Have you heard of the new product Welch's has come out with called "Aqua Juice?" They are saying it's a naturally lighter juice drink for kids. Yeah, that's because it's 50% juice, 50% water. So they just fill the container half full with juice, then supplement with water (which is practically free) and sell it for the same price as a container filled to the top with juice.

Do people not realize they can do this themselves at home? We normally do it by the glass. I fill a glass halfway with water, sometimes even 3/4 if I'm going to add a strong juice like orange or grape. Top it off with your favorite 100% juice, and you've just stretched one juice bottle into the equivalent of two or more. For older kids who serve themselves, pre-mix the juice and water in pitchers or re-use old juice containers. Now that I mix my juice with water, full juice tends to taste WAY to sweet for me. You get used to it pretty quickly, in my experience. And of course for kids, they don't ever have to know the difference.

If this were sold in pouches or juice boxes, I might think it was a good product. Sometimes individual servings are called for, like at a party or sporting event, and those are the only times that Noelle gets 100% juice instead of watered down juice. It might be nice to have an "on the go" version of that to pass out to a bunch of kids. But for big bottles? Save your money and do it yourself!

We've been getting a lot of spam comments on our site this week. They don't get published, we have to go in and approve new commenters first. So today I went in to delete the one million spam comments we had, and ended up accidentally deleting some of our most recent legitimate comments. Oops. I was so irritated with myself! It was a mixture of early in the morning sleepiness, Noelle's incessant chatter, and a system that made it too easy to accidentally delete. We are working on changing one of those things, I'll let you guess which. If your comment is one that got deleted, I apologize! I didn't want you to think that we deleted it because we don't like you. That may be true, but it's not why we got rid of your comment.

I've never been a fan of myself with short hair. Well, there was that unfortunate period during high school where I thought a "spike" was the height of hair couture but we shall never speak of that time period again. So where was I? That's right...I've always preferred myself with longer hair. Add to that my fondness for tattoos, and the two ear piercings I have and you wonder why Jaime, a good Nazarene girl ever married me.

Again I digress...back in the 90s I was going for a record...my hair was down to my chest and I had no intention of cutting it, but then I got bored with having long hair. It was a pain to maintain, and if I was always going to put it into a ponytail then what was the point? So in 1995 I cut it; but ever since then I've toyed with growing it out again. I'd get to the awful middle hair stage and give it. Middle hair stage? What's that you say? That's simply the phase where your hair is "too long to be considered short, but too short to put in a ponytail".

Finally, about 2 years ago I decided to go for it again. Even though Jaime was against it, even though society says men should have short hair, even though I find it hard to decide which flavor to start with first on Neapolitan ice cream...I went for it. And it grew, and grew, and grew. I wore it in ponytails, under hats, in a bun, and down...until today.

In one of her dastardly ploys Jaime suggested that I could donate my hair to Locks of Love. She told our 3 year old daughter that "daddy was going to give his hair to some little child who didn't have any." Turning to examine our 3 month old son, who is almost completely hairless, Noelle replied "you mean like Evan?" How low can you stoop woman? Using children with cancer to tug at my hair bands heartstrings? Well, it worked, I am again a man...but mostly because I was again getting bored with it. Hopefully my son will be proud of me, and hopefully some child with a terminal illness will find solace in the hair that I have provided to them. God bless you little child.

Over Christmas vacation we celebrated Noelle's third birthday. We intended to have a party for her here before we left, but never got around to it. Of course we had one in Illinois, and although she sometime acts timid about it, she loves the attention. I promise we'll have a party with all her friends next year! She got to be with her cousins this birthday, though, and she loves them to pieces.

Today we had Noelle's 3 year check up, and here are her stats:
Weight - 36.5 lbs (90th percentile)
Height - 40.5 inches (off the charts!)

She is the average height of a 4 1/2 year old, her doctor said. The doctor also checked her blood pressure, asked her to jump, and then did the usual checks of her ears, heart, lungs, etc. Noelle also got to pee in a cup for the first time. She was hesitant at first, but then laughed and said "this is funny, mama." She was also supposed to wear a paper gown, but she decided she'd rather just sit around in her underwear. It was a pretty strange gown.

She also ended up having to get a shot, apparently at her last checkup the clinic was out of a shot she was supposed to get, so she was behind. This required a trip to McDonalds after for a reward. She cried and kicked, but overall she did fine. At McDonalds I gave her a dollar and let her order her own ice cream cone. She chose to put the change in the little box for charity at the counter!

So, we have a healthy, super tall little girl! She is becoming more girl and less little every day. Her tantrums serve to remind us that she is still only 3 years old at heart, and I hope that we do our best to let her be 3 all year long.

I stumbled across a neat idea on a blog I read called Let's Explore, interviewing your kids at the beginning of each new year. I thought it would be a lot of fun to start with Noelle this year, as she is old enough now to give her own true answers. I will type up her answers and put them in some kind of notebook to collect year after year. I did it on a whim this year during breakfast, so I just used the same questions from the blog. Here are her answers for January 2009.

Favorites:
Cereal - Blueberry Morning
Vegetable - Carrots. AND snap peas!
Drink - Milk
Toy - baby dolls, Lucy and Josiah
TV Show - Maggie and the Ferocious Beast. (her official answer was "guess!" but she confirmed my guess of Maggie)
Game - "Candylane"
Book - Chicken Licken was her answer, although we've only read it maybe twice
Restaurant - Old MacDonalds or "Meskican" where she gets rice
Holiday - Her birthday
Animal - A giraffe. Two giraffes, one long and one short

If you could change your name, what would you choose?
Noelle.

What do you love about each person in our family?
Daddy - he gives me baths
Mommy - she plays with me
Evan - he laughs at me

Where would you like to go on vacation this year?
The lake to swim

When Evan was born Jaime and I couldn't agree on whether to have him circumcised. She wanted it done, and I wasn't sure about it. The thought of having my boy's twig and berries fiddled with just seems wrong.

So I did a little research and it seems that there are pros and cons on both sides of the argument. Anyway, by the time we had made the decision to have the circumcision done, it was time to leave the hospital. Then we were advised to wait until we were cleared by his cardiologist.

A long story short, Evan is going in to Vanderbilt tomorrow to be circumcised. Neither of us are sure what to expect but everything we've heard from friends tells us that it's a short process (in and out in about 20-30 minutes). Here's hoping that it'll be quick, and our boy won't end up a girl.


UPDATE:
Well apparently they don't do this procedure in the clinic if the baby weighs over 16 lbs. Evan weighed in at 17.4 lbs today, so now we have to wait until he is 6 months old and have it done in the OR under general anesthesia. Poor guy!