A Few Things

A few weeks ago on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon we went up to the lake near our house.  The water was pretty cold, but the boys had a ball playing in it.  We ordered lunch and had a picnic on the shore and just enjoyed being together.

Jackson is getting really good at hitting a baseball with a bat.  Granted, the bat is larger than usual size and the ball is plastic, but we still think he does a great job!  He absolutely loves going out back when Phil gets home from work and letting Daddy pitch the ball to him.  We are definitely gearing up for t-ball next spring!

My mom sent the boys some cute dinosaur water bottles the other day and I thought it was a good opportunity to catch a little of Emmett's speech on video.  He is just talking up a storm!  We can't believe how one day a few weeks ago everything just clicked and he started spewing out all of the words he's saved up over the past two years.  :) 

J and E love to play "Guess Which Hand?" with Phil.  They just think it is hysterical.  And we think it's hysterical that now J and E will walk up to us with something big sticking out of their fist and say, "Guess which hand?"  It's so cute that they can't even tell (or don't even care) that we can totally see which hand the thing is in!

We had a wonderful visit with Nana and Papa Swoop (Phil's dad and stepmom) this past week.  Here's a sneak peek into a big project (that turned out absolutely awesomely) that Phil and his dad worked on...

The boys just LOVED hanging with N and PS.  Reid was in love with Nana for sure (and I think the feeling was mutual).  :)  More to come on their visit soon.  The boys and I are off this morning to visit Phil at an air show in California.  Here's hoping they sleep well in the hotel room tonight!

First Day of School

Today was Jackson's first day of 4-year-old preschool.  This year he goes Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 8:30-11:30.  A few of his good friends from his class last year switched to another school this year that meets every day of the week and I debated for a while about sending him there instead.  I really didn't want to send him every day, but I thought maybe I should follow the other moms and send him with his friends.  I was proud of myself, though, for sticking to my guns and doing what I thought was best for J and our family and not following the crowd, like I usually do!  I love his little church school and it is perfect for what I want him to be doing right now.  He has a new teacher this year and seems to like her so far.  Today when I dropped him off he walked right in and said hi to her and then said, "After we get home I can go in the backyard and hit balls with Daddy and then I can get a home run like [Curious] George!"  Phil has today off from work and told J that they would play baseball when he got home from school and J was very excited to share this news with his teacher.  J is very friendly right now and will talk to anyone and sometimes talk their ear off.  :)  Here's my big boy right before we left for school.  It's much hotter this year than it was last year on the first day of school!  I just love him so much...

6 Month Reid

He's a big-un!  Well, I don't know how big he actually is (we're about a month behind on check-ups), but everyone comments on his huge thighs and knees.  And he's eating like a horse.  He loves baby food, as long as it is at least a little bit sweet and contains apples or bananas in some way.  I actually can't believe how much he eats sometimes.  He loves to take a bite and then stick his fingers in his mouth and suck on them before taking another bite.  So cute!  Here's a video... (and please excuse the mess in the background and our broken sliding glass window that randomly burst one day while Phil and the boys were eating lunch)...

Untitled from Heather G on Vimeo.

He started crawling a few weeks before his six-month birthday and is now all over the place.  This is totally fine and makes him really happy... the only problem is that he's still spitting up a lot and he often ends up leaving a snail trail wherever he goes from crawling through his spit-up.  Yes, it really is gross.  I almost can't keep up with how much he does it!  Luckily he usually just spits up on the hardwood floor and (other than having to sometime scrape it out of the cracks with a knife) it's not too hard to clean up.  Was that TMI?  I really do try to keep the floors clean of spit-up!  For anyone else who had a bad spitter... when does the spitting end??  I was hoping it would stop when we started solids, but no such luck.  Here's a crawling video...

He is just the happiest baby all of the time!  The only time he ever gets too upset (and even then it's not that bad) is when he's hungry.  He's always so smiley!

He ate these two whole jars of food (with some rice cereal added) in one sitting!

In Reid's case it really is true what they say about him wanting to keep up with his brothers.  I can't believe how quickly he learned how to crawl and how he seems eager to do other things, too.  He was on his knees holding on to the side of the crib the other morning when I went to get him, and I actually saw him trying to climb up onto the fireplace the other day.  He started out like this and then I scooped him up...

And here he is already getting into the big boy toys!

I wonder if this means he'll walk early, too.  I hope so, because I'd much rather have a walker than a crawler!  The sooner they get up off of the gross, dirty ground, the better in my book!  :)

Reid really loves watching his brothers and just recently started laughing at the things they do.  Jackson thinks this is the coolest thing and loves to make Reid laugh.  This was such a cute moment last night...

Catching Up... Again

After Jackson's special request a few weeks ago, we went to feed the ducks down at the lake.  Phil was flying nights so he was able to come with us.  Only we didn't so much feed the "ducks" as we did the geese and mainly the gross seagulls.  But no matter... the boys enjoyed it anyway.  The birds were all very tame and got close to us without being nasty, thankfully.  Phil was even getting the seagulls to do tricks for their food... he would throw the bread up in the air and they would catch it mid-flight.  Pretty cool. 

Our squadron had a First Friday get-together at our baseball team's last Friday night game for the season.  It was really fun and made me wish we had gone to more games.  Hopefully they'll be back next summer.  Here's Reid and I enjoying the game after Phil and I participated in a little push-up competition out on the field between innings.  He let me win (gentleman that he is).  :)

My friend Michelle and I took a two-night alone trip to San Francisco a few weekends ago.  Aaaahhh... it was so great to be without kiddos for two days and fun to be in a "land of plenty" for a change.  :) It is hard to live in such a small town all the time, but we are really thankful to be within 6 driving hours of several cool big cities.  And we feel like if we lived in a bigger city all the time we wouldn't take nearly as many fun little trips as we do.  Living without a lot of fun stores and restaurants and things to do really makes you appreciate them!  Here we are at our first stop for lunch with our Mexican tomato-y beers (they have some special name, but I can't think of it right now).
 

My Aunt Wendy and Uncle Steve (and their three daughters) live in an amazing house up on a hill in Oakland.  We were so thankful to be able to spend some time with them and stay one night at their place.  We spent our second night in downtown San Francisco, but I didn't take any other pictures after this one!  Having too much fun, I guess. 

 

Jackson and Emmett's days have been filled with the standard bike-riding, getting soaked with the hose outside, painting and cutting paper for about 3.7 seconds, reading the occasional book, playing a few computer games, chasing each other around the house, wrestling, building train tracks, eating snacks, and playing with friends.  One of the reasons I haven't been blogging as much is because the boys have been really stir-crazy lately and I'm having to help them find things to do a lot more than I used to.  It is really frustrating sometimes because they have SO many toys and books and the weather has been beautiful outside, but nothing seems to hold their attention for very long.  Jackson is almost worse about it than Emmett, which I think is weird.  He starts preschool again in a few weeks, so hopefully that will help.  Emmett plays really well by himself when J is not around, so I think J's school will be good for E, too.  

These boys love to be sans-clothing.  Maybe we shouldn't let them run around without clothes as much as we do (at our house, only, of course!), but I figure we're bundled up so much for most of the year that we'd better let our skin breathe and enjoy the warm air while we have it!  Here are some pics of naked and semi-naked trampoline fun the other night...

 

The one thing that the boys love, love to do that will keep them busy for a while is play out in the driveway with all of their riding toys and ride their bikes up and down the street.  Of course, this is the hardest for me because I have to be out front with them, too, and can't get much of anything done.  But they love it, so we try to do it for a while at least once a day.  

Reid loves being outside, too!  My big boy is 6 months old now!  I have a post in the works of all that he's doing now.

I've been making some crazy changes in my house again, too.  We are at the three-year mark in this house, and for the past ten years this is the point at which we have moved to a new place.  So I'm getting the moving itch again and trying to stifle it by repainting my house and rearranging some things.  I think it's working.  :)

We participated in our neighborhood garage sale a few weekends ago and sold a bunch of furniture and random decoration-stuff that we've (I've) had for a while.  We made over $600!  One of the things we sold that made me happiest was that awful pleather couch that we had in our family room.  It was actually one of the first things to go... for the asking price, too!  And we had at least 10 more people ask about it throughout the day.  Go figure.  We should have priced it higher!  Anyway, we used the money we made to buy a new couch.  It's actually a sofa/chaise combo from Ikea.  (I'm having a love-affair with Ikea right now.  He just came into my life a few months ago and I love him.  The closest one to us is in Portland, but between there, Orlando, and San Francisco, I've managed to visit him quite a bit these past few months.)  ANYWAY yes, the sofa is white.  And yes, I realize I have three boys.  And yes, it already has a few marks on it.  And yes, I know I'm usually really OCD about things.  But I really love it and I think I'm being pretty relaxed about it so far.  AND it is slipcovered, AND the slipcovers are machine washable, AND I can buy a whole new slipcover for $50 if I need to, AND I plan on getting a darker slipcover at some point.  But the white was cheapest for now and I have to save up for another color.  :)  Here are my little bruisers checking it out.  Oh, how they love to wrestle...

It's longer than our pleather couch was and has more seating, but somehow it looks like it takes up a lot less space than the other one did.  It's more clean-lined and lower to the ground, and I think that makes a big difference.  And the white really brightens up the room.  Enough about the couch already, Heather... sheesh!  :)

Oh, Emmett.

He is a mess!  He cracks us up every day.  He's now talking up a storm!  It's amazing to us that in the month since my parents left something just clicked and now he's imitating everything and saying two- and three-word combinations!  He's also gone through a major growth spurt and has lost some of his baby chunkiness.  Phil even had to raise up the seat on his bike.  :(  Getting so big so fast!  He certainly keeps us on our toes, but also makes life very interesting and fun (and crazy and frustrating, too, sometimes!).  :)

Two little Jackson tidbits that I want to remember:

1.  J is extremely lovey and affectionate.  We were having some snuggy time in the bed the other morning and J was telling Emmett how much he loved him.  He gave E a big kiss and then said, "You're a really good kisser, Emmett!" 

2.  J came with me to take my sister to the airport the other day (Beck was here for a week... hence the reason I've been so bad at blogging again!).  He just looked so grown-up and cute sitting in the back of the van and I said, "Jackson, you're so cute! I want to eat your face.  Can I eat your face?"  J holds up his hand and says, "Not right now, Mom.  Wait til we get home."