5 month update

Time is flying by and Stella was 5 months old yesterday. We continue to feel so amazed and blessed by her presence in our family.

Here's what Stella is all about now: She loves her sister and gets very excited when Jordan plays with her. She rolls smoothly from back to belly and belly to back. Sometimes when I put her on a blanket and leave the room for a minute, I actually have to look for her when I come back because she has rolled away! She has a favorite toy, which is a little bird with textured tail and feathers that she can chew on. She self-soothes by sucking on the two middle fingers of her left hand. She talks a lot and sometimes just likes to listen to how loud she can make her voice. She's added the "h" sound to her repertoire to go with "g" and the vowel sounds. She gets mad if she is trying to talk with you and you aren't looking at her. She laughs if you tickle her face with her feet. As you probably saw in an earlier post, she can stick her tongue out. She definitely recognizes her bottle and if she sees it, you'd better get it to her fast! And, hooray, as soon as we started letting her sleep on her belly at night, she is sleeping for 6-8 hour stretches! She enjoys playing Peek-A-Boo. All in all, she is developmentally age appropriate (in my professional opinion ;) ).

Lots of folks ask me if Stella is a lot different than Jordan was. My answer is always "yes" and "no." Jordan was such a sweet and easy baby, pretty much nothing ever phased her, unless you wanted to hold her too much (go figure). Stella is definitely more particular, she has preferences and she lets you know them. And she is a total cuddle-bug. I feel like her personality is just more intense. But having said that, we are amazed to find ourselves with another complete sweetheart. She is so very engaging and affectionate, even already. Her eyes communicate so much joy and zest for life. We ran into Jamie's mentor from seminary the other day--he's been a pastor for nearly 50 years and is very gifted in the Spirit. He took one look at her and said, "there is something very special about this child-I feel the hand of the Lord is on her already, I hope I live to see what He will do with her." It was a very powerful moment for me...those are the things that I hope for for her, that she will be special to God and others and that she will be used by Him for His purposes. So, what I am trying to get at is that--we weren't sure that another baby could be as special to us as Jordan was--so, its a good thing we got Stella. She makes it so easy to be totally in love with her.