5 Months!

Our sweet Annabelle turned 5 months old yesterday!  She's getting to be such a big girl.  She weighed in at 16.8 pounds today on our bathroom scale.

I took a few pictures of her in her dress after church today. 

Before dinner tonight, Caden was just cracking Annabelle up rolling Thomas on the counter.

Here's Annabelle's "5 month" picture that I took yesterday.

And how she's changed over the months... 

Sitting and Eating

Our backyard project is almost complete.  So far, we've pulled out a lot of bushes to sod an area to give Caden a little bit of grass to play in and reconfigured the back fence to enclose our driveway.  The only big thing left to do is to reroute the pool fence, which is scheduled for next Monday.  I'll post before and after pictures once it's all done.

Annabelle is getting so big.  She can sit up now; although, she's still pretty wobbly.  I usually leave the boppy around her, so she's padded if she takes a tumble.  Here's a video of her sitting from yesterday.

Here's a picture from her playing on Saturday.

We got a trampoline from a friend.  Caden has hardly touched it, but he did jump a little yesterday.

Before church yesterday, we attempted to get a picture of Brian with the kids.  But Caden was not interested at all, so here's Brian and Annabelle. 

Annabelle has been eating so much lately that I decided to try to give her some real food yesterday. She tried avocados.  Caden hasn't sat in a high chair or booster chair or used a bib in about 9 months.  But as soon as he saw that Annabelle was going to use them, he insisted that he use both.

Here she is before she tries it...happy.

I'm not sure about this stuff... 

Seriously, what are you putting in my mouth? 

Alright, I guess it's pretty good! 

Here's a picture of Caden eating in his high chair at about the same age. 

Annabelle just loves to play peek a boo.  Here's a video from last week.

Singing and Playing

I can't believe it's already the middle of July.  This summer is flying by.  Caden is still enjoying gymnastics and Kindermusik.  The curriculum for Kindermusik this summer has been about animals.  This month every week we pretend to go to the beach, so we sing a lot of songs about playing at the beach and different ocean animals.  Caden has started talking a lot about going to the beach with Wyatt, so he's definitely looking forward to our trip to San Diego next month.

In general Caden just loves to sing.  Lately, his favorite songs are the ABC's, the Itsy Bitsy Spider (so cute when he sings this with his signs...we have got to get it on video soon!), and a Kindermusik song called, "Allie, Allie-Oh" about a zoo train.  I did finally get him singing his ABC's on video.  In this video, he's pretty busy building a "chair choo choo", so he's not really bothered by the fact that I'm taping him.

Yesterday, my two little sous chefs were helping me make dinner.  Caden is pretty scared of loud noises in the kitchen like the food processor and the blender.  It doesn't faze Annabelle at all, but in this video, he's telling me that she was scared and that he comforted her.  They already love playing together; he's silly with her a lot and she just cracks up.  He's tickling her in this video.

Caden still loves watching people cut grass, use weed wackers, and blow leaves.  Mimi and Tia got him a lawn mower and weed wacker.  They were supposed to be toys that stayed at their house, but he just loves them so much, he wanted to bring them home.  He uses them all the time.  We recently tore out some bushes in our backyard and laid some sod.  So now he has grass to cut and edge in our backyard.

Annabelle Swimming

Annabelle had her 4 month appointment at the doctor last week.  She was 14 lb, 6 oz (75th percentile) and 25 1/4" long (80th percentile).  Here's how she compares to Caden...he weighed in at 18lb 3oz (97th percentile) and was 25 1/4" long (60th percentile).  Caden was nearly 4 pounds heavier and they were the same length...he was such a chunky monkey!

Annabelle got in the pool for the first time on the 4th of July.  She had fun.  Mimi and Tia got in the water with Caden, and he enjoyed jumping and swimming to them.

Caden just loves to read.  We get new books at the library every other week.  Most of the time the books we get are about construction vehicles or other trucks.  He loves to flip the pages and tell me what he sees in the pictures.

I took this video of Caden and I tickling Annabelle this week.  Check out this post of Caden getting tickled at roughly the same age (http://texasjollys.blogspot.com/2010/08/talking.html)

Jumping, Jumping, Jumping

This past weekend we pulled the jumperoo down from the attic for Annabelle to start playing in.  She loved it.  Caden did plenty of jumping last weekend, too.  We went to a bbq at a friend's house on Sat and Caden had his first opportunity to jump off a diving board.  I didn't even ask him if he wanted to do it.  He headed straight for it after he saw a few older kids going off of it.  He couldn't get enough of it; he must have jumped off it at least 50 times.  It was a good workout for me; I had to tread water in the deep end forever.  I'm so glad we don't have a diving board in our pool :).

Here's Annabelle enjoying her jumperoo.

Here's Caden in the jumperoo at 4 months.

The jumperoo has a setting where it plays different songs, including the "ABC's".  Caden was cracking us up because he decided to use one of the legs of the jumperoo as a microphone to sing along.  There are three legs; one for Caden, and then he insisted daddy sing on one and mommy sing on one, too.

Here's a video of Caden jumping off the diving board.

And here's a video of me playing peek-a-boo with Annabelle in her jumperoo yesterday.  Love that sweet little chuckle!