The adventures of a Westcoast boy and a Midwestern Jewish girl as they discover the truth beneath the myths of the South, embrace rural life by starting a sustainable farm, and learn how to teach sociology.

Saturday, April 2, 2011

The Amazing Shrinking Child

I forgot to put Evelyn's growth stats in that last post and I think there are some people out there who are interested in this sort of thing.

At her 4 month check up Evelyn weighed 11lbs 1.6 ounces-that's the 10th percentile. She was 22.5 inches tall which is the 5th percentile and a half inch shorter than she was a 2 months. See chart below.

This leaves us with 2 questions:
1. when are those Otto genes going to kick in?
2. did we really need one more reason to question medical care in Mississippi?

Friday, April 1, 2011

Breastfeeding

No witty title-just right to the point. The latest controversy I'm posting about is not Mississippi specific. It just shows that there are crazy people all over this country.

The other morning I was watching some morning tv show while feeding Evelyn and nearly exploded when this story came on. To save you the jump here is the latest controversy: a Spanish toy maker has made a breastfeeding doll. Instead of the baby doll coming with a bottle it comes with a halter top that children can out on. The child places the baby so that the mouth lines up with some daisies on the halter at which point the baby makes a sucking noise. Apparently, this is something to be outraged about. People claim it's disgusting. Really, you can buy a doll that poops and a breastfeeding doll is disgusting? The health editor for foxnews.com said he thought it was a bad idea. I just cannot get my head around this. Apparently some people fear that little girls who play with this doll will then want to have a baby. Let me tell you, if someone had told me at 9 years old that if I had a baby I had to feed it every hour by having it suck the life out of me I would have changed my family intentions immediately. If you want to read more, I sort of like what this blogger has to say about it.

In other news...Evelyn ran her first race! Ok, she napped in the baby jogger* for the whole 10k, but we think it counts. Our good friends Anna and Tim came to visit and we showed them the sights of Starkville by running the Historic Starkvegas 10k. It was fabulous. Tim totally rocked it and came in 3rd overall, Phil pushed Evvy in the stroller and neither one had a meltdown, and Anna helped me make it in in exactly my goal time. Pacer friends are awesome. We were too excited about having our friends in town to take pictures, but thankfully Anna and Tim documented their journey to MS. Here are some photos of the race morning:
Starkvegas 10k

Spring has sprung down here. Bartlett Pears and apple trees have bloomed and become green. Actually, everything is green and it's awesome. For our family and friends in the North who are having yet another snow day, don't be too jealous. Just think of how miserable we'll be in a few weeks when it will be 100 degrees with 100 percent humidity at 10pm.

The farm is doing what it should do in early spring--becoming green. We've got lettuce and some other greens that should be ready in the next couple of weeks. We had our first spring salads the other day--delicious! Corn is coming up and the tomato plants are doing well. Potatoes should be going in the ground soon. Local folks should keep their eyes and ears open for an announcement about Old Well Organics going live and open for business.

*Special shout out to bobcat for the baby jogger. This thing has logged a lot of miles and we're hoping it makes our kid as cool and athletic as his are.

Also of note: Anna and Tim claim the Provence room is very comfortable and while we did get a little bit of farm work out of them, we didn't force them to spend 2 days building a shed like we did our previous visitors. So, book your stay!