Noe is enchanted with her feet as of late. Just about any time you lay her down (for bed, for a diaper change, for play), she goes after them. She hasn’t quite gotten her socks off yet, but she’s close, as you’ll see in the video. And, of course, what she really wants is them in her mouth, like everything else these days.

We had a family outing to the zoo on Saturday. We had super weather (people say March is the snowiest month here in Denver, but also the balmiest…go figure) and I was impressed by the zoo –lots of animals and nicely laid out. We were able to walk the whole park in the time Noe was up, though she seemed as interested in the other kids as she was in the animals. Here we are by the elephants, though the penguins were Noe’s (and our) favorite. You can get really close in the outdoor exhibit, and they held Noe’s attention by being pretty active –lots of waddling and jumping!

Noe turned 5 months on Friday, and to celebrate, we pretended she was 6 months. Here she is in “her” high chair (borrowed from friends).

We played with a spoon, and Noe surprised me by sipping water right off of it. She’s been really interested in watching us eat and drink recently, so maybe she will take to this whole adult-food deal right away.

We were back up in the mountains this weekend. With Noe’s increased awake time we went for a walk around the lake.

On Sunday we checked out the aquarium. Noe wasn’t so into the darkened flash flood room (it’s an atypical aquarium), but she did seem to enjoy looking at some of the fish. Here she is with Daddy.

Here are some pictures from our trip to the playground a few weeks ago. (Thanks to our friend Travis for sending them –and taking them!)

It looks like we’ve achieved a nap break-through –Noe has been down to only (!) four naps the past few days, with longer stretches of wakefulness in between. This has meant that we’ve been able to get out and have some fun! Yesterday we went to the Children’s Museum.

Here’s Noe on a lily pad in the infant pond area. It was pretty cool –a padded blue pond with lily pads for the babies to lay on and mobiles that hung over top of them (well, actually only one of the mobiles hung over the top of the lily pad; Noe’s hung *by* it) and lots of stuffed animal puppets –frogs, ducks, geese, etc. You can see in the picture that the walls are painted to look like a forest, and there are trees around and nature sounds playing.

After we hung out there for a while, we checked out the rest of the museum, which is fantastic. There is a place with padded ramps for crawlers, a dance studio with tap shoes and tutus, a painting studio, a pretend grocery store, complete with moving check-out counters, and more. A great resource as Noe gets older!

Today we went to the pool!

It’s right down the street from our house, and they have a good indoor kids’ pool that has a zero-entry baby depth as well as a deeper end with a water slide. We had the pool to ourselves, which was a good way to start out. Noe wasn’t so sure at first, but she was game and didn’t take long to adjust. I considered no tears a win for her first time. The pool offers a parent-baby swim class starting at 6 months, so we’ll have to think about that –it’s on Saturdays, which means that Josh would be able to come with us.

So Noe seems to talk in bursts --she will go a week or so being very quiet, and then she’ll have a day where all she does is make noise. It’s still infrequent enough that I spend a lot of the day laughing with delight at her sounds.

Noe had a busy holiday weekend. She enjoyed a visit from the Mac Inneses –here’s Ieva helping to show Noe how the Exersaucer works.

Noe also went with Ieva to the playground, where she played on the slide and swings with Daddy. We didn’t get a picture, but she traveled to the playground riding on Daddy’s shoulders, which is a big hit with her.

We also had some more snow this weekend, although it’s well on its way to gone by now. Here’s Noe dressed for the cold.

We took a quick trip to Breckenridge this weekend. We had beautiful weather –it snowed just enough to dust all the pine trees, and not enough to make driving a challenge. They didn’t seem to have skis short enough for Noe, so we visited the snow sculptures.

Noe also had one of her best nights of sleep in a while –was it the altitude?

Here is Noe in her new exersaucer. She still doesn’t totally get it – hasn’t started to reach for the toys, partially because she’s so captivated by the picture of a baby on the box. But her mom is happy to have another play station to shake things up a bit.

Noe is also having fun unpacking the big box that arrived from Grandma Cheryl –she’s having fun exploring more noise-making toys handed down from Aunt Lisa!