Happy five month birthday, Emily.

The word for this month has been “sturdy”. No more flopping around, bouncing her chin off her chest (well, not as much). Our little girl is standing tall… from a decidedly sturdy sitting down position. So, what tricks did Emily have in store for us this past month?

• Giggles aplenty. And nothing makes me smile more than that hefty laugh of hers.
• It used to be that Emily would attempt to grab anything that happened to find its way into her hand. Fate would decide. Well, Emily is The Decider now. If she sees what she wants, she will have it. And if you hold anything grab-worthy in front of her – like Mr. Hoppity, B-B-B, (Not)Bagpuss, or her pacifier – Emily’s eyes and arms open super-wide and her body begins to convulse like an electroshock patient. Yes, she is a woman who knows what she wants.
• Emily is a great appreciator of the finer things in life – specifically, momma’s milk. It is this longing for food that has kept her waking up every three hours all through the night for a feed. We have recently implemented a sleep/feeding regimen in an attempt to get her to sleep more at night, and consequently allow Jan to sleep more at night. So far, so good. We are proud to say that Emily now regularly achieves an unprecedented five hour stretch of sleep – usually from 1am to 6am – and thus has lengthened all of our life expectancies by more than a few years.
• She’ll sleep for hours without food, but if that pacifier falls out, we are frequently requested to kindly replace it in its proper resting place. And sometimes it doesn’t really fall out – I see her pull it out herself in her sleep. Sabotage! But it was only recently that Emily has developed the fine motor skills necessary to then put the pacifier back in her mouth all by herself. I see her practicing this at night before she goes to sleep. Whereas she used to spend all evening staring at her hands in wonder, she now meticulously studies the mechanics behind removing and reinserting the pacifier in her mouth. It doesn’t look unlike a baby taking a roadside sobriety test.
• Our little Weeble-Wobble has discovered that if, when sitting up, one holds on to their feet, there is a much smaller chance of falling over to one side.
• If the hungry-cry appears, we feed her. If the sleepy-cry appears, we put her to bed. If the pain-cry appears, we make sure nothing heavy is on her. But there has since appeared a fourth and not so easily squelched cry. We fear it may be the teething-cry. We’ll provide more updates on this matter as they arise.
• Finally, it looks like we’ve got an opera singer on our hands. Sometimes sustaining a single nails-on-the-chalkboard screech for upwards of seven minutes without taking a breath, Emily apparently loves the sound of her own voice. I came home late the other night to discover all of the sheets had been removed from our bed and Jan asleep on the living room couch. She was later quoted as saying, “I just couldn’t take it anymore!”

B-B-B + L-W-G
(Big Brown Bear and Little White Girl)