Let's eat!

Lately Sophie has really been interested in watching us eat. She follows the food from the plate to our mouths and back to the plate again. We figured that since she is now 24 weeks, it's time to start rice cereal. Here are the pictures from her first cereal experience. For the record, I don't think that any cereal actually made it into her mouth, but when we tried it again the next day she ate the whole bowl!

Hey, wait what's going on?

Hmmm, what is this?

I can do it myself, thank you very much!

All done! Oh, do I have a little something on my chin?

5 months old already!

Today is Sophie's 5 month birthday. We've seen a lot of changes in her this past month, her little personality is starting to emerge! She is smiling a lot more, and is generally a happy baby. As you can see from the picture, she is a drooly mess! She now always has to wear a bib, sometimes several, throughout the day. She has mastered grabbing near by objects and loves to chew anything in sight! Her favorite chew toy is currently her burp cloth- this can entertain her happily for 45 minutes. She has also started to "talk" and will look right at you and babble and coo, as if she has something important to tell you. She also loves blowing raspberries, and I will catch her doing this over her monitor in the middle of the night. Right now she is trying very hard to sit up, and has just discovered her toes. One of her favorite toys is her excersaucer where she can practice sitting/standing up and now refuses to play in toys where she lies down, like her once loved bouncy chair and swing. It has been very fun to watch her grow, we will have to see what happens this month!

Let's get together, yeah, yeah, yeah

This past weekend, my 3 good friends from Pepperdine got together in Searchlight, Nevada. We have all had babies within the last year and a half. We had visions of going out to eat, swimming and playing in the lake all afternoon, and possibly doing some shopping. Well, needless to say the babies ruled the weekend and we were lucky to get out the door in between all the nap times. But we did manage to go to the lake- and stayed for over a half-hour! Which I thought was extremely good since it was 110 degrees outside. Most importantly though we got to sit, catch up, and watch our beautiful babies.
Here is a shot of all the babies- as you can see Sophie is the chunkiest. From left to right is Sophie, 5 months, Haiden- Jamie's baby, 9 months, and the man of the house for the weekend, Charlotte- Rebecca's baby,17 months, and Rori- Ashleigh's baby, 12 months. We all had great intentions of taking lots of pictures, but somehow our hands were always full. We look forward to doing it again sometime.

Baptism

The last month of summer was jammed packed and flew by extremely quickly. While my family came to visit, we had Sophie's baptism. This event brought quite the crowd, we had 20 people come and filled up 3 pews. It was quite a big event for our church, and I still have people come up to me and tell me what a wonderful baptism it was. I think that Sophie's outfit helped, although Carl thought the hat was a little much.

Let's go for a swim!

This past weekend was really hot, so hot in fact that I thought it was time for Sophie to experience her first swim. We filled up the pool and then let it bake in the sun for a couple of hours. It was still not hot enough, so we added boiling water and got it close to bath temp. I was hoping that she would splash around, like she does in her bath, but she seemed pretty confused. You could almost see her thinking, this is not my bath, and why am I wearing this silly swimsuit? Carl saw that I was preoccupied with the camera and saw his opportunity to swoop Sophie out of the pool and into lake. To my utter surprise, she did not cry and seemed pretty content until the water splashed onto her back. I have a feeling we have a little lake girl!

100 Days!

On Saturday, Sophie was 100 days old! Aside from growing 5 inches and gaining 7 pounds- oh yes, she is our big girl- we have seen a lot of changes in her. Here is a new list of likes and dislikes:

Likes

1. She still likes to be held, but her favorite position has changed from laying on your chest with her head tucked under your chin to being cradled. Sophie would be perfectly happy being held all day, it has been quite the challenge to get her to sleep in her crib and not on us.



2. Eating. Eating is a very serious activity and should not be delayed in anyway- see dislike number 1. In addition to being held all day, Sophie would like to eat all day as well. She is now on a schedule but still tries to convince us that she should be eating more, and more often.



3. She likes anything that moves. This includes her swing, bouncy chair, stroller, and even her car seat- she knows that the car seat goes in the stroller or car and both of these things move.


Dislikes

1. Being burped. Being burped is a major flaw in her joy of eating. She will do anything to get out of burping. This includes whining, crying, trying to sit, even trying to stand, and arching her back in a dramatic 2 year old temper tantrum style. We may have our work cut out for us in a couple of years, as she is already executing this tantrum tactic quite well.



2. Being cold. Sophie still loves her bath, and is starting to splash around in the water which has been quite fun, but the 5 minutes after the bath are a race to get her diaper and pajamas on as quick as possible as she will scream until she is toasty warm again.



3. Cold water. The first time Carl dipped Sophie's toes in the water she fussed, but did not let out a major cry. Carl then proceeded to dip her little toes in the water every weekend until she let him know that this would not be tolerated any longer by letting out a couple of big screams. The score so far stands as Sophie 1 Carl 0.

First Hike

We went on our first hike with Sophie this past weekend. We hiked up to Avalanche Lake, which is one of our favorite hikes, and were pleased at how well Sophie did. Carl carried her in our front pack, and the combination of the motion while walking, with the body heat from Carl knocked her out both ways. Sophie was quite the hit on the hike, everyone we passed made a comment about our youngest hiker. It made me think that people went home and told everyone that they saw a cute baby on the hike, and oh some glaciers too. It was such a successful trip that we will have to do it again!