Week of April 19th

Brother and sister sharing a moment....Sophie looks almost as large as Jake in this photo!

Sophie hanging out with Jake in his room on Monday of this past week. Jake LOVES to read any chance that he can get and is finally taking some time to enjoy reading by himself every now and then. I was sorting some of his clothes in his room and put Sophie in his bed to keep an eye on her, well he thought this was a great chance to cuddle in by Sophie and read (or more likely...he was protecting his turf!).

Sophie likes being on the floor with her head up a bit-so this toy seems to be perfect for her right now. She is still working hard on trying to roll over-always to her right. We'll keep her practicing and see what happens............

Big boo-boos!! Jake was helping Daddy refill the bird feeder outside of his room and decided that standing on a small boulder and saying, "look at me, Daddy" was a good idea. Before Dave could say anything he fell off onto a budding hosta plant with last years dried "sticks" pointing straight up! Lots of owies!! He didn't even cry, though. What a brave boy.

Other things this week:

• Jake has been learning all about birds at daycare. He also attended a zoo class about birds on Sunday. Both learning sessions have been very timely as he has just been infatuated with all things "bird" for a few weeks now. He loves to eat breakfast and watch out the window at the bird activity in the backyard. He has learned to accurately identify chickadees, goldfinches, robins, and cardinals! Yet more confirmation that we have an animal/bird lover on our hands.
• Jake has been having what we think are growing pains waking him up in the middle of the night several nights this week. He cries that his legs hurt him. Dave and I both remember the feeling of growing pains as kids. Not fun.
• Jake continues to amaze us every single day with the new things he says, the length of his sentences, and his progress with learning pronoun use. He is becoming quite a talker just like his daddy!!
• Sophie has started to come into a bit more of a nighttime routine with sleep (and I think it has helped that we realized that she is now 3 months old and that we did not need to wake her up to eat at midnight before we went to bed...in order to get a couple of hours of sleep). I know, I know...never wake a sleeping baby but with her colicky symptoms she was waking up every 2-4 hours to eat so we tried to plan the wake up times by waking her at about midnight. Anyway.....she now goes to sleep around 10PM to Midnight and sleeps for 4-6 hours, wakes for a bottle, and goes back to sleep for 3 hours or so. She's started to have a bit more scheduled naps, too. We are starting to emerge from newborn sleep fog!! Now, I hope I didn't just jinx us!!
• Soph has also discovered that she has hands that do things! She rubs her eyes when she is tired which I think is amazing because it's truly the first sign that she can give us, other than crying, that she needs something. She is also starting to reach for things and put her arms around us when we are holding her. We forgot how fast infants learn things and I find that I am so very grateful that we kept a calendar of when Jake did what/learned new things because we reference it all the time to see where Sophie is at compared to Jake and prove to ourselves that we really should not be this surprised that Sophie found her hands at 12 weeks!!