Five Months!

On February 27th, Ania was officially five months old. I can't believe how quickly time is passing. Ania is a wonderful baby. She is happy to follow her brother around to parks and play dates, falls asleep easily in her car seat, and loves her bath! She is quite the tiny swimmer. She can sit up pretty well now and enjoys playing with her toys. She is drooling like a bulldog and chewing everything in site so I think she will be getting her first teeth by six months.  She smiles and laughs all the time and loves to watch William play.

Then and Now

It's amazing to me to see the differences and similarities between William and Ania. Though she actually outweighs William when he was this age, they are definitely siblings! Looks at those cheeks, lack of hair, big eyes and little chins!

Beautiful Day

Today was a beautiful day so we spent the whole afternoon outside!

There was a lot of running, jumping and playing with our friend, C. And William and C had the most fun digging in the dirt. After making a respectable sized hole, they filled up plastic baggies with dirt which they insisted was popcorn for the movie they were going to pretend to watch. Guess who now has two bags full of dirt in her car?

And what did Ania do during this three hour playdate?

CFMS Charity Auction

Last night Taylor and I ditched the kids and went to William's school's charity silent auction. While we didn't win anything, we did have a good time. We had a chance to talk to William's teacher too which was nice. For me there is always a moment of awkwardness approaching her. Other than Taylor and I, she spends the most time with William but we aren't friends. I don't hang out with her, I don't know a lot about her life etc. So really we only have William in common and I never know what to say to her exactly. Obviously I want to hear about William in school but I also want to be polite and not bombard her with questions about my son. Anyway, the awkwardness wore off pretty quickly. We had a great conversation (about William) and I learned that he's doing  advanced work in math. We already knew that he could count beyond 100. (Though he forgets 13, 14, and 15 EVERY TIME he counts, but he remembers 113, 114, and 115. Weird, right?) Apparently she has introduced William to some of the older kid's math lessons at the school. That was nice to hear. He also hasn't broken anything in a quite a while! Also good to hear. Montessori does things a little bit differently than other schools. At William's age they focus on lessons that teach children how to focus and complete assignments so that when they are four and five they pick up reading and math quickly because they have learned how to learn. This means that William also spends a lot of time in the school cleaning the school. He washes and hangs towels, cleans the tables etc. Each chore has a specific way it's supposed to be done. We haven't been in his classroom since the fall so we are looking forward to Night School next week where we will get a chance to see what he's been working on!

Sitting Up

We had a great long weekend! It's always great when Taylor is home three days. Though I think he's looking forward to getting back to work tomorrow. It's more relaxing than being at home! Saturday we went out for brunch and to run errands. We ended up at Barnes and Noble and I managed to leave with only three new books for William. It was tough, though. Books are my biggest weakness.

We've been lax with William's bedtime for a while. He begs us each night to sleep with him and every night we give in. (Or rather, Taylor does because he is in charge of bedtime.) With two kids, I decided that had to stop so we've resorted to the only method that worked for potty training-bribery. William earned two Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for going to bed on his own last night. It was pretty cute because he would only let me leave if I let him read in his bed as he feel asleep. I remember staying up super late reading in bed as a kid. I had all sorts of ways to trying to hide this from my parents, including blocking the crack under my door so they couldn't see that my light was still on!! Anyway, it's fun to see William enjoy reading so much.

Sunday we decided that the mountain of clean laundry actually needed to be put away and the upstairs needed to be cleaned. Since it takes three times as long to do anything with all the help we get from William, Taylor decided to take BOTH kids to the Air and Space Museum in Dulles. For the past couple of weeks he's been reading William a National Geographic book about Space. They read a chapter a night so William was pretty excited to go see a space ship. They all had a great time. William came back and told me all about the silver airplane that dropped a bomb on Japan and took out a whole city and ended the war. (I guess this qualifies as a history lesson but he seemed a little too excited about it.) I managed to make a big dent in the mess that is our upstairs. All together a good day.

Monday we took the kids to the local roller rink. Every Monday morning they have a tot morning and allow the kids to bring scooters and bikes. A couple of kids from William's school went too and they had a blast scootering around the place. Each holiday Monday has a different theme and this week was pj day with a puppet show. After two hours of scootering, we headed out to lunch with some friends, errands and a hair cut for William.  As Taylor tucked William in, I played downstairs with Ania. My baby girl has been sitting up for 30 seconds at a time for a week or so, but tonight she sat up and played with toys for several minutes! She even caught herself as she started to tip over. She's almost five months and getting so big.

Update

I am going to try to update this more often because I am not doing a great job keeping track of Ania's milestones! She is 4.5 months already. At her three month appointment she weighed in at at 15 lbs 7 oz and 24 1/4 inches long. Not bad for a baby who was 2 weeks early, 6lbs 9oz and only 18 inches long. I think she's surpassed her brother in size when he was this age. You should see her thighs. Someday she'll kill me for saying this but they are huge!! Some of her 6month clothes won't fit over them. (Though some of that is also due to the fact we are cloth diapering her.)

Ania is a great kid. She's very happy to do whatever her big brother wants during the day and as a result spends a lot of time at the playground. She'll happily fit in a nap whenever she can! By 5pm she's a bit cranky (sorry, Daddy!) but for most of the day she's a happy little girl. She loves her jumperoo and can spend an hour just jumping around. Just like William at this age, she is spitting up a storm and is quite the little talker/screamer. Happy screams though. She's reaching and playing with toys, grabbing her toes, chewing on and wringing her hands. She laughs when you tickle her and smiles all the time.She's also doing great at sleeping. I am truly lucky that my kids have generally been good sleepers!

William is also doing well. He's just over 3.5 years old and is still a bundle of energy. He loves his school, Christian Family Montessori, and his friends. It amazes me to see what he learns all the time. Last week, Taylor and William read a chapter each night in a book about the solar system and William now spouts off knowledge about the planets. He loves to swim, play sports, go to the playground and "wrestle" (really tackle his friends to the ground). He's stubborn as hell, but he's also incredibly sweet. We are really lucky that he loves being a big brother and we haven't had any jealousy issues with him and Ania. I am sure once she tries to take his toys we might have an issue, but right now William is so gentle and loving with her. He asks me to have five more babies every day. (Not going to happen! That would be 7 kids!) He always wants to hold her. William's teachers think it's hilarious that he only refers to Ania as baby Ania. They also think it's funny that he calls Taylor, Taylor about half the time. At least he still refers to me as Mom, Mom-Mom, or Mommy.