Jed's first day of preschool

Jed is now in the three year old class at Faith Preschool. (Yes, he's four, but he has that September birthday so he'll always be one of the oldest in his class). Jed loves his teacher, and has met a new best friend named Luke.  Apparently all the kids in Jed's class love him...who wouldn't?? We love Faith! I'm looking forward to another year there!




It was a little bright

Toothless Grin

Here's what's happened in the last month:

lost first top tooth

lost other top tooth...others are close behind! 4 lost so far

Eli's first day of 1st grade

Thankfully, Eli was looking forward to going back to school after summer break. He was excited to see his friends again and meet his teacher. We haven't heard any complaining from Eli about school, but we have heard some complaining about homework. I can handle that!

Speaking of handling that, this year I've volunteered to be on the PTA board (co-chair of membership) as well as be a co-Homeroom Parent for Eli's class with my friend Jen, who is Mia's mom. I think I may have bit off more than I can chew!

Eli is continuing in the two way dual language program at school. This year, they have a mixed class of native Spanish and native English speakers, which is the way it's supposed to work. He is exposed to more Spanish that way. I love seeing him write notes in his folder in Spanish!

So far, so good for Eli's 1st grade year!

Eli and his friend, Mia, with their teacher, Mrs. Sanchez

Sunset Valley Elementary Cheetah Pride school shirt

My 3 Sons

 

Parent Rap

Summer Fun Pictures

I know the summer break is over, but I'm trying to play catch up here on the blog. Summer flew by! We spent most of the summer at the YMCA pool. It was a fun summer, although there were hard days when the boys were bored and I was at my wits' end trying to deal with three loud, energetic boys all day, every day!

Here are some pictures from the end of our summer break:

Beach Trip

In late July/early August, we went to the beach in Port Aransas with Grandpa and Gramma Ninny, Aunt Brynn, and cousins Grayson and Garrett. Grandpa and Gramma Ninny rented a nice little beach house for all of us to stay in, which was just a short walk over the boardwalk to the beach. It was perfect!

We had a great time except for the little incident when Garrett got stung by a sting ray! He was in a lot of pain and we weren't sure if the barb was in his foot, so we ended up calling the ambulance to come check out his foot. There was no barb, and we found out that to treat a sting ray sting, all you do is soak it in very hot water for about 45 minutes and then treat it with iodine and bandage it up. As soon as Garrett put his foot in the hot water, the stinging went away, and we was walking on it a couple hours later. Eli liked seeing the ambulance in action, and thankfully everything turned out to be okay.

The day we left, John and I took they boys to the Texas Aquarium in Corpus Christi. What a cool place! We saw many different kinds of sea life as well as a dolphin show. The USS Lexington ship is right next to the aquarium, so we stopped there. The boys loved checking out the ship. It's huge!

So, it was a fun vacation all around. I love driving only 3 and 1/2 hours for a beach vacation!

14th anniversary

July 18th, John and I celebrated our 14th anniversary! For our anniversary date, we went on an afternoon date to the greenbelt for a little hike and dip in the cool springs. It was perfect! I love that Austin has several hidden gems in the greenbelt that are within 10 minutes from our house.

Stranger Danger?

Last time we were in Dallas in July, we went out to eat with Grandpa and Gramma Ninny to their favorite Mexican restaurant. They go there every Friday night and know everyone who works there. However, Max was not a fan of our server for some reason. Every time he came to our table Max would start to panic. Since then, Max has gotten better with waiters, but if we have a male server, Max gets worried.  Not sure what it is, but it is pretty funny. Poor Max is scared and we're all laughing at him!

Max is 9 months old!

Wow, Max has accomplished so much in the last month! In fact, at his nine month well check today, the doctor said that he's doing so much that he's all messed up. In other words, his brain is working hard keeping up with all these new developments. Unfortunately, I think these new milestones are all affecting his sleep as well, and he's not wanting to stay asleep. He wants to practice his new skills instead of sleep! Here's a list of his new accomplishments this month:

• he got another tooth on the bottom and three more are close behind, making eight total teeth
• eats finger foods and loves feeding himself
• waves bye-bye/night-night
• clicks tongue and loves when you click back
• likes growling back and forth with people
• gives kisses by smacking his lips
• likes to dance whenever any music comes on by bobbing head and/or body up and down
• he practiced all month and finally started crawling one week before he turned 9 months! First he went from being on his belly to sitting up, then he was doing a move where he would do a push up and balance on his toes with stretched out legs, then he did the crawling position and rocking on his hands and knees, he could crawl backwards for awhile, then he finally took off!
• a few days after he started crawling, he started pulling up to his knees and then to standing soon after that
• he likes to pull up on the ottomans and bite off the leather on them; not sure what to do about that
• he also likes to pull up on the piano and play it; he's so tall, he can reach the keys already
• and as of today, he can clap his hands

avocado!

The Plank

You see his tan lines? He even has tan lines
on his wrists and ankles where his rolls are.

We'll blame this on the angle of the camera : )

Whew! Needless to say, Max has been busy! He's also been busy growing. He weighs in at 23 pounds and is 31 inches long. At the doctor's office, the nurse asked me how much I thought he weighed, and when I guessed 23 pounds, she laughed and said, "Thant's a little ambitious, don't you think?", and I was right on the money! He's about the size of a 15-18 month old. Slow down, Max!

Spiderman!

This year for the 4th of July, we went up to Dallas to hang out with family. While we were there, we found out about a special event at the Amazing Jake's fun center at the mall...breakfast with Spderman! Knowing that Jed is a huge fan of Spiderman, we knew we couldn't miss this! So, everyone headed out to the mall at 8:00 on Saturday morning to go eat some breakfast at the buffet and meet Spiderman. Most of us were excited to see Jed meet Spiderman, but I think Grayson and Garrett were way more excited about the breakfast buffet! We ended up spending half of the day there playing games, riding go karts, playing mini golf and lazer tag, plus riding the carousel and the little train. We got our money's worth and stayed for the lunch buffet as well. Jed loved the whole experience, but his only regret was that he didn't get to wear his Spiderman costume since we left it at home in Austin.

Breakfast!

The big kids are still fans!

Lazer Tag

Riding go karts w/ cousin Grayson

Mammy was brave enough to ride w/ Garrett driving!

The spider with 7 legs

Cardboard Creations

I found out about this amazing video/story about a 9 year old kid who created an ellaborate arcade out of cardboard. You can watch the video here. It's pretty inspiring! I knew Eli would be inspired to make his own creation after he watched it, and I was right. For his first project, he made a football game where you pull back the die with the rubber band and try to make it through the field goal to get points. I'm looking forward to seeing the next game he's going to create, which Eli says will be a soccer game. What a great way for him to use his brain this summer! We had a talk about "plan B", trial and error, and it's also a lesson in patience!

I got the die in mid air!...see it?

Kids!

Our friend, Heidi, has her own urban farm, which is much more involved than ours, and she lives in a neighborhood just 2 minutes from us. They happen to have goats and one of the mamas just had babies, so we went to go see them. Baby goats are the cutest! She had three baby boys, so I welcomed her into the three boys club. I'm glad I didn't have all mine at once though! They are named Old Spice (b/c he was stinky when he came out), Jake, and Donny V.

Unfortunately, we heard some sad news yesterday that one of the baby goats didn't make it. They had to put the darker brown and black one down because they discovered he didn't have a hole for poop to come out. Poor thing! He wasn't eating and had a huge belly. I'm sure he was miserable. So sad.

Here's Jed with Jake

Mama and Old Spice

The brown one in the back is Donny V.

Max and Jake

Fun Times!

the jumpy seat!

Eli took this one of Spiderman

Eli reading books to his brothers

the superhero costume Jed came up with

Max 6-8 months

He is the size of a toddler, literally!  Max was just under 23 pounds and about 30 inches long at his 7 month appointment.  He's in 12-18 month size clothes.  It looks like he should be walking, but for now Max is just rolling to where he wants to go. He finally started sitting up by himself a couple weeks ago. That stage was short (a little over a week) but sweet because I could sit him down next to his box of toys, walk away, and he would still be there when I came back. Now he can go to a crawling position from sitting and then rocks back and forth on his hands and knees like he's going to take off crawling. Not yet, Max!

There are now four teeth (or toofies, as Jed calls them) in his mouth! Max eats like a champ and seems to like baby food more than Eli or Jed ever did when they were babies. We've started some finger foods as well, which he also likes. The boy just likes to eat!

Max still just goes with the flow. Even when he should be fussy due to the fact that he needs to nap, he still is generally happy except for some eye-rubbing and minimal fussing. I don't get it, he'll take only and 30 min. morning nap, we'll go swimming at the pool until past naptime but he's fine. He'll conk out a couple minutes after we get in the car to head home though.

Another new thing Max has started doing is babbbling! I love the baby babble. So far, he's only saying /ba ba/ or /ma ma/, and a few /guh/ sounds. Max likes to try copy us, especially Eli or Jed. He laughs back when we laugh or grunts/growls back to us. It's a fun game!

Oh, and his hair seems to be thicker and getting some curls in the back. It's still blonde with some red tint to it. He has more hair like Jed did and it's blonde like Eli's was...a good combo!