Kenzie- 5 Months Old

Another month has flown by and our Kenzie Rose is now 5 months old!  She is getting so big and learning so much.  She babbles a lot and loudly! We had to duck out of church a little early last Sunday because I couldn't keep her quiet.  She wasn't upset at all just having a good old conversation with herself.  Brady always says, "What is with all that ruckus, Kenz?"   

She can roll over, sit up for about a minute, blow bubbles and she loves to look at herself in the mirror.  Kenzie is a pretty happy little girl most of the time.  She saves her biggest smiles for her brother and laughs at almost everything he does (except when he scares her- then she cries).

Kenzie is eating baby food- still just once a day at lunch time.  So far she has had peas, carrots, apples, pears and bananas.  She drinks water from a sippy cup but doesn't much care for it yet.  She had been off her reflux meds for about 2 weeks but started spitting up a LOT so we started them again a few days ago.  Kenzie is sleeping from about 7 pm till 6 am then she nurses and goes back to bed until about 8:30.  She will nap after being up for 1.5- 2 hours and nurses every 3 hours.  We seem to have found a good routine that works well for us most days!  

She is in cloth diapers now (unless Andy changes her) and that is going well too.  I wasn't sure how I would like doing that kind of laundry but it is not as bad as I thought it would be.

Here are her 5 month chair pics:

 She loves to stick that little tongue out!

Brady at 5 months old.

 After we picked Brady up from school, we went to the park to take some pictures… a lot of pictures! :)

 This is about the time that we started hearing the police on the bull horn telling someone to "come out with your hands up!"  Needless to say we packed it up quick and headed home.

A few more pictures in the front yard…  I know everyone thinks their child is adorable but I am so in love with this little lady!

First Friends

My good friend, Jaime, has a daughter who is 5 months older than Kenzie.  We all got together at the park on Valentine's Day.   Natalie is so little for her age- I think she is 14 pounds and Kenzie is 12.5.  

It was cute to see them babble to each other, reach for each other and smile.  We need to get together and let them "play" together on the floor.  

Another Thumb Sucker

Kenzie is becoming a thumb sucker.  She started in utero- we have ultrasound pics of her sucking her thumb and a pic of her sucking her thumb in the hospital.  But until recently she hasn't really been able to keep her thumb in her mouth.  She would accidentally pull it out and get really mad.  Now she has learned to suck one thumb and hold her hand in place with her other hand- just to be sure her thumb doesn't escape.

 Kenzie has also been working on sitting on her own.  

She can only stay up for about 45 seconds or so before toppling over but it's a start!!

 Not the most flattering picture but she is such a happy baby!  I think I have a baby picture of me like this- she kind of looks like me a little :)

 Silly Brady locked himself and Macy in her crate.  He thought he was pretty funny- Macy didn't.

I forgot to mention in the milestones post that Brady learned to tie his shoes!  

And now he is up to about 75 sight words (and he has a new pair of Planes flip flops waiting for him when he masters the entire box of 96 words)!

A Long Over-due Trip

We finally went to Houston the first of February.  It had been almost a year since our last trip.  

My friend, Niki, had a Sip-n-See for her baby last St Patty's Day and we made it back for his 1st birthday party!  This is a pretty horrible picture but it is the only one I have.  Niki also has a super sweet little girl who is almost 3- she kept trying to give Brady hugs and kisses.  He was a little unsure of her but was sweet and gave her hugs and allowed her to give him a kiss on the cheek.

Gramma Dar, a silly boy and Kenzie Rose- I took about 20 pictures and this was the best one!  I'm just noticing that Kenzie has bright pink socks with a pale pink outfit- not sure what happened there.  Poor mis-matched girl.

Think, Think, Thinkery!!

The new Children's Museum, the Thinkery, is open so we went to check it out.  

Upstairs there is a water room- the boys LOVED it!  All sorts of buckets, water wheels, cranks and tubes.  Even musical instruments played with water.  They thought it was fabulous- but they got a little wet in the process (and it was COLD outside).

 water funnel...

 water gun- check out the look of determination on that face!

 This was the Spanish house- you push the buttons to hear different phrases in English and Spanish.

(Notice the water on Brady's shirt)

 Pretend grilling

 This was one of the coolest exhibits- you build a plane and get to launch it.

 You have to crank the wheel to raise the bowling ball and then it drops and launches your plane.

 Here you can draw with melted wax- a lot of fun!  I think Brady just liked manning the controls!

All in all it was pretty cool- Brady and Ben seemed a little bored with most of the exhibits but it was still good to get out of the house on a cold winter day.

Milestones

I'm super proud to announce that Brady is learning to read.  We have been working on sight word flash cards for about 2 weeks and he is doing so well.  So far he knows 50 words, they are: no, are, can, but, eat, blue, here, little, pretty, all, you, play, find, black, on, get, he, good, it, ate, do, look, four, see, is, me, up, help, she, be, away, am, must, go, did, big, new, at, and, soon, so, say, please, said, my, in, I, out, for & a.   Some days he is happy to practice them and other days he acts like it is complete torture.  Brady has also been working in an addition work book and is getting pretty good at adding number 0-10 and has starting working on 11-20.

Kenzie started eating solid foods about a week ago.  She has been eying our food for a while now and the Dr. gave the all clear at her 4 month well check so I decided to give it a try.  The first day I gave her oatmeal and she cried- dramatic little one.  Once I mixed some peas with it she was much happier.  So far she had had peas, apples and carrots.  The last few days she has eaten about 2 ounces of food around lunch time and seems to enjoy it.  She is also working on drinking water out of her sippy cup- she gets some out and then seems surprised and spits the water out.

Eying brother's lunch...

Brady loves to feed Kenzie- and takes his job very seriously.

Kenzie also started rolling from her back to her belly on Saturday night.  I put her to bed in her Woombie and looked on the monitor to discover she was on her belly.  I rolled her onto her back again and she prompt rolled onto her belly again.  We played this game a few times before I gave up and took her out of her Woombie for the night.  Now she gets to wear a sleep sack to bed instead.  I think she is happy to have her hands free.

I tried out a few cloth diapers the other day too.  They are still HUGE on her little bottom.  It's pretty funny because they make her butt look huge!  Andy started singing the junk in the trunk song for her yesterday.  I may wait for her to get a little bigger before I switch over completely (more or less).

Andy and I went to his awards dinner for work the other night.  Grammy and Gramps came over to babysit.  It was the first time for someone else to put Kenzie to bed and it went really well.  We may have to go out more often now!

 We tried a new hiking trail on Friday before the cold front came through.  Check out this cool stone bench in the side of the hill!