Emily is 4 Months

    

…and she is as beautiful and fun as ever.

Her hobbies mainly involve rolling over, which she mastered (back to front) about two weeks ago.  She can’t roll front to back, though, so we often get to play flip-the-pancake with her at night.  (When she rouses in the middle of the night, she doesn’t like to be on her tummy so she cries… and we turn her over… and then she promptly flips again and cries.)

Her other love is smiling at people and blowing bubbles.  She is incredibly responsive and lights up like a little bulb when you talk quietly with her.

At the doctor she was 15 lbs 6 oz, our smallest four month-old (75th percentile).  Molly was 15 lbs 10 oz and Tucker was 17 lbs 4 oz at the same age.  She is 90th in height.

This is her enjoying Vacation Bible School at our church this week:

And on an unrelated note, we have had amazing fruit so far this year.  Our strawberry crop was insane, topped only by our black raspberry crop which was even better.  The picture below is our harvest on one day a week or two ago.

Beauty Shots

 

  

Emily at 3 Months

Emily is flourishing.  She is a beautiful little girl and we all are having so much fun having a baby again.  Life has gotten much easier for us since she started zantac at 2 months.  She is eating well now, without pain and screaming, which makes life for me much easier.  She is a very interactive baby and cracks big smiles when you talk softly to her.  She also is very active.  She now often turns on her side to sleep which I don’t remember either of my other kids doing, and certainly not at three months.  She wiggles all around her crib at night.  We often find her at the opposite end of the crib, turned 90 degrees and smiling and cooing when we go to get her in the morning.  This past week in the middle of the night, Austin went in to give her a pacifier and she flashed him a big grin and then scissored his hand with her legs, as if to say “ha! got you!”  She loves her mobile and will wiggle and thump for a long time just looking at it.  She also loves the front pack and will reliably fall asleep in it, which is wonderful for napping on the go.  She still nurses once a night though she has gone through before, but not lately.  It’s easier to feed her than to try to get enough good feedings in during the day that she doesn’t need it (she is already very distractable with nursing). 

She reminds me of Tucker as a baby, partly because of personality (she loves the mobile, is happy in her crib when she wakes up in the mornings, etc.), partly because she spits up amazing amounts like he did and has eczema and a dairy allergy like he did, and partly because I think she looks like him.  Also, she still has blue eyes like Tucker’s at that time—Molly’s were already dark brown by two months.  (Tucker is on the right in the following two sets of photos).

Molly Graduated

I was a little concerned that Molly wouldn’t wear the cap and gown her preschool wanted her to for graduation, if she decided they weren’t pretty enough.  Thankfully, she got on board with the festivities.  I supplied the big pink beads so that she could feel extra pretty.  (She has many, many more opinions on fashion than I did at her age, or well, really ever.)  Hopefully she gets on board about her uniform for kindergarten this fall as well! It’s not something I am discussing with her a) because she has no choice and b) she tends to want to wear the opposite of what I pick for her.  For example, we were doing errands and she needed a couple nightgowns.  There was a rack with about 5 different options, of which I told her she could pick two.  She asked me which ones I liked best, and I ranked them 1 to 5.  She promptly chose my 5th ranked choice.  Not that I care which nightgown she picks, but it is pretty reliable how she picks things in relation to my preferences.  If I do care what she chooses but am not willing to pull the you-have-to-wear-this-or-you’re-in-trouble card, then I strategically don’t tell her what I really think.

Anyway.  Molly the preschool graduate taught herself to read this past month.  She came home from preschool and reported that her friends who are twins know how to read.  So she sat down and taught herself.  Literally, she couldn’t read, and then that day she just decided she was going to and started sounding out words and figuring them out.  I was pretty surprised.  She is only 4 and a half but she knows how to skip, pump on the swings, tie her shoes, read, and I’m not sure what else.  If she puts her mind to it, I think the list could be pretty long.  For example, a couple months ago Austin’s parents were coming over.  Molly told me, “Henny doesn’t like messes!”  So while I was enjoying a Sunday afternoon nap, she cleaned the house.  She straightened everything downstairs, then cleaned everything off our kitchen table and wiped it down.  It looked to me when I got downstairs like Austin had been at work!  But it was actually Molly. 

My darling Molly, you are a firecracker!

Twins!

Molly is more excited than Emily to be twins, I think!