alexist

Mixed results here...

Last night, we moved her into the bedroom early, and she stayed asleep. That is, until her bottle, when she wouldn't go back to sleep. Put her in the sling, she was quiet, eventually slept. Repeat for next bottle. So Mommy got no sleep. At 5:30 (bottle 3) I couldn't get up again and had to wake Neil.

Tonight, I fell asleep early, Neil brought Aliza in at 23:00, and she fussed. I rocked her (the rocking base for her Moses basket was a GREAT purchase) and she calmed down eventually. Bottle at 01:15, back to sleep--perfect! Next bottle 4:00-ish (did it when she was starting to wake up but before she fussed), not so lucky. Back in the sling, cuddle, finish off last half ounce, nice fat belch, and back to sleep. Now I'm fully awake, darn it, but I'll try going back to bed in a few.

Oh, and several people said Aliza's the spitting image of me. Poor child ;-) I do see bits of Neil in her (definitely the mouth) but I suppose the resemblance to me is more immediately obvious as our colouring is similar and she has the same chubby cheeks--not sure about her face shape yet though (larger version of my icon photo for comparison: http://web.mac.com/alexis_treeby/Images/sitting.jpg - I was maybe 6-7 months).

Just got weighed: 4.14 kg (9 lb 2 oz) :)

This is a little old, but I just remembered this.

In his State of the Union address, Bush proposed some (very minor and ill thought out) health care reforms. Part of this included a new tax exemption on health insurance, capped at $15K per year. He then basically said that people whose insurance cost more had "gold plated" policies and were responsible for driving up costs, so should pay more tax.

Well, I've checked what health insurance would cost us if we moved to the States. Once Neil got a job, we'd have group coverage, which is usually better and much cheaper (often your employer pays part, but even if they don't, group coverage has lower rates as the risk is spread), but I wanted to know what an individual policy would cost as a stop-gap. New York is a "community rating" state. This means that insurers must accept all applicants at a uniform price (based only on what part of the state they live in). This makes insurance more expensive for healthy people, but means everyone can buy it if they can pay--in some states insurers are really awful. I checked Empire Blue Cross/Blue Shield, as I used to have it and I know all my old doctors take it. Cost? $1,500pcm for a family HMO-only policy (no coverage for doctors who are not on BC/BS' "network"), $3,000pcm for POS (full coverage in-network, partial coverage [after copay and deductible] for out of network). The latter policy might be described as fairly generous (people at some big companies, or who work for the government, often have fantastic policies that cover almost everything), but the former isn't and it STILL costs $18K a year. Gold plated my ass.

(If we just want to cover Aliza, we can get Child Health Plus--it's $155 a month.)

And because group coverage is cheaper, it won't change the problem with the current tax exemption anyway--generous employers can still be pretty generous. It's just going to keep causing problems with would-be individual policy holders.

The whole US system is a mess anyway. Put everyone on Medicare I say.... seems to work just fine for the old folks!h

I think Aliza needs one of these:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/interests/giftsforkids/59cc/

They also have:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/interests/giftsforkids/5e09/

Unfortunately, Tux only comes in a T-shirt, not a onesie :( Same with http://www.thinkgeek.com/interests/giftsforkids/592c/, http://www.thinkgeek.com/interests/giftsforkids/592f/ and http://www.thinkgeek.com/interests/giftsforkids/6c71/ - don't they know the onesies are better for infants? :)

(side point: Thanks to Google, I've discovered that "onesie", the US term for a bodysuit, is actually trademarked by Gerber!)

They also have giant microbes on the site; I've always wanted those for myself. :-) The "Calamities" set is cool, although the best individual one is giardia.

Today's Independent has an article on King David Primary in Birmingham--a Jewish school where half the pupils are Muslim (only 35% are Jewish):
http://education.independent.co.uk/schools/article2201860.ece

Personally, I don't think I'd like sending my kids to a Jewish school where Jewish students were actually a minority (though I do want them to mix with non-Jews, not be in a complete bubble) but it's nice to read about coexistence.