After her last doctor visit, Andy and I decided it was time to start Noelle on some solid food. If her track record at trying new things in the food department holds up, we know it might take her a while to adjust. After all, she didn't eat anything for the first 36 hours of her life because she had trouble learning to nurse, and the child still won't take a bottle very often. So, if we want her to be eating solids around 6 months, it might be good to get her used to it slowly.

Today after church we bought some rice cereal and baby spoons, strapped her into her bouncy seat with a bib and went to town. This picture reflects her general attitude about the experience. I think she probably got a total of one spoonful into her tummy, which is honestly better than we anticipated. She only gagged a few times, and just spit up once. Mostly she just gave us a weird look and pushed the cereal around with her tongue. Very cute.

So we will keep practicing, and we will also keep our fingers crossed that maybe getting a little more substantial food in her tummy will help her sleep a bit better. She usually does pretty well, but occasionally she throws us for a loop. Last night she decided to pretend like she was a brand new baby and woke up demanding to be fed every 2 hours. I tried to tell her she was too old for that, but she didn't buy it. Needless to say, we were all exhausted today. It's a good thing we are in love with that little girl.

Wow, what a fast 4 months it has been! Noelle had her Dr.'s visit today, and she was:

15 lbs 9.5 oz
26 inches long

She was 8 lb 10 oz at birth, and 21 inches long. No wonder she's outgrowing all these onesies! Her doctor said that she looks perfect from head to toe.

She has done pretty well with her shots in the past, but this time for some reason she has struggled. She was hard to console after the shots, and now tonight she won't let me put her down. Usually she'll go in her crib at bedtime without a peep, but tonight, if I so much as make to lift her over the crib rail, she screams like I'm killing her. So, we're having some mommy daughter time this evening.

She is SO close to rolling over, and she's grabbing everything in sight and trying to put it in her mouth. She and I had a 5 minute laughing session today for no reason, and her laugh is so great. I love that baby!

Today we celebrated Noelle's first Easter. She's not quite old enough for egg hunts and Easter baskets or to understand what the day is about, but we think she enjoyed it anyway. Andy and I are excited about starting traditions with her that we will carry on for our family. For instance, today we had "Easter Fajitas" for lunch, and we just might do that every year! Granted, it was just because that's what we had in the house, but traditions have to start somehow.

We spent the day with just the three of us (or 5 if you count Nacho and Duncan). We went to church this morning where Noelle wore her very first dress, as pictured here. This afternoon we did a photo shoot outside and got some great pictures. She really likes to be outside - it almost always calms her down instantly. She is definitely more like Andy in that way. I got a caterpillar on me while we were out there and about had a heart attack trying to get it off! Take a look at the pictures!

We hope that all of you had a happy Easter and were able to spend time with family and friends.

Google...how do I love thee? Let me count the ways:
- Your blindingly fast, efficient search engine.
- Your map software, which makes everyone else look like a bunch of bumbling amatuers
- Your desktop software, which, even though I don't use it, is amazing and useful.
- Your drive to make the internet a better, and more fun place.
- And yet another reason: Google Calendar.

Just released, Google's calendaring software offers a web-based way of keeping track of one person's (or many people's) events and happenings. I haven't had a chance to use this very much. It just launched last night so it's SUPER slow from all of the people trying to access it. But what I've seen is quite inspiring.

The default display shows a standard 1m through 12pm event calendar. Buttons at the top allow you to change your current view from day, to week, to month. Clicking anywhere in the grid pops open a window for that date/time, allows you to name your event and even gives you the option of setting alerts for said events.

Once you save the event, your current view will show a solid block of color indicating the duration of that event. I haven't had a chance to do much more than that but I can see this being HIGHLY useful for families on the go. I'm constantly asking Jaime what's going on for a certain day. With this website, I can simply check myself and not bother her. I can also look over "our" schedule for the next week, month, etc.

Supposedly it's even got a way to make your events public. I assume this might mean you can share events between other Google account holders. A perfect example would be that Jaime and I are traveling to both Illinois and Florida in the coming months. We could put these trips on our calendar and our families could see when we'll be in town or out.

I don't know about you but I'm voting Google for El Presidente in 2008!

Andy had his first softball game of the season tonight. He plays with a team from our church in a local league, and this is his third year playing. He has a great time, and it gives him some good exercise. He also usually injures himself at least once during the season. Tonight he slid into home base (and scored a run!) and ended up with some major scratches and what will probably turn into a nice bruise on his thigh. Ouch. The things guys do for sports.

The game was early enough tonight that Noelle got to attend. I walked her around the park to show her the layout, and then we settled in to watch her Daddy play. She didn't pay a lot of attention to the game, but she was very curious about where we were. Here's a picture we took of Noelle and her Daddy after the game.

Those of you that know me, know that I'm in love with a web-based programming language called ColdFusion. It's elegant, streamlined and very powerful. It's not quite as widely-used as other languages like PHP or ASP and one of the reasons why, in my opinion, is the lack of open-source (free) applications.

It seems as it in the past few months, many programmers have been remedying that issue. Coldfusion programmer Brian Rinaldi has compiled an exhaustive list of Free and open-source applications and all of them are written using Coldfusion.

Anyway, here's a tiny list of sites I've found that are very useful for Coldfusion programmers. Enjoy!

Brian Rinaldi's blog
Ray Camden's blog
CFQuickDocs - Coldfusion docs reference (written in AJAX)
House of Fusion (Coldfusion mailing list)
Sitepoint Coldfusion Forums Coldfusion Cookbook

Recently ESPN.com changed it's format from 800x600 standard to the more cutting-edge, larger format 1024x768 standard. As more and more people are bumping up the resolution on their Dell 19" LCD monitors, many websites look increasingly small and insignificant. What ESPN.com did is to reduce the amount of space on either side of their website and make it fill the monitor again. This allows for a greater amount of content to be above the bottom of the window.

As part of their redesign, they also switched to using an all CSS-based code template. CSS (or Cascading stylesheets) is a "language" which allows web developers to seperate the structure of the website (rows and columns) from that way the information appears to the user (colors, fonts, sizes, etc.).

There are many benefits to making this change among which are: Code becomes smaller in file size, Decreased load time for users.

In fact, the change is so tremendous that ESPN.com is now SAVING themselves 732 terabytes per month. If you don't know how much a terabyte is, think about it this way...the average computer hard drive is now about 80gigs. A terabyte is 1000 gigs.

Impressive no? Click the link below for a more detailed analysis of this story. Check the link

I'm sure that I am seeing things that aren't really there since I spend all day every day with her, but I think I am starting to become aware of personality traits in Noelle. I've been talking to her a lot lately about how some of the things she does are frustrating to me now, but I hope that she still does them when she is a teenager.

One of the things she does is refuse to "go with the flow." If I put her in her swing and that's not what she's feeling like doing, she will fuss until I move her on to a new activity. As her mother, that can be frustrating right now because I just want her to DEAL sometimes when I have to put her down to throw in a load of laundry or whatever. However, when she is a teenager, I will be SO grateful that she does not go with the flow. I want her to be her own person.

Also, if Noelle has a need she wants to tell us about, she will fuss and cry until her exact need is met. She won't be appeased or fooled into thinking she's being taken care of if we aren't doing what she really needs. I tell her often that she should hold on to that. As a teenager and adult, she is going to have to speak up for herself to get her needs met. She might luck out occasionally and have people in her life that anticipate her needs (like her mama), but for the most part, she needs to put herself out there and tell people what she needs.

I am so excited to get to know my little girl and see what kind of person she becomes. It is amazing to see the changes that happen from day to day, and to think about how she will change from year to year, MAN! How great to be a mom.

So yesterday Noelle started to try rolling over. This is the first time she has shown any interest in it whatsoever, so I thought it was pretty exciting. She didn't have quite the momentum she needed, but she got about 45 degrees towards the goal. She'll be rolling over any day now, I'm sure!

She still does not like tummy time, I'm guessing at least in part because of her reflux, but we are working on it. She doesn't mind as much when she is on my legs on her tummy, so we're trying that a little more often.

We got a book called "Slow and Steady Get Me Ready" that has an activity for every week between birth and age 5 that is supposed to help prepare them for school. I thought at the very least it would give me some things to do with her, and if it helps with school, that is wonderful, too.

Noelle had her first play date yesterday. It was really for us moms, but 3 of us from my childbirth class got together with our babies yesterday afternoon. Noelle was hanging out with the younger men! Their boys are both 6 weeks old, and can you believe that Noelle is 15 weeks old today? Wow. She's growing up fast!

So a friend of mine sent an email to me today with a link to an animation for an >Adidas commercial.

Whatever it is, it's just awesome. The way the players run, then break apart when they come into contact with the soccer ball is just stellar. Kudos to 1st Avenue Machine for their great work.

Also, I'm listening to Maroon 5 right now. Have I ever mentioned that they're a fantastic band? Well, they're great. You should go listen to them. Check the link

So we were a little concerned, or at least curious, to see what the time change might do to Noelle. She has been going to bed roughly at 8 PM every night for the past month or so, almost always with no problem whatsoever. She had been waking up once a night (sometimes twice) to eat, but would go immediately back to sleep until morning.

But, it turns out that a time change was just what Noelle needed because she has started sleeping all night again, and taking great naps during the day. Let's hope it lasts!

Talking with a friend yesterday, I realized that I have not slept through the night since the middle of my pregnancy. Even if Noelle is sleeping all night, I wake up expecting her to wake up, or because *someone* is snoring, or because the dogs are laying entirely too close to me, or on top of me. Will I ever sleep from bedtime to morning again?