Sibling love

Annie has been really loving to Ryan lately. It is so cute. She asks to hold him and gives him hugs and brings him toys. And only hits him with the toys she's trying to share with him sometimes. And only half smothers him, instead of completely laying on him like she used to. And he loves his sisters. He gets a big smile a lot of the time when one of them comes close to him, especially to talk to him.

Aren't they cute?

Rachel and Annie got out some hats so they could head outside where it was so bright (and hot). And of course they love modeling for the camera.

 

 

Saturday morning Ryan woke up first, around 6am, and while I was in the middle of changing him and getting him dressed I heard Annie calling out, so I ran in to get her out of bed before she could wake Rachel up. It turns out Annie's diaper had leaked, but I didn't want to go back in to get her new clothes and risk waking Rachel, so she stayed in her clean diaper until Rachel woke up. She thought it was pretty funny to copy Ryan and laid down her blanket to lay on, just like he was doing.

One of Annie's favorite things when she wakes up from a nap is to have Ryan join her in her crib until she's ready to get out. We've been trying to enforce the binky staying in the crib more often lately, so often when she wakes up she's not quite ready to give it up and get out. She thinks it's the funniest thing to have Ryan lay on her pillow.

She even shares her beloved blankie with Ryan occasionally.

 Laundry day:

 

While Rachel was at preschool the other day Annie woke up from her morning nap and I soon found her like this:

Backpack on, "reading" a book, apparently having driven to her own version of preschool on her little car.

At Ryan's 4 month doctor's appointment, which was almost a month ago, Ryan weighed in at just 12 pounds. That's just a pound and a half weight gain in 2 months, and dropped him from 30/40th percentile down to 5th percentile. He stayed in the 60th percentile for height, so he's just a real skinny boy. Not a huge concern, but the doctor does want us to go in for a weight check next week at 5 months. And she prescribed food for the hungry little boy. We started him on solids twice a day, and apparently it's finally helping him to not be such a hungry little guy because this week he FINALLY slept 3 nights in a row some good long stretches (like 8 hours) instead of waking up every 3ish hours to eat (sometimes even every 2 hours, making my sleep very fragmented and making me a very tired mom). Wednesday night none of the other kids woke up, either, so I got probably 6+ continuous hours of sleep before I had to feed him at 5am, then got another hour and a half of sleep before everyone woke up for the day. I felt more rested yesterday than I have felt probably since Ryan was born. Unfortunately last night all 3 kids were up multiple times, so I can't say the same today. :/

Anyway, the point is, Ryan started eating "real" food and loves it. So here are some obligatory messy face pictures of the baby:

 

And one last picture until we're caught up. Annie wanted to dress up in Rachel's favorite princess dress the other day. It was Rachel's Princess Pea (from Super Why) costume from when she was 2 and 3 years old. Rachel still wears it all the time, though it just comes to her knees now. When Annie put it on I was reminded of how it is supposed to fit, like a floor-length dress. She makes a cute princess!

Annie has really been making leaps and bounds in her communication skills lately and it is so fun to have a cute little talker around. Rachel was super advanced, speaking in complete sentences and knowing her ABCs before she was even 18 months old (like around 15 months), so even though Annie is on par, or even a little ahead of "normal" in her language development, it has felt kind of slow. But she's putting words together now and expressing herself more and more and it's a lot of fun. Except when she expresses herself in tantrum form. Here come the terrible twos!