Happy 9-months-old to Madeline
Today Madeline turned 9 months old. She was treated to a trip to the doctor’s office with only one shot! If you are trying to keep up with her latest stats, she now weighs a little over 19 pounds and is 27 inches long. She’s still about average (statistically speaking) in those areas, coming in right around the 50th percentile. Her head continues to be really small at 42 centimeters…which is a little less than the 10th percentile! Since most people seem to have kids with heads in those upper percentiles, I guess someone out there has to make up the stats on the lower end, and Madeline is just that lucky baby! She has four teeth now, and can stand unsupported for 5-10 seconds. She is more interested in crawling than walking at this point, but I am sure she will make some forrays in the direction of bipedal motion in the coming weeks.
In other random Monday news, I did our taxes today while Madeline took a very long afternoon nap (3hrs, she had skipped her morning nap all together). Yeah for getting lots of our money back from the government. Buying a house, plus having a baby plus making lots of tax-deductible charitible contributions, plus paying for some of Tony’s grad school expenses…equals very large returns from both the federal and state governments. I was almost feeling guilty about getting such large returns…but then I remembered it was our money to start with!!! We’re just getting it back after a short separation.
We knew we would be getting some money back, but the exact amount was a very pleasant surprise. We had already been planning to give some of this refund money away, and it was fun to then get to discuss how we might like to give more away. Our tax system is amazing in that the more you give, the more you can get back the next year (if you make enough to itemize). Give money away, get a bigger tax return, give some of that money away…rinse, lather, repeat the next year. And that’s not even touching the heavenly blessings of giving money away. Or the thrill of knowing that you might be a part of making something amazing happen…like a building for the Rock!