Five Months Old!

Gabriela is five whole months old. She is such a big girl.

Just this week she started sitting up by herself for a few seconds at a time. She has shown herself to be a very resourceful girl. If there's something on her baby blankie out of reach that she wants, she will grab her blankie with both hands toward her until her item of choice is within grabbing distance.

Gabriela talks a lot these days. I am so happy she never lost her baby hair. She is starting to grow some new hair underneath, and it seems to be a much lighter blondish brown color... sort of like her Daddy's. Gabriela puts EVERYTHING in her mouth now. She especially likes to put her fingers in her mouth on the sides. She won't let me take a peek, but it feels like there are some bumps in there that may end up being teeth.

Gabriela really has a thing for my hair lately. She doesn't *pull* it, but she always likes to have a little handful in her hand if I'm holding or cuddling her. Sometimes if she starts getting fidgetty during the night, I'll give her some of my hair and she goes right back to sleep.

She's been rolling over from her back to her tummy since she was about two months old. But Gabriela only recently figured out how to roll over from her tummy to her back. It's funny because all the baby books we have read say that rolling from back to tummy takes so much more strength and that babies usually aren't able to do that until they are about five months old. While she can do both now, she still hasn't put the two together- that if you keep doing them in the same direction, you can go all over the place. We haven't let her in on this little secret yet.

It probably won't be much longer before she's crawling. Gabriela loves when we sing to her. Just the other day she was really fussy, so I started to sing her Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. I hadn't even finished singing the FIRST twinkle, and she was flashing the biggest grin ever. Her favorite story right now is Mr. Brown Can Moo Can You? by Dr. Seuss. She loves all the goofy sound effects.