For Daddy

Mini golf with Uncle Jeff

 "Run Around the Rosy"

 Looking at tiny fish in the sea water

 In the sand

 First taste of sand

We love you and miss you TONS. We're having fun, but we're tired.

Weather

This is for memory's sake:

Yesterday was 72 degrees and sunny. We played out in the yard all day long and I held myself back from planting seeds in the garden.

Today we have 4 inches of snow, it is still falling, and it's 31 degrees. I guess it's good I didn't plant.

Lovely, lovely Wyoming.

The Ella Girl

Ella is currently:

a girl through and through...

obsessed with dancing & being a ballerina. (She will tell you once she turns 3 she will take dance lessons and tumbling!)

very into gardening, worms and bugs.

in love with wearing dresses.

hopelessly sure she will soon "get big, get married and be a mommy to a baby girl in my tummy. Her name is Ashlynn-baby or Maxson." (This story stays the same except for the names... currently we have 3 friends who had new babies this week and their names are Max, Paxton and Ashlyn, thus the current names).

always wanting to go on a walk, out for a run or on a bike ride.

completely, utterly, irreversibly in love with Rapunzel (Tangled). My favorite part of this obsession is the concept that she should always play outside in the grass barefoot, "like Rapunzel does!" (As much as Ella is a girly-girl, she still has this rough and unrefined side. She's not super princessy and she's just as likely to tell me in the morning that she'd like to wear sweats and running shoes as she is to want a leotard and tutu).

7 Months has come and gone!

Now that we are 1/2 way through Benjamin's 8th month... I guess I'll finally get his 7 month post up here. We've had a rough go of it the last month or so with RSV as well as some other nasty cold/cough thing and a huge breathing (or rather, not breathing) scare. Thus, we've huddled down and tried really hard just to get everyone well. Not much else (on a large scale) has happened or gotten done.

Since 6 months Benjamin has:

started eating avocado, rice, oatmeal, banana, butternut squash, sweet potatoes, peaches, pears, green beans, applesauce and peas - he still loves to eat, but sweet potatoes are by far his favorite. He barely tolerates green beans or peas.

gotten teeth (4/6) - both bottom guys have popped through and look huge! We thought he was having tons of trouble with teething and were confused because we thought it was just the one on his bottom left side. Instead, both broke through together! He certainly knows how to use them, too!

started crawling - or rather, "inchworming" (4/21) - he reaches with his arms, gets up on his right knee and pushes himself forward, dragging his left side. It isn't very efficient, but it certainly gets him where he'd like to go. He also gets himself up on hands and knees, but then he looks around like, "now what?" and then flattens himself back to the floor.

begun making it impossible to change his diaper! Does anyone have any suggestions on how to get a small boy to stop wiggling long enough to get poop off and a clean diaper on!?

talking more and more. He says, "gluh gluh gluh" a lot as well as, "ah ya ya ya." Only at the saddest of moments will we get a "MA MAaaah!" The funny thing is, he started this right about the same time his voice turned super hoarse because of his respiratory illness - I think he realized his voice sounded strange!

is no longer Mr. Super-chunk. He weighs 19 pounds (which we know well thanks to numerous visits to the dr. and watching to be sure he wasn't losing too much weight through this illness). I think he must have gotten longer recently since he seems a lot less chunky to me right now. We won't know his height/length again for another couple of months.

has not slept through the night for an entire month. He currently wakes up every 1 1/2 to 2 hours (Mommy is feeling the effects of this for sure!).

loves hearing people sing and nursery rhymes. We get lots of giggles from This is the Way the Ladies Ride and Humpty Dumpty. His favorite soothers are Hush Little Baby and Jesus Loves Me.

is obsessed with attempting to grab the cat.

will finally play for short periods of time while sitting up unassisted. We assume he was against this before because his tummy was so chubby that it was uncomfortable!

Eleanor Christine

I've started several posts about our Ella over the last couple of months, but they haven't quite gotten finished... and now I hardly know where to begin. Eleanor continues to grow in stature as well as vocabulary daily. She is a healthy, happy, spunky girl who gets girly-er and girly-er all the time. These days she is very into nursery rhymes, singing, being a ballerina, swimming, playing with dolls and Sesame Street. She often plays pretend and loves to "be" a baby, puppy, monster or mommy. Her imagination is WILD! She always keeps us smiling.

This evening, after dinner, Ella was running around the house and finally settled herself in the kitchen. She started pushing a toy on the refrigerator that plays the ABC Song and each time it played, she would turn around and around in circles - making herself dizzy. Finally she sat down on a small stool and we giggled about her facial expression. Next thing we knew she said, "Our house is turning... around... and around!"

Many days, Eleanor picks her own unique outfits. Leotards and tu-tus are a favorite. The above pictures are from a few days ago when it was quite warm outside, but had recently been raining, so the backyard was kind of muddy. She chose that outfit completely on her own. The rain boots are out a lot right now because it is fairly "warm" (by our standards) but it has been snowing a lot over the last week. Snow and thaw, snow and thaw...

Here are a few quotes I saved. Unfortunately, I haven't been very good about writing down her incredible little comments. Hopefully these will make you smile, though:

"When we get sad, some rain drops coming from our cheeks. Yeah, we cry and rain drops come from our eyes."

Typical prayer over a meal:

"Our Jesus, thank you for our food. Thank you for our family. Thank you for God. Thank you for making us healthy and grow strong... AMEN!"

Looking at a map of Sheridan: "Dis is South America, here Africa, dis Adeline's house and Lucas' house. Dis way to VA, dis to Daddy hunts. Dis way Iowa. Mommy, we go South America now?"

Ella sings and sings all the time... Most songs now end with, "I know my abc's next time won't you sing with me." This inevitably leads to singing the ABC song.

6 Months Already!

Benjamin turned 6 months last Saturday. We took him to the doctor on Tuesday for a Well Child Visit. Here are his stats:

Height: 25.5 inches (18%)

Weight: 18 lbs 4 oz (64 %)

Head Circumference: 43.5 cm (43%)

Thus, he's quite the chunker! We love his little chubby frame these days. Some of his favorite things are rolling over and over and over, his Baby Einstein play mat (with dangly toys he can grab and pull while listening to music with lights that flash in time), our animals, people singing and Eleanor. About a week and a half ago we were cutting down a diseased apple tree in our backyard and had some friends over to help us. They brought their golden for a little doggie playdate and London and Sadie were chasing each other around, being dogs. Benjamin watched and watched and then started laughing. He laughed and laughed at those dogs! The other things that make him laugh are Eleanor and tickling. He is very in tune with his hand-eye coordination and has great dexterity.

Some things he dislikes are being left alone, strangers, sitting up to play, food that is even the littlest bit chunky and getting shots. He is still a very calm, gentle, peaceful little guy. He smiles often and is very patient. He still doesn't vocalize very much, but we do get the occasional coo, giggle and fuss. He watches everyone and everything very intently. He is straining and straining these days to get his little body moving and ready for crawling. I think this milestone is still quite a ways away, however, since he cannot get his tummy off the ground. He is also working very hard on cutting his first teeth. We've had several rather fussy evenings lately in this regard. We can see one little white dot so far, but who knows how long it will take for this tooth to fully show itself (we've been thinking for the past two weeks that it's sure to break through in the next few days).

We are grateful daily for Ben's presence in our growing family. He's a very pleasant, joyful little man. We look forward to watching his continued growth.

Snapshots

I realized recently that we haven't blogged in almost 2 months! Sorry family!

These snapshots are the only good pictures we've gotten over that time... Eleanor is going through a "I don't want my picture taken" stage and I haven't had time to clear our overly full SD card to make more room on the camera. Until today. So hopefully we'll be taking more pictures again soon!

The above collage includes a very cold, but sunny walk out by the buffalo pen - a much needed outdoor activity. Hopefully we'll be able to enjoy the outdoors again soon! It also includes Valentine's Day when Seth surprised us by taking a few hours off work in the morning to stay home and make us breakfast, Benjamin's amazing ability to sleep hard through almost anything, his love for bathtime and Eleanor's willingness to have her picture taken when she's holding her brother (after having picked out his outfit for the day).

We hope you all are well and we hope to do a better job of keeping in touch. :)