Sitting up!

Linden is sitting up on her own, quite well. It was a fairly sudden change, and she suddenly seems so much older! Sitting independently led us to green light a couple of things, namely trying food and going on the baby swing.

Food is fun for Linden, although  sometimes it seems she’s a bit frustrated. I think she would like to actually be satisfied by the food, but about 90% of what goes into her mouth (which is not much to start with) comes back out. She is learning to chew more than she is learning to swallow. But she is super interested, and brings every new food right to her mouth. So her introduction to food has been quite successful.

Maren’s favourite activity is swinging. I can hardly think of a time when she has stopped swinging on her own - it is almost always me or Jeff telling her she has to stop. But if first impressions mean anything, Linden will be even harder to pry off the swings. Maren’s first time on the swings she was a little unsure, and it took her a while to warm up to it. Not Linden - she was squealing and laughing the first time. So we could be in for some serious tantrums in the future.

Meanwhile,  The purple ball game never gets old, and in fact being able to sit up seems to have made it more exciting:

In her own words

Linden has a lot to say lately. Mostly it sounds like this:

This has basically been the soundtrack to our week :)

Sleep-deprived

My last post was titled "Teeth," but I completely failed to mention that Linden got her first two teeth. Chalk it up to sleep deprivation. Linden hasn't been sleeping well, but hopefully it is temporary, maybe related to teething.

Last week we took a trip to Cypress Hills. We stayed in a cabin, went hiking (I was on my trike), swam, made s'mores, and generally had a good time. Staying in a cabin worked much better for us than camping. I expect we will be taking that option for a while.

Maren and Linden are beginning to be able to play together - it is super fun to see how much they can make each other laugh. We tried to capture it on video, and of course missed the best of it, but here is our best attempt:

Teeth!

A couple of days ago I tried to text Jeff while holding Linden, and she took this selfie:

Linden turned 5 months old on August 1. She is really starting to show her personality. She is persevering, and appears to be frustrated by her lack of abilities. She wants to eat, but isn’t quite ready yet. She needs to either be able to sit unsupported or be 6 months old before eating is recommended, because these external markers correlate with intestinal development.  But she can’t quite sit on her own yet, which she finds extremely frustrating, because she seems to be completely done with laying flat but has no other options in terms of her own abilities. She also loves watching Maren, especially Maren jumping, and does this excited screech every time she sees Maddy, for the entire duration of time that she sees Maddy. She is pretty funny 😁

 Maren is continuing to learn to read and spell. With a little help, she used her magnetic letters to spell the names of some of her favourite superheroes, but she didn’t have enough of the letter A. So she improvised with The Flash. I think it is both impressive and hilarious :)