Roman is 5 months old today! He is getting so big that it almost seems like he is older than just 5 months. I think he is close to 18 pounds, and he is wearing 9-12 month clothes already. He always has a huge smile on his face, and he is such an easy-going baby. He loves to just sit and watch his big sister! He rolls over, when he feels like it, but mostly just watches the chaos going on around him. He can sit for a few seconds on his own, but mostly likes to play on his back.

He already has his two bottom front teeth, and I’m pretty sure the top two will emerge in a few days. He is teething on anything he can get his hands on, usually his own shirt, which gives new meaning to "I’m so hungry I could eat my shirt!" A few weeks ago I started giving him pureed food. He loves pears and sweet potatoes, but is not crazy about cereal of any kind.

Roman still isn’t sleeping through the night, but when he wakes up he eats a full 8-ounce bottle, so I think he’s just a very hungry boy. We have a new strategy for the nights. He wakes up between 5 and 6 every morning to eat, and often he was waking up Harper and she wouldn’t go back to sleep. We decided to put Roman’s Pack n’ Play (portable crib) in our walk-in closet and have him sleep there instead, and it’s working out great! He sleeps really well in there, and Harper can’t hear a thing. This morning he slept until almost 9:30, and even slept through us rummaging around in the closet for our clothes!

Harper continues to impress us with her big-sister skills. She really is wonderful with him and very rarely shows any jealousy. I absolutely love their age difference because Harper doesn’t remember a time when Roman wasn’t in our family. It seems very normal for her to have to share Mommy and Daddy’s attention, and she doesn’t get mad when I have to ignore her for a little bit to give him a bottle. She is very affectionate towards her brother and gives him the sweetest hugs and kisses. We’ve only seen her get upset with him once – they were both in the bath and I accidentally wrapped Roman in her pink bunny towel. She was already tired and ready for bed, and she took one look at him and burst into tears saying "no that’s HARPER’S towel!" Ever since then I make sure to ask her if it’s okay for Ro Ro to "borrow" her towel!

Harper turns two in just a few weeks and we are having so much fun with her at this age. She is talking in full sentences and says the cutest things. I’ll write more when it’s closer to her official birthday.

Last week we flew out to Cincinnati to visit our friends Dave, Jenn and Katelyn ("Kiki," according to Harper). The flight out was easy, despite backing up the security line for a good 20 minutes as we unloaded the stroller. Harper loved the plane ride and, much to the dismay of the other passengers, shouted "blast off!" when we took off! Roman fell asleep in his car seat mid-flight and didn’t seem to notice his sister bouncing around in the seat behind him.

The Bastos family moved into their new condo just a few days before we arrived, so we got to see it in all of its move-in (and still partially under construction) glory. Their new condo is absolutely gorgeous and inspired us to plan a few home-updates of our own. About an hour after we arrived, Portman said "well, I thought this trip was free since I booked it on miles, but now I see it’s going to cost me more like $10k. Thanks, Dave!"

Sleeping 4 adults and 3 babies in a condo required creativity. Kiki is temporarily sleeping in a pack n’ plan in her parents’ closet because there are no shades on her windows, so Portman and I got to bunk on her daybed and trundle. Portman insisted on calling it a "grundle bed" and asked me to tell him a scary story every night when we went to sleep. I refused. Luckily Aunt Jenn is still pregnant with twins, so Harper got to sleep in the twins’ crib, and Roman camped out in a pack n’ play in Kiki’s bathroom. Everyone was nice and cozy and slept remarkably well! The twins’ room also doesn’t have shades, so Harper woke up every morning shouting "lights! cars! cars walking!" as she looked out over the Cincinnati skyline. She thought that the tiny cars driving on the bridge looked like "cars walking." It was so cute!

The girls were so excited to see each other, and despite the frequent arguments over toys, they had a great visit. We took them to the Newport Aquarium to see Scuba Santa, which is exactly what it sounds like: Santa, in a scuba suit, in an aquarium complete with an elf, his sleigh, sharks and sea turtles. It was actually really cool and we got a decent picture of it.

The next night we took them to the Children’s Theater to see "Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer." We weren’t sure how they would do in an hour-long play, but they sat through the whole thing and even sang along to the songs! They were the most excited about the random penguin and panda bear that were in the production (yes, seriously random), and of course about Santa. I stood in the back with Roman and about 10 other moms with infants. He was really good but didn’t want me to sit down!

After the show we walked to an area with a lot of restaurants and happened upon a huge crowd watching Santa, Rudolph, and Frosty repel from the rooftop of a Macy’s! It was part of the Macy’s Christmas Tree lighting celebration and we caught it right as Santa jumped off the roof. This picture is really blurry, but you get the idea:

We had lots of time to relax because Aunt Jenn is on bed-rest, so Portman was able to get a haircut and Jenn and I got much-needed pedicures. We were all set to go home on Monday when Harper all-of-a-sudden got really sick. We ended up taking her to the doctor and managed to miss the only flight home that day. Unfortunately they couldn’t find anything wrong with her other than swollen tonsils, so it seemed like our extra night was kind of a waste. We got home Tuesday evening and Harper was still really sick. She pretty much screamed through Wednesday and Thursday, and I took her back to the doctor on Friday. Turns out she has double ear-infections. Poor baby! I talked to Jenn and Kiki ALSO has double ear infections, so I guess the girls were sharing something – just not toys!

View from the condo:

Harper and Kiki at the aquarium:

Yesterday we took the kids to the Udvar-Hazy Air & Space Museum at Dulles and it was freakin’ awesome! This was our first trip to the museum and I can’t believe we waited so long to visit it. Portman thinks it is the best museum he’s ever been to, and Harper would probably agree with him. We got lucky and had the place to ourselves, and Harper spent two hours sprinting from plane-to-plane screaming "uhr-pain!" and "hell-copper!" Her favorite was definitely a little yellow prop-plane, and my favorite was either the space shuttle Enterprise, or the Blackbird. Both were absolutely fascinating to see up close. Harper and Portman rounded out the trip with a ride on the flight simulator. Harper has been talking about riding on the "rocket ship" all day today, and even adds a countdown to her story! Needless to say, we will be back there very soon… maybe this afternoon if the weather doesn’t clear up.