Noa turns 5 months old!

We're hearing new sounds from our baby girl these days. She blows us raspberries and mimics us when we do the same. She is practicing her consonants sounds like m, n, k and d. It's music to my ears! Some new accomplishments include an uncanny ability to stay up late, resist taking naps (she must have learned this one from her big sister), drinking from a bottle (YAY!) and beginning to jump with some support from us under her arms. She also tries sitting up on her own from a semi-reclined position or even from the floor and soon she'll be strong enough to sit up unassisted--here comes the high chair out of storage again! I have even caught her pushing her knees up under her tummy when she's lying on the ground, in an attempt to belly flop/army crawl to a new toy. I'm frightened of this new development in particular and am thinking of keeping her strapped to my chest in the Ergo until we leave for France just in case she should get any further in her attempts to become mobile. We'll be having none of that just yet, thank you very much!

Gi is transitioning smoothly in her preschool class two days a week and though we're a little worse for the wear with the virus swapping that comes with the territory, I'm very happy she's beginning to enjoy school with her friends. We're still casually and noncommittally working on night time potty training with mixed success but we have finally managed to transition her to a regular toilet. Boy was that slow going after her scare on the automatic flushing toilet--it flushed, she got scared, repeat twice after I assured her it wouldn't happen again and voila, big problems with big toilets. So yesterday when she came to me with her little Baby Bjorn potty in her arms and told me she wanted to put it in the garage (one of my more recent suggestions to her to encourage her to use the real toilet), I just smiled and showed her the way. I'm beginning to understand that being three years old is really all about supporting her need to make her own decisions in her own time--easier said than done!

And now, here are some shots of the property after that massive storm gave us nearly 2 feet of snow and us having fun in it!