Miriam can get all over a room now. With a combination of forward scooting, pivoting, and rolling, she goes all over the living room floor. When she lays in her bed she'll pull her legs underneath her, but when she wants to move she mostly uses her arms, and kicks with her feet a little, to move. So she's not quite officially crawling.

David is enjoying being able to play outside again. Yesterday was especially gorgeous, so we went to the park for about an hour. Being that it was a beautiful Saturday, a lot of other people had the same idea. He didn't like having to give up the swing so another kid could have a turn, be he had a great time.

Becky's parents, her brother Nathan and his girlfriend Sarah came to visit last week. We went to New York City on Tuesday, March 16th. We took the train in and walked around with the double stroller. David especially loved the M&M's store. He's still talking about it.

This week, David has started singing/talking along with his favorite shows, and he also likes to "read" along with his favorite books. It's really cute. He's also talking a lot more.

Miriam has been spitting up a lot, so I doubt she'll grow much between appointments this month. She seems to retain her food better when she's hitting a growth spurt. She knows how much she needs/wants, I guess!

Miriam's first teeth popped through yesterday. She got both of her bottom front incisors. Hopefully she'll start sleeping better again. She is also very curious and loves to grab anything within her reach, especially at church when Becky is holding the bulletin. There's a lot of movement and dodging on Becky's part to be able to continue reading along when holding Miriam. Miriam is also getting better about sitting up without support for a short period of time. Of course, she has to be put into a sitting position, but she can usually sit that way for a minute or two.

David fell out of his bed while sleeping for the first time last night. Becky went right in and got him calmed down and tucked back in and he went to sleep fairly quickly.

We got to go to the park for the first time in a while yesterday. It's finally gotten a little warm (as warm as 45 degrees can be!). It's supposed to rain today, but so far it hasn't, so we can't play outside again.

David is doing very well with his letters. He can currently read about 20 words. We printed him a sheet with 12 words on either side of the page that he's been working on for a week or two. Today Becky printed him 2 more sheets, so he has 72 words that he can work on learning to read. David can also count to 20, but most of the teens sound like "teen", haha. He has also taken an interest in the clock in the dining room. He noticed the second hand moving between the numbers, and he would read the number that the second hand pointed to as it moved. We are amazed how smart he is and how well he is reading the letter and number symbols already.

David is learning how to spell some words from watching his favorite show Word World. He can read/spell "rocket", "ball", "dog", "pie", and "ant". We made a sheet of words for him to read from. He'll also be working on "piano", "pig", "duck", "cow", "frog", "hat", "cat", "horn", "lion", "pants", "socks", "tree", and "hug". These are words that he also sees on Word World, or ones that he uses a lot.

Miriam started saying "mama" this week. It's very cute. She especially uses it if she's sitting in the highchair waiting for food. She lost weight between her November and December doctor appointments, so we're working on getting her to nurse more often. She's been improving on how much she nurses, but she's very distractible right now. She goes back to the doctor next week to see if she's gained weight.

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.