Scoot, scoot

Gemma is officially army crawling around and making fast progress. This girl is determined to get around and check things out. I hopeful we will have a video for you in he next couple of days!

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Wait, what?

On the way home from the store yesterday, William dropped this bomb:

"Mom, I don't think I believe in Santa Claus anymore."

Wait. What? When did that happen? Who helped you come up with that one? Where did that come from?

Sadly, after he dropped that bomb, he moved on to the next topic and refused to discuss this one again.

I am not opposed to giving up on Mr Claus. I'm just a little sad that it's happening so soon. And, Gemma hasn't even had a chance to start believing...

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The current argument

At breakfast this morning:

William: no Amelia, those are called band AIDS.

Amelia: un uh. They are BAND aids.

William: band AIDS.

Amelia: BAND aids.

William: Mom! Tell Amelia is is BAND aids.

Mom: no. Just eat your breakfast.

Amelia: see William? I was right?

Mama: what?!!?!

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Gemma is 5 months old!

Gemma is 5 months old today! She has brought a lot of laughter and smiles to our house this month as her little personality emerges!

Gemma is growing up so fast! He still fits into a few 6-9 month clothes and we wear mostly 9-12 month. However she does have a handful of 12-18 month clothes that fit. Keeping up with what fits the three growing kids at our house is a full time job these days. The box of clothes Gemma has now outgrown is quite impressive.

I'm still squeezing her into our last bag of size 2 diapers - which means extra laundry this week. The too small diapers don't hold as we'll as I know the size threes will.

Gemma is getting very close to being fully mobile. She is able to scoot a little and with great effort. She can make forward progress, but it still requires a great deal of effort on her part. She easily spins herself around on her belly (all the better to spread spit up around the place) to reach different toys and fun things like papers left on the ground. Daily I look around with growing concern about her safety...and remind those big kids to pick up the pieces that are small enough to fit in the baby's mouth.

Gemma is loving sitting up and has become quite stable. She loves to look at books and play with toys in this position as well as keep her eye on what the big kids are up to.

Gemma loves chewing on everything in sight. We will be starting solids in about 4 weeks- she works hard any time we're holding her to get food into her mouth, it will be fun to see how she actually likes it.

Gemma loves books and stuffed animals- particularly anything that has a tag on it. Why? No idea. She will work and work to spin a toy around to find the tag to chew upon.

In general, Gemma is a very happy girl and rolls with the craziness if our day to day life. She is full if smiles and giggles for everyone as long as you give her some time to warm up. Catch her by surprise or hold her too soon and there will be tears aplenty. Nothing that a few minutes with her mama can't fix. We recently discovered she hates being alone while she is awake. Apparently, she is surrounded by people most if the time and when she is alone, she gets a little sad. She and I were home alone and I stepped into the laundry room. Gemma squawked and I peeked around the corner. I went back to switching clothes over and she squawked again and then started to cry. As long as I am in sight? We are all good!



And lastly, I might actually cry when this hat doesn't fit her anymore.

Hard to believe...

It's hard to believe how much a baby grows in just 5 short months!

Photo1 Gemma's birthday
Photo2 Gemma today - 5 months old!

Look what I have!

Gemma has feet! They are so much fun to play with and chew on! The picture isn't great because she loves the dot pattern on the case of my phone. But, so adorable to watch her grab her feet!

Picture 2 here is from this morning. I was getting ready for work and Gemma was keeping me company in the bathroom (because she is safest with me!). Suddenly the light was just perfect and Gemma was so adorable I needed to take a picture. So, I ran around to make that happen instead of getting ready for work.

Amelia wore this same outfit when she was a baby along with this hat. I don't think the hat is going to fit for much longer, which makes me just a little sad...

Election 2012

We stayed up last night with the kids for awhile to watch the election returns come in. John printed each of the kids a US map to color in for each of the candidates. Amelia's candidates were pink-Obama and purple- Romney. She got quickly tired of waiting for the actual returns to come in and just colored the map to her liking. William chose orange for Romney and blue for Obama. He was very excited about the results and cheered every time a state was declared, regardless of candidate.

He started out the evening hoping Obama would win (why? I just like him mom) and then flipped to wishing Romney would win (why? Because he ha the most states colored when we turned the TV off.)

He made us promise to tell him the results right away in the morning. I will say his geography knowledge is pretty impressive. He was able to color in most of the states by himself without any help accurately locating them.