Playmates

Daniel is so eager to play with Catherine, even though she can't do much yet.  He likes to read books to her and is good about remembering to bring her toys when he gets something new out for himself to play with.  He insisted she join him in his "tent" the other day.  Luckily, she's a good sport most of the time and just follows along.

Catherine's Six Month Check-Up

Catherine is six months old already - well, six and a half months old really!  She's grown a lot in the last month.  We had her 6-month check-up on Tuesday, and she weighed 14 lb., 14 oz. (19.68 %ile)) and measured 25.5 inches in length (30.38 %ile).  She is sitting up by herself and working really hard to learn how to crawl.  She can get up on her hands and knees by herself, but she can't get any further than that.  She usually gets on her knees and then lunges toward an object she wants, only reaching it half the time.  She is eating more and more foods and likes a lot of things, including peas, plums, sweet potatoes, potatoes, green beans, zucchini, oatmeal, apples, and chicken.  She's finally got the hang of eating from a spoon and opens her mouth readily.  The big news is that she finally learned how to take a bottle!  Hooray!  After 3-4 months of trying, she got it!  This has been a nice break for me - I was having way too much stress trying to time everything right with work so that I could be home to feed her.  Now maybe we'll get to use those 75 packages of milk I have stored in the freezer!  She continues to squeal a lot rather than coo and has recently begun making a "monster" noise in which she grunts loudly.  Daniel gets a kick out of that one.  She's sleeping okay.  She typically wakes up once during the night to eat, but there are other nights that she sleeps through.  She then takes three naps during the day, ranging from 30 minutes to 2 hours.  The hard part is that you never know what kind of nap it will be!  She also recently got a tooth!  How's that for not feeling like a baby anymore?!

Zens Grandkids' Extravaganza

Last weekend we had all four Zens grandkids together for the first time.  My sister and her son, Bryson (20 months), my sister-in-law and her son, Henry (5 months), and my mom all came to visit.  We had so much fun seeing all the kids together.  It was a wild and tiring weekend!  I'm so thankful that they all made the long trip to come see us!  We didn't do anything special - it's hard to get out of the house with four kids on different schedules.  There were some meltdowns and plenty of crying, but a lot of laughter too!  Here are a few pics, including our many takes at trying to get all four in one photo!