Here’s a photo of her first day, both looking a bit wary:

Elena and Elizabeth are very close, so you can imagine how disappointed she was when Elizabeth went off on an adventure without her:

Elizabeth will also undertake training an apprentice, Elena McPherson, who will gradually take over as the McPherson Family’s Official Animal Feeder. The transition is expected to go smoothly and there should be no disruption to daily operations. Also note that Elizabeth will maintain her position as McPherson Family Table Setter Extrordinaire.

I was very worried how Elizabeth would take it and if she could attend the funeral. She was such a trooper though. She seemed to understand that we were going up to say good-bye to grandpa’s body. Over the course of several days, she asked a lot of questions and seemed to get it sorted out in her head. Elizabeth will still talk about grandpa out of the blue and tell me how much she misses him.

I’m sad that Elena will never know her Grandpa Fricke. Since Frank’s dad passed away before Elizabeth was born, they never go to know him either. Luckily, they have an awesome Aunt and Uncle and wonderful grandmas to spoil them as their grandpas would expect.

Here’s my last photo of Elena with her grandpa.

Elena is 16 months. She’s starting to talk and her personality is really coming out. Her first sentence was a few months ago “Bye-bye daddy! *smooch*” Current favorite words are “mine, eat, uh-huh, yeah, and bad baby.” The last one is courtesy of her big sister. It’s great to see her growing language comprehension–and funny to see her sneaky side when she knows what you’re saying and deliberately doesn’t listen.

Her teeth are giving her problems though. She has 8 teeth: four top front, two bottom front, one left top molar and one left bottom molar. She looks a bit silly with only two bottom chompers, but we’re hopeful more will join them soon. Elena seems to like to eat, but she’s not eating very much yet. I wonder if this has to do with her slow teething. Good thing she’s still nursing like a champ!

We like to start them young when it comes to jobs around the house. Elena likes to carry Finley’s food bowl over to him and take Elizabeth’s “night-night cup” of water to her.

Elena spends a lot of her time copying her big sister. She absolutely beams when her sister does something fun. In some ways, Elena is a lot like her sister, but sometimes it’s amazing how different they are. As high-need as Elizabeth was as a baby, we never had a problem leaving her in the church nursery. Elena has finally lasted 45 minutes in the nursery as of last Sunday.

I also never had to call poison control for Elizabeth. She was never interested in putting stuff in her mouth, but Elena will eat ANYTHING–dirt, cat litter, dog poop, brake grease. I was pumping up bike tires and turned around to see a shiny, bright blue face. I think her tongue would have been blue if she had actually ingested any brake grease, but I called poison control anyway. They said if anything happens, it would most likely just be the runs. We smelled like automechanics for the rest of the day, but that was better than going to the hospital!

I quickly googled their site and found the hotel is indeed offering a “Stylish, insulated backpack complete with Nestle baby formula, baby bottle, and information about infant care, all courtesy of Nestle.”

Over the weekend I thought about how to frame a letter to the hotel management. Why should they stop giving away freebies to their guests? Is the World Health Organization going to come knocking at their door? What’s in it for them?

Monday morning I posted about it on the Lactivist forum at Motheringdotcommune, and then I went out to run errands with the girls and Finley and enjoy our 70 degree weather.

Almost immediately, my post started getting comments from others equally outraged at Nestle targeting the hotel industry. (This was a new experience for me, since I mostly lurk at motheringdotcommune.) It turns out my post on the violation was passed on to LACTNET, another forum I’m on and somebody forwarded it to yet another message board and somebody on that message board called the hotel. The person who phoned was in England, so my post crossed the Atlantic and the US in less than a few hours and people jumped into action!

The hotel manager was, not surprisingly, unaware of the ban on formula marketing and unaware that Nestle has been the target of a boycott since 1977. He has reportedly promised to check with the ethics department at their headquarters office.

Someone else contacted IBFAN (International Baby Food Action Network) a watchdog agency that tracks code violations . Their mission is to “improve the health and well being of babies and young children, their mothers and their families through the protection, promotion and support of breastfeeding and optimal infant feeding practices.” IBFAN is looking into the violation as this is the first report of Nestle working with the hotel industry.

It’s so cool to see the wheels of change moving. While it may seem like no big deal to give out a few bags of formula, Nestle and other formula manufacturers continue to undermine breastfeeding as the normal way to feed a baby, putting profit above health. As UNICEF has said: “Marketing practices that undermine breastfeeding are potentially hazardous wherever they are pursued: in the developing world, WHO estimates that some 1.5 million children die each year because they are not adequately breastfed. These facts are not in dispute.” (quote from IBFAN site)

It infuriates me when Nestle and other formula manufacturers spread misleading and often false information and even target moms who have chosen to breastfeed. Statements like “even exclusively breastfeeding mothers need to formula feed sometimes” (quoted from MDC) are sickening! I’ll get off my soap box now but I’m so glad that I played a small part this week in the struggle for breastfeeding to be seen as the normal way to feed a baby.