Seven Months

Woo Hoo!  Seven months!  Still such a super sweet baby and finally consistently sleeping through the night!  :)  And he's actually starting to eat some solid food, although he is VERY picky.  He will only eat carbs.  And not from a spoon... just little pieces of torn off food that we put in his mouth.  He tries to pick them up himself and put them in his mouth but he still has trouble getting the food in there.  And just for the record... we have tried and tried and tried all kinds of fruits and veggies and he has nothing for them.  Gags, spits them out, etc.  We are still trying those, but seriously it is amazing to see him actually wolfing some solid food down... even if it was just a potato or pieces of bread.  

He has a big goose-egg on his forehead in these pics and I actually can't tell you exactly what that is from.  Probably from toppling over from sitting and hitting his head.  He is on the move all. the. time.  Full-up crawling everywhere and even standing when holding on to something (although I have to be right there because eventually he just lets go and falls down... hence the goose-egg).

These pics were hard to take because he wouldn't sit still that long.  Here he is on the go again... trying to crawl off the couch...

So I repositioned...

And then here he goes again...

So I repositioned again...

And ended the photoshoot here because he was about to take off again.  :)

We had the FSU game on the other day and D was mesmerized by the game... seriously he sat there for several minutes (okay probably just several seconds) just watching...

Here's a video of pretty much the same thing... haha.  But he does make some cute faces and sounds, too...

IMG 3027 from Heather G on Vimeo.

He loves to stand up like this and touch his sound machine after nursing...

And it was so cute the other day... Reid got this stool and was showing D how to eat solid food (aka eating all of D's food himself).  D just adores his big brothers.

Turtles!

I joined a second homeschool group a few weeks back to hopefully meet some more people and do some field trips and the first e-mail I got after joining was a message about a sea turtle nest excavation!  The group had adopted a nest on the beach and the eggs had hatched a few days prior, so we got to go out to the nest and see the volunteers dig down to the nest and sort through the eggs.  AND they said there may be a few babies still trying to make their way out of the nest.  We were so excited!

The nest was underground below that cage...

It was really hot and muggy that day, without even a breeze on the beach, which was really weird!  And the biting deer/horse flies were just attacking all of us with a vengeance, but it was worth it!  As soon as the volunteer starting moving sand away with her hands, she found a live baby right near the top!  She pulled him out and placed him into a cooler with some sand (no ice... haha) until later.

Then the volunteers took the cage off the nest so they could dig down further...

When they reached the eggs they measured the depth of the nest... 21 inches!  The volunteers said that the sand spray from the momma's flippers while she was digging her nest was 19 feet wide!  At the bottom the volunteer found another live baby and carefully pulled him out.  I was so excited because I didn't think there would be any left!

They flattened out an area of sand to lay out the eggs and sorted them into three sections:  hatched, unhatched/rotten, and partially-hatched eggs.  You can see in that one section closest to the lady that poor little guy who almost made it out, but not quite.  :(

There were 109 eggs in the nest, but only 33 of them hatched.  Hopefully one of those 33 makes it to adulthood to come back here to lay her eggs!

Then we had to do some swimming... the boys couldn't resist.

Jackson never left the nest until the very end, though.  He was enthralled.  And lucky that we stayed close because at the end the volunteers walked around with the babies so that we could all take pics and see them close up!

The volunteers wait until nighttime and release the babies right by the nest and let them make their way to the gulf on their own.  They said this is important so they can "imprint" on the sand and hopefully come back to this exact spot to lay their eggs in the future. So amazing.

And then we played in the gulf for a little while.  The water was the perfect temperature but there was a red flag and a pretty strong current so the boys had to stay close to shore.

This was Davis's first real experience at the beach!  It got me a little teary-eyed to see him sitting there... I guess since this time last year we had just moved here and he was just a tiny little bean in my belly.  And now here he is in the flesh!  Lots of chubby baby flesh.  :)

 And this baby who won't eat solid food DID eat a fistful or two of sand.  Go figure.

Here are a few short turtle videos and a little beach video, if you're so inclined...

IMG 3080 from Heather G on Vimeo.

IMG 3076 from Heather G on Vimeo.

IMG 3082 from Heather G on Vimeo.

Latest Ocala Trip

We went to Ocala this past weekend and had a wonderful time, as usual!  The boys had been talking about this trip pretty much ever since we left the last time.  :)  Here are J and E telling how many more sleeps we had until we went to Grandy and Popeye's....

We were happy to see sweet baby Peaches again.  And the boys promptly wore her out...

Here's another sweet baby...

The boys ate lots of popsicles that weekend...

 

Peaches LOVED Davis, and the feeling was mutual.  It was really neat to see how she was instinctively more gentle with him than with adults or even the older kids.  She would just sniff and lick him and kind of nuzzle him... never using her teeth (even though it looks like she is in this picture).  And he would never get upset when she loved on him... just smiled and giggled!

My niece, Olivia, liked for his hood to be up that day.  :)

Partners in crime... Oh, these two.  We could eat them up.

And these two buddies, too...

Everyone enjoying ice cream one night after dinner...

And, of course, Peaches wanted some, too!

Mommy/Daughter snuggle time...

O was looking so sweet sitting there hugging her little doggie...

Later that night I looked at old photo albums and loved these pics of Becky and me back in the day...

Becky was in town visiting from Iowa, which was the main reason for our visit.  We got to spend a lot of time together just relaxing and hanging out and it was wonderful!  Saturday morning B was outside with Reid and I thought the field was so pretty with the fog...

They were petting the horse and then Reid saw me and came running... :)

Pretty Ben...

"Hey Lady!  Can you stop taking pictures and send someone out here to feed me??"

That night Leslie and Becky and I got to go see John Mayer in Tampa!  Along with all of these people...

Is it weird that I'm always surprised at how many other people are at a concert?  I kind of feel like I'm the only one who is allowed to like that singer... like "What are all of you people doing at my concert?"  Weird.  :)  Phillip Phillips opened for John.  He was really good, too.  We just had "cheap" lawn seats, but it was still an awesome concert.  And we only got rained on a little bit.  :)

 

AND Davis took a bottle of milk (my milk... still no formula... baby steps, right?) from Phil while I was gone with no problems!   Hooray!!  It was so great to have a night out with my sisters!

The next morning we went in town to spend some time with my grandparents.  It's always so good to see them.  My Mimi looked beautiful and stylish, as usual!

The kids played with books and puzzles...

And Reid played "Tackle Davis"...

Then before we left we were able to get a nice family picture with my grandparents!  I love it!

And I just had to share the few pictures Becky snapped leading up to the good one... herding cats as usual.  Lol!

And one last pic... Reid wanted to lay down with his blankie next to Peaches.  So sweet.  But we for sure do not need a puppy right now.  :)

It was a fun weekend for sure!!  :)  We sure do love our family.