Reese and Julie: 5 Months Old!

Time is flying by. I can't believe Julie turned 5 months old last week. She seems to be growing and learning more every day. She is very attentive to the world around her and tries to talk to everyone. She likes to do this thing where she blows her binky out but holds her gums just close enough to catch the very tip of it so she doesn't lose it from her mouth. She's developed her own schedule very little help from me. In fact, I tried to put her on a schedule about a month ago and failed miserably. This week I suddenly realized that she takes naps at roughly the same time every day. She's been waking up more at night, but hopefully we can fix once the semester is over. Julie is continuing to refuse her bottle - something she started just a few weeks ago - which prompted me to start feeding her rice cereal. I keep thinking that if I can get her used to the taste of formula, maybe she won't refuse to eat from a bottle or a cup and I can actually go out for more than 3 hours at a time. I can't say that she enjoys the cereal so much as she is willing to humor me and munch on a few bites. And our biggest news of all - Julie rolled over for the first time on Sunday! Well, I'm told she rolled over. I was busy in the kitchen making chocolate chip and pumpkin pancakes so I missed it. Don't worry, she doesn't seem to have noticed that she did it. She's much more interested in standing and trying to scootch forward than in rolling over.

Reese continues to amaze us (and humor us) as well. I went to her parent-teacher conference two weeks ago and her teacher told me that she can add and subtract number 1 through 10. She said, "I kept trying new numbers just to test it out, and she kept getting them right!" Other than showing off her math skills, her teacher said that she talks about Julie a lot, loves to dress up in "pretty dresses and shiny shoes," and really likes art. She has been very excited for Christmas ever since she helped my mom put Christmas lights on her Christmas tree over Thanksgiving weekend. She was bouncing off the walls when we did our Christmas trees and couldn't quite grasp why we would want to spread out the ornaments (which she called "pyramids") rather than put them all on two branches. The bottoms of both of our Christmas trees look kind of special. Everytime I look at the clusters of ornaments and garland I have to smile. I asked her recently what she wants Santa to bring her for Christmas. She responded, "He'll bring me whatever he wants to." Ok...

Otherwise, we had a great (though short) Thanksgiving with our families and even got to sneak out to see the 7th Harry Potter movie thanks to Todd's parents. St. Nick visited our house and brought Reese a chocolate mouse (which she liked the idea of more than the actual taste of since it wasn't dark chocolate) and - the thing she is most excited about - Teddy Grahams. He also brought Julie so carrots and sweet potatoes. We'll see what she thinks about these shortly. I'll post some pictures when I try them out. Until then, here are some pics of our beautiful girls: