Vivian's 4 month checkup

Baby Girl is 4 months old, and it's going too fast! We just had her 4 month checkup and her stats are looking good.

Weight: 14 lbs 4 oz. (50th percentile)
Height: 26 inches (95th percentile) - what?
Head: 16 inches (50th percentile)

Recent Skills:
turning from back to belly
tripod sitting for up to 10 seconds unassisted (this actually upsets me - too soon!)

She was great during her shots but apparently when Brian and I were out to dinner had a complete meltdown of at least 1 hour of straight crying (she's never done that before). Thankfully she seems to be back to normal today. Nathan had a terrible reaction to his 4 month shots too, so I'm glad to have them behind us.

Also, aren't they cute together?

Nathan says the alphabet

Nathan has been singing songs unexpectedly for awhile now and has started counting up to 12 (3 and 8 were long absent but have started to make an appearance). I actually managed to capture him doing the alphabet on video - TWICE! Usually once the camera comes out he clams up so this felt like a miracle. My house is a mess in the background. You can't ask for two miracles at once!

Also difficult to capture is his visage. He just seems to be ALWAYS MOVING these days, especially when he's happy. This is all lovely unless you're wanting to get a good portrait for hanging on the wall above your bed because you actually got your act together after 2 years of living in your house and bought some frames and hung them...

Also, I may be a bit obsessed with my new camera and the piece of fleece that I bought about a year ago to make a baby blanket but has since become our go to backdrop. I'm still working out the best way to get a moving target in focus though.

Our Little Boy

Nathan is officially a little boy and not my baby anymore. *Sob*

Brian took him to the park yesterday and took the camera out for a ride. The best part of Virginia Park (aka Hippo Park) is that there are these great trucks and diggers that are there for all of the kids to play with. No plastic here folks, they are metal and quite serious. For a boy whose favorite thing right now is playing "little builders" with a mega blocks set, this makes the park quite the fun place for our guy.

He's pretty good with other kids. He does a lot of watching before joining in and generally if another kid takes away whatever he's playing with, he just moves on to the next thing without hesitation. I'm sure that will change over time, but at least for now we don't have the play yard bully. (Imagine me spitting on the ground, throwing salt over my shoulder, and knocking on wood.)

You can also see how fun the video capability is on our new lovely below or here:

Our Little Lady

Oh, you'd like to look at a few pictures of our darling girl? You're welcome. 

New Camera!

I got the most wonderful gift for my birthday - a new camera! Our "old" camera is 5 years old and so very trusty. I don't want to disparage old faithful, but let's just say that the flash has to be held down with a rubber band due to an unfortunate fall a few years back. The new lovely is just LOVELY. Can you tell a difference???? The video is especially awesome, but I'll have to prove that to you later since the only ones we've taken so far are walkthroughs of the house. Thank you, Mom and Dad!

In case you were wondering my kids have blue eyes and excellent eyelashes - thanks, Brian! Someone please tell me that they see the red in Viv's hair too. N is even looking a little strawberry blond these days.

I think it's hysterical that when Brian was playing around and testing it, these are what he chose as hist subjects. I think it says a lot about what we have lying around the house. They were artfully displayed by Nathan.

Nathan Says

I'm pretty excited for this post. We are moving from a list of things that Nathan can say to actual cute things he does with the English language.

Cottage quotes:
"dang it!" - as he swept bugs off the boat.
"turn it, like this" (complete with hand motions) - trying to get one of the flashlights to work

He tends to use "you" when he really means "me," so he'll ask me to "hold you," During bedtime I list all of the people who love him. While he worked on falling asleep, we would overhear him saying, "Mama love you, Daddy love you, Nonnie love you, Viv love you, Pop Pop love you, Nathan love you..."

Other quotes

"Plants are crying" - talking about the flowers after he waters them

"Cherries snuggling" - looking at the cherry pits in a bowl

He also knows all of the words to a few different songs, especially Five Little Monkeys and Ba Ba Black Sheep. Periodically he will just rattle the whole thing off when he thinks no one is paying close attention. I love this. I tried to get him doing it at dinner one night, but he was too aware of the camera. I'm not sure what he was doing with his finger in his mouth...

He also is a fan of pretending to pump and then feeding his milk to Viv. I find it hilarious and sweet. He'll be appalled in 15 years that I documented that.

"Breast pumpin'"

Cheery Cherry Girl

 I don't know if you can tell, but Vivian seems to have a bit of red in her hair. It's mostly her eyebrows and in the sunlight that I really see it, but it's fun. 

In other news, she's also started rolling both directions very reliably as of yesterday. Seriously, she seems to opt into tummy time and only be a little frustrated that she hasn't figured out that she can end it whenever she wants now.  

Typical younger sister gets a truck driven on her during the photo shoot...