Thank *you*, Peter.

Here's the promised Cute Picture of My Baby. :) She's looking at the envelope that Grandma and Grandpa Papke sent us. She says, "Thanks, Grandma Grandpa, for sending me such a fun toy!"

The weather has been really nice of late, and I'm enjoying it. And taking the opportunity to dress my baby in cute little sundresses, ala the photo. They show off her sweet baby chub, which I'm totally enamoured of. Oh, and on the topic of sweet baby, chub, we went to the doctor on Friday.

They didn't tell me a weight in pounds, so I've only got what I remembered from the scale. What I remember was 7.91 kilograms, although running that through a converter yields me nearly 17-1/2 pounds, which seems way too much! That would mean she's gained more than 2-1/2 pounds since her last visit. In any case, though, she's certainly gaining weight just fine and healthy and happy.

You'd think that would forestall the doctors from lecturing me, but alas, not. One of the doctors nearly went pale when I mentioned that I sleep with my baby. She said "Well, you know, we can't recommend that." I said, "I know. And I disagree. Fortunately for me and my baby, I'm the one who gets to make that decision." Then they proceeded to lecture me about how I needed to give my baby vitamin D (and this is the third time I've declined the vitamin drops) because breastmilk is "deficient"- actual wording, I might add. Oh, and since she's over the six month mark, I had to argue with them about why she's not on solids yet. They're convinced that she'll get an iron deficiency.

Now, my baby isn't going to get rickets. We don't live that far North, and she's my daughter, which means she's white as all hell. Furthermore, she goes out for a walk near every day, so it's not like she doesn't get sunshine (which is how the body synthesizes D, as you may or may not recall). And there's plenty enough iron in my breastmilk for my baby girl, thank you much. Besides which, she's blatantly not ready for solids. She's just now able to sit up, she has no teeth, and, most importantly, she's not interested. At all. I'm pretty sure she hasn't figured out what eating is. And they're insisting that I give her solids?

So I told them all this, and they told me that I should make her some rice cereal, mixed with breastmilk and feed it to her. First of all, I'm not giving her rice cereal. That stuff is so processed, and such a simple carbohydrate that it's nearly as bad as feeding her granulated table sugar. With a history of blood sugar issues in the family, I don't want to start off her experience with food teaching her to eat things that have a high glycemic load like that.

Second, we can't get Ari to take breastmilk alone from a spoon or a bottle or a washcloth or a cup. I'm highly dubious that she'd take it adulturated. Besides which, of course, the times that we've tried letting her lick some mashed food off of a finger, she utterly refused it. So, yeah- not starting solids at this time, thanks. They seem to feel that she has to get going, or what, she'll never learn to eat?

Anyway, that was the doctor's visit. That and the shots (poor little bean).