Inch worm

Viv had her 5 month pediatrician visit and Dr. Hales is definitely not on her good list after she got another 2 shots in the butt. In fact, he makes her cry when she looks at him. Anyway, she gained 1 lb and 1 inch- 13.6 lb and 25 inches.

Two front teeth

Vivienne has two of her lower incisors coming in. They're still a little too small to get a decent picture of, but that should change soon. She also has another pediatrician visit this morning so we'll probably have something to post about that later.

Vivienne versus The Tooth

It looks like Viv is getting her first tooth, a lower right incisor to be exact. Grandma Kathy has been saying for months now that Viv is teething but Al and I weren't convinced. In fact, we've been using the "Oh, you must be teething" phrase to tease each other for a while. Turns out Kathy was right so I guess that'll teach us to be smartasses. At any rate, the tooth can be felt but not seen, we're sure it'll be here soon though. We'll put up a picture of the tooth as soon as it shows up.

In other news,the Saints lost to the Bears. We haven't told Viv yet but I'm sure she'll fly off the handle.

Sippy Cup

We don't have anything groundbreaking to report, but Viv has been giving sippy cups a whirl for a few days and seems to be doing well at it.

March

NOLA made national news again for the march on city hall to protest the spike in violent crime. Alice took time off to participate but I wasn't able to make it, unfortunately.

Things are indeed bad here. The march today had 5000 or so people who have simply had enough and are baffled as to where our political leadership has been. Almost everyone here has been directly touched by this or knows someone who has. A bar that Alice and I used to go to frequently, before Viv arrived, was held up at gun point a few months back. Someone else we know was pistol-whipped in a bar robbery a few weeks ago, her father, who was in town to visit, had 6 ribs broken. A botched home robbery/invasion ended up with a young mother being killed and the father shot multiple times protecting their toddler- this happened a stones throw away from Grandma Kathy's and Nonna Linda's house.

People have always had to be a little more careful in N.O. than in most places but it feels different now. I've stopped taking shortcuts home for fear of getting stuck off the beaten path. Die-hard New Orleanians are starting to question the sanity of staying here. I really thought that despite all the damage Katrina dealt that we could recover as a city but if crime isn't dealt with quickly and harshly here, I'm afraid that New Orleans may not survive this.

Enough of the gloom & doom- here's a cute pic of Viv:

News from the Hood

A day or so ago Viv met a couple of baby goats. It turns out (as translated through a comical exchange of non-Spanish speaking grandma Kathy and non-English speaking goat owners) that these are the kids of one of the wild goats. Unfortunately, papa wild goat become Christmas dinner. On the bright side though, we now have three wild goats and two of them are small enough to not make Alice nervous they'll charge her butt and knock her over.

We also ate some home grown tomatoes this week after rescuing them before the last freeze and wrapping them in paper until ripe (take that Pod!).

Viv also turned over twice today.

On to some pictures- Saints fever has clearly taken over some folks across the street:



Believe it or not, this is actually quite an improvement over what it has looked like since the storm.

Here's one of Viv:



She wants to drool on you, or possibly spit up. It's hard to tell.

January 2nd

I finished up painting and hanging the picture moulding in the hallway today. That leaves two rooms to wrap up and with any luck I'll be able to get to those within the next couple of months. It's also been a little chilly here the last few days, which explains Viv's outfit in the first pic. I'm not sure how to explain the pic of Viv and Alice further down the page.

Pictures

We don't really have anything new to report but I thought I'd put a few photos up.