Reid-y Reiderson

Reid is eight months old now and busy as a bee.  He is all over the place all of the time... pulling up on everything and cruising along the furniture.  He loves the dishwasher and the pantry.

He loves sitting at the table like a big boy.

Jackson loves Reid all of the time, but Emmett is not such a fan of Reid's mobility.  He gets very frustrated when Reid touches any of his trains or other toys.  We're working on it!

Reid loves to eat.  He still nurses about five times a day and eats at least one jar of solid food at breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  We just had his six-month checkup (I'm a little behind), and I was a little surprised that he's not bigger than he is.  He's in the 10th percentile for height and the 25-50th for weight and head size.  He's still spitting up quite a bit, but the doctor said it's normal as long as he's gaining weight and happy. She said hopefully when he starts eating less liquidy foods around one year that will help.

I love his little feet sticking out of the bottom of the high chair.

He is such a happy baby, as long as he's not tired or hungry.  :)  He laughs a lot at the things his brothers do.  He goes to bed around 6:30 or 7:00 and has been sleeping through the night since about six months old.  He wakes every day around 6:15, though... ready for his milk!  He's a pretty good napper and was much easier to get on a nap schedule than his brothers.  Maybe because I was more relaxed about it this time.  He takes two naps a day and lately they've both been around 1-1/2 to 2 hours long.  It's very nice.  Jackson and Emmett still take regular naps, too, which is wonderful.  1:30-3:00 in the afternoon is a happy time of day for me! 

He loves these bar stools.  He climbs underneath them and pulls up on them and gets so proud of himself! Luckily, they're very sturdy.  I just realized that in these next pics he only has one sock on.  I cannot keep socks on his feet.  I set him down and five minutes later at least one is gone and the other is hanging on by a thread.  And I know his outfits are mismatched, but at home we just dress for comfort.  I promise that when we go out in public he always looks presentable.  :)

This totally cracked me up!

Let's see it again, up close...

Hahahahaha!!!  He is so cute!

Wanting to join his bros for lunch...

Uh-oh.  He's also discovered how to climb up on the hearth.  So far he's only done it this one time, though, because about two seconds after I took this picture he did a nose dive off the edge onto the floor.  I guess that's pretty self-critiquing.  He was fine, though... not even a lump on the head. 

Do you see that fat little hand and that chubby big toe sticking out of this pants?  Ohhhh... baby hands and feet are so yummy.  Actually all of Reid is yummy!  He's my precious little baby boy.

Soccer, Secret Hideouts, and Sayings

Jackson started soccer last week.  We weren't really sure how it was going to go over, but he was SO excited at his first practice.  He had a little trouble focusing and controlling the ball because of this excitement, but I think he had a lot of fun.  Hopefully he continues to enjoy it.   I can't wait to see him in his little jersey!

The little boy in the white and blue is one of J's buddies from school and J was really excited to see that they were on the same team.

My friend Michelle's daughter is also on J's team.  I thought she looked so cute with her pigtails and shin guards on...

Stay tuned for pics from their first game this weekend!  Should be interesting!  :)

A few weeks ago I changed the position of our couch in the living room.  I was tired of it the way it was and I feel like it opens up the room a lot more this way.  Anyway, the couch is pulled away from the wall a few feet and the space back there makes the perfect secret hideout for J and E.  Phil sometimes puts a sheet over the back of the couch to make a little fort for them, but they love going back there even without the sheet.  They are really into Jake and the Neverland Pirates on Disney Jr. right now and they like to pretend that space is their very own pirate hideout.

Jackson memorized his first Bible verse!

I've really been trying to take more videos lately.  I just love looking back at old videos and hearing how J used to talk and I feel like I don't have enough of those!  So I've been trying to take more of the boys talking and just doing normal everyday things.  In this video I was trying to think of things that E says now that we think are really cute.  I should have written down what I wanted him to say!  I'm really glad that I remembered to get "milk" (which sounds like "moat"), "I love you so much, Mom," and "blankie" ("ginkie") on there.  :)

It's funny to me how when I'm taking the video I sometimes have no idea what he's saying to me, and then when I watch it back it makes perfect sense and I can't believe I didn't understand him!

Fun Family Visit and a Short Vacay

I'm going to stop apologizing for not blogging in a while.  It doesn't seem that I'm going to get any better about it anytime soon!  I hope that the few friends and family that read this will hang with me anyway.  :)

Phil's dad and stepmom were here a few weeks ago and we all really enjoyed their visit.  The boys looovved hanging with their Nana and Papa Swoop and Phil and I really enjoyed seeing them, too!  We had a little mini happy hour every night and Phil's dad helped us with a few projects around the house, which was so nice!  Charlene is so great with the boys and it was really nice to have someone to help out with holding and feeding Reid and playing with J and E.  We went on a fun double date one night to a yummy Thai restaurant (which has really great food but not the best atmosphere... but Phil's choice won out on this one)...  :)

We all drove over the mountain to the "big" city one day.  Here's R sleeping so sweetly in the car.  For about 35 minutes.  Then he fussed the rest of the way because he could see Nana and wanted her to pick him up!  :)

We packed everyone into our minivan and J loved having some company in the back seat.

And we can't forget our E...

We popped over to the mall for a little bit and then went to the splash park, which we thought would be a big hit with the boys.  Not so much!  It was right about naptime and the water was really cold.  That combo did not make for super happy boys.

Emmett still managed to soak himself, though. 

The next night we had a little bonfire in our fire pit to burn some of the extra wood from a project Phil and his dad worked on.  I also burned my diaries from high school (ahhhhhh... that felt good)  :)  and we finally got rid of our Christmas trees from the past two years.  They'd been hanging out behind our fence.  I know... classy.  The boys loved watching Phil cut up the wood and they especially loved the s'mores we ate later. 

I thought they looked so cute hanging onto the fence watching Daddy.

Nana and the boys had lots of snuggle time on the couch.  I always love this time right before bed when they're all clean from baths and super snuggly.  I'm glad Nana got to experience it!  :)

Here's Chris hard at work painting the big project that he and Phil worked on.  They made a banquette for our breakfast area!  It is my favorite thing in our house now.  Look at all of that hidden storage!  They did such a great job on it... it totally looks like it has always been there.  I was very impressed!  I can't believe we didn't think of doing it sooner!

The boys loved their Lightning McQueen coloring books that Nana bought for them.

Look at these cute best buddies snuggling on our bed and watching a few minutes of Cars.  They are so precious.
 

The night before Chris and Charlene left we set the timer on our camera and took a family picture.  I thought it came out surprisingly well, except for being blurry for some reason.  And we were totally giggling about Phil's dad's pose.  He set the timer and ran back to be in the pic and didn't have enough time to sit down.

I love this cute video of Reid talking to Charlene.  They were best buddies while she was here!  He was talking so loud in reality, but with all of the background noise in our house you can't hear him very well. 

Thanks so much for coming, Chris and Charlene!  We sure enjoyed spending time with you guys!

The weekend after C and C left Phil flew a jet down to an air show in Redding, CA.  I loaded up the boys and all of our gear and drove down for one night.  I wanted to record a few things about the trip just for posterity.  It was fun to get out of town as a family for a little bit, but we quickly remembered how crazy it can get.

We met Phil at the air show right before the F-18 demonstration flight.  We were eating lunch in the VIP tent when the jet took off and he did a very loud afterburner climb right in front of the tent.  As you can imagine, our little sensitive J, who hates loud noises, was NOT happy!  It was really loud and he started crying.  I took him out of the tent so that we could watch the jet while he plugged his ears and he calmed down and seemed to maybe even enjoy it a little bit.  At one point he looked up at me and said (with his fingers still in his ears), "Mommy, can you wipe my teardrops?"  Oh, I wanted to eat him up right there.  Phil stayed in the tent with Reid, who was also a little upset at the noise, and Emmett came out and watched with J and me.  All was good then, until we thought the demo was over and went back into the tent to leave and the jet flew directly overhead, really low, with afterburners.  It was SO loud and even scared me to death!!  You can just imagine the scene that ensued.  I think a curse word might have come out of my mouth (luckily you couldn't hear it!) and all three boys were crying!  We just had to laugh as we tried to calm everyone down.  Needless to say, we left right after that... we did NOT want to stay to see the Thunderbirds fly!

Reid actually took a decent nap when we got to the hotel, but for some reason he did not want to sleep at night in the pack and play.  He was up off and on the whole night.  Emmett was up several times, too.  We think he might have night terrors.  They don't happen too much at home, but there have been a few times over the past few months where he wakes up at night just screaming and almost nothing calms him down.  It usually takes about 20 min or so for him to settle down, but then he goes right back to sleep.  We find that it usually happens if he goes to bed really late for some reason and/or isn't in his bed at home.  Anyway, Phil took Reid for a drive around 5 A.M. since he wasn't wanting to sleep and we wanted J and E to be able to sleep a little longer.  We were all really tired that next day, but the boys did really well in stores and restaurants.  There was a really nice pool at the hotel and J and E had a blast playing in it.  J still talks about it!  So like I said, it was fun to get out of town and spend some time together as a family, but it was a bit crazy at times. I don't think we'll be staying in one hotel room together again anytime soon!  :)