Happy St. Patty's Day!

I figured since I finally put up the Christmas post that was sitting around unpublished I should post something new too. And, it just so happens to be St. Patrick's Day (my second-favorite holiday) so hope your celebrations go well whether or not you are Irish like me.

February-March has been a fun time for the Bairds. February is full of birthdays in our family (8 I think!) with Micah's grandma Nina celebrating her 80th with a great family gathering and this year was also a big one for my brother Shawn. We celebrated his 30th in style, hockey style, that is. It was the first Penguins game for me if you can believe that, and the first hockey game for my sis Kelly and her boyfriend Noel. Lil Kelly technically attended a hockey game last March in Chicago (in utero), but this was quite a treat for her, cheering the Penguins next to her Uncle Shawn while sporting her new Sidney Crosby jersey. The Philadelphia Flyers fans were something else--I had never experienced anything like that before, but they were great to lil Kelly, saying that she was still too little to boo at and that she still had time to switch sides so they liked her. After the game we went to the home of the original Philly Cheesesteak and shopping in a kilt store in downtown Phoenixville where Uncle Shawn bought Kelly her leprechaun, Mr. Finnegan, King of the Leprechauns. We even got to see Uncle Shawn in action, playing his bass guitar at church before catching our flight home.

At the beginning of this month I kicked off a celebration of Irish food. I made several Irish dishes, including Guiness stew, champ, Irish soda bread, and a lighter dish, turkey hash. For my birthday celebration we had Zach, Katie, and our friend Kyle try out some of the dishes and Micah learned how to pour the perfect black & tan and my favorite, a snake bite (hard cider & Harp). We also had homemade shamrock shakes for dessert along with the delicious strawberry birthday cake that Kelly and Micah baked for me. Needless to say, it wasn't a light dinner, but a lot of fun! Micah had arranged for a great night on the town (Yellow Springs) the day before as part of my present, we walked from our babysitters' house (thanks again Lainie and Bev!) to the Winds Cafe, a great restaurant that brought out my inner "foodie", and then to the Little Art Theater for a movie! Yay! Btw, we saw "The Wrestler" and while we rather would have seen the Watchmen or Slumdog Millionaire, that's what was playing and we did enjoy the film. Is he a great husband or what?!

She still doesn't have any teeth, but Kelly is cruising--walking while holding on to furniture, our hands or while pushing her toys around the room. She is also creeping (crawling on all fours) everywhere and keeps trying to get out of the house. So I bought a new stroller for a steal on ebay and we have been out and about in the neighborhood, enjoying the nice, if erractic weather.

Micah and I wrote a children's book just for her, starring her--Kelly's First Halloween Adventure. We took advantage of all the costumed Kelly photos (could you tell that Halloween is my #1 favorite holiday?) to put them together in a cute story form for a special keepsake. Micah came up with the story and photo spread and I edited it and we published it as a photobook on Shutterfly.com. It just arrived yesterday and it is just perfect! I think she'll love it for years to come. Some of you might be in there, Demkos, Curets, Esways, Shevitz's, Bairds, Aichele's, Colleen, ...um I think that's it, without looking to be sure...if you want to check it out you can see it at kellyrhiannonbaird.shutterfly.com

Our biggest news is that it is finally official! Micah has taken the job at Children's Hospital in Akron. We are planning to move up there sometime this summer! It will be a busy spring/summer for us as we get ready for the move, celebrate Micah's birthday on Easter, Kelly's first birthday on Cinco de Mayo, and both of Micah's graduations (Pediatrics and Rehab).

Well, that's what's new with us. What's new with you?

P.S. If you are not on our email list for photo and blog updates and want to be, or you know of someone else, drop me a line! I email out cute pics of Kelly every week or so. She is getting sooo big!

Merry Christmas!

(Baby's first real snow)

(Our tiny reindeer enjoys a carrot snack before heading to the Live Nativity to visit the other animals)

Merry Christmas! It goes without saying that 2008 has been the best year yet for Micah and I. Kelly Rhiannon is now 7 and a half months old and has just begun to crawl. She loves her rubber duckies and plays with them in and out of the bathtub. She even takes some of them on the road, whether on vacation or to Grandma's house.

Welcome newest Bairds!

Laura finally did it! She had to show off and go even longer than I did with one baby. Jonas Elijah (green hat) and Lilah Rose (yellow) were born on Tuesday! Kelly has 2 new cousins to play with!

Kelly's first cold--for real this time!

Baby and I are home sick with respective colds. She has had cold-like symptoms associated with teething, but this is the real thing. I think that her cough is keeping her from getting enough rest because she fell asleep in her high chair this morning, poor thing! We play in the bathroom a lot to get some steam therapy, but Momma is TIRED! Everytime I try to take a nap, she wakes up from hers. We need to coordinate them better! LOL! Hopefully, since we've been sick since Sunday-ish we should be getting better soon!

First Thanksgiving!

We hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving Holiday! We had our turkey day on Friday when the majority of the family could get together at Grandma and Grandpa Baird's. Colleen flew up from Virginia and Grandma Nina came from Boardman. Josh and Laura could only join us via webcam from Louisiana since Laura was due any day with the mystery twin cousins! On the menu for Kelly was sweet potatoes (her favorite!) and mashed potatoes. After dinner we cleaned her up in the bath where she was joined by her older cousins Silas and Sophie! We celebrated Sophie's first birthday on Saturday with a really fun Minnie Mouse-themed party. On Sunday we went to church with Grandma and played with Bella, Jackson and Alex after a pancake brunch. It was a great first Thanksgiving and we are thankful for the blessing of friends and family like you!

Gods and Gold-The Mayan Exhibit

Our favorite museum was the Museum of Man. Downstairs they had an awesome Mayan exhibit and we saw real crystal skulls and learned about their history. So Kelly the Museum girl may grow up to be little miss Indiana Jones!

Balboa Park

Momma and baby play peek-a-boo inthe Japanese Friendship Gardens and look at pretty koi in the fish pond.

California Dreamin'

The Baird family went on another adventure together, this time travelling cross-country by airplane to sunny San Diego, CA. Micah attended a conference for one of his specialties and did some networking about possible jobs for after residency. Baby and I explored San Diego while he was in class. We especially enjoyed Balboa Park with its many museums (the trolley driver called her "Kelly the Museum Girl")

and Japanese garden and Coronado Beach. Micah joined us for Old Town (think: Mexican Williamsburg) and the Zoo (the same trolley driver changed her nickname to "Kelly the Zoo Baby"). Kelly is a great traveller--on the plane, cabs and bus and she makes friends everywhere she goes with her big beautiful brown eyes and winning smile. We hope that she always enjoys travelling this much!

Kelly Rhiannon's First Boo Day

Hope you all had a happy Halloweek! Here's a pictoral overview of Kelly's costumes. We decided to go with the standard "animal, vegetable, mineral" categories for variety. Enjoy!

ANIMAL...

pink bunny

white bunny




black cat



VEGETABLE...



pumpkin


strawberry hat

carrot

MINERAL....

Super Baby = baby of steel

New Baby Tips that Really Helped

Here's a couple of things that we did with our little girl that I thought were worth passing along:



Save all instructions! I keep a drawer (really a trundle storage box that rolls under her crib and is hidden by the dust ruffle) for all instruction manuals, proof of purchase, important packaging for all of Kelly's stuff. I know where to look when I need to find something baby related and if I need to take something back or consign it (worth more with packaging) I still have it.

I hid a $20 bill in the lining of my diaper bag for emergencies.

I use a drawstring mesh lingerie bag to keep baby socks together in the washer and dryer. I hang it by the string on the hamper and put socks in it everyday. Keeps the washer and dryer from eating them!

I started during pregnancy to stock up on essential supplies--I know most moms do this with baby supplies like diapers during their nesting phase, but I'm not sure if everyone stocks up on things like detergent, TP, tooth paste, etc. Mostly I started doing it because I have to drive pretty far to get to my nearest Trader Joes, but I found it easier to keep a stockpile in the garage on an old bookshelf than to have to explain to a tired husband or helpful friend, what to buy and where to get it.

When I need to shower we have bathroom funtime. I started putting Kelly in her bouncy chair and later in her exersaucer and she plays just on the otherside of the curtain so I know if she's cranky to hurry up!

The Great Blackout of '08

(Cellphone picture of Baby Kelly by candlelight)

I've been meaning for some time now to post about the crazy time we had back in September. It seems so long ago, it happened before all of this depressing economy stuff (Now's the time to get "Financial Peace" today! http://www.daveramsey.com/) and election hoopla and I guess that family life in general makes time do funny things! Anyway, thanks to Hurricane Ike we were part of the worst power outage in 30 years! Driving home from church on Sunday I had to fight wind gusts of up to 75 miles an hour! It was weird because the sky was clear and the sun was bright, but the winds were just brutal. I pulled into our little one car garage and started to unload little Kelly. By the time I went to close the garage door, the power had gone out. I went inside and Micah, who had just returned from work and had turned on the Wii to play some video games while waiting for us to get home, said, "The power is out." We didn't think much of it and went on with our day, eating cold cuts for lunch and reading and playing with the baby. I was still thinking that I had a church board meeting to go to that evening and decided to take a nap. When I woke up I noticed that the little tree just outside our patio door was bent almost hortizontal to the ground and there were big waves on the surface of our pond. The power was still out and the meeting was cancelled since there was no power at the church. One of the highways was closed due to large trees on the road and 500,000 customers were without power in the Cincinnati area. We learned all of this thanks to Micah's smart phone that had internet access and we started to worry that the power wasn't going to come back on before dark.

Well, all together we were without power for 56 hours. The wind warped our garage door enough that I couldn't get it open--we thought that the locking mechanism was jammed and I was without transportation or access to a cell phone charger, making for a pretty miserable Monday. Kelly was the least phased by the outage (the only changes for her were that she had to switch to disposable diapers and we had to find her a battery powered night light) but she chose this stressful time to do some heavy-duty teething! Micah got home really late to a pretty desperate Momma and baby. We had to practically empty our fridge and go searching the area stores that had power for food, medicine for a teething baby and batteries. Our power finally came back on while we were away having a blackout bonfire and Zach and Katie's. It was exciting to drive home and see lights on in neighborhood closer and closer to home until we finally spotted our window from the road! We did a electric slide of joy! We quickly did laundry so that Micah could attend a work conference in Atlanta and about two hours after I dropped him off at the airport we lost power again! Luckily it came on again at 3 AM! We will always remember this crazy time! Hopefully we will be better prepared for future natural disasters. (Momma is stocking up on camping and emergency supplies!)

Pictures lots of pictures!

Here is a brief list of things that have happened in the last several weeks (in random order):

1. Dressed Kelly up in rabbit costume
2. Jim, Annie, Garrett, and Drew came to visit (in costume!)
3. Dressed Kelly up in carrot costume
4. Kelly went to regional assembly in Columbus
5. Dressed Kelly up in a cat costume
6. Kelly rolled over and over again and over again (she's traveling now . . .)
7. Kelly went to the Renaissance Fair

Here are some pictures to enjoy! More costumes to come . . .

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

P.S. click on the title of the post to see all our pictures on picasaweb!

Kelly health update

It seems that her cold-like symptoms were short lived, but her fussiness is not. The doctor saw a tooth starting to come in and we think that instead of her first cold, its probably more likely that she is teething instead. Yea, score one for the germaphobe team!

first cold

As you may have already heard, Kelly did well on her 4 month checkup at the pediatricians, who not coincidentally, is our doctor too (yea Med-peds docs!). Dr. Hardin said that she is tall and thin (70th and 50th percentiles) and he laughs everytime he tells us what her headsize percentile is (75th, btw) because we usually make a remark about being a Baird (with gi-normous heads). Ironically enough, the very next day she started showing signs of catching her very first cold--lots of snot, crankier than usual, snugglier than usual, didn't sleep through the night, a slightly raised temp (but not a fever). Dr. Daddy thinks its a cold. I've always been a germaphobe --it was a good survival tactic during the days that we didn't have health insurance as kids and never knew if our parents would take us to the hospital or not--so it is hard to admit defeat when the telltale signs of an infection manifest. I work so hard at not getting sick in the first place--and have a pretty decent success rate to prove it--but once we get sick I just try to ride it out as comfortably as possible. So anyway, this cold seems pretty mild so far although the sleepless night that we had gave me quite a headache!

In other news, Micah finished editing the birth video and Katie, Zach and Silas got to screen the premiere! So if you want to see it, come on over!