What to say first?

I have some information on bottles to share, but first let me give a few important updates.

My grandmother came home from the hospital Wednesday evening. A visiting nurse is helping to care for her at home. She is doing pretty well, considering all she is facing.

Brooklynn is trying to cruise. She is desperately trying to walk while holding onto furniture. She is also crawling very quickly and has learned to open drawers and chase the dogs. We may have an early walker on our hands. She also jammed her finger up my nose the other night and pinched, giving me a very bad bloody nose. It took 10 minutes to stop the bleeding and I had a very big mess in the bathroom sink.

We had an interesting Saturday last week. I was getting ready to take Brooklynn to a parade that her cousin Helen’s high school marching band was putting on for practice. I called the dogs inside and couldn’t see Gwennie. I searched high and low and couldn’t find her. I became convinced she had gotten out and called my parents to come help look for her. My brother’s family also began to look for her. We all drove or walked around for about an hour calling for her. Then I went back to house to feed Brooklynn and my mom decided to take one more look under the shed (we had already looked and listened for her there) and saw a chocolate nose peeking out. Gwennie was under the shed and she was stuck. She had dug her way under there and moved to come back out and her back legs got stuck on a ridge of earth. I reached my arms in as far as I could and dug her legs out with my hands (losing several fingernails in the process). By this time my mom had called everyone and they all came into my back yard.

This was our first meeting with them. My oldest niece is 7 and she hugged me super tight and whispered “I missed you.” I hugged her back and told her the same. My nephew was more interested in seeing the dogs and making Brooklynn laugh. My middle niece didn’t really know what to do. She talked to me and gave me a quick hug before they left. The baby (who will be 2 in October) hadn’t foggiest idea who I was. I didn’t force it. I just said “You don’t remember me, huh” while kneeling to talk to her. Her sister said – “You know her, that’s Aunt Krista” and her brother piped in “No she doesn’t. She hasn’t seen her since she was a newborn baby.” Anyhow, she was more interested in seeing and petting my dogs. Even Rudy kissed her – and Rudy is leary of most kids. My brother held Brooklynn and “you look like your mommy.” SIL did not try to touch her – I was extremely relieved. She did go get bricks to help make sure this ordeal didn’t happen again though. The whole meeting lasted maybe 10 minutes or so. It was actually probably a good way to break the ice a bit.

One interesting tid-bit – I learned that SIL’s sister had given birth to a baby 8 days after I had Brooklynn. I wonder if her own sister also being pregnant added fuel to the fire last year….

I think I might just save the bottle information for a blog later this weekend. The short of it is that if you’ve been using polycarbonate bottles (most bottles are, like Avent, Dr. Brown’s, Soothie…etc) you might want to reconsider using them to a chemical called BPA. I’ll post the links that led me to this decision and pictures of what I’m now using soon.