Ruby is 4 months old!

When Maia was little, Aleks and I flew often and drew a lot of attention traveling with such a small one. An older gentleman was chatting with us and remarked on how having a little one is such hard work. He said "the days are so long, but the years just fly by". I'm often reminded of this when I think of our little Ruby being 4 months old! It's hard to believe that she's already been here 4 month, but at the same time, I've certainly felt every minute.

Ruby had her doctor's appointment yesterday and everything looks wonderful. Her head is growing at a consistent rate (a huge relief, after some concern last month), she's almost 12 pounds, and is still in the 70% for height.

Ruby smiles all the time, and when we go in to get her in the morning, we are often greeted with a shriek and huge smiles. She is interested in watching and listening to people, rolled over once!, and is reaching for and holding onto toys.

The other evening I was making funny sounds at Ruby and she started giggling. It was so precious. I don't remember Maia doing that until she was much older. Aleks, of course, was gone so I tried to video it. Ruby had used up most of her giggles by this point, but I did manage to record one! (It's at about 20 secs, no need to watch the whole thing.)

Ruby loves to look at her sister and watch what Maia is doing. Most of the time Ruby has this look on her face that says "why are you being so emotional about that?". If I had to guess at this point, I'd say that Ruby is going to be introspective and less talkative than Maia. I have a feeling that Ruby is going to be the kid that cracks us up with well timed one-liners.

Maia is now 21 months old! I can't believe that she'll be 2 soon. This past year has been a really fun one. When Maia was about 17 months we were reading her alphabet book and she was asking me what all the letters were. After doing this about a million times in a row, I got tired and started asking her what the letters were. And she could do it. And now she can consistently identify all her upper case letters and most of her lower case letters.

This new trick leads to some funny incidents. Most recently we were at the Palouse Mall and Maia saw the logo on the floor. She immediately dropped to her knees and crawled along the letters saying "P-A-L-O-U-S-E-M-A-L-L". It was pretty cute, even though I had to hide my disgust at the thought of all the germs on the floor.

A bit more bragging: Maia also knows all her colors and can count to 10 and identify 70% of her numbers. 9 gets her confused as does 4 and 7. Ok, no more bragging.

Maia is in the throes of being 2. She likes to do things herself and/or her way all the time. We constantly hear, "no, self!". She's getting quite good at using a spoon to eat her applesauce.

She got an awesome kitchen set for Christmas and was having a ton of fun playing with Daddy. Aleks came to tell me something while I was in the kitchen. Maia poked her head out of the doorway and said "Daddy, in there!" while pointing to her room. She loves walking by herself where every we go. The grocery store, mall, parking lot, etc. I love the she loves to walk, but am feeling that we might have wasted our money buying an expensive double stroller. It's probably just a phase, maybe this summer she'll sit in her stroller, making our trips to the mall go much quicker!

Everything with Maia is either hot or cold, very rarely do we get anything in between. It's never boring at our house. The sweetest thing is that Maia gets so excited when we all go out together. It often sounds like this:

Aleks: Maia, I have a question for you. Do you want to go on an adventure?

Maia: (big eyes) with mommy?!

Aleks: yes

Maia: and daddy?!

Aleks: yes

Maia: and Ruby?!

Aleks: yes

Maia: and Maia!

Aleks: yes! everyone gets to come

Maia: mommy coming, daddy coming, ruby coming, and and maia coming!

Maia also loves dancing and singing. I love how free she is right now, not inhibited by what other people think or how she "should" be. She just loves exploring her body and voice and it's so fun to watch.

I'm so looking forward to this summer when we're all home and Ruby is a bit older and the two girls can interact more.

Life is very full right now.