Growing Up Too

Chloe is involved in her own mature activities. Last week she got her brand new twin-sized mattress. It is still on the floor at the moment. She seems to enjoy the fact that she shares a room with her sister now.

Yesterday we finally switched Chloe into her booster seat for lunch. We should have moved her out of the highchair a long time ago but decided it was a necessity today since Julia would need it for feedings. Chloe was hesitant at first, but now she is quite proud of her new seat. She has also mastered drinking from a regular cup.


The other day I changed Julia’s diaper, laid her on the floor, and went to wash my hands just as I normally do. However, this day was different because of what I saw when I walked back into the living room. There was Chloe standing over Julia with her arms wrapped around Julia. She had picked Julia up completely off the floor about three inches. Of course, as soon as she saw me, Julia was dropped. This was the first time (that we are aware of) Chloe has tried to pick up her sister. Hopefully this doesn’t become a new fun activity for her. Then again, maybe she thought she could do it on her own because we have had her hold Julia to pose for pictures in the past.


And just for something fun…here’s a picture of grown-up Chloe mowing the grass.

Growing Up

Last week Julia was introduced to the crib…finally. That means she is now sharing a bedroom with her sister. That is going well so far. Chloe does wake up when Julia cries during the night, but she goes right back to sleep. Julia even manages to nap in her crib from time to time. Sometimes it’s not more than 20 minutes, but she’s slept in there over two hours one time.

Julia has become more much coordinated and continues to amaze me with what she can do. She loves playing with toys, especially when she can get them to her mouth. She is becoming very frustrated when I put her on her play mat with the toys that dangle over her. She used to be quite content bat them around and squeeze them, but now she’s upset that they won’t reach to her mouth.

This picture may not look like much, but it shows the determination she has. She had been trying to reach the bee hanging on the bouncey seat for quite some time, but it’s a bit harder because it dangles in front of her. If she didn’t aim just right, it would swing away from her. Here she found that she could raise her leg so that her foot would block the bee from swinging away. Smart girl.

Julia had her four-month checkup with the doctor yesterday. She weighs in at 16 pounds 7 ounces (95th percentile for her age) and measures 25 inches long (75th percentile). By all appearances she is a very healthy baby.. The doctor gave us the go-ahead to try cereal with her, so that was a fun experience today.

This was after the first bite. After this picture was taken I asked Julia what she thought of her cereal, and she smiled. For some reason that picture was missed. She gobbled up the cereal just as fast as it was coming. It was quite the different experience from Chloe who cried the first several times we tried to feed her.

This was the reaction when I told her that she’d had enough cereal.

I had been noticing lately that Julia has been watching me eat very closely. I guess today’s experience with the cereal showed her that the food we eat is really good stuff. This evening Kevin and I were enjoying some strawberry shakes. Julia watched Kevin’s cup go back and forth from the table to his mouth. She reached for it just about every time. And then this happened….

The hand is grasping the lip of the cup, and she was trying to pull it towards her. Notice the open mouth just ready for something; too cute.

Vacation in Pictures

I'm saving time and simply making this post a review of our vacation in pictures. I didn't take as many pictures as I should have. These are the best I have.

We drove halfway to Michigan the first day and stayed with family overnight in Illinois. Chloe had great fun playing with Josiah and Rebekah (Daddy's cousins). They even taught her how to play hide-and-seek.

We enjoyed yummy hot dogs in the park...

and ran off lots of energy before getting back in the car to drive 6 more hours.

We arrived in Michigan late that night. The next day was filled with activities like playing Uncle Kyle's guitar,

cooking with Grandma,

and sleeping in Grandpa's lap.

Doesn't she look so comfortable there?

Great-grandma met Julia.

What trip to Michigan would be complete without a tractor ride?

The next day we headed off to the Weiss reunion. They had this activity for the kids. It is a big pile of sawdust with hidden pieces of candy, coins, and other small prizes. Chloe wasn't so sure about it at first, but once she started she didn't want to stop. She was the last little kid playing in the sawdust!

A cute little bottom covered in sawdust.

The rewards of all her hunting... a bunch of candy she can't eat, some stickers, a few bracelets, and $1.43 in coins.

That evening we headed to the Koester reunion, where we spent the next 2 1/2 days. This is a picture of the boy cousins that were at the reunion. There were 16 people missing out of 42 (I think).

Here are the girl cousins.

Daddy is giving Chloe directions on how to play Eagle's Nest.

She made it into the nest. What an asset to her team!

Family photo after church.

Grandpa and two very happy girls.

Chloe found that she was able to sit on her bottom and slide down the ramp at the house.

Chloe walking with Great-grandma and Bill, although it looks like she was in the air more than she was walking. If you look closely, you can see that Bill had to carry Chloe's baby in his other hand. Poor Bill.

On the way home from Michigan we stayed in the night in Illinois again. Those activities were the same as the beginning of the trip. Somehow I didn't end up with any pictures of Uncle Ethan with either girl. I wish I had gotten pictures of Chloe playing "Ring Around the Rosey" with everybody. We had a great time on vacation, even though we wished we could have stayed longer.

Travel

In order to make writing about vacation easier, I have broken the trip into six segments. This time we drove to Michigan. Since it was going to be so long in the car, we thought it would be better (especially for Julia’s sake) if we broke the trip up into two days each way.

Julia was simply wonderful during our travel time. Don’t get me wrong, we had a few different times of crying. But overall she slept the majority of the way. I really don’t think we could have expected her to be any better. We traveled for about 3 hours until she was awake and hungry and made a long (1 ½ hour) meal break. By that point we only had about 3 hours until we reached our destination. It worked out really well.

I packed quite a bit of entertainment for Chloe in the car. Before we left I found a tray that attaches to our car seat. That was a wonderful purchase! She loved sitting and coloring. Her other favorite activity was her ABC bottle. I made an “I Spy” bottle with alphabet beads. It was an old water bottle filled 2/3 with rice. Then I put in two sets of alphabet beads and some colored beads just to make it a little prettier. She just loved turning the bottle around and shaking it to find different letters.

Chloe traveled pretty well until she got tired. Then she really fought sleep for a while and was quite crabby. The last leg of the trip home she was insisting that I couldn’t nap. “Mommy, no nap” was the phrase of the afternoon. Then we had a lovely conversation that went something like this:
“Hey, Mommy!”
“What?”
“Mooommmyyyyyy……”
“What Chloe?”
“Hey Mommy…..”
“What do you want Chloe?”
“Mommy…..”
“Chloe…..”
“Mommy…..”
“Chloe…..”
“Hey Mommy!”
“What Chloe?”
“Hi.”
(sigh) “Hi.”

The best part of the travel experience for me was our first day of travel back home. One of Kevin’s aunts was going to be traveling and stopping to the spend the night only 30 minutes from where we were stopping to spend the night. So I switched seats with Kevin’s cousin and was able to have adult conversation for several hours without Chloe interruptions. It was so nice.

We hit some pretty fierce storms in Michigan on our way up. We saw a tree that had snapped in two and was blocking all lanes of traffic westbound. Conditions at one point were practically a white-out with the wind driving the rain directly into our windshield. Kevin said was by far the worst storm he’s ever driven in. We were (of course) grateful for a safe arrival.

Home Again

Kevin mentioned that even if I don't have much time to write today I should at least say we made it home. Once again we got on the road a little later than we had planned. We got home around 11:00 tonight (last night, rather). Now it's 1:15 and Julia is almost ready for bed. I will tell all about vacation fun over the next few days. But for now it's time to catch some much needed sleep.