5 months

Joanna was 5 months old on Feb. 20! She continues to amaze us with her development. A few weeks ago, she began rolling from her tummy to her back, and just in the last few days she has been rolling from back to tummy. Every day she gets a little better, faster, and moves farther. Time to start babyproofing! This is going to be challenging since Orrin likes to leave small things like coins and foam stickers everywhere.

She is becoming more and more like a mini Orrin. Mostly because she is smiling and laughing a lot more. Actually, the first time I really heard her belly laugh was at Colby a week and a half ago, but since then she has cracked up at me turning the page of a book, and pretty much any time Orrin talks to her. He is still a fabulous big brother, but I did find him sitting on her yesterday. We had to have a little chat about how sitting on your sister isn't ok. I have to laugh at the things I find myself saying sometimes.

I think she will be a good sleeper but we can't get more than a couple healthy days at a time to really tell. She has had cold after cold and at one point had bronchiolitis. All the congestion makes it hard for her to sleep so she is still usually up a couple times a night.

She is still freakishly strong. When we hold her up above our heads, she holds herself stiff for a long time. She loves to stand up, it can be quite a challenge to get her to sit. So the exersaucer is a hit, the bumbo not so much. And she loves her toys, any toys. She is so content to play on the floor, its great.

I was going to wait to give her solid food closer to 6 months, but she sits in her little high chair while we eat dinner and seems to get so upset that she can't have any. She'll smack her lips and watch longingly. So yesterday we gave her a little chunk of avocado mashed up to play with. She ate maybe a quarter teaspoon total, but she certainly had fun making a mess on the tray. And she didn't seem to mind having a different texture/taste. So I guess we'll keep doing that for a while and at some point start actually trying to feed her regularly. Its fun but just adds a new complication to the day.

She is always trying to get whatever Orrin has. And vice versa. Not looking forward to when they start fighting over everything.

It took awhile but she is finally figuring out the jumpy thing. And loving it!

This one's for Aunt Becky!

Having fun with daddy.

Napping with Daddy, Orrin decided to decorate them (he is into drawing O's at the moment)

We had some fun at the Meijer Gardens seeing the butterflies while Scott was on his paternity leave.

We also walked around outside in the Children's garden and on the boardwalk. It was nice but a little chilly.

First solid food

Can't forget about Orrin

Orrin is growing up so much lately! He is a wonderful big brother and and overall fabulous kid. I know I'll forget a ton of things here, but some Orrin facts:

He has an obsession with Puff the Magic Dragon. A few weeks ago, I asked him why he hadn't told me he needed a diaper change - his answer was a very emphatic "Because Puff the magic dragon lives by the sea!" He knows all the words to the song, frequently talks to puff on the phone, and his default answer to most questions is puff, or puff the magic dragon.

He can't wait for Joanna to get bigger and play with him! Last week I had his tent set up in the living room to play in. He brought some toys in there and then called out "Come on Joanna, come here!" He was not happy when I explained she couldn't crawl in there yet.

He also has an obsession with taking pictures, or playing with electronics in general. He will walk up to random strangers that take out a camera or phone and start talking to them. We got him a toddler camera for Christmas that he loves. He has filled up the card (about 600 pictures) a couple of times already.

He is learning his colors and shapes currently. And I think he will be an early reader. He points to the words in books as he "reads" them.

We started asking him what he would like to pray for at bedtime. The very first time was heartwarming because he said mommy and Joanna, but then he said the table. Recently his favorites have been "mommy's pump" and the hutch, but he does also list any person we may have seen that day too.

We have been cracking down on hitting lately, with an immediate time out if he hits either one of us (which he would do if we weren't allowing something he wanted). So now he'll tell us he's just patting us, not hitting. However, when it comes time to go to bed and he doesn't want to go, he'll purposefully hit one of us (very slowly and lightly - you can see the gears cranking in his brain) to get a time-out to delay bed. The last time he did it Scott just brought him straight to bed but then didn't stay with him at all (he'll usually stand in the doorway for a minute or two), saying he had to take care of mommy because Orrin hit me. :) He hasn't tried it since then.

He loves to help me in the kitchen. Lately he has been all about making muffins. And he of course still loves to help Scott with whatever he is doing, especially scooping dog poop.

He is perfectly capable of being potty trained at this point but is choosing not to. Occasionally he will go a whole day using the potty, but then want diapers the next day. I have chosen not to battle him yet, even though I would love to not be buying diapers. I know it will go so much easier if he would just choose to go diaper free by himself. I just need to figure out how to make him think that I want him to be in diapers forever. He is stubborn and at the age that reverse psychology really works on him. :)

Some favorite words:
Jonada = Joanna
Sock = Scott (he named his stuffed bear Sock, probably meant Scott, but Sock is a pretty cute name so we're sticking with it)
Chicken = Kitchen (and chicken)
Checkup = Ketchup
Tickle = Pickle
Pockible = Popsicle
Cramra = Camera

Favorite Books: Green Eggs and Ham, Mrs. Wow Never Wanted a Cow, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, God Made You Special, his Children's Bible, any of the Busytown books



In his dragon towel after bath time.

Every once in awhile I'll let him have the last sips of my coffee (he asks every day).

Likes playing in the snow but we haven't had much of it yet this year!

Catching up

Well if I were better at this, I would have blogged about each individual event, but it seems kind of late to do that. So here are some non-Joanna pictures of the fun stuff that we have done over the past four months: (they are in backwards order, but I don't really feel like fixing it) :)

4 months

4 months stats: 15 pounds 8 ounces (80th percentile) and 26.5 inches long (99th percentile). I checked and she is pretty much in the same percentiles as Orrin at that age, but she is over a pound lighter and an inch shorter. Which is weird because Joanna seems huge, so its hard to imagine that Orrin was even bigger!
She is wearing 9 month size clothes, even some 12 month (usually when she's in cloth diapers).
She hasn't changed too much since the last post. Still cooing and squealing a lot. She is very good at grabbing toys and chewing on them. And she's working hard on rolling over but not quite there yet. Its kind of a hard age because she gets bored easily so I have to keep moving her around to different places. She wants to be held a lot but she is heavy so I get tired! She doesn't like being in the wrap or ergo right now though, which would help me out a lot.
I've noticed that she is a lot more serious than Orrin was. She smiles, but not nearly as much or as easily as him, and she does giggle, but its pretty rare. Maybe its because she is a girl, but she is more challenging. More sensitive and more dramatic. And lately, up every hour or two at night, which is very draining! For a while she was consistently sleeping until 4am, but now she is usually back up sometime between 11 and 1 to eat again, then every 3 hours (or less) after. And there are at least a couple times in between that we go in to stick the pacifier back in her mouth, which usually buys us another hour of sleep. My criteria for deciding to feed her is if after replacing the pacifier twice, she still whines. I could probably try rocking her back to sleep or something, but nursing her is fastest and easiest and I am always tired and just want to go back to bed at that point. :) Hopefully this is a short phase!
But overall, she is wonderful and we just adore her!

Spot is always her guardian.
Keeping warm

We started putting her in the exersaucer last week. She likes it, but gets tired after about 5 or 10 minutes and will kind of slump over.

3 months

Our computer died, so this one's kind of late. Joanna was 3 months old on December 20. She is growing so much! As of today (so I guess she's 3.5 months now), she is outgrowing most of her 6 month size clothes, so I pulled out the 9 month stuff. We weighed her last week and she is well over 15 pounds, not sure how tall. We've decided she's going to be the athlete of the family (a relative term, since the rest of us are not so athletic) as she seems to be pretty coordinated with grabbing toys and moving them to her mouth, and she loves to be on the ground kicking her legs and rolling onto her sides. I've seen her laugh twice now, but it is very difficult to get out of her. She smiles quite a bit, but is more serious than Orrin was as a baby. In the mornings she likes to talk and squeal, and is definitely finding her voice. Its kind of fun to wake up to. She regularly sleeps 8 hours before waking to eat (generally around 4am), and a couple days ago even went 11.5 hours. That was pretty awesome for me! Orrin still adores her and she definitely likes to watch him.