Early May - A:Four Months, J: Almost 4

Abby seems to be hitting some new developmental levels. Yesterday, she discovered she had feet and legs. I was holding her up in a sitting position and all of a sudden she pushed herself into a full stand! I had no idea she was going to do that but once she was upright she positively beamed! This from a girl who is still learning to keep her head upright and has yet to learn to roll over! She has then spent the last two days trying to use her legs everywhere - to kick in the bath, to inch herself backwards in the crib, and to attempt to thrust herself out of every seat we have by raising her butt up and pushing down with her feet. She is strong and very determined! We are scared that between that and her weight (approaching 19 pounds and the limits on most of her swings and seats are 20), she needs some safe new places to be parked.

So today was a shopping day. She made out like a bandit, getting a new exersaucer, which she loved in the store, and a new Bumbo seat.

Here she is yesterday, enjoying her new spring outfit:

Jake used his last 5 stars to get some magnet clips. We were clipping nature items to the car before dinner last night:

Abby's #1 activity (after eating) is watching her brother. She'll do it for an hour at a time, almost without blinking or moving. Often he has no idea he is the show:

He's doing some good developing himself. He is super articulate about everything and has a very intuitive sense about people and what they want. Tonight he told Mike he would play longer with Gram to give Mike a chance to talk to Gram's daddy for a while. Earlier today he asked me to please look for something downstairs, but added if I couldn't find it, to let him know and he would come look (all verb tenses intact.) Yesterday he asked if he could do something and I said probably not and he said, well, if you change your mind let me know. You might change your mind! And he helped us test the features of every exersaucer in the store today, quite thoroughly!

Last night Abby took out her pacifier and then put it back in by herself!

Aren't I coy?

The Bumbo seat today revealed to her that she really does have feet!

She also got Jake's musical toy to play a few times. I'm not sure she got the connection between her actions and the sounds, but liked when I cheered at her success!

She also tried some rice cereal last night for the first time. The sour expression on her face was priceless, and happened too fast to capture on film. What is THIS? And none went in at all. Tonight was a different story-she moved her mouth around a lot and even though it didn't seem like she was swallowing, suddenly I looked up and she had finished the bowl, with very little on her face or her bib. And she seemed pretty happy about it!