And that's 2008

I don't know what you think of 2008, what the history books will say about the late stock market fall, President Bush going out with less than favorable fanfare, Obama elected, wars being all over the Middle East, oil spiking at $145 a barrel, the Beijing Olympics and Michael Phelps' feats ... but, it was a banner year around the Fletcher house. June 18th would figure to be the most memorable day, Kole's birthday, but it was actually June 17th that Kathy and I keep re-living and talking about when we're sipping wine in the hot tub. What a day that was, beginning about 5:00am when Kathy woke up with "cramps", then it led to us being at the hospital before 8:00am, then came pacing the halls of Arlington Memorial ... it was the day that would never end. The June 18th birth date was an early-morning technicality, but what I remember most about the 18th is watching Kathy writhe in unspeakable pain. I was elated, but mentally and physically exhausted from the hours that had preceded.
Lots of pain and discomfort for Kathy most of the year, before and after the birth, but by June 19th the smiles kept adding up. Here at year's end, the smiles beat the frowns by a landslide.
Kole isn't crawling or walking yet, but probably isn't far away from either. We're enjoying our last few moments of setting him down and knowing he'll be close to there if we walk away for 10 seconds. Lots of milestones still to come in 2009, with Kole and with Kathy and I.
Will Kathy return to work? Will Kole have a brother or sister? All questions we've heard before and still don't know the answers to. We agreed at about last April or May that we were going to get through the holidays before discussing any of it. Right now, I'm as thankful as I've ever been for my job and the little freelance gigs that have come along that have kept us comfortably afloat this year. Kathy wasn't making 6-figures in her previous job, but it was a handsome income that is quickly missed when it vanishes in an instant. I say I'm thankful for my job, when it has been as challenging as it ever has in Big 12 Showcase's 13 years on the air. Because of budget cuts and loss of sponsors, we took the show off the road and into studio, and the cuts keep coming. But, pink slips haven't been handed out, so the glass is still half-full here.
I leave you with a picture taken earlier today, December 31st. No - Kole is not pulling himself up just yet. But, if you stand him up in his crib, he'll happily stand and dance for a while.
A happy and safe 2009 to all, and a very hearty thanks for all of you who helped make 2008 unforgettable for us.

Six Months, Doctor's Update

Upon turning 6 months old, Kole was rewarded with a trip to the doctor's office. He weighed 18 pounds, 15 ounces; his length is 29 and 1/4 inches; head circumference 17 and 3/4 inches.
At 29.25 inches, he is above the 97th percentile for 6-month-olds (longer than 97% of the babies in America his same age). Another way of looking at it is - he is exactly the average length of a 12-month-old. His weight is just over the 60th percentile, slightly better than average for his age.
Doctor is very impressed and happy with his health and appearance. He got three shots and one vaccination orally. He whimpered for a bit, but didn't put on a big crying display. He handled it like a boy.

Moments of Discovery

A day short of turning 6 months old, Kole is doing everything but crawling, and he may have developed one of the senses that separates humans from the animals - a sense of his own being.
On the crawling - he has two stances right now. First is the body-surfing stance, essentially balanced on his belly button, hands and feet off the ground. He does this with the idea that his hands and feet are free to reach and kick. But then comes the on-all-fours look - where he's on his hands and knees, rocking slowly. Kathy and/or I will sit there encouraging him to move forward, putting a toy or something he wants out in front of him. But, instead of forward movement, he normally just reverts back to Stance A on the belly. He's getting ever so close - and Kathy and I recognize our fleeting final days of being able to contain him in one general area of the floor.
Another area of discovery is his hands. He looks like he's doing signing for the deaf - or perhaps doing a sock-puppet show without socks. He'll put his hands out, then anything is fair game ... the beauty-pageant wave, the open-close claw, the hippie on acid tripped out by watching his hand wave side to side in front of his eyes ... he'll get both hands working and it's quite amusing. One by-product of this has been mockery. The whole happy-hands thing has created a new world of mimicking. If he appears frustrated, or is obviously hungry and getting a quick case of the red-ass while a bottle is being made, all you have to do is start waving, or open-closing your hands like little chompers, and he'll immediately crack a smile and start doing his hands, putting them out and waving and clasping them.
Another trick for shutting him up when he's upset (are we veteran parents or what!) is to take him to a mirror. He likes what he sees so far. He's fascinated with either Kathy or I through a mirror, and I can only assume that he's fascinated by the prospect of noticing himself. I'll attach photos on this - he even has a little mirror that is one of about four things that dangle from one other little toy he has. But, if we take the mirror and lay it down he will find it, look at the image of himself and hold a frozen stare like a cat that just spotted a mouse. He puts his nose 1 or 2 inches from the mirror and stares. And stares. And stares. It's fun watching and imagining what's going on inside his mind.
He has a doctor's appointment on the 18th, so we'll have an accurate count of his measurements.

Big Day with Santa

Big day at the mall for the little one - another visit with his little pals Noah and Sarah (whose mothers Kathy went through child birth classes, etc.), and a big visit with Santa at the Parks Mall in Arlington. Kole hasn't been strolling with Sarah very long, but felt brave enough in their relationship to begin sucking on her fingers instead of his own. She appeared to enjoy it, and Kole never stopped laughing at her.

Thanksgiving at Wah-Hoo

Scenes from Thanksgiving Day at the Wah-Hoo Ranch - including Kole's after-dinner fireside visit with Grammy, Grandpa Gedy, Grammy's horse Biscuit, and a big smile with Mommy.

Kole's Thanksgiving wishes

Kole gives his own Thanksgiving wishes to everyone ... whales, dolphins and humans. The groan at the end is the ultimate kicker.

Scary Day

When we started this page, we wanted it to be about Kole and not about us. But, since most who read this are concerned friends and family, and if you haven't heard the full story yet, this is as good as any place to explain it.
Monday around 12:30 in the middle of the afternoon, while I was at work, Kathy got a knock at the door. She looked through the peep-hole and saw a young Hispanic-looking guy at the door she did not know. Looked clean cut enough, jeans, tucked-in plaid long-sleeve shirt. Kathy was going to ignore the knocker and wait for him to move on - like a trick-or-treater when you have no more candy. Instead, the guy changed his tune and began banging on the door with a fist, like he was a landlord at the door of a delinquent tenant. Kathy continued to watch out the peep-hole as he walked away, then the black SUV parked on the curb turned off its engine and a second Hispanic-looking guy came to the door and took his turn pounding the door. With Kathy's pulse racing, the second guy took a few steps back, got on a cell phone and appeared to be telling someone our house address - as if he was asking someone if they had the right house. He spoke in Spanish and Kathy couldn't understand. He then put his cell phone down, satisfied with the information given to him, then with Kathy still watching through the peep-hole, watched as the second guy strode purposely towards the door then WHAM! kicked the door with all his might.
Kathy then ran to the bedroom and retrieved the loaded .38 Special I keep in my bedside table - as she's doing this she hears WHAM! .... WHAM! more kicks to the door. By the time she dials 911, a fourth blow had been delivered to the front door in broad daylight.
It's hard to reconstruct this story, but she says the whole time Kole was in his swing, where she put him when she first heard the door knock. Maggie, our cowardly guard dog, mustered a low growl - but even Kathy guesses that she was probably just feeding off of Kathy's own fear, instead of reacting protectively to what was on the other side of the door.
With the 911 operator on line, the kicks stopped and Kathy checked the peep-hole and saw where the two guys and the black SUV were both gone. They left with as many unanswered questions as why they came and picked our house in the first place. The cop eventually arrived and said this had all the characteristics of a typical mid-day burglary attempt.
I took Kathy to the gun range just after we married and tried to get her to accustomed to shooting the gun - but she was just too fearful, and unnerved by the other people shooting large hand cannons just feet away. Still, she had the gun in hand and insists she was ready to use it. The cop later gave her some tips, about keeping the gun closer to her body instead of holding it outstretched like a Charlie's Angels pose. He complimented her on being cool enough to call 911, and said next time, if it escalates to someone attempting to kicking down the door, it might be a good idea to shout something about having a gun, police on the way, etc. Plus, he gave a good pointer to arm our security system (right by our garage door) to where alarms would sound at the first crack of the door.
It was a good stop-down opportunity to review all procedures if the scenario should repeat itself.
I got home before 3:00 and the wine began to flow, taking the edge off of some frayed nerves. In the end, everyone was okay.
Photo: the shoe prints on our front door. Thought we'd have the evidence to compare it to the shoe on the corpse if this should happen again.

Milestones Abound

It's the 18th of the month, which means that Kole turns over another month - and this makes it 5 months. I think I gave as much of an update of emotional and physical development as possible in the previous post, but really in the last 48 hours we've had a groundbreaking development. I'll let you see the video with your own eyes. There's really nothing more I can say or add.
We both weighed ourselves with Kole, then weighed ourselves without him and took the difference. We were about 6 ounces apart, which is as close as we've ever been. So I think we're fairly accurate, though the weight he's put on is fairly significant - over a full pound in a month, plus one inch. Still, he is only slightly ahead of the bell-curve for his age. It's nothing alarming, he's just right on top of that shaded area of averages for height and weight on the growth chart. As the doctor said last month - he's healthy and happy, the portions of what he's eating are not out of whack, everything is fine. He's just on an earlier growth spurt than the average - and that may all catch up when he's between 4 and 5 and other kids have a more significant spurt, or between ages 11-13, etc. It should be noted, however, that this past month he has been eating more solid foods - oatmeal cereal, bananas, peaches and pears, mostly.
Enjoy the video. Monday afternoon I talked to Kathy from work and she was like - I finally saw him do it by himself! I then wondered how he would do if a camera was propped on him. Making his daddy really proud, he glommed the camera and performed on cue!

Closing out the 4th month

Kole will turn 5 months next week - but until he gets to that point, before we really start grasping for new milestones and new signs of what a big boy he's becoming, we're really trying to harness the sensation of him being a cheery, happy little baby.
From what we read, the 5th month will begin a real emotional development - when he'll become real connected to Kathy and I and recognize us as mother and father, his key caregivers. He will be outwardly emotional and clingy, which is all very cool. But, there will also be separation anxiety and he will bear a large potential to be scared by strangers. So, it's the give and take of growing up, moving up in status from infant to young toddler.
He is still a ways from crawling, and from what we can tell he is beginning to turn over on his own. He's done it a couple of times for sure - but when we weren't looking. Still, he hasn't shown a consistent pattern of showing he can freely do so.
He is still growing like a weed. He now wears clothes that are labeled 9 to 12 months. It's easy to tell by his appetite. Just earlier today, he was cranky and crying and obviously hungry. Kathy stirred up some oatmeal cereal with some pears and peaches - and the kid was like a newly-hatched chick in a nest, craning his neck and crying for more. As soon as Kathy would plunge a spoonful of food in his mouth, he'd be crying again the instant she'd pull the spoon free. It's hard for the two of us not to watch and laugh. It's like ... EASY KID, IT'S COMING! Geez!

Clothes ... Lefty??

The Little One is growing out of many of his clothes, and it's reaching a point that has us scratching our heads. As I keep saying, he's growing faster length-wise than he is outwardly. At the doctor's office, still technically a full week from turning a full 4 months, he was 27 inches long at his '4-month check-up'. I keep reading different things online, including other parents' random blogs like mine, and the average length I keep seeing is 22-24 inches.
The element that causing us a great inconvenience is that clothes-makers seem to go by these averages as well. Kole is wearing clothes that, on their tag, are for 6-9 month olds. And if you read the fine print of the tag, is actually for babies 24-27 inches long. So ... as you can see, Kole is about to out-grow "9-month old" clothes.
After the baby showers and all the initial infant stages, we were on clothes overload. There are some stages where he never had to wear an outfit more than once or twice because he had so many to choose from. Now?? We keep rotating and washing the same 5-7 outfits for every-day wearing, plus the PJs with the little footies for sleeping.
Kathy's been doing lots of shopping lately, but is finding that when babies get to that 9-12 month stage, most are at that crawling/walking stage and everything is pants and tops. Nobody really makes onesies with the snap-crotch at that age. But, here's Kole now needing clothes that most clothing makers are sizing 9-months and up.
It's still far from an issue that is at critical stage - but at this point it's on that border of frustrating and slightly amusing. More of the frustration is aimed towards the clothing makers who have determined that 4-6 month old babies, by average, are about 12 pounds and 23 inches. So, his wardrobe has been greatly diminished as a result.

I've also noticed a recent trend, watching him handle a rattle or little toy. With his right hand, he seems to only have control over it for a couple of seconds before losing grip and having it fall out. But with his left, he sustains a grip on it for 3 or 4 or 5 minutes, with vigorous shaking and constant motion. I don't know if this precludes him being a lefty, but he has shown some early left-hand dominance. Also, while being fed a bottle, I'm seeing some consistency in trends, though it could be the way we have him positioned in our arms. But, his right hand will sit idly on your hand, or the bottle, while his left flails wildly and happily to his side, rubbing his head, and gripping certain things around.
These are just things I've noticed, and not suggesting that either one of us thinks he'll be left handed or whatever. Just interesting observations.

First Holiday?

Don't know if this exactly qualifies as a first holiday. July 4th was technically his first holiday, where he got his first bath. But, at least there's an element of dress-up to Halloween, which more entertains the mother in this case than the baby. She found an outfit too good to pass up, so she bought it several weeks ago. The week of Halloween is also National X-Ray Technician Week (whether you knew it or not), so the skeleton suit was a perfect tribute to both. Since he won't be going door to door for candy, plus the fact that I'll be in Iowa on Halloween night, we decided to play around tonight.

1st Quarter Earnings

Four months old today - a full quarter year. I haven't been good about updating the milestones, so I'll update them now. Many of which come along so subtle, it's hard to define one moment as the milestone. Normally something just gradually happens, and it takes us a while to realize that it's repetitive, then we deduce that it is a trend and a new physical or personality trait.
Like this past week, we would notice a little noise coming out of him - different from his normal cooing and goo-goo noises. Finally we realized that when he would yawn, he would have one of these old-man groans that accompanies it. Very high-pitched and baby-like, but one of those long, sustained, almost sing-song moan and groans with a yawn. Then he'll smack his mouth. He's like a miniature old man. It's hilarious!!
One of his favorite things to do is to stand up and put weight on his legs and feet - like if you were to hold him up in your lap with his feet on your legs. I guess just the act of being vertical and upright is so cool, he will giggle and laugh and do his happy-howl.
Photos: One of the photos I'll attach is of us feeding him cereal this week - his first with solid food. He makes a big mess, but he loves that oatmeal cereal stuff and gets real happy when he's fed. Another photo I'll attach is with him wearing his mom's favorite outfit. We wish each outfit had a Post-It not on it or something to remind us of who bought it, but Kathy thinks his red pin-stripe jammies is the coolest looking thing on him. The catch is, the size on the tag is "6-9 months". We now have to look at clothes not by the suggested age of the tag, but the height/weight dimensions, as he's 27 inches-plus, and climbing towards 17 pounds.
He's a good, happy boy with parents who are slowly but surely getting the hang of things.

Update from Doctor's Visit

Little one had a visit with Dr. Carlson today for a 4-month check-up, though four months won't technically come until next week. He had some shots due, so he got FOUR of those. Kathy said he absolutely freaked - red-faced crying with tears in his eyes. She said she could barely contain herself just watching. But, he survived and came home with a smile.
He weighed 16 lbs, 6.1 oz., so he's more than doubled his birth weight in four months. He is 27 inches long. I'm tempted to say still 27 inches long, but I was probably off when I measured him at that three weeks ago at the 3-month mark. In fact, since the doctor's visit today is official, I'm modifying Kole's chart to reflect that he was 26 inches at 3 months.
Otherwise, Kole is healthy as a horse and everything is going well. The doctor's quote: "Whatever you guys are doing is perfect for him." And for what it's worth, his head circumference is now 17 inches. Otherwise, the weight and height chart since birth is ...
Birth: 8 lbs, 2 oz - 21 inches
1 Mo: 10 lbs, 9 oz - 23 inches
2 Mo: 13 lbs, 1 oz - 24 inches
3 Mo: 15 lbs, 10 oz - 26 inches
4 Mo: 16 lbs, 6 oz - 27 inches

Update II (10/11) Little guy had a rough night last night - crying or irritated pretty much all night. We ended up giving him a dose of baby Tylenol twice, then actually took our first toil with semi-solid food. We fed him rice cereal just before he went to bed to see if that would help knock him out, and apparently it did as he slept well all night. In fact, he's working on a solid 12-hour snooze right now.
It's Texas-OU week, and it's hard for me not to forget that it was Texas-OU last year that we found out that Kathy was pregnant.

Crib peeker

Beyond the physical stats of length and weight, perhaps there's no better image of how big he's getting than seeing him hold himself up on his belly, craning his neck up to see what's on the other side of the crib.

Ticklish Kole

We discovered a soft spot on the little critter. Right on his bare belly - when bathing him or changing a diaper - we've now found that he is ticklish!

Play Date

Kathy made two good friends during her pregnancy, as she took classes through Arlington Memorial Hospital for birthing, breastfeeding and infant care. Among a handful of others, two young mothers named Beverly and Ellie were who Kathy kept in contact with through pregnancy, emailing and phone calling, sharing misery, asking advice, etc. Both other girls ended up giving birth on June 16 - Beverly had a little girl (Sara) and Ellie had a boy (Noah). In fact, Beverly was still in the hospital recovering on the 17th when Kathy and I went in for our big, long, marathon day of labor. So anyway - they've kept in touch and Kathy has seen each individually since the births, but they all three got together today with their kids. It was just the second time we've seen Kole around a baby near his same age. We had the one meeting with our next door neighbor who was born in April and Kole was obviously bigger than already.
Kole was a lot bigger than the little girl, Sara. But, he was just longer than Noah by an inch or two. But, they were about the same size. Like Kathy, Ellie (who is from England and has only been in the US for less than 5 years and still has a thick, wonderful British accent) gave up breastfeeding soon after birth and her baby has been on the bottle as well. So, maybe that's contributed to their early growth spurt.
Anyway, I'm attaching a photo of Kole's first day with his first little friends.

Speak Up

Since I never technically gave a three-month update, I'll go ahead and do that and see what else I can add that I didn't at 12 weeks. For one, I'll add this video so you can see what sort of conversations we have around the house. It's still very much a toss-up as to which of us Kole will look like, or resemble in one personality facet or another. Even people at our church where Kathy grew up and dozens upon dozens of people have known her all her life insist that he looks like me. The only thing I can really figure is that people keep saying he has really long eyelashes, which is one of my stronger traits. If he can get the rest of his looks from his mother, he's in great shape.
Today we had a little boys day out. Since Friday I went out and played golf, then Saturday had a working assignment at the Texas A&M-Miami football game, I gave Kathy the day off today. Kole and I went to Costco and to Home Depot and he was a model child. Of course, we left right after a feeding, so he was good and groggy the whole time, but never really knocked out asleep.
Check the video out. I purposely left my own goo-goo commentary out of it and just let him do his thing. Obviously unprovoked verbally, but I'm holding the camera with my right hand while doing funny faces off to the left (his right).

12 Weeks

It's weird what to think and count - is he still a week away from being three months? But, as of today he's 12 weeks. Well, actually it's a week from tomorrow that it will actually be September 18, but 12 weeks is the official count right now.
No - it doesn't just seem like yesterday that we brought him home. But, I can't remember counting down 12 weeks quite the same as this. It's everyone's nature to say the time flies by - especially in a retrospective look back. But, being in the moment, 12 weeks has seemed like 12 weeks with Kole. There are so many milestones you can't wait for him to achieve, in order to maintain your sanity, but there are times when it seems like it just flies by in an instant.
I am elated that he spends more time smiling than crying, coming from a stage where crying is all he knew how to do and poop. Now he smiles and laughs and goes Ooooooohh all day and all night. This morning I sort of woke him up from a dead sleep at 6am. He was already kicking a little, shifting, but I rubbed him then turned him on his back. It's our little routine to get him worked up and want to eat. We're now keeping him on a fairly regular eat/sleep schedule. So I roll him over, he has the bewildered look anyone should have when they've just snapped out of a dead sleep, but within seconds he notices me and smiles his big cheeky, toothless smile - kicking his feet and flopping his arms around. It's a great daddy moment.
I'm attaching a photo of the clothes he has now left behind - 31 onesies or outfits since we brought him home. One has a tag left on it, plus there are two others he never wore. Even when we brought him home there were a handful of outfits we struggled getting his head through. He outgrew many, quickly. Really, it's his length that is outgrowing things the quickest. The quickest way for us to tell he's outgrowing something is when we have to struggle to button up his pants from the bottom, between his legs. From his shoulders to his crotch they just get more and more stretched - eventually barely hanging of his shoulders and arcing underneath his neck, plus being tight around his diaper.
Kathy has always dodged the topic of having a second baby - especially since Kole's birth and her ... well ... recovery. Another childbirth just wasn't on the radar. But, she has made the initial vow to hang on to these onesies and such "just in case" an oopsie comes along anytime soon. Of course, she admits, keeping boy clothes would almost guarantee a girl if another should come.
As the Just the Facts notes on the left, we weighed him at 15-and-1/2 pounds today. I measured him at 25-and-1/2 inches. He's a growing boy and he's adjusting great to his schedule. He gets to sleep around 10:00-10:30, and for the last few nights [knocking on wood] he has slept until 5:30-6:00am. As noted just above, today he was barely stirring at 6:00, and if I hadn't stirred him up and turned him over he could have easily gone another half hour.
We'll get a better idea of how he is measuring comparatively with babies his age when Kathy catches up with her buddies from childbirth class next week. Both of their babies were born a day or two before Kole.
I'll put one one more picture - with me reading (actually showing) Kole his new book Fletcher and the Falling Leaves. A very clever and astute find by my friend Sara in Iowa. It's about a little baby fox named Fletcher who gets freaked by falling leaves when Fall comes - he thinks the tree is hurt and he tries to put the leaves back on. Eventually, after the plot drags through nearly 10 more pages, an ice storm creates a pretty display of icicles hanging off the tree and it makes Fletcher happy. Unwittingly, he's a perfect Fletcher - innocent and a little dimwitted. Eventually, very entertained by nature.

Into September

Kole is approaching his third month. He is growing and probably around 14 pounds, though we haven't weighed him in a while. He is nearly sleeping 6 hours a stretch at night, and at this point that would be considered an average. He has gone longer, but also shorter. He is up more in the day and plays with things in his hands - a rattle, even a little cloth football that has a little handle on it. He coos loudly and sometimes appears to be attempting to sing. We've caught him more than once staring at his hands as they fidget and wave wildly in front of himself. We have a little Bumbo seat, which helps young kids sit up a little better. Just over a week ago he would sit up for about 10-15 seconds before his head would get to heavy and he would slowly sink his chin into his chest. Now, his head and neck are strong enough to endure several minutes in the Bumbo. When laying down, he can prop himself up on his hand and hold his head up for inspection like a lizard. And with his tongue hanging out at least 20 hours of the day, he may not be far from being a lizard.
It's definitely a transition, parenting wise. He's become more than just a eat-sleep-poop machine, spending all remainder time in a swing to keep him happy. He now needs stimulation in the daytime, and also shows his enjoyment for it more.
Good times in the Iota Nu Beta house (some people haven't got that title. It's to be pronounced: I oughtta knew bettah). College football season is upon us and Kole is beginning to digest the finer points of the no-huddle spread offense, as I try to explain it slowly and use stuffed animals as defense guys.

Finding a Schedule

It's been an interesting week here at the Fletcher house. We think Kole is old enough to where we kind of went into a second gear finally. He's getting bigger and a little personality full of sounds and kicks and reaching is starting to evolve like a chick pecking its way out of a shell. Plus, all the books have said that between 2-4 months, we'll want to get a couple of things accomplished: get him on a nap/sleep and feeding schedule, and get him sleeping in his own crib.
The sleep thing, thankfully (and knocking on wood) he's been real good about. Two nights ago we put him down around 9:30 after a feeding and he went solid until 5:15am. We were both like ... damn! Last night he went down closer to 10pm and woke up hungry around 4am. So, the schedule is coming. KOLE-TV is alive and well in our room now. Our baby monitor has a little A/V plug and I run a cable from that to our TV so we get his little spy cam on our big 38-inch bedroom TV. So long, David Letterman, hello Kole - every kick and squirm live and in war-like night-vision video. He took to his crib real easily. We had been putting him there for a while, letting him lay on his back watching his mobile while stretching and kicking. Now he sleeps like a lazy dog.
We also made a formula change, which all the doctors and books preach against. But, Nestle Good Start with Natural Cultures goes for about $29.49 for a 24-oz. can at our Tom Thumb when it's not on sale. It's the most expensive formula on the entire formula shelf, simply put. But, formula is formula, we're learning. The FDA has such strict standards of what has to be in baby formula, and what cannot be in it, that the back labels of the name brands and the generics are a mirror image. Target sells its brand of denatured whey cultures with DHA & ARA and all the stuff Good Start has, and sells it for $17.29. It takes Kole about 5 days to suck down a can of formula. Do the math. The one thing the Target brand doesn't have is a reuterin additive, which produces antimicrobials. Good Start had it, and it's found naturally in breast milk - simply put, it helps digestion. So, we found a good reuterin additive from the Vitamin Shoppe, we give him a 1/2-teaspoon a day. When we made the formula switch, he at first was grumpy and occasionally screaming in pain, grunting in pain, and he'd have poops that were hard as a rock. The poor kid was constipated and gassy. But, with the reuterin additive he's back making green and yellow chili in his diaper, ooh-ing and smiling more.
I've done a bad job of updating the 'Milestones', but he's now kind-of reaching for toys when he's on one of those play mat things with little toys dangling around. Either that, or he's wildly throwing his arms around and hitting them over and over again.
[PHOTO: Maggie still hasn't warmed up to Kole one bit, but we're still trying.]