Saturday, May 25, 2013

Fun at Home

We are in the double digits and I can't believe it! 10 months!!!

Eva continues to be so busy with learning new things and growing so fast. She loves clapping with us!

She has started pointing and has waved a few times. She climbs on everything and loves to be standing! She isn't cruising around on the furniture yet, but I'm sure she will be before we know it. She also LOVES to dance. Anytime there is any kind of music she starts wiggling back and forth. She also gives kisses now! She always does them two in a row. Sometimes she doesn't want to when the kids bother her too much for them. She has started shaking her head no when I think she actually means it and has said Momma a few times that seemed like it was calling for me. Growing so fast and doing it with much adorableness!

She continues to be such a happy girl!

She still loves her Momma so much and mostly only wants me. She doesn't let me take one step away from her either, which makes it hard to get anything done but it is so very precious being loved so fiercely by such a sweet pea. Dave took this picture as I was walking her up for bed time. She's a big snuggler before going to sleep.

We got Benjamin a new bike (which he's still learning on, so no pictures yet) and that meant tall Collin gets Benjamin's big bike. He is super excited and looks HUGE riding it!

It's adorable and a little sad (to see him being so big) all at the same time.

Eva had her first taste of watermelon. She liked it!

However, she did not appreciate it when we took it to turn it around back to the edible side.

Silly faces with Daddy.

Dave continued the silliness and cut super pieces for round two.

Everyone loved it!


Collin preferred to give me silly faces instead of watermelon pictures. He's a goofball like that. ;)

Argh!

Benjamin hasn't been able to enjoy corn on the cob this summer with his missing teeth (we're up to 5 lost), but he can devour watermelon happily!

I think Eva enjoys sensory things because she loves to play and explore her food. For the first few times I gave her berries, she wouldn't eat them....she only wanted to explore what they felt like squished in her fingers. The same thing happened with the watermelon. After she filled her tummy, she had a blast playing in it. There was watermelon juice everywhere!

So we headed up to the bath tub. Eva has hated baths since her newborn days. She cries hard every single time, any way we try. Finally we started putting her in this sitting baby tub and letting her play with toys and then filling the tub with water and she doesn't cry. Yay!!!

The girls were super cute playing together. Anna even helped wash Eva. I love the way they interact with one another. Anna is going to make a great Momma some day. She is so nurturing. When we get together with friends she will play Momma to littler kids and carry them around everywhere. It's adorable how she talks to them.

So relieved to finally see a happy baby at bath time!

They had a lot of fun!

Next up it was time for the boys!

After we got clean, we were silly and made crazy hair.

Collin had to do more silly expressions too. :)

Haven't done any funny/cute kid sayings in awhile, so here goes: 

Collin brought me his little plastic elephant that was broken again after Daddy had already glued it back together once. 
Me: Maybe it's time to throw the elephant away, since it isn't staying together.
Collin: No! We can't do that.
Me: Why not? Is it one of your favorites?
Collin: Because, the elephant has a baby!
Me: (Realize he's right, there is a baby that goes with it and then tear up that my wild, tough Collin is also so thoughtfully sweet)


We had been trying to decide what we wanted to do for our anniversary since our first idea didn't work out. We figured something out that we're excited about and the next day I was telling the kids (they're invited). When Dave got home that night, he was excited to surprise the kids and tell them we were going to Brown County for the evening. He said, "Guess what guys? I have something fun to tell you!" Anna comes over and in the cutest voice says, "Daddy, I already know what we're doing for our anniversary." It was so funny how she said "our anniversary".

As the youngest of the three big kids, Collin prides himself on getting bigger. That comes with a lot of cuteness as well. For instance, when Benjamin and Anna had their yearly check-ups a few months ago Collin was paying attention when the doctor checked their muscle tone. (She had them make muscles with their arms and then tried to push their arms down.) So, Collin will now come up to you and make big muscles and with the sweetest voice that is FULL of confidence and a twinkle in his eye say, "Try and push them down." He also likes to taunt me about his getting big. When he does or says something that makes him seem so much older, I will playfully tell him that he's getting too big and he needs to stop. He will reply with the same twinkle in his eye and say, "I am. I'm gonna be four." It is so funny and adorable how he says this!

One more, Collin doesn't watch much TV so he didn't pick up on recognizing his letters as quickly as the other kids did (since they are in almost every show for kids these days). I was starting to work on them with him and decided to use his talent for rhythm to our advantage. So I made up a little song to help him learn how to spell his name. We clapped out his letters C-O (pause) L-L (pause) I-N and then shout "Collin!" We did this one afternoon for about 5 minutes and that was all it took to stick. After that he could easily spell his name doing his little chant. After a few weeks, he dropped the clapping, song type way and will just spell the letters, but he always yells "Collin!" at the end. :)

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Our Littles

Collin has his first crush. It's pretty adorable. He's in love with a girl from our church named Tierney. She was a helper in Anna's ballet class and he would watch her every week and then come home and talk about her constantly. He pretends about her and gets so shy when you talk about her. He made her a card and gave it to her this Sunday and gave her big hugs and told her all about Disney. See the love? ;)

The little monkey told me he was going outside this morning and was already in the back yard by the time I got to him. I made him come right back in because this is the outfit I found him in. No need for clothes, just Daddy's shoes and some sunglasses!

He is OBSESSED with shoes right now! Every single day he wears our shoes and then we can't find them. One day Dave found a pair of my tennis shoes in the neighbor's yard!

Eva has fallen hard for her little blankie. It is so precious! She always has a hold of it in her bed (while she sleeps and when she cries for us to come get her when she wakes up). She brings it downstairs every day and loves to cuddle it, especially when she nurses. Here she fell asleep after nursing and I just couldn't take her to bed right away. She is so very sweet!

Since getting back from Disney (where she insisted on her Momma holding her all day everyday at the park when she was sick) Eva has decided she would like that to continue. She has "The Moms" so very bad! I don't remember the other babies needing only me this intensely. A lot of the time she won't even let her Daddy hold her! So anytime I'm sitting down, this is usually what my view looks like....Miss Eva pulled up on my leg with a toy. She will get down and play for a few minutes and then look back and find me and let me know I'm not to go anywhere.

Momma's girl!

She really loves pulling up to standing right now! This is a special picture, because Eva is our little smirker and most of her smiles aren't this big. She always smiles with her eyes too which is so sweet!

Big, bright blue eyes!

I had planned to do her 9 month pictures myself when we were in Florida (I have had bad luck with 9 month pictures in studios in the past as they just want to crawl off and have major separation anxiety). Unfortunately, she was sick so that didn't happen. It took her awhile to fully recover when we got back as it's pretty tough on a baby to have a respiratory infection and stomach bug at the same time. :( So, I insisted that we take her 9 month pictures this Saturday.....since it was the last day she would be 9 months and all! Here she is getting beautiful and ready for pictures!

The big kids had fun playing Simon Says while Miss Eva had her photo shoot.

It was hard to capture the little 9 month old as she could care less about grass and will just crawl and crawl and crawl when she's outside!

She loves inspecting pieces of grass and leaves and flowers and sticks....and anything she can get into her sweet little fingers.

She's a very happy girl! (As long as she doesn't think Momma is leaving)

Close ups of our sweet pea.


She loves to clap!

Doesn't miss much of anything and loves to watch all that's going on around her.

Beautiful baby girl!


The end!

I should note, the end of our photo shoot did not happen naturally. It ended in tears...mine! You won't believe what she put in her mouth......bird poop! :( Dave and I pulled (we think) all of it out but were so upset that she had something so gross and potentially dangerous in her mouth. We called our nurse on call who told us she would be fine, but we may want to call poison control to be sure. So of course we did. They said she would be fine but may have a stomach ache later. Then she ended the call by saying we should mark the day on the calendar that it happened in case she gets really sick so we can tell the doctor....gee thanks for that comfort! Thankfully, she was completely fine and never showed us any ill effects and hopefully won't. Yuck, yuck, yuck!

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Last Days of Disney

We headed back to Animal Kingdom and enjoyed another safari.

The hippos were really cool!

Elephants!

Found a petting zoo...

Eva was still feeling yucky (we took her to urgent care that evening to get antibiotics) so I shared my ice cream with her and she loved it.


We enjoyed some more pool time that evening but it was rather chilly, so we ended up playing in the hot tub.

That night Anna threw up over and over again. So the poor girl missed her last day at Disney. :( I spent the afternoon with her and the boys had fun together, including finally meeting Mickey!!!

Collin went straight in for the hug!

So happy!

More hugs...


Being silly with a Goofy statue.

They had fun exploring The Swiss Family Robinson's treehouse.

On the boat ride...

Dave came back to care for our little patient so I could have some fun with the boys. 


We had a fun dinner with Grandpa at Pinocchio's restaurant.

Eva smiles!

Claps for Disney!

They have new castles that look really cool. It was rainy the other two days we visited, so this was the first time I got to snap some pictures. Here's The Beast's castle from Beauty & The Beast.

Eric's castle from The Little Mermaid. (Collin really liked the ride inside this one!)

We enjoyed one more firework show.

The boys were both really tired, but we had Eva's car seat in the stroller. So, that left only one seat for the boys. I decided to put Collin in her seat since there was lots of room at the bottom (in the stroller) for the rest of his body. It was such a funny site seeing my giant Collin in a baby seat! He thought it was hilarious too.

We let Anna pick out a toy at the Disney store in the airport since she missed the last day. They found this Snow White statue and asked for their picture with it.

As we were walking away, Collin stayed to do this!

They all zonked out on the ride home from the airport! We had such an awesome trip!!

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