Chloe is turning 5 months next week. She's officially in the age range for introducing solids. Both Phoebe and Piper got their first taste of solid food just prior to being six months old, even though I figured I'd hold off until after six months with each of them, maybe even longer... There are a lot of reasons to do so, best summed up by Kellymom.com, but my number one reason for holding off is our families high risk for food allergies.

Much like the rationale behind probiotic therapy, holding off on solids allows for total intestinal maturation. If the gut isn't mature, then it is considered leaky. Basically, in the immature gut, small openings allow large food particles through, which the body then views as foreign and attacks, mounting an immune response and therefore an allergy to that particular food. In mature guts that are leaky (due to irritable bowel syndrome, antibiotic use, or other causes of chronic diarrhea), probiotic therapy enhances the mucosal lining to not allow the larger particles through.

By 6 months, it would seem that infant intestines are fairly well ready for the introduction of solid foods - and yet we're still advised to start with the least allergenic of foods, just in case. Basically, it's unknown exactly when each baby's gut will be mature, the average age being around 6 months. Typically, though, most infants guts are ready for solid food by 9 months, and in some cases, it might take until 12 months or so.

So my intention, like it was with her sisters, is to hold off as long as possible on the introduction of solids for Chloe. We'll see how long "as long as possible" really is.

Seriously, who travels on Christmas day?!?

We'd planned the Christmas dinner to be with my brother and his family - a two hour drive away.

We'd done our morning, opened our gifts with my parents and grandmother (the great-grandma). We ate all the traditional Burke family foods, and let the kids play, and by noon we were loaded up and ready to go.

The roads in town were deadsville, little did we know we should have checked the traffic report!

So we travelled about 20-30 minutes away from our home - only to find the freeway at a standstill. See, my brother lives in a town on the way to Sacramento and Lake Tahoe.

We tuned in to the traffic report stations, wondering if we could still hit another freeway (almost parallel, but slightly less direct, to the one we were one). Nope, heard reports of accidents on that freeway, as well as the one other route (which we'd have to entirely backtrack to hit) which we could take.

Chloe was getting agitated, and the big girls needed to go potty... So we pulled off the freeway, only to realize we'd gone 5 miles in half an hour.

Nope, not gonna do it.

We turned around and headed home. Two hours later, the point at which we should have been arriving in Davis, we were arriving home. We'd dropped Phil off at the local burrito joint (about three blocks from home) to grab our oh-so-sophisticated Christmas dinner, and the big girls were happily playing with their new toys again, and Chloe was happy to nurse and go down for another nap in her crib.

Next time we'll check online traffic reports first.

I was entirely disorganized this Christmas. I'm amazed I'm not out there still shopping (don't even ASK about wrapping, though). I still have a sneaking suspicion in the back of my head that I've forgotten someone - and it's gonna haunt me until NEXT Christmas probably.

It wasn't the third kid... well, okay, in part it was the third kid, in that there was one more petri dish to keep us housebound for the better part of the first three weeks of this month. It was school, and preschool. It was remembering last days, and birthdays, and the etiquette gifts for teachers (oops, sorry Mrs. Matteroli... it's coming, I swear it), and those wonderful sweet neighbours, and cousins of cousins, and timing everything to when they needed to be timed to. It's that I like to MAKE things for Christmas, not just buy a gift card.

Now ask me where I was on Wednesday night.

In line at the grocery store buying not one, but nine gift cards for assorted people in our lives whom I just don't know well enough to know what they'd like, and because I couldn't get the cookies (dough already made and in the fridge) actually BAKED and decorated.

I did learn, though, that the grocery store carries both Grey Goose Vodka (in a locked case), and some pretty decent toys if needed.

Phil, Chloe and I went to New York City last weekend to visit with Phil's sister Jennifer, husband Paul, and their new son, Gio. Gio is less than a month younger than Chloe. So they'll grow up together. I foresee many trips between the coasts (my Parents In Law have a house in Rhode Island, and Paul's family is from near us here in NorCal), and the ability to watch the two "babies" as they grow together.

What will be interesting is the sociological case study of Gio, the city boy, and Chloe, a product of the suburbs. I can't even fathom raising a child in the big city... although I've now seen the little local playgrounds near Jen and Paul's apartment. Plus I realize there's Central Park in the summer - and I'm sure the museums have programs for kids and the like. I just couldn't look at the city through the eyes of a parent. It really seems more like a grown-up's playground to me. So I'll learn about it as they do.

Hey, I've already learned that you have to buy your stroller by how heavy it is so you can scoop it up and carry it down the subway steps quickly, that FAO Schwartz is really just a giant playground, and that he'll always be able to buy any of his cold weather gear on the street for about $5 apiece.

Thank you to everyone who has expressed support as we wondered about Piper's heart! I will never cease to be amazed at the extent of caring in the world.

We spent an inordinate amount of time at the doctor's office yesterday, and with a fairly slimy doctor to boot (comments like "I like to rub little girls bellies" had me crawling in my chair and ready to grab my girl and run - but I really wanted to hear that I only had to see this guy this once) to hear that, indeed, her murmur, though apparently "musical", is innocent.

As for the squatting - well, either she IS trying to compensate for some shortness of breath, or she's just being ornery. The nice thing for me (isn't it always about me?) is that I no longer have to feel guilty for getting impatient with her when she does it - it's not pathological.