4 months!

I can hardly believe it. Time flies. My baby is not a newborn anymore! She is a big girl with lots of new skills and new ways to amaze us every day.
It's all about play time now. She has a couple of toys that she loves to grab and eat, and can spend lots of time just looking at bright colors, Milo, or anything else!
She is rolling over. Mostly it seems to happen on accident right when I put her down on her tummy and her arms are out in front. If she pushes up with one arm more than the other to look around at something- whoop!- there she goes, over onto her back. She hasn't figured out that she could do that to get out of tummy time... yet. Instead she just lays her head down and rests with her arms behind her, which we call her "seal move" (see the picture).
She is grabbing everything. She loves toys, especially her stuffed dragonfly that crinkles. She is grabbing at our food, too! And my earrings and hair... I think it may be time to put away the dangles for right now.
Her eyes are still mostly blue but now I am noticing some brown around the pupil. Her true color remains to be seen... maybe she'll get the Grompe greens that all my siblings have.
She has more than doubled her birth weight of 6 lbs 8 oz coming in at 13 lbs 11 oz today at the pediatrician.

Visit from Tim and Sheryl

Tim and Sheryl came for a quick drive by visit today on their great Northwest tour, between my grandparents and Arnold and Gina. It was great to see them! It really had been forever. They fawned on Josie and we had a nice (though very brisk and windy!) walk through Gasworks with their dog, Emma.

Camping trip

This weekend we made a family camping trip to the south fork of the Stillaguamish river. It was a nice spot. We stayed in a yurt, which was nice. We went for a hike on Saturday and saw the most amazing salmon spawn in the river, it was truly thick with fish! At night we got very chilly, and all cozied up together with all the blankets we brought and dressed Josie in pajamas, swaddled AND in a sleep sack! Brrr. There was frost this morning, so we knew that it was truly cold, not just us used to the hot summer weather. Overall a nice trip.

Giggle Video

sleep breakthrough

Oh. my. goodness. Josie went to sleep last night in her OWN CRIB at 8:30, and I woke up at 5:30 feeling STUNNED that I had not heard a peep all night. For a minute I was worried, is my baby alive? Sure enough, she slept 9 hours IN A ROW!!! That is double her previous best, and many MANY time better than she has been doing recently. This is a major breakthrough for us, and just in time too! I thought I was going to lose my mind this last week. Now we just have to exactly replicate the same conditions tonight and see what happens. Even if we go back to a few awakenings, now we know it's possible!

More pictures...

We are having some sleep struggles right now... Josie is up a lot more at night than usual and also having trouble napping. We are working on a solution, but so far nothing has helped much! Maybe we just need to wait it out.
Josie has now rolled both from her belly to her back, and from her back to her belly. Pretty good! She is also starting to grab for objects, and pull them into her mouth. We put her in the jumper last night to see how she liked it, and although she is clearly still a bit small for it she really enjoys being upright like that.
Also, as you can see, Milo is tired of being left out of cuddle time :-)

Labor Day weekend at Grandma's

We had a lovely long weekend in Portland at the Grompe's. We ate grandma's delicious meals, spent lots of time hanging out, got some sale shopping in, and Eric had a great time watching the Nebraska football game with his mom. Josie loved all the attention, although she is getting more and more distractable and her sleep is all over the place right now.
Unfortunately Grandpa Yost got sick, so our plan to spend time with all the grandparents didn't pan out. We are so glad he mentioned something when he was starting to feel sick, because it turned out to be kind if a nasty one. We hope you are feeling better, Richard! We are going to be extra careful this fall and winter with the flu season predicted to be unusally bad, hopefully our holiday plans will work out and no one will be sick. Lots of good handwashing this winter!