Abby the Explorer

Abby loves being on her tummy, which I guess is how she got so good at moving. Sometimes I'll be holding her, she will start to fuss, and I'll think, "You shouldn't be tired, you shouldn't be hungry, I wonder what the problem is...hmmm, I'll just put you down for a minute and think about it...ah-ha: you just wanted to be on the floor so you could go exploring!" Abby's favorite places to explore are sides of walls, windows, and cabinets. She likes to roll over right next to a vertical surface so that one hand is on the floor and the other is reaching up the wall. Then she'll just hang out there until I decide the edge of the cabinet might not be the best object to chew on.

Of course when I tried to capture her new skill, she did not perform, but this is a really cute video anyway:

Matt said to me today after watching Abby military crawl across the floor, "What do we do with all this (boxes of unsorted small pieces of toys in our family room) once Abby is really crawling?" Good question. That's my next project.

Playing school

When Anna gets out of school each day I'm eager to hear what she has been up. I've learned that the best way to find out is not to ask her right away, but just to wait. She shows us a lot of what she does at school when she is playing. We often hear her sing, "If your name is Ernie, get your bag." In fact one day Mommy, Daddy, and Anna all had to get their bags and line up at our front door to wait to be "picked up." Last week she set up an "art center" with her farm set. Each of her dollhouse characters came to the art center, made a painting, set their painting aside to dry, then went to go play somewhere else while the next character came to the art center. This week she's been conducting entire classes with her as the teacher and her stuffed animals as the students. She sets them up in a line to read them stories. Then she sets up a sink using a mixing bowl and they each wash their hands before getting their snack. Then it's time for music class:

Cox Farms!

On Friday we took a family trip to Cox Farms. The weather was great, the crowds were small, and both our children surprised us. Anna loved the slides (which we thought she might be scared of) and Abby was good for the whole time we were there. Anna not only loved going on the slides, but she showed us her new independent side, by stating, "Go by myself, Daddy, you stay here," before climbing to the top of the slides. Some of the slides are pretty tall so Matt did follow her a few feet behind. Anna ended up loving the idea of Matt or I sliding down right after her.

In addition to the slides, we enjoyed apple cider, seeing cows, horses, and pigs, going on a hay ride, and walking through a corn maze.

Our little Mommy

Anna loves to play "Mommy" to her stuffed animals and babies. Over the past few weeks she has been busy carrying Minnie Mouse in the Bjorn, tucking Abby Caddaby, Elmo, and Cookie Monster in for bed (including singing lullabies), and rocking her baby doll to sleep.

Me too!

Abby is 5 months old now and on the move! She is not crawling, but she is able to get where she wants to go by rolling around and pushing herself around with her legs and arms. She does have a lot of fun playing with the toys that we have designated "Abby's toys," but her real interest seems to be getting to the toys Anna is playing with! I had to break it to Anna yesterday that as Abby starts to crawl she's going to be able to play with more things. I explained that was okay because Anna couldn't really play with all her toys at once anyway. She seemed skeptical.

"Rice and cereal"

On Tuesday Abby had "rice and cereal" for the first time! I know you're thinking, "Did Sarah misunderstand what she was supposed to feed her 4 month old? I thought she was an experienced mom?" Okay, we didn't really feed her "rice and cereal." We fed her rice cereal, but Anna calls it "rice and cereal." I had told Anna about a week ago that soon Abby would get to eat real food. I said she would have rice cereal after her baptism. (In my head thinking sometime after the baptism we would get to that.) Anna took it quite literally. Every time Abby reached for my plate in the following days Anna said, "No, Abby, no pizza for you. You have rice and cereal after your baptism." I'm not sure if Anna was disappointed that Abby didn't get her first bowl of "real" food right at the church, but she did seem excited to see Abby eat on Tuesday.

Abby loved her first meal! She slurped each spoon full right down and wiggled her arms in excitement as I got the next one ready.

I like "rice and cereal"!

Abby's Baptism

On Sunday Abby was baptized at St. Mark Catholic Church. It was a beautiful day and beautiful baptism. We got to celebrate afterwards with Nana, Uncle Pete, Grandma, Grandpa, and our good friends, Corinne, Rich, and Cornelia. We also had fun all weekend celebrating with our visitors :)

A gift from God!

Nana, Grandpa, Corinne, Daddy, Mommy, Abby, Uncle Pete, & Grandma

Posing with her parents and Godparents :)