Joe is 4 months old today.

Unbelievable!

You are such a sweet baby, Joe 🙂  You love to play and coo and smile.  You have started talking to us on a regular basis – you love to screech and trill and gurgle.  Sometimes, you shriek so loudly that you strain your throat and start to cough!

You also love your Jolly Jumper.  I haven’t put you in your bouncinette for awhile now.  Whenever you’re in it, you strain and try to sit upright, so we just put it away.  You still like to lie on your playmat.  You like to kick and bat at things and roll over.  But lately?  Lately, your favorite spots are your Bumbo chair that your gramma brought you and the Jolly Jumper.  You are really starting to figure out how to jump and JUMP and JUMP!!!!!

You are also a drool-baby.  Or, as your daddy refers to you, a “drool monster”.  We have learned that we need to keep a bath mat under the Jolly Jumper in order to protect the floor, and we have basically taken to tying a drop cloth around your neck.  You don’t mind, though!  And neither do we 🙂

You love taking baths.  You splash and splash and blow bubbles in the water.  You are trying so hard to sit up in your flexibath, and your toes hang over the edge.  I can’t get over how big you are!  You love it when your daddy fills up a cup of water and raises it WAY up high and trickles it on your tummy.

And speaking of your daddy and things you love, you love him.  When he comes home, you get a big grin on your face (unless you’re nursing).  You love it when he kisses your neck and blows raspberries on your tummy.  You shriek with laughter and it’s so contagious that we can’t help but laugh, too.

You’ve also started to “play” with your food.  You’ll be nursing, and it’s as if you’ve suddenly realized that there are other people around you.  You look up out of the corner of your eye at me or your daddy, stop sucking, turn your head, and just grin!  You go back to nursing almost immediately, and then repeat the process over and over again.  It is so cute, and I know that I shouldn’t encourage you, but I love it 🙂

You roll over like it’s nothing.  If I put you on your tummy, you flip yourself.  When you’re lying on your play mat, you scooch around with your feet and end up in a completely different position from where I left you.  I know that you’ll be crawling in no time flat, which probably means that I should start doing a bit more baby-proofing.

You love it when we read to you.  At the moment, your favorite books are “Oh, The Places You’ll Go” by Dr. Seuss, “Maisy Big, Maisy Small” by Lucy Cousins, and “Baa Baa Smart Sheep” by Mark & Rowan Sommerset.  If you’re fussing, odds are that reading you one of these books will do the trick for at least a little while.

This next month is going to hold a lot of fun things for you, and at the end of it?  At the end of it, we’ll hop on an airplane and fly a looooong way, all the way to America so that you can meet your family.  They love you so much, and you don’t even know it 🙂

And your dad and me?  We love you so much, too!

Happy 4 months!