Spiked lemonade

Here's an interesting story that you may have heard about in the news. It's certainly been a hot topic around here.

Baby shoes

As I'm looking at the photos I just posted, I'm a bit embarrassed by how ragged her shoes appear in the final picture. But let me say that those shoes, knock-off Robeez, are awesome.

We buy ours at Target, which has some cute patterns and are only $12 compared to $30 and up. However, I love them because they stay on, they don't bother Kelsey one bit, and most are adorable. What surprises me is how they can look so worn when Kelsey isn't using them for walking! Consider these a great gift or registry item.

Kelsey's birthday/baptism weekend

We were fortunate to have all of the grandparents in town for Kelsey's celebration.

Kelsey in her white dress before we head to the church.

Kelsey looks at us as if to say, "I can have this cake?"

Yum ... I think she likes it! (Note Toby the train, which she did cover in icing as well.)

Kelsey happily stands at her play kitchen before her birthday party. She had to wear a sweater over her adorable sundress because the temperature was in the low 60s.

Learning to read

Brendan is making strides in learning to read. He's mastered many of the "popcorn" words (it, at, the, on, and, etc.) and can recognize dozens of others in stories. He handles his beginner readers from school with ease.

Sunday night, however, was the first time I've seen him pick up a more complicated book (a Spider-Man adventure) and attempt to truly read it. He had listened to me read it once, so he knew some of it from memory. But I could see that he was looking at the words and trying to make sense of it all, instead of reading from memory and looking at the pictures. He was quite impressive and stumbled on a few new words here and there.

Teachers don't teach kids to read the way we learned. We were told to sound words out. That's the last resort now. Instead, kids are encouraged to look for visual clues, make a guess as to what it is based on the story, use the beginning and end letters for clues, then sound it out (which Mrs. Benedict calls "turtling"). When you think about it, that's exactly what we do as adults when we come across a word we don't know.

Happy 1st!

Kelsey turned 1 on Thursday and celebrated in grand fashion! She spent her birthday rolling, crawling and eating, as usual. Her brothers and Grandma and Grandpa Healy sang "Happy Birthday" to start the day.

The real fun began Saturday when Kelsey was christened at St. Kenneth's at noon. Kelsey was dressed in a simple, white linen dress with white sandals. She had many special visitors for the occasion, including her godfather Nick and godmother Suzanne, who also brought along her husband Doug and twins Erin and Justin. (The twins are seven months old and are so adorable!) (Nick and Ken have been close friends since high school, where they swam together in Plano. He now lives in Virginia Beach with his wife and two adorable sons. Suzanne and I have been best friends since elementary school. She lives in Columbus, which is one of the few pluses to us living this far north!)

The ceremony was short and sweet. The priest made the ceremony family-friendly, which we particularly appreciated since Ryan wanted to wander instead of sit. At the end of the ceremony, Brendan moved up a couple of pews to be next to his sister. He kissed her and said, "You are as beautiful as anything I've ever seen."

Afterward, Kelsey took a nap in preparation for the birthday party. We were nervous the weather wouldn't cooperate, but by early afternoon the clouds had moved on and the sun was shining bright. It was rather windy, which made it a tad cool, but we decided to party outside. A good decision, indeed!

The dozen or so children ran wild in the open green space behind our house and didn't seem to mind the cooler temperatures. We enjoyed yummy BBQ from Famous Dave's (easy option - no cooking for me!), had a delicious chocolate and white cake from Baker's Rack in downtown Plymouth, and the children colored a book titled, "Kelsey's birthday party."

The party's theme was books, and we had requested that if guests wanted to bring a gift, that they bring books. What a fabulous idea. Our friends picked out some beautiful, fun, creative treasures that we will enjoy reading over and over. Much better than the dozen or so dolls we would have received otherwise! We also received a children's bible and a toddler bible stories book that the boys wouldn't put down last night. (Her grandparents and aunts and uncles sent many, many cute outfits for her wardrobe.)

And Kelsey had her first taste of sweets. She happily tasted her birthday cake and enjoyed most of it. She wasn't too messy. I was thrilled as neither Brendan nor Ryan tasted cake on their first birthdays. They had no interest.

So, Kelsey at 1 ...

• Her primary means of transportation: crawling. She prefers the army crawl, which is adorable when she pushes her little bottom in the air. In the past week, she's been crawling more on her knees.
• She points at objects and says, "That." Today, she got a paper cut on her finger and I had put a Band-Aid on it. Ken came up to see it, and she pointed to it with her other finger. "That."
• Last week she checked in at 21 pounds and 4 ounces and was 29 3/4 inches long.
• She stands now and particularly likes standing at her kitchen.
• She can pull herself up to the standing position if she has something sturdy to grab.
• She loves engaging Brendan in a game of I-drop-you-pick-up. It happens most often at meal time, when Kelsey will drop a toy or sippy cup and wait with anticipation for Brendan to notice and pick up. Ryan, meanwhile, laughs from the other side of the table.
• She loves eating table food now. We went to Compari's for dinner last week, and I ordered a penne pasta dish. I thought she'd have a noodle or two. She ate nearly half of my pasta!
• She's no longer nursing. My goal was to have her weaned by 12 months, and we made it ahead of deadline by one week. (That's quite impressive in the newspaper world.) She seems as happy as can be and actually was as much a part of the decision as I was. We've skipped the bottles and moved directly to sippy cups.
• She loves to turn around and give us a mischievous smile when she's about to get into something she shouldn't.
• She takes 1-2 naps per day. She seems to be slowing losing interest in the morning nap, but this weekend, she definitely needed it.
• Her bedtime is between 7-7:30. During the warmer months, it's always harder to make 7. We love evening walks and popsicles after dinner.
• Her hair has grown thicker but there isn't much there. It's still blondish.
• She is generally a happy, easy-going baby. I can put her in her room to play for 20-30 minutes, and she won't cry for me once. The boys were never this way!

(Pictures to come if I can figure out how to use Grammy's fancy-pants camera!)

Easter

Easter weekend was surprise-filled, fun and exhausting. By 7 p.m. Sunday night, our house was ready for bed.

• Thursday night, Ken's aunt and uncle arrived from New Jersey for the weekend. They stayed at the beautiful Inn at St. John's in Plymouth. We greeted them with our favorite pizza from Compari's.


• Friday, Brendan was off school for Good Friday and Spring break. Aunt Ellen and Uncle Jimmy watched the kids while we went to work. The kids were great for them, which is always good to hear. That evening, we had dinner at home together before they drove back to the hotel in six inches of snow. Snow! That was the surprise of the weekend, and not a pleasant one.



• Saturday morning we thought we'd meet our guests for breakfast, but we were slow moving. I worked until 2 a.m. on a work project and needed a little extra sleep. When we did arrive at the hotel, we gobbled down bagels and went swimming in the very cool hotel pool. Later in the day, Ellen and Jimmy watched the kids so Ken and I could enjoy dinner alone.


• Sunday was a first for the Healys. We arrived to church on time. The kids were all wonderful (another surprise, but this one pleasant). Brendan was very concerned that the Easter bunny hadn't visited us at home, so he was thrilled to learn that the eggs were hidden in the basement. That sneaky bunny!


• While Brendan and Ryan hunted for eggs, Kelsey hunted for baskets. She was on a mission to get anything and everything out of Ryan's basket. (Her basket was obviously much less interesting!) She wouldn't cry when I'd move the basket; she'd just wait for me to walk away and the army-crawl her way back.

• After egg-hunting, we joined Ellen and Jimmy for brunch at the Inn at St. John's. The setting was in an elegantly-decorated atrium. The brunch selections were quite impressive, particularly the desserts. The children had good options -- pancakes, waffles, chicken fingers and any kind of cookie or cake you could imagine -- but they ate hardly anything. They were more interested in the children's room where the Easter Bunny spent his time and where they could, well, act their age!

Spike TV show premieres

Tonight's "DEA" show premiere is getting a lot of attention in this city, since it documents work from the the Detroit office. It's getting a lot of attention in our house, too.

Here's a story from today's Free Press. Yesterday, this truck was driving through the streets of downtown.

The show is on at 11 p.m. EST on Spike TV.

The hipper, cooler D

The past two months, my life has been all about one word: Metromix.

Metromix is an entertainment-based website that features the things to do, places to be for the 18- to 34-year-old childless crowd. (It also appeals to the parent who occasionally gets out of the house for date night, or to the 40-year-old living as if he's 30.) The backbone of the site is a comprehensive venues and events database. We already had a rich events database, but we had to beef up our venues to include capsules, photos, and details such as whether the venue is fun and flirty or trendy and upscale. In order to launch, we had to have 3,000 detailed venues. And we were given five weeks to collect the data. It wasn't pretty.

But the end result is. Check it out: detroit.metromix.com. There are eight or nine other Metromix sites, which were started by the Tribune Company nearly 10 years ago. The Chicago version is immensely popular. Gannett and Tribune have entered an agreement to launch several sites this year, and Detroit was the first site in this venture.

Posse Kwametatus

For my Dallas readers who have heard about the Detroit mayor and the text message scandal, you might find this story interesting. Former Dallas mayor Laura Miller offers some perspective.