Big Girl

Julia is definitely becoming a 'big girl'. She can play in her exersaucer, she can roll over from her back to her belly, and loves putting anything she can find in her mouth.
A few weeks ago we celebrated John's birthday, as a birthday surprise I got a babysitter and we went out to see Star Trek. If you look closely at his 'whoopie pie' birthday cake, you will notice the candles spell out Sophia (they were left over from her birthday earlier in May).

While visiting Julia's Nana, we discovered that Julia loves to look at balloons!!

New Skills

Julia is hard at work on developing new skills. Her best new skill is accurately and consciously reaching for toys. I had an earlier video attempting to demonstrate this, but we finally got a better video. I think she has also discovered her hair, as you will see in the video she uses one hand to grab for toys and the other to play with her hair.

The other skill she is working on is trying to rollover (from back to belly). She was desperately trying to roll over, but her left arm just kept getting in the way and it would make her very mad. About 1 month ago she did rollover (back to belly) at nighttime, but she was swaddled, so no arms sticking out to get in the way. In the video I say that she has rolled before that was about 2 weeks ago and was actually her rolling from her belly to her back (and yes I did miss it because I was petting Pearl).

For cute photos of Ella and Julia together, check out my sister's blog.

http://cederbaby.blogspot.com/2009/05/ikea.html

After seeing the photos if anyone is inclined to think that Ella is a good babysitter, keep in mind that Ella was only willing to hold Julia long enough for us to get a few good photos, then she looked at us and sternly said "someone get this baby".

Second Thanksgiving

John, Julia, and I were happy to host the 7th Annual Second Thanksgiving at our house this weekend. Each year we get together with friends from college and have a full Thanksgiving celebration. Unfortunately this year was smaller than usual, but we were very happy to have Molly visiting from Atlanta and Caitlin visiting all the way from London, England.

Since we had a smaller group than usual, we broke with tradition and had lasagna as the main meal instead of a turkey. Julia didn't seem to mind at all, she was just happy to be invited to sit at the grown-up table and to get a change to get all dressed up.

I realized by the end of the weekend that Molly and Caitlin didn't come to see John and I, they came only to spend time with Julia. She had a great time and can't wait until they come back to play again.

4 months

I'm a little behind on posting Julia's 4 month birthday photos and one reason is that we actually forgot to take an 'official' 4 month photo of Julia. Julia's 4 month doctors appointment confirmed our suspicions, that Julia is growing like a weed. She weighed 12 pounds 13ounces (40th percentile) and is 25 1/4 inches tall (70th percentile). That may not sound like a big baby, but she jumped from the 25 percentile at 2 months to the 40th percentile in weight and jumped from the 50th percentile at 2 months to the 70th percentile in height, so she is on a steep growth curve. At least now we know why she went back to waking up twice at nighttime, she needed lots of extra calories to grow!

She also has learned a new talent... she can now actually reach for toys. I caught a little bit of the action on video, though of course she didn't perform as well for the camera as she usually does for mom and dad.

Baptism

Julia was baptized on Mother's Day in Wellesley, MA. The baptism was at the church I grew up at and where John and I were married. She did very well for the entire church service. She was awake and alert during the baptism and cooing and laughing during the sermon. The only time she cried was during on the hymns and fortunately by the time the music stopped she was asleep. Julia was the 8th Caruso to wear the baptismal gown (John and his 3 siblings, and Julia's 3 cousins).

The other exciting part of the weekend is that Julia's cousin Ella from the Rybolt side and her cousin Sophia from the Caruso side got to meet. They were able to entertain each other by running around in the reception hall during the church service, the fun did get temporaily disrupted when John's brother had to sneak out of the service because we could hear them yelling up in the sanctuary.

Pearl

John and I just adopted a new big sister for Julia, her name is Pearl and she is a 5 year old yellow lab. She is very friendly, loves to play ball and carry a toy, and when you sit on the floor with her she thinks she is a lap dog. I don't think Julia has actually noticed yet that she has a new big sister, not even when Pearl gave her a big friendly lick on her hands and arm.

Rainbow Artwork

Julia made her first piece of artwork at school. Last week was Rainbow week at school and her classroom made a rainbow, she contributed the green handprints.