20 weeks

Dear Emma,

Today you turn 20 weeks old. I still have trouble with the whole weeks vs. months calculation because to me that seems like you should be considered 5 months old while in reality you'll not turn 5 months until February 26.

In the past month, you have grown so much in so many ways! You started wearing 3-6 month clothes about a month ago and you're starting to grow out of them already! Everything fits you up top, but your little legs are long and so you are outgrowing the pants and sleepers length-wise already. At your 4 month checkup, you were 15 lbs, 1 oz and 25 inches long. Your weight was 75th percentile while your height was 90th percentile! We're not sure where you're getting your height from but we're happy about it. Your Daddy says that everyone listens to tall people and Aunt Kimmy already wants to recruit you for her high school volleyball team.

You've loved to stand up practically since you were born, and lately you keep getting stronger and better at it. You can almost sit up on your own now too (you're still a little Weeble-Wobble but you're getting much better). You also learned to roll and play with toys over the past few weeks. In fact, you roll so much that you keep rolling over in your sleep, almost giving Mommy a heart attack when she finds you in the crib on your tummy at night! But, being the paranoid (and loving and responsible) parents we are, you have an Angelcare monitor in your crib that will beep if it doesn't detect you breathing, so I am somewhat comforted by that. The doctor says that if you are strong enough to roll over on your own, you should be OK if you roll over in your sleep. But your Mommy worries about you because you're her little Peanut. Come to think of it, it's only been in the past month that you've started sleeping in your crib, in your own room - before that, you slept in your rock-n-play sleeper in our room. Things are changing so fast that I can hardly keep track of them all!

You've always been a very alert and curious baby, but this month you are really watching and recognizing people and objects. You get so excited when your bottle shows up, or we bring out one of your favorite toys. Lately, you really love this Steeler "taggie" blanket and continually chew on the tags every chance you get.



You also just started eating solid foods. We gave you rice cereal at first, but you didn't really like it (and it didn't sit well with you). So we switched to oatmeal and you seem to like it a lot. You've also tried green beans, which you were just so-so about and just today you ate sweet potatoes, which you really loved! You're getting much better at getting the food swallowed instead of just getting it all over your clothes.

You're still not laughing outright unless you are very, very entertained by something. But you smile all the time and give little giggles. One of my favorite times with you lately are the mornings. When you first wake up, you start cooing and talking in your crib. When I come in to pick you up, you smile at me so big! It's like the sun just came out to shine. I love those moments with you, Peanut.