Lately

Here's a rundown of what we've been up to lately.

Eli -

Eli is almost nine months. I can't believe it! He started worm-crawling over a month ago. His skills have quickly evolved from this:

To this:

To this:

Now he's all over the place and into everything. He mostly likes to unplug our wireless router and his monitor. He takes everything off the shelf in the kitchen that houses all the kids markers/play dough/ craft supplies. He finds lint or dust bunnies on the floor and promptly puts them in his mouth. When I try to put actual food in his mouth (anything other than baby food) like tiny cheese pieces or bread, he spits it out immediately.

Case in point: He hates crawling in grass, but eating it?

No problem.

He loves bath time and now he plays peek-a-boo. He's pretty serious, though, and people try to get him to smile at them wherever we go and he'll just stare back at them stone-faced.

He doesn't sleep through the night, yet. He usually wakes up once around 4. He's on a bottle, now. That transition went pretty smoothly compared to when we did that with Sam and Afton, thankfully. He takes a morning nap around 9:30 for about an hour, then another nap around 1:30 that lasts from 1-2 hours. He likes all fruity baby foods and he likes sweet potato baby food. He peed on Dan's head yesterday.

Afton -

I thought that when Afton started kindergarten she would talk my ear off everyday about the things they do, but she doesn't, really. She likes school and only has meltdowns when she thinks they're going to have some sort of drill. (Fire drill, hurricane drill, tornado drill, lockdown drill, it's kind of ridiculous.) I had to bribe her. I told her that if she didn't cry during the next drill, I would buy her a frosty. It worked! She hasn't cried during a drill since. She likes the "resource" time during school. That's when they get to go to the library or music or PE or art, or French.

She does not like omelets.

She is very creative. She loves to draw and create things. This is a dalmatian. She still loves to dress up and changed costumes at least 4 times yesterday alone. Captain America, Spider-Man, Cinderella, and Rapunzel.

She got her first loose tooth last night and started to cry because she said, "I don't want to lose my teeth until I'm a grown-up."

Sam -

Sam is loving second grade. His teacher is super nice. He forgot his lunch the other day and I didn't notice until his lunch time was just ending. I raced over to the school only to find that his teacher had helped him through the hot lunch line. (I don't think he minded missing his PB&J since it was chicken nuggets, french fries, and chocolate milk day...)

He plays soccer and he really likes it this year. He still likes to build things with legos and blocks and he plays with his hot wheels tracks all the time, too.

His front teeth are FINALLY growing back in!

He still loves to read, too. The other morning he told us he had gotten The Old Man and the Sea off the shelf and had read it in one night. Last night he stayed up until 10:30 reading Harriet the Spy and when I went to check on him this morning, he was reading in bed until he finished the whole thing.

Me -

I had grand visions of all the things I would be able to do once the two older kids went to school. That's not happening at the speed at which I thought it would... It's hard to get anything done when Eli is awake! I have done some organizing and some baking.

This is one of the prettiest cakes I've ever made. It tasted pretty great, too, but it was more work than I thought it was going to be.

I'm coming around to pumpkin baked goods. The pumpkin muffins with chocolate chips were good.

I reupholstered our dining room chairs. They really needed it.

I volunteered to be in charge of book club for church, so I spent a good chunk of time this last week trying to finish the book I'd selected before I hosted our meeting on Wednesday night. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Great book.

Afton finally lets me do her hair before school now. Hooray!

I had been in a great habit of taking Eli for a walk around the neighborhood after we dropped the kids off at school, then putting him down and working out. Then rainmageddon came and it's been raining for a week straight. I'm still working out, but the walks have ceased. I'm looking forward to doing that again. We were supposed to have family pictures taken last Saturday. It rained. Then we moved it to yesterday. It rained again. Here's hoping next Saturday is sunny!

Dan -

 Dan has been really busy lately with work and church stuff. Eli and I went downtown to meet him last week and watch the UCI World cycling competitions. We saw guys doing a 100-mile course around Richmond.

It was pretty neat.

Dan's dream of owning a grill has been realized. Before the rains came, we used it three times in one week.

 He also bought some patio chairs to go with the hand-me-down table the old owners left.

Dan continues his rock climbing love and he's also been running a lot.

His home project list always seems to get longer and longer! He's amazing and we are so lucky to have him.

That's the latest for us!