the ridlehoover family blog

I'm going back to work!  I accepted a position with Symetra Financial last week.  My first day in the office will be this Wednesday.  I'll be a senior developer and agilist working on their web development efforts. I can't wait to get back in the groove!

Have you ever tried baby food?  I swear, if I could get my cooked carrots to taste this good, I'd eat them every day! Gracie and Hunter have been experimenting with rice cereal for a while now.  But, this week, we introduced them to carrots.  Hunter had his doubts at first.  But, he seems to have adjusted.  Gracie, on the other hand, likes the carrots so much, we have to feed her all her formula before bringing out the oozy, orange goodness!  The minute she starts on the carrots, she doesn't want anything more to do with the bottle...

My bad!  When writing the post below, I hadn't reviewed the nurse's notes from Hunter and Grace's six month checkup.  I have now and I must issue a retraction:  Gracie is not in the 50th percentile.  She is actually in the 50-75th percentile range - the same range as Hunter.  As most people who meet them note - these kids aren't skipping any meals! Also, I mentioned that we will be taking Hunter to see the head doctor, which I referred to as the "cranial/facial" doctor.  Turns out, they're actually called "craniofacial" doctors.  A thousand pardons...

I left Microsoft back in April to stay at home with Jill and the twins. As Hunter and Gracie's six month birthday approached, Jill and I agreed - it was time for me to go back to work! So, I have spent the last three weeks talking to recruiters and interviewing all over the Seattle area. I talked to companies small, medium and large; start-ups and well established firms. After approximately ten interviews, I have received five offers - all of them quite generous. (Not a bad ratio of interviews to offers, if I do say so myself!) Jill and I are now weighing the options. We will make a decision this week, possibly as early as tomorrow. Stay tuned to hear how it turns out...

Gracie and Hunter turned six months old on Sunday.  To celebrate, we sang "Happy Birthday" and ate rice cereal. Today, the twins granted an audience to their pediatrician who promptly poked them and prodded them and declared that all is well.  The official statistics are as follows:

• Hunter weighed 17 pounds, 14 ounces and measured 26.25 inches.  He is in the 50-75th percentile.
• Gracie weighed 16 pounds, 6 ounces and measured the same as Hunter.  She is in the 50th percentile.

More good news:  Gracie's heart murmur was imperceptible.  But we're still going to take her back to the cardiologist in a couple weeks just to be safe. A little less-good news:  Hunter has developed a flat spot on the back of his head.  It's been that way for several months.  And, it's not getting better on it's own.  So, we're going to take him to the cranial/facial specialists at Children's Hospital to hear what can be done to correct the problem.  It's purely cosmetic.  But, it's probably better to get it done now, before he develops his Dad's infamously hard head. All in all, it was a fantastic doctor appointment.  To celebrate, we poked each baby in the leg three times - two immunizations and a flu vaccine.  Happy! Happy! Joy! Joy!

It's getting harder and harder to get an accurate weight for Hunter and Grace.  They like to wiggle so much that it throws the scale off.  Even just sticking their legs out straight causes the scale to jump.  So, these latest weights are approximate, but should be close:

• Hunter is now 17 pounds, 3 ounces.
• Gracie is now 15 pounds, 8 ounces.

In other words, they're huge!

Grace and Hunter got their first taste of solid food, today: a few spoonfuls of rice cereal mixed with formula. Jill and I have been considering this for a few weeks, but Gracie convinced us today when she grabbed my bowl and started trying to eat the pineapple off my cottage cheese. She almost dumped the bowl in my lap before I was able to regain control of the situation. Hunter was a little less interested, but both managed to keep it down! Yeah!

Hunter and Grace turned five months old, today. (Has it really been five months?!?!) To celebrate, I uploaded a couple of recent videos. (These are, of course, on both YouTube and our MobileMe gallery which has better video quality than YouTube.) Hunter's Perspective What the world looks like when you are five months old... [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_profilepage&v=Z_AoyUP8e2I] Laughter Jill's friend Monica finds something for Grace to laugh about... [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEOC3qkzaKo&feature=player_profilepage] Note for posterity:  Hunter now weighs 16 pounds, 10 ounces, and Gracie weighs 15 pounds, 6 ounces.

Jill and I want to get some official birth announcements out soon. We tried once before, but the images we selected were too grainy for the printing company. So, a couple days ago, we spent an hour or so taking pictures in our bedroom. The best are now on our web gallery, including these two: Photographer's note:  The light in the room was natural but dim. I chose not to use a flash. Instead, I used a wide open f-stop and overexposed one full stop. As you might expect, the depth of field is quite small. Next time, I may choose to use a light or flash to see if I can get results as nice as these.

Two new milestones to report today!

• Gracie fed herself last night, for the first time ever!  She ate three ounces of formula while holding the bottle all by herself.  And, most impressively, she didn't spill a drop!
• Hunter rolled over this morning, without any assistance!  I didn't see it, but Mom reports that he rolled from his tummy to his back, just like Grace has been doing.

Unfortunately, neither of these milestones are on film.  But, we'll capture them soon enough...