Four Months Old

Our handsome little guy had his four months check-up yesterday. He definitely remembered the last time we were there because as soon as we put him down on the table and the nurse bent over him with her stethoscope, his lips puckered up in fear and he started crying. Sad but oh so cute!

Noah is getting very big. Here are his stats:
Length- 25 3/4 in (74%)
Weight- 15 lbs 2 oz (49%)
Head Size- 16 3/4 in (52%)

At four months he:

• sleeps through the night
• can roll over from his stomach to his back and from his back to his stomach
• grabs anything that comes near his hands and puts it in his mouth
• laughs when he thinks Mom or Dad are being silly
• can stand up on his feet while being held
• follows Gabbie around with his eyes any time he hears her voice
• kicks his feet like crazy when he is excited (whenever he does this Gabbie will scream "Noah scited')
• sleeps very lightly during the day and is frequently woken up by his big sister playing
• holds his head up high when he is pulled up into a sitting position
• nurses almost exclusively but we have started giving him a little bit of cereal each day if he is still hungry
• loves to snuggle. he grabs your hands and pulls them up close to his face so he can lean against them

We love having him in our family. He is a wonderful addition and we all adore him.

Gabbie's Projects

I love looking at other blogs and getting ideas for things to do with Gabbie. Since that is one of the reasons I enjoy blogs so much, I thought I would share some of the stuff Gabbie and I do together in case it might give some of our readers ideas.

In learning the letters, we drew pictures for things that started with the letter 'A' (don't laugh at the pictures...when it came time to draw, I couldn't think of anything that started with the letter 'A').

This project was a HUGE mess because Gabbie would squirt the glue into a huge pile, put her fingers into it then grab some rice. She probably had more rice stuck to her than the paper but it was one of her favorites.

For this tree, we traced her arm then she did finger prints with stamp ink because we didn't have paint.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle is one of lady's favorite books. This activity was based off the story and the lifecycle of a caterpillar. First we read the story together then we made a caterpillar with lots of colored circles. After that we painted butterflies with watercolors.

This is one example of the monsters we made. I grabbed some of the kitchen utensils and traced them on paper. Gabbie drew on them after I made their eyes.

another very messy but fun activity...finger painting with pudding.

Collages are one of my favorites. Gabbie really just likes the glue aspect but she's starting to figure out that you put the glue on then you put something on top if it.

Clouds...

The newest project...bubble painting. I added some food coloring to our bubbles and then we blew them on the paper to pop. Next time we'll use more than one color of bubbles but you get the idea.

Painting on bread... I took some milk and mixed a little bit of food coloring into it. The paintbrushes were q-tips and the paper was the bread. After painting, we toasted up the bread and Gabs enjoyed it for breakfast.

A lot of these ideas came from books I checked out at the library or information I found when searching for toddler art projects online. I love to get those books that have a bunch of activities you can do with kids because they give me ideas when I am stuck on the same stuff with Gabs. If you have any good craft/learning activity ideas, please share!!

Especially for Grandma Christensen

We try to call Gabbie's grandparents on Kyle's side every week through skype. This way they can see us (and when they get a camera, we can see them). Gabbie looks forward to it very much. Last night she had to wait longer than she wanted to and kept looking at the computer and pouting, saying "Granma Chrisen".

We just had to take a video and share it with you Grandma.

(The VA family should get skype accounts and webcams so we can call you too!!!)

Overview of October

I'm a slacker. Yes, I know. There are so many things to get done during the day that I have to pick and choose what to do. Unfortunately, I haven't chosen blogging. I will try to improve. Promise. Since I hardly posted anything about what we did this month, here is a quick recap of the month. It starts from the end of the month (Halloween) and goes to the beginning of the month in descending order.

We all dressed up for Halloween this year. Each of us were characters from the Wizard of Oz. Our Halloween was actually the week before the 31st. We dressed up and headed out to Zoo Boo at our local zoo with some friends. Gabbie loved it; everyone at the zoo loved us. We kept seeing people take pictures of our family as we were walking past them. I guess not many people get as dressed up as Kyle did.

Our handsome Lion...

Dorothy and Tin Man crawling through the tunnel of fish...

trying to get a picture of the kids and daddy but they were too interested in looking at Kyle and his weird outfit...

Another day this month we went to a volleyball game at Kyle's school where three of his students played. Noah and Gabbie got dressed up in some clothes they hadn't worn yet. Naturally I had to take some pictures of this handsome little guy...

He has the cutest smile...he'll smile at you and then when you talk to him about his cute smile, he will scrunch up his shoulders, bow his head and turn to the side like he's embarrassed. It is super cute.

whenever we tell Gabs to 'say cheese' this is the look we get...

We realized during the beginning of the month that we hadn't been to the zoo in a really long time so we planned to go on Friday night right after Kyle finished with work. There were hardly any people there and all the animals were up close so we could see them really well.

We finally broke down and got a double stroller because it was too much of a hassle for me to go places while trying to keep Gabbie in the stroller and carry Noah in the Baby Bjorn. They love sitting next to each other. Noah almost always ends up with his seat laying back because Gabs likes to sprawl out with her feet and arms over on his side and accidentally hits him if he is sitting up.

The best thing we saw at the zoo was the Daddy Elephant playing with his son. They were hitting each other with their trunks (well actually I think just the son was hitting his dad).

Gabs and Noah LOVE their bath time...Sometimes they take baths together and other times Gabbie begs us to let her take a shower...

beautiful girl...

handsome guy...

Any time she gets into our bedroom, she pulls out my shoes and starts walking around the house in them.

Early in the month we made fruit loop bracelets. Gabbie was showing them off when I took this picture mid-chew...

She was talking to Jesus...

Playing with some toys...

During conference weekend for our church, the first weekend of the month, Gabbie watched a scripture video on the computer while we were listening to the prophets and apostles...

She is so brave now. Any slide she sees is one that she has to go down.

Sorry for the mammoth post. I will update more often. Things are going great in Texas. We miss our family and friends in Utah and Virginia but we are adapting well.