Miriam had a doctor's appointment today. At this point, David weighed more than she does at the same age. He was about 13 1/2 lbs at 5 months, and she's at just under 13lbs. It looks like David was about 3/4" taller at that age, too. This definitely shows that every baby is different!

Miriam and David are quite different, comparing at the same ages, of course. David was a lot pickier on the type of babyfood we fed him, whereas Miriam likes pretty much everything but plain rice cereal.

Miriam started out sleeping better at night than David did. Now, she sleeps worse at night (usually going to bed for the night around 1am) but she takes much better daytime naps than David did until he was closer to 11 months old.

We're getting our Christmas decorations up. We have our stockings up over the fireplace. We've set up the tree, but we haven't had much time to get the lights on yet. We have a garland and lights on the railing up the steps, David has a little 2' tree in his room with a small strand of multi-colored lights that he helped pick out, and he has a set of Disney Cars ornaments on it. We're using this instead of a nightlight for him for the Christmas season. He also has Cars Christmas window clings on one of his windows.

The only decoration Miriam has in her room is a ceramic Nativity set that we were going to put in David's room, but we were worried he'd break it, since he can reach almost everything on his dresser.

David is now learning how to say his numbers! He can "count" from 1 to 10. He also knows all the letters in the alphabet. He loves to read "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" right now. He'll bring it over and say, "bah bah".

Miriam is learning how to sit on her own for a minute or so. She's getting good use of her hands and likes to put her binky in and out of her mouth. She also likes to grab her feet. She is very good at eating from a spoon, and has liked pretty much everything we've given her. She does not like rice cereal by itself, though. I guess it's not very flavorful. In the past month she's tried rice cereal, green beans, peaches, squash, pears, sweet potatoes, and bananas.

Miriam has started spoon training with rice cereal. She started that last week on Friday after her 4 month check-up. Today she got to try green beans and it seemed like she liked them.

David's really starting to say more words. He still doesn't use simple sentences, but he's trying to say a lot more things. He currently says: apple, ball, bowl (for bowling), Dad, Mom, Miriam ("myum"), bed, eyes, nose, head, hat, elbow, shoes, socks, cheese, please, water, hotdog ("hot-go"), go, David ("Day-dee"), Buzz (Lightyear from Toy Story), Pooh (Whinnie the Pooh), bath, more, eat, mall, yes, no, pants, and Jess (the youth pastor's wife nextdoor). When he wants to read "Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb" he says "Dum" (in the book it goes dum, ditty, dum a lot). When he wants to read "Hop on Pop" he says "pop-pop-pop". When he wants to read a new favorite, "Just Like Daddy", he says "Dad". He knows almost his entire alphabet. He can even read the uppercase letters, so we're starting to work on lowercase letters now. I think he's going to be a good reader.

We got back to New York on Wednesday afternoon. We had a good flight. Both kids were very good.

Miriam had a great doctor's appointment on Thursday morning. She's growing and developing well, so the doctor is happy. The doctor was also pleased that she had such a happy baby for her first appointment of the day. Then we went to Target to buy a coats for David and Becky, but all David kept saying was "mall, mall". Next we went to the indoor play area by the food court at the mall so that David could play. Then Adam met us for lunch. He went back to work, and the rest of us went home and napped all afternoon.

It's tough waking up in the morning when it's so dark. It's rainy and cloudy, plus the days are just shorter at this time of year. I really hate changing the clocks back, though, because I hate when it gets dark at 4:45pm.

We flew into St. Louis on Tuesday night. We've been having a good time at Grandpa & Grandma Wesche's house so far. It rained all day yesterday (Thursday) but we still went to the mall and let David, Maddi and Jeremiah play on their indoor playground, and we had lunch at Chevy's. We're very happy to be "home" for a little while and see everybody in Becky's side of the family. Becky's Grandpa & Grandma Luebke are celebrating their 50th anniversary this week, which is why we came to town. They're having a nice party on Sunday afternoon.

We had a nice time visiting with Danny this week. I think he enjoyed relaxing and sleeping late. We took him to the beach on Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday we pretty much stayed around home and went to the mall, and he got to play computer games for a while. Friday we spent the afternoon driving around Manhattan, which pretty muched turned into a mini-nightmare as we tried to enter the Holland Tunnel at the same time as the whole population of New Jersey that works in Manhattan, haha. The kids were very tired of being in the car. Then we let David play on the big playground at Liberty State Park for about half an hour so that Danny could take pictures of the Statue of Liberty. We ate dinner together and then got Danny back on base on time. Miriam cried all the way from the I-278 bridge from Staten Island to Brooklyn until we got home, which for a two hour drive, was pretty much exactly half of the trip. The view of Manhattan from I-278 is amazing, though, especially at night.

We went to Mid-town Manhattan yesterday. Adam went to a hospital near Central Park to visit somebody from church who is getting treatment there, so we all decided to go along and packed lunch to eat in Central Park. Well, it ended up being a rainy day. We still packed our lunch and tried to at least find a place to park in Central Park, but all the roads we saw that actually went into the park are closed off from traffic, so we ate lunch as we drove home.

We took a few pictures of some of the things we saw in Mid-town Manhattan. Things are slightly nicer than downtown. Driving into Manhattan is almost like a dream, especially how it was yesterday being gray, cloudy and rainy. There are so many skyscrapers, it just doesn't seem like it can be real. I would have taken more pictures, especially of the drive in over the bridge, but since it was raining I wasn't sure how pictures would turn out through raindrop covered windows.

David is really babbling a lot now, and will try to imitate things you ask him to most of the time. He still doesn't put two words together, but he'll get there. We've recently developed an interest in sitting on the potty, because I put him on it the other day, so now he likes to sit on it occasionally, but he's only gone once, and that was the first time I put him on it.

Miriam is developing use of her hands, and is getting ready to roll. She puts her fingers and fist in her mouth a lot, and is able to hold onto a rattle for a little bit. We put up a new video of her holding a rattle. Click on the link for videos from the homepage. If you put her on the floor on her back she'll roll to her side, and she'll spin around in a circle on her back like the hands of a clock. I'm amazed how much "faster" she's growing than David seemed to at that age. Time must be moving faster this time since I have a 2 year old running around, too.

Today we drove into Downtown Manhattan. The skyline is amazing. Skyscrapers everywhere you look. Becky was saying, "wow," every now and then, and David would repeat it. It was really cute hearing him say, "wow," as we drove through New York City.

We drove through the Financial District to see where the Twin Towers had been. Then we took the Holland Tunnel over to Jersey City, NJ so that we could stop in Liberty State Park and get close enough to the Statue of Liberty to take some pictures. After that we ate lunch in the food court of a really nice mall close to Liberty State Park, and then we took the Holland Tunnel back to Manhattan, and the Manhattan Bridge back to Long Island to go home.

We hope you enjoy the pictures. We had a nice time driving through and looking at the scenery, even though it took almost two hours to get home from Jersey City. We hit the afternoon traffic on the way home.