Phoebe at 4 months

Phoebe is four months old today! I don't know how big she is because her well-child check isn't for a couple more weeks and, well, I haven't bothered to measure her myself. Suffice it to say, she's a growing concern.

She recently learned how to laugh—like full on belly laugh—and it's highly amusing for everyone. Here's a video from a couple days ago when Miriam came into my room around bedtime and engaged Phoebe with peek-a-boo for the first time (it's not the first time we've tried peek-a-boo with her; it's simply the first time she "got" the game).

Warning...there's some baby spit-up (or, as we like to call it, Phoebe Cheese) involved...

I don't think anyone has ever had more fun playing peek-a-boo! 

Now that she's laughing everyone is doing everything they can to earn a giggle from her, though largely she seems to hand them out arbitrarily. Yesterday Andrew, Rachel, and I were in the kitchen talking. Rachel started to explain this podcast murder mystery she'd listened to and Phoebe thought it was the most hilarious thing ever. Every time Rachel revealed some new gruesome detail, Phoebe would giggle and guffaw, which had us all laughing by the end. 

Let's see, here she is getting ready for bed a couple of nights ago:

And here she is working on waking up (with a smile on her face, this time (she doesn't seem to like waking up and often wakes up crying before shaking it off and deciding to be happy about being awake)):

Here she is testing out the walker Naanii and Bumpa sent out to Georgia with Grandpa:

She's a little wibbly-wobbly in it still, so she's got a blanket wrapped around her torso, and her sweet little feeties don't quite reach the ground yet so  it's not so much a baby walker as it is a baby holder, but she'll grow into it!

Here she is this morning:

(She doesn't always sleep with her fingers open like this; but they do tend to fly open when she's getting ready to wake up and is drifting in and out sleep). 

Here she is just before church this morning, giggling at the table with her brothers:

I'm not sure what she thought was so funny. Everything is funny lately (until she laughs so much she cries). 

In addition to learning how to laugh, Phoebe has been diligently working on learning how to roll over. I'm honestly not sure why because she doesn't really enjoy tummy time. Whatever her motive, Phoebe can roll front to back and back to front (and has been able to for at least a week now, though she's doing so with increasing intention). 

Here she is practicing her rolling skills (with some help from Alexander, much to Zoë's displeasure, as you'll hear in the video) this morning:

And here she is working on her rolling skills during our evening scripture study. She started out on the floor lying this direction:

Pivoted to this direction (turning somewhere around 240° counterclockwise):

She wasn't very interested in playing the role of Rachel's pillow, but she tolerated it...

And then, when I put away my phone to read some stories to the kids because clearly she wasn't going to ever flip over onto her tummy while I was filming, she promptly flipped over onto her tummy:

She's a silly little goose, but we're so glad she's ours. 

She's a pretty good sleeper, as long as she's close to mommy, is pretty passionate about mealtime, and also enjoys sucking on fabric (chew toys are kind of blah but if she can suck on a burp cloth or someone's shirt, she's all over it). 

Waffelles, the cat, has finally forgiven me for having a baby, it seems, and has been coming up to me to solicit back scratches on a more regular basis. She's sniffing Phoebe more regularly as well and doesn't automatically leave the room when Phoebe enters. So we're making progress in that department, too.