Willa is FIVE Months!

Today is Willa's five month birthday!  Hip hip hooray!  I can't believe that we have had Willa with us so long, being a parent still feels so new.  We love our Willa-bear so much.  To celebrate, I thought of what I could do that would be fun for Willa.  First of all, I let her sleep in this morning (sarcasm, I never wake a sleeping baby if I can help it) - she slept almost eleven hours!  She can't eat cake and ice cream yet, so as the parent always sacrifices for the good of the child, I will eat it for her.  Actually, nix the cake - I would have to bake it and that's not going to happen today.  I will, however, eat chocolate chip cookies and delicious ice cream in honor Willa's five month birthday.  I'd better eat enough of it that she can get some of the flavor coming in through the milk.  See what a good mom I am?

Here are some pictures we took this morning next to her giraffe.  My friend Katie told us to take her picture next to the same stuffed animal each month so that we could see how big she had grown.  Unfortunately, Willa was very cheerful this morning but not so inclined to smile.  She can be tricksy like that, she'll only smile if she feels like it.  Maybe it didn't help that I tried to position her very sweetly with the giraffe and instead she attacked it and ripped out some of its hair so I had to pull it away for a few minutes.

One forced smile - Ryan's hand is tickling her.  All the pictures are fuzzy because she's quite the little mover lately.

Stare down contest with giraffe:

Fakes out giraffe and gets ready to give a life-ending bite:

These days Willa can grab items with TWO hands and is getting very accurate with her reaches.  She loves to immediately put these items in her mouth.  Sometimes she gets frustrated when she can't get them to her mouth, but she also gets frustrated when they do get to her mouth and she doesn't know what to do with them from there.  Life is so hard.  She likes to grab our faces and put them in her mouth, which results in large, slobbery, and very sweet kisses.

These days we call her Willa, Willabeast, Wildebeast, Willabear, Willis, Wilster, and Sweetie Pie :)

Willa started laughing around three months but now she does so more often; however, she's still pretty coy with her laughs.  Sometimes she will laugh at everything we do, then next day she won't laugh at anything.  She has recently started liking to get her diaper changed.  She started kicking, smiling, and sometimes laughing - especially when we use the cool wipes on her warm behind.  

She is very observant and follows us with her head and eyes all the time.  If either of us says something she'll immediately swing her head around to see who is talking.  

She is STRANGER shy already!  Willa is a mama's girl and even takes time to warm up to dad if he has been working more than usual.  Some days she is good for the babysitter, other days she is crying when I come back but immediately stops it and starts smiling once I hold her - the little stinker!  Since the babysitter is quite possibly the nicest person on the planet, I think it's Willa's issue to get over.  Any ideas on how to get her over this?  Even if I'm right there and someone else tries to hold her she will look at me and her bottom lip will start to quiver.   Maybe I just need to get out more.  It's exhausting to get out of the house with a baby, though!

She has also just started finding her voice and likes to coo and make sounds.  She's very good at making raspberries and she also likes to do a raspberry-like gurgle in her throat when she's not happy.  This is actually good, if she's upset when she's in the carseat or somewhere where she has to soothe herself she will do this now instead of screaming (most of the time).  She is also sleep-trained!  She babywised herself.  Occasionally, if I keep her up for too long she will have a hard time going to sleep herself, but she will lay in bed with her pacifier in just doing that throat gurgle in a really sad tone for a few minutes before she goes to sleep.

This is Willa on our morning run today.  It was drizzling a little so I put the rain canopy on.  This stroller is SAWEET!  It deserves, and will get, its own post.  She likes to sleep during the run.  I like to look out over the stroller and see her little feet laying still or starting to twitch as she wakes up.

We sure love our Willa!