Gwen's First Tooth

Gwen cut her first tooth this weekend. The little bugger is starting to break through on the front bottom. Being the humble 6-month old that she is, Gwen wasn't very interested in showing off her new tooth today. So you'll have to wait for pictures of the tooth.

In the meantime, here are some photos of Gwen NOT showing off her new tooth.

School Pictures (Fall 2010)

Here are the girls' school photos from Fall 2010. The photographer was brave enough to have the kids and their siblings pose together. We were surprised to see that Morgan and Gwen both smiled for the camera at the same time.

You can tell the photos are a couple months old already (sorry, I just got around to scanning them this week). When the photos were taken at the end of November, Gwen couldn't quite sit up yet. If they were shooting them today, Gwen would be sitting straight up -- and probably have at least one of her hands in Morgan's hair.

Here are their individual shots and class photos.

Winter Watermelon?

You know what they say: Nothing tastes better on bitter cold winter day than a juicy watermelon. (What? Nobody says that? Really?)

Well, with Gwen still not grasping the concept of solid food, we decided to give Gwen a try at grasping some watermelon inside her nifty little baby food baggies. Morgan was more than happy to show Gwen how it's done.

We're not sure Gwen realized there was food inside. Then again, Gwen doesn't really understand what "food" is yet either. Nevertheless, she had fun chewing on the mesh bag. Well, until she dropped it. And then dropped it again. And again.

"HeY, WAit. WhERe dId iT gO?"

Gwen at 6 Months

Wow -- or, as Morgan would say, "Holy ta-MOLEY!" -- Gwen's first six months flew by faster than we could have ever expected.

This month, Gwen perfected sitting up by herself. She has gotten very good at leaning over to grab her toys. And lately, she's been lunging from a sitting position to her belly, which is a big step toward learning how to crawl.

Gwen tried a bunch of new foods this month. She hasn't taken to solid foods quite as fast as we thought she would. But she has learned quickly how to grimace, smirk, shiver and sneer when she gets new food in her mouth.

Unfortunately, Gwen's ear infection issues continued this month. She came down with ear infections numbers 5 and 6 a few days after Christmas. And then, by the second week of January, she notched numbers 7 and 8. We're crossing our fingers that she won't reach double digits.

Over the holidays, both sets of grandparents claimed they saw more and more of Andy in Gwen than they had before. But as the pictures below show, it all depends on her expression. (That's "Andy" Gwen on the left and "Ariella" Gwen on the right.)

Here are some more photos from Gwen's sixth month:

Now that Gwen can sit up, she's able to really enjoy bath time and snuggle time with Morgan.

Eating is an adventure. Gwen is very interested in everyone else's food -- but not so interested in her own food yet.

Gwen has gotten really good at stretching to reach toys -- a new skill she put to use when we visited the Please Touch museum recently.

Of course, goofing around with her big sister is still Gwen's favorite thing to do.

Gwen Sits Up

Let's make it official: Gwen can sit up by herself.

Since right before Christmas, she has been sitting up with the "boppy" or while she's leaning against something. But in the last few days, she has figured out how to lean toward a toy, balance herself, and pull herself back to an upright position. (If there were a "Sitting Up" rulebook, I'm guessing those would be the three requirements the judges would look for.)

At school on Friday, Gwen's teacher needed to shuffle one of the babies to the "Infant B" (a.k.a. "crawler") room. Since Gwen is the only one of the 5-6 month-olds who is sitting up, she got to go play with the big kids. Way to go, Gwen!

On a somewhat related happy note, since Gwen has started sitting up, she's also been spitting up a lot less. Way to go (again) Gwen!

Diving right into 2011

2011 has gotten off to a busy start. (So much so, in fact, that we're way behind on our blog posts.)

On New Year's Day, we made our first venture to the Adventure Aquarium in a while (thanks to Nanna and Grandpa, who renewed our membership for Christmas).

Morgan was excited to get reacquainted with her old friends the hippos. This was also her first attempt at wildlife photography with her new camera from Aunt Lindsay.

This was Gwen's first visit to the Aquarium. So, of course, she took a nap. Some day, we'll be able to show Gwen all these photos and say, "Look at all the fun things you slept through when you were a baby."

After checking out the Sting Ray Beach exhibit, we headed to the big tank to see Scuba Santa before he swims back to his vacation home in Aruba until next Christmas.

Gwen liked looking at the colorful fish in the "sunken ship" section of the aquarium. Her white shirt and polka dotted pants were the perfect outfit for the black lights. Whoa. Trippy.

While Gwen drank her bottle inside with Mom, Dad and Morgan headed outside to say hi to the penguins and seals. As always, Morgan posed for another sitting-on-the-turtle shot (the linked photo is from last March, FYI).

Oh the Weather Outside is Frightful

We've already had our fair share of snow this winter. But, thankfully, it hasn't been anything like the monster snowfalls we had last winter.

The first snowfall of the season came in mid-December. It was just a dusting, but Morgan was super excited to make snow angels.

Then came the Christmas storm. It cut our holiday party short (Aunt Lindsay, Mayie, and P-Pa all had to leave Christmas night) and ended up dumping 12-16 inches of fluffy snow.

This time, Morgan was just as excited to go out in the snow. It took 10 minutes to get Morgan into her snow suit (courtesy of the Katie Fricke Collection). But it only took her 3 minutes to remember that she hated the feeling of snow blowing in her face.

Even though we never actually played in the snow, the Christmas storm still ended up being lots of fun. Andy's office and the girls' daycare were both closed on Monday. So we spent the day playing in the attic with all the cool toys Morgan and Gwen got for Christmas.