Monday, July 05, 2010

Independence Day Cookout

We had my parents and two of my brothers come for a Independence Day cookout on Saturday. We grilled hamburgers and hot dogs and just hung around the house and yard. The baby in the above photo is Julianne, my brother's and his wife Crystal's baby. We enjoyed using our brand new patio!

My poor diet... it wasn't expecting Tim to make Skyline Chili Dip. Going off the diet just for part of the day has set me back two pounds - unbelievable! It was really good... but not that good... I made him take the leftovers back with him!

Here's my brother Mike with Chris... I wanted to include this one because it has the star garland in it that we made last year, not because it has my beer bottle inadvertently in the shot... that may have added to the poundage, huh?

A shot of almost everyone...

Here's Tim with two of his nieces. Dutch makes an appearance at the cookout in lieu of my other brother and his owner, Stephen.

I got some Pop-its for the girls to enjoy. Cecilia couldn't always throw them hard enough to get them to explode, so she was stomping on them. Caroline was bursting them between her fingers (because her uncles showed her how).


Cecilia with Gramma

Caroline waves a flag


The girls also played in the inflatable kiddie pool for a little while.

First pictures of the grandparents with all three of their granddaughters

Here's our dessert: a giant sugar cookie with a cream cheese frosting and decorated with red and blue fruit! In the background you see the growing reason for me to take the glass to the recycling place... still haven't done that. There are now 13 more reasons that I should make that trip. I told Chris that I was waiting until I had 99 bottles... so I can sing the song, you know.

The girls finishing their dinner

Baby Julianne kicking and wiggling a bunch!


Mike and Crystal made a side trip to Alabama (since we only live 15 minutes from the border, tops) and got some fireworks. Chris, Mike, and Tim had fun aiming the Roman candles up at the sky...

Grampa pushed the girls on the swings for a bit

The chickens stayed in their cage...

... and didn't care for Dutch at all. But he was such a good dog and sat so still next to the cage when I told him to sit!

Mike in the kiddie pool...

Sorry that my narrative is not as lively as usual and I just have a bunch of obvious captions here... but really, we didn't do much but hang around! And it was lots of fun, too!

4 comments:

mel said...

Hey, we had the same dessert! Except ours was flag shaped. Or, it started out flag shaped, and then when we baked it, it morphed into this big oblong blobby thing that had to be trimmed back into a flag shape. hehe.

Erin said...

I considered a flag shape, actually, and then saw the round one and thought it'd be easier. How funny we both made the same thing!

Anonymous said...

Wow. Really hope you didn't breastfeed after drinking that beer!

Erin said...

Anonymous, your fear of revealing your identity plus your misinformation are obvious here. Drinking one beer and then nursing afterwards is rarely a cause for concern (some babies are sensitive to alcohol through the milk, as some are to dairy, or caffeine, etc., but this varies from baby to baby, and most show no sensitivity). The real concern with a mother drinking while nursing is that she might become too tipsy to properly care for her baby, possibly dropping him - which is a concern for a mother with a formula-fed baby as well.

The funny thing is, I am not even nursing an infant. My nursing child is almost two and a half years old and is therefore much larger than an infant and nurses less often (and therefore any small amount of alcohol in the milk from one beer is even less of an issue).

From the Breastfeeding Answer Book, pg. 597: "The American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Drugs considers alcohol consumption compatible with breastfeeding, although side effects are noted if alcohol is taken in large amounts. An occasional drink or regular light drinking (one or fewer drinks per day) has not been found to be harmful to the nursing baby."

It is myths like this one that you are presenting that are perpetuated and lead mothers to wean early... they think they have to have these limited diets, that they can never have a drink, that they cannot nurse in public, and so they feel too restricted.

So, for your future reference, it is fine if a nursing mother has a drink here and there, even up to one each day. It is not fine if a mother (nursing or not!) drinks a six pack every night. Please don't spread breastfeeding misinformation to other nursing mothers... it hurts breastfeeding rates.