Appointments and presents and snakes, oh my!

Today Caroline had her 9 month check up. Yes, it's a little late given that she's over ten months now but it's the soonest they could see her. Caroline is VERY healthy and now almost in the 50th percentile for weight! Can you believe that?! Such wonderful news. The not so wonderful news is that she hasn't really grown length-wise in 4 months. I was very surprised to hear that because when you look at her, she looks so long. Perhaps it's because she is lean? Anyway, she's measuring in the 5th percentile for height at this point, where she used to be at the 75th percentile. Her doctor wants me to feed her one additional meal per day to see if that helps her growth at all. So we'll see if that helps. She gets rechecked in a couple of months for her 1 year appointment (1 YEAR, omg!) and we'll see if things have improved. If she still isn't growing length-wise by then, her doctor said we'll have to look into exploring that more. Let's hope she just has a growth spurt!

In great news, Caroline is quite advanced when it comes to her skill sets according to the doctor. She does everything and more that a baby her age should. He said she seems very smart, coordinated and socialized and that, combined with her weight gain, makes him less concerned about her lack of growth regarding height. So we'll see what happens.

When we got home from the appointment, we had TWO presents waiting for us courtesy of the USPS. One package was a box I had mailed from when we were in the States containing all of the books I bought Caroline while we were there. The second was an Easter package from Caroline's grandparents from Waco, Judy and Harry. I'll let the pictures tell that story:


Yeah mom, so what?


Fine, I'll read the label.


*Gasp!* It's for meeeee!

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy! How do I open it?

Like this? No...

How about this? No.

Here we go!

She was much more excited than she looks in the pictures, Judy. She only pokes things she likes and she was poking the Easter out of that stuffed animal. Bentley was VERY jealous by the way. VERY. OH, and I need to point out that the beautiful dress she happened to be wearing today was hand made by Grandma Judy. How perfect is that?!

In other news, on the way to the daily (yes, daily) pool party with my favorite ladies, I smelled something dead. I honestly thought it must be a toad or something. I wasn't very concerned. I put Caroline's baby monitor in the palm tree hanging over the pool and parked myself on a float. (Just for the record... I can see Caroline's room from the pool, it's close enough that the monitor works and the monitor tells me if Caroline stops breathing, if the smoke alarm or carbon monoxide detector go off, the constant temperature of her room along with any temperature changes out of normal range, plus I can HEAR anything that goes on in C's room. If the monitor is taken outside of working range, it sounds an alarm for me so that I know. It also notifies me if the battery is low on power. Didn't want you to think I was being irresponsible.) When Caroline woke up, I went to grab her and bring her back to the pool with me. That is when I saw what was dead:

Yeah, it was HUGE. REALLY HUGE! I of course had to run back and tell the girls at the pool, which proved to be difficult in wet flip flops. I totally felt like a girl out of a slasher flick who runs away from the killer and you just KNOW she is going to fall. And her boobs are going to fall out of her top. AND I ALMOST FELL AND I WAS IN MY BIKINI, SO MY BOOBS ALMOST FELL OUT OF MY TOP. So I manage, by the grace of a very sympathetic God to keep my footing, and I make it over to the girls. "OH. MY. GOD. THERE. IS. A." *Gasp, gasp, gasp, deep breath* "HUGE DEAD SNAKE in my yard." So we all did what responsible bloggers do and took lots of pictures of said dead snake. It was terrifying for me. I almost forgot I had a child inside who needed me. The horror of it all. Oh and Judy, that bush the snake was dead under? Yep, same one we posed next to for pictures when you were here. Who knew that was living there? Ok, I'm taking a deep breath and moving. OMG, HUGE SNAKE IN MY YARD. HUGE. Another deep breath. Zen. Phew.

I got Caroline, put her swimsuit on and floated around in the pool, all the while searching the bottom of the pool for snakes. A bit later, Caroline and I went home walking as far around the bush as possible.

I knew Benjamin would be home soon, so I paced around near the driveway, all the while looking for more snakes. I just knew they were lurking everywhere. I even started beating the trees in our yard with a bat just in case. I guess I wanted to show those snakes that I was the boss and that my yard would not be their residence. I beat no snakes out of trees and I'm sure my new neighbors think I'm totally and completely nuts. IF ONLY THEY KNEW THE HORRORS I'VE SEEN. Come to think of it, my real enemies are the boonie bees and I'm lucky they didn't find me. Because they're probably the only residents of my yard anymore... and they probably think I'm nuts too. Maybe they didn't sting me out of pity? Who knows. Anyway, I continued pacing with Caroline and sure enough, Benjamin came home.

I tried to look totally normal and was like "Hey, I want you to see something. Follow me." So I take him around to the back of the yard and... THE SNAKE WAS GONE!!! I just about died. Turns out the husband of one of my pool gal pals took pity on the womanly fright and threw away the snake. I think Benjamin thought I was losing my mind. Luckily I took pictures, so he believes me. Then he started talking about how if he had found the snake first, he might have played a trick on me with it and then some D words started getting thrown around by me... disdain, disembowelment, divorce. Then we hugged it out and he promised never to purposely scare me or play a prank with a snake. And I made him the other D word... dinner. :)

To get your mind off of that horrid Guam beast, here's a picture of Benjamin and Caroline from this evening. Benjamin was topless because he had just fed Caroline, who decided to share her chicken and vegetables with his shirt.