What a character! Emily is eating her lunch in a big person chair and reading a sale flier at the same time. She has found the shoe section of the sale flier. She consented to look up at the camera for a photo, but I think she took the opportunity to tell me about the pair of shoes she wanted me to buy her. She’s my daughter!

We have started to eat lunch in the kitchen where we can look out the window and watch for birds on the bird feeder. Today was a warm sunny day and the birds weren’t hungry, so Emily had moved on the sale flyer. I have lightened up a little and I am letting her stand on her chair to see out the window. The height is perfect for her to stand and rest her elbows to gaze out the window.

We were playing in the girls room and Emily discovered that she could check on Julia for Mommy. If she could figure out how to climb in with Julia, she would. This week, Emily also discovered that she could climb into her own crib with the side down. She didn’t think she could crawl out after she got in, so we kept playing the game with Mommy taking her out and she would climb in again.

A little pre-bedtime sugar cookie making with Mommy and Emily. The process was supposed to be roll, sugar, and smush. Emily loved to say roll for all of the steps. The balls she made were pretty good until she had them made and then stuck her fingers into them. The sugar step involves touching the cup bottom into the sugar, only Emily thought that it was better to coat her fingers with sugar. Then the last step was to smush the dough ball with the cup and that was Emily’s most successful step. I am mistaken to say that any of these steps were Emily’s favorite steps because eating the cookie was really her favorite.

The girls were hanging out on Daddy’s lap and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to snap some photos. As usual, we couldn’t get Emily to look at the camera although she is willing to say cheese.

Emily still loves her sister and doesn’t seem to be very jealous of my giving Julia attention. This day she was giving Julia much more attention than her Daddy, but I caught the moment that she allowed Robby to love on her a little.

Julia is growing quickly, I have noticed that she is outgrowing 0-3 month clothes when they are one piece outfits. She is long enough to be stretching them a lot. We think that Julia is caring more weight than Emily did at her age. She just seems more pudgy, although you can’t call either of our kids pudgy. She is moving well – she has her rigid pose, where she can stand on her own because of holding her body and legs tightly. She has continued her crunches and leg lifts. She is also listing to the side in a movement that will become a roll over soon. She loves to watch people and smiles when we look and talk to her. She calms down when Emily comes into view.

Julia is still getting me up in the middle of the night once most nights and twice every once an a while. On rare occasions she holds off and gives me six hours, but I can count that on one hand. It is also not predictable. I try to brace myself for what she is going to do, but she doesn’t do the same schedule more than two nights in a row. The earliest she has gone to bed is 10:30 pm and the latest is 2:30 am, she can wake up from 6:30 am to 10 am. This morning she woke up just after Robby went to work and wasn’t interested in going back to sleep. We laid in bed and played and watched some TV.

Emily has been asking to ‘Help Mama’ at almost everything I do. She will climb up and get Julia a fresh diaper or fetch wipes. Today I asked her to bring me one tissue, she went and pulled two out of the box and managed to put one back in and brought the one to me. She also wants to load and unload the dishwasher. I caught her trying to pick up Julia to bring her to me for a feeding. It was really sweet, but not so safe for Julia.

Another antic that she has added just recently is to ask to ‘Sing’. This can mean to literally sing, but also to dance, or just to listen to music. Before this she has enjoyed these activities, but didn’t ask for them by name. Along with singing games she has started playing hide & seek with her Daddy while Mommy finishes dinner and playing Simon-says with Emily making the movements. She finds the last really funny and giggles as we imitate her. This evening she delighted herself with spinning around until she was so dizzy she fell down, then she would get up and do it again and again. She also figured out how to lay on the ottoman, scoot off head first, do a modified headstand, and then sometimes flip over and other times just fall off. The last thing for this post is her climbing out of her crib. She still is sleeping in her crib and we are not taking her out until we need her to be out or she climbs out. She has started to throw her leg over the top edge while I’m in the room and the side is down. Today I asked her if she had enough guts to go ahead and climb out, she looked at me and said ‘Help’.

This morning when we woke up, we looked out the window and saw snow falling. This is a rare treat for us. I was all for getting our kids up and making them look out the window immediately and then following that with going out and playing in it. Reason won out and I didn’t make Julia spend much time looking out the window and we fed Emily breakfast before going out. Unfortunately, by the time we did get out the door, the snow was beginning to melt. There was enough snow for Robby to teach Emily how to make a snowball, or at least a snow clump. Throwing the snow clump consisted of smushing it against someone else. The other favorite game was to get snow on your shoes and then stomping it off on the driveway.

It appears that Julia spent the outside play time with her eyes covered by her hat. Oh well, I guess Mommy should look in a mirror after putting the hat on her. She didn’t seem to mind the hat/eye covering.