Imagination

Did you know that we have a dinosaur in our house?  He (it's a boy) lives in Taylor's closet and his name is Choppy (which used to be the name of all of her stuffed kitties, but those are now all named Sofie). Choppy is orange and white and red and purple and he likes to eat hot dogs and pancakes.  And he is potty trained. :)

So we're leaving on our annual Texas coast trip on Friday, and Taylor is super excited to go to the beach. All week she has been listing off all of the things we will see there: sand, water, dolphins, whales, fishies, turtles, crabs with pincers, seahorses, and parrots.  HA.  Oh this kid, how she makes me laugh. 

Mother's Day

Mother's Day was extra special this year because I got to spend it with my mom!  We went to brunch, took naps, then enjoyed the beautiful weather in the backyard.  And I took about a gazillion photos of my kids - I can't even describe how much I love being a mama to these two!  My gift to my mom was a mini photo session with the kids.  Libby took those the day before and I can't wait to see them! We'll be doing something similar with Jake's parents when we visit MI this summer.

Seven months

Boy oh boy did Ben find his voice this month.  He is LOUD.  Rarely cranky, but often loud.  :)  He has also decided that he wants be mobile. He is not quite crawling but he can get his knees up and under him and kind of inchworm or drag himself along, his primary motivation being the cats or a ball [I am posting this nearly a week late and he is now full on army crawling!]. Taylor is super sweet with her brother, and Ben, oh how he loves his big sister. He is always watching her and loves it when she pays attention to him. They often take baths together (at her request), and when it's warm enough they splash around in a blowup pool in the backyard. She likes to play peekaboo with him, and when she leaves the room he cranes his neck and squeals because he wants to be where she is.

We have pretty much just been going for it on the food front. His first table food was steamed broccoli, he ate it by the fistfuls and absolutely loved it. He's also had steamed peas, carrots, tortilla, mum mums, puffs, pasta, hunks of banana...  He's a great eater, and he's getting fairly good at getting things into his mouth on his own.

Ben loves looking at himself in photos, in the mirror, or on my iPhone.  He is all smiles and laughs as soon as he catches sight of himself.  He likes being sung to, jumping in his Jumparoo, and chewing on anything he can get his hands on. He can say "mama" and Jake swears he has said "dada" too.  He's super squirmy and it's nearly impossible to change his diaper or clothes anymore. His lower gums seem a tiny bit swollen to me, so maybe we we see our first tooth soon? Sleep is actually pretty decent. Lately he's been getting up just once a night to eat, and I can live with that for now I think. Jake does have to go up and put his paci in occasionally, but I'm a happier mama getting more sleep.

Inchworm

Nico is the most patient and tolerant (or maybe just lazy) cat ever.

Wildflower minis

While the sick tot sleeps... photos from our cold and windy wildflower mini photo session last month with Happy Soul Photography.  How did she capture so much color on such a dreary day?! Jake's parents were in town when we had these taken, so they got in on the action (one of my favorites pics!).

I jinxed us.

On March 11, I wrote "for the most part we've all been pretty healthy." I totally jinxed my family. Since then we've had an ear infection (Taylor), a round of stomach bugs (Taylor, then me, then Jake), thrush (Ben and I), a second nasty stomach bug [eta: norovirus, actually] (Taylor, currently), and we have ear tube surgery (Taylor, third round) scheduled for Thursday. :(

Splash!

It's been an odd spring, many more chilly days than we are used to here.  But as soon as those temps finally hit the upper 80s, it was time to break out one of the plethora of blowup pools we have (which were recently rediscovered after cleaning and organizing the garage for the first time since moving in 4+ years ago). Both kids had so much fun, although after about 10 minutes T's enthusiastic splashing became a little too much for Ben. I do expect we'll be doing a lot of this over the summer, and it's just a matter of time before Ben will be able to hold his own with big sis. :)