Poor Doogan

Here's a conversation Aria and I had yesterday morning after Emmett slept 11.5 hours:

goofydaddy: hey Aria, guess what?
Aria: what?
goofydaddy: Emmett didn't wake up at all last night! Mommy got to sleep lots!
Aria: WOW! ...I don't sleep lots.
goofydaddy: oh? you wake up in the middle of the night?
Aria: yeah.
goofydaddy: we don't hear you on the monitor, what do you do when you wake up in the middle of the night?
Aria: I twirl Doogan's ribbon! (she throws in a quick twirl to illustrate and giggles)

I kinda believed her, but now I really do, because she woke up last night at 3am screaming for me. When I went in, I asked what was wrong. She started laughing that nervous laugh she does when all is not quite right, and held her hand out. It was too dark to see, and then she said "Doogan's ribbon fell off! I need a better sleep buddy!" I hugged her, we laughed a bit, I took the ribbon, gave her another stuffed animal, and she hugged it along with Doogan and went back to sleep.

This morning, Dana tied another bow from some ribbon we have, and I showed it to Aria when she woke up. she got a kick out of seeing it, and understood when I said that I didn't know how to attach it to Doogan. Occasionally throughout the morning, Aria would go to twirl Doogan's ribbon out of habit, and when she would only feel the little string that's still attached, she would laugh hysterically, and remind me that "when mommy picks me up from school, she's going to put Doogan's new ribbon on."

Poor Doogan! he's been through a lot!

Emmett is 5 months old today!

Emmett is a growing boy! I'm documenting some things that are happening below so we don't have to remember...I barely remember yesterday!

He's been home with Daddy for just over a month now while I've been working. I'm usually on the road before the kids wake up. Things are going well and Emmett's been relatively easy to take care of in the morning while Kevin gets Aria ready for school and drops her off. He's not only a goofydaddy, he's a super daddy because he manages to get up early to do his p90x workouts and work 20hrs part-time during naps and in the evening. I pick Aria up by 4:00 so I can get home and spend time with them both before bedtime around 7:30.

Emmett's eating well - thankfully I can provide for him with very little supplementing with formula. He takes 4 bottles that total about 30oz!

He's starting to sleep better and better at night. Since about 3 months he's been great about staying in his crib for about 11 hours (no eating or having to take him out), but there was a lot of waking and needing the pacifier between 1AM-7AM. Recently he's got into the groove of two good naps in the morning/afternoon and has been able to stay awake from 3PM-7:30! I think this is the reason the nights are starting to go better - he's just so exhausted! Last night he slept 11.5 hrs straight with minimal stirring for the very first time. YAY BUDDY!

He currently has 2 teeth that are about halfway in on the bottom. He's drooling A LOT again so I wouldn't be suprised if we see more in the near future.

At about 3 months we started mixing cloth diapers in and it's been going well. Now our routine is to use Nature Babycare diapers until we get a major blowout and then we start using the cloth for the next day or two. We always use the paper diapers at night. We are waiting until things are a little more solid to use cloth continuously like we did for Aria starting at 8 months until 18 months (when she went to school).

Emmett is stubborn in the rolling department. We've caught him rolling to his side a couple times. He even got stuck on his side a week ago! He just likes his back and is content to stay there for now. When we put him on his stomach he quickly moves his arms to his sides and balances on is tummy. He's so silly!

We let him try some cereal/milk a couple times last week and he lapped it up ok. We aren't too serious about spoon feeding yet. I'm hoping to give it more attention over the holidays.

Overall he's a pretty happy boy. He loves watching me shake my head like a muppet - it gets a smile every time! For a while I was the only one to get giggles out of him, but Daddy is falling into his goofydaddy role again and Emmett is responding nicely. He is so entertained by watching his big sister. We all definitely love having him around :-)

His arms are on the way to his sides!

Aria sings an aria!

I was going through some old pictures and came across this video. Kevin and I cracked up and watched it about 10 times. The video is from this past Easter 2009 (you can even see my Emmett belly).

For your viewing pleasure...

update: here's what she's singing...
...on tree
We're bangin on Pop-Pop's tree
we need a lot of help
Mommmmmy we're bangin on the treeeeeeee
Mommy... bang... inon... tha... tree
we'rebanginonthatree.