19 ounces

19 ounces. That's how much my 19 1/2 month old little girl has gained in the past 6 weeks. This is very good news for us, as we've been struggling with weight issues with her and in the previous 6 weeks, she had lost 9.5 ounces.

Yes, I've eaten steaks that weigh more than what she gained this time around, but I'm still considering it a very major accomplishment! Her pediatrician wants to repeat some blood tests (uugghh!) just to be sure everything is still OK, and he said we should now stop catering to her picky eating habits. But, we don't have to take her back for another weight check until her 2 year old checkup (in June), versus every 6 weeks like we've been doing.

The size 12 month pants still fall off her and she's still below 0% on "the curve." But, she's moving in the right direction and this mommy couldn't be happier! She's still my Spectacular Thing in the Not-Quite-As-Small-Anymore package :-)

Good thing, bright red package

Lest anyone think I play favorites... I don't! Yesterday I blogged about my baby, Jessica. Today, I'll write about my other little girl, Rachel. My other good thing, in a bright red package!

During my first pregnancy, my husband and I teased each other a lot about what color hair our first born was going to have. I'm blond, he has dark brown hair and I'm not sure why, but we had a little "competition" going on which of our genes was going to win out. Here's how the delivery went....

I was at the hospital, doing "practice pushes" with the nurse when all of a sudden she shouted, "Stop! She's in a hurry to come out, I need to go call the doctor." In the 20 minutes it took for the doctor to arrive, before we could finish the delivery, the nurse tried to amuse me with small talk. "I can see a lot of hair," she told me. Of course, she couldn't tell what color.

When Rachel made her debut (only 4 pushes later after the doctor arrived -- God bless her for making it so easy on me!), the nurse announced not "it's a girl," but "she's a redhead!" My husband turned to me and said, completely straight-faced, "um, anything you need to tell me?" You could have heard a pin drop in that room as the doctors and nurses stopped cold in their tracks to wait for my response. If you know my husband, you know that this is just his sense of humor, he was making a joke. If you know our family, you know that his cousin has two kids with bright red hair, so Rachel fits right in. The red is not a mystery, we just never considered that blond + dark brown = redhead!

She's so much like me, it's almost scary. She's smart and thoughtful and most important, kind. She's sensitive and emotional and strives to make everyone happy. She's also organized and meticulous and she does NOT like it when her plans don't go her way. Yes, she's Mini-Me.

Rachel is almost 4 1/2 now. She and her sister are total opposites. Rachel organizes, Jessie destroys. Rachel listens, Jessica laughs as she does exactly the opposite of what you tell her. Rachel is respectful of what her father and I say, Jessica makes her own rules. Night and Day, Black and White, these are my girls.

Do I have a favorite? Of course not. They're both my beautiful, perfect, precious little girls. Do I approach them the same? Of course not. They're totally different people, and I know how to parent each according to their own personalities. I love them the same, but I mother them differently. Is that right or wrong? I don't know. But, so far it seems to work for us, so we'll keep doing it.

Here's another picture of my little redhead (who's initials are R.E.D., by the way... a total coincidence since we picked her name months before we knew her hair color). She's playing with her little cousin, who can't seem to get enough handfuls of her bright, pretty hair. Of course, Rachel takes it all in stride and loves how his face lights up when he plays with her.




You know, this post and my last both had "good thing" in the title, but that's wrong... the right word is really "spectacular."