This month Caleb started standing and walking with support (5 1/2 months). And a few days past the 6 month mark he started crawling and is now very proficient at it. He is also able to pull himself up and cruise around lower pieces of furniture (he has discovered that the girls' hair is useful for pulling himself up to stand which neither of them appreciate). He is a very happy little explorer and I love watching him as he discovers his world. Much delight in this little boy! He is now eating solids thrice daily (but is still feeding at least 3 times a night). This week he cut his first tooth (lower gum) and has been quite unsettled through the nights. Last night we finally pulled out the Bonjela and voila! he slept soundly for a few hours. He's doing really well with the toilet training - he often grizzles at us until we take him to the loo! Simply hold him over the toilet bowl and he pees and poops away! (We tried sitting him on the potty but he crawls straight off it and then plays with it instead....) I love not having poopy nappies to scrub each day!
Sarah continues to love on Caleb with pats and snuggles. Abigail prefers more raucous interaction - Caleb laughs at the silly antics she performs for him and that tickles her fancy. Abigail really enjoyed a couple of Dr. Seuss books from the library this month - even being able to recite passages! Jon and I enjoy the word play in them too. Both girls have also been enjoying some Winnie-the-Pooh stories. I'm looking forward to reading through many more classics with them as they grow older. Both girls like to peel onion and garlic for me, put away the dishes, and make toast. They're getting pretty good and buttering their own too.
I had a friend and two of her littlies over one morning earlier in the month - the rest of that week the girls insisted they be called Bekky and Jessica. We visited Grandma Randall Mother's Day weekend. I visited another friend the next week - the girls have since pretended that they are Hannah and Aurora. They've also been various aunties and uncles (this morning they were fighting over who got to be Uncle Andrew). Sarah often gets landed with the male name or the part of prince :) We missed a couple of weeks of playgroup, MOPS, church, library story time - ie. any social outings - due to a cold bug working its way through the family. It has mostly left us now and so we made it out to a birthday party on the weekend and back to playgroup this week. I wasn't able to do the Climb for Cancer in the middle of the month as Caleb and I came down sick that weekend.
This month we finally bought our digital piano. Jon did LOTS and LOTS of research into digital pianos over the past few months, with many trips to music stores to try various ones out, and we finally picked the one we wanted. It is now assembled and set up in our lounge (we've moved the computer upstairs) and we are enjoying playing music again. I am keen to learn new pieces of music and have starting learning the music to the song 'Blessings' by Laura Story. Jon's looking forward to doing some recording with it soon.
We had a big clean up around home with our area's kerbside collection being on. It is nice to be rid of the large junk items that were piling up for this occasion. Jon's cleared out the cupboard under the stairs and made it into a little cubby for the girls to play in, which they enjoy. We also upgraded our trampoline as the mat on our one was worn through and we were having trouble sourcing a replacement the same size. Last weekend we made a trip to Surfers Paradise to pick up a piece of furniture and turned the morning into an outing for the kids - stopped at a nearby playground and then took them out for lunch and ice cream. They like getting ice creams.
