5 Months Already!

*please note that I was very good and posted TWICE today! So make sure you see both entries... it doesn't happen often! ha ha

Today my baby girl is 5 months old! Where has the time gone? Here are some of her new (and continued) interests from this past month:grabbing her feet

chewing on said feet

blowing raspberries

biting/sucking in her bottom lip (and pretty much doing anything with her lips, including TALKING… she jabbers away all day long, especially at night)

playing with her soccer ball… sometimes it gets away

Oh, and no picture, but she has finally rolled over... twice. She still thinks sitting up and standing up (while holding onto our fingers) is much more interesting, though. She is also working on wiggling her body forward to the things she wants if they are out of her reach. We are constantly in awe about how smart and curious she is and how fast she is learning new things. We certainly do love her and are so grateful she is part of our family!

Wednesday Surprises

Last Wednesday (February 23^rd for the record) three wonderful things happened. The first happened at 5:15 a.m. and that is my sister-in-law, Jenny, had her first baby: baby Lilly. Both mom and baby are healthy and doing great. We have seen pictures and she is beautiful… and she has lots of long dark hair… I think it will take Julie at least a year to catch up with her new cousin in the hair department! Haha. We are so excited to meet Lilly.

The next thing that happened was that Julie rolled over for the first time ever! Unfortunately, I missed it as I was out of the room grabbing my shoes so we could go for a walk. Big bummer. However, she did a reinactment the next night after Arek and I finished bathing her. We are so excited for accomplishment!

Lastly, my little brother (my ONLY brother, I should say) got his mission call! On May 18^th he is leaving to serve an LDS mission in Samara, Russia. We are so happy for him. It is especially cool because my dad’s master’s is in Russian history and he speaks fluent Russian and has been there lots of times. So now Ben and my dad will be able to speak Russian together… which I’m sure they’ll do when they want to get away from all the girls in the family and talk about “guy” stuff… whatever that is! Anyway, Ben gets to go through the temple in a week or two and we are so excited for him! He’s going to be a great missionary!

Here is Ben with Julie a few days after she was born (I can't believe how tiny she was... and she had hair, too!)

Sometimes... Ugh

Sometimes I could just kick myself. I took several cute photos of Julie sitting up by herself yesterday and as I was going through them on the camera to delete the blurry ones (she moves lots) I accidentally pressed a button that deleted ALL the pictures on the camera... permanently. Ugh! I was so angry with myself. Luckily I recently copied most of them onto the flashdrive and computer, but all of the cute pictures from the weekend were gone. So, I tried to take a couple of new ones of Julie sitting, but by that point she was tired of posing for mom. So, here are the two that I managed to take. And I now know there is a delete-all button and I will NEVER push it again. Blurry, I know, but it's the best I could do with a baby who wobbles Me and Julie... Arek calls this her "sailor" outfit (with jeans cuz it's real pants are shorts and it's just too cold out for her to be wearing those yet). My favorite thing about it is the matching head band. Thanks Mom for keeping all of Rachel's baby outfits.... most are the wrong season but we make them work :)

Nothing Like a Good Book

I love reading. It is one of my favorite past times. I have always wanted to share that love with my kids. Luckily we had lots of friends and family give (and loan) us books for us to read with Julie. Most of them are short little board books, with less than 10 words on each page. Julie loves me to read them to her. Last weekend while we were at Arek's parents, Julie was getting fussy so I read Julie "Are You My Mother?" (the full-length version), and then Arek's dad read it to her and then he also read her "Go, Dog, Go". My little angel listened quietly the entire time... I was amazed how long her attention span lasted. It was so sweet to see her snuggled up with her grandpa, sucking her thumb and "reading" the book. What a cutie.

cheaper is NOT always better

so recently we decided to try using the cheap brand of diapers... huggies are just so expensive. the first day we had a huge blowout but it didn't happen again too bad for a few days. we thought, "we can live with an occasional blowout." well then last night she had her biggest blowout over and arek firmly decided that we will deal with the pricier huggies... just so we don't have to deal with the mess every few days. hopefully once solids come into play we can go back to cheaper diapers, until then we are sticking to namebrand. unless anyone has had luck with cheap ones? i'm definitely up for suggestions! here's my messy girl... arek insisted on a photo. (and, honestly, this makes it look better than it was!)

My Little Chunky Monkey

Last Friday Julie had her 4 month check-up. Lo and behold, our little girl (whom i affectionately refer to as my chunky monkey) is, indeed, chunky. She weighed in at 15 lbs 9 oz (88% for girls) and 25.5 inches (90% for girls). We are so happy with our little chubbo. She certainly has her own personality. Still not rolling over yet, but she loves to sit up and trade her toys between her hands. She has also weaned herself off her binky... she has decided that her thumb tastes better and is much more convenient, and no one can try to convince her otherwise! She loves to go to the library with her mom and play peek-a-boo, pat-a-cake and wheels-on-the-bus. And anything that she can get to her mouth gets duley slobbered on... she can't wait to be able to start trying foods. She's already starting to lick her lips and eye all pieces of food that Arek and I eat. So, to make a long story short, we love our little growing girl!