Ten Months

Bennett William at ten months of age is a conundrum. On one hand, he's the sweetest, smiliest, cuddliest boy on the planet. On the other hand, he's the wildest, wiggliest, most opinionated baby I've had. Yes, it's true, my sweet third born, who I thought was my "easy baby" has turned into his own little tornado. This kid is FAST! I can set him down and turn my head and he's halfway down the hall trying to throw himself down the stairs. He's now almost impossible to hold in church because he's always squirming to get down so that he can examine the floor for the most disgusting thing he can find to eat. When he doesn't get set down like he wants, he starts squealing like a little pig and throwing himself backwards. Beware, he can bloody your nose, as Brent was lucky enough to find out! He loves faces and hair, and will pull, hit and scratch whenever he gets close enough to touch you. Maura and Tristan are always getting just a little too close and Bennett's lightning fast reflexes are always ready to grab a big chunk of hair. They don't like it much at all! He's also crawling very well and he can reach any an all toys that they're playing with. Suddenly that cute little brother isn't so cute anymore! They still love him so much, though! He is impossible not to love when he gives you his most charming smile. He's still a charmer and works his magic on all the ladies!

Maura and Tristan love Bennett, but they also love to torment him. Some of their favorite activities are stealing away toys that he's worked so hard to get. They also enjoy throwing things, shooting things and tapping him with things. I don't think that the intention is ever to hurt him, but sometimes I question their judgement! And so...you get crazy action like in this photo. That's a marshmallow gun that Tristan is aiming at Bennett's head and yes, that's the back of the couch that Maura is standing on. Yep, I'm an awesome parent! I also let me baby crawl at lightning speed down the driveway towards the road. He was fast--I can't imagine that crawling on concrete is terribly comfortable!

We had about three nice days during the month of April, so we made sure to take as much advantage of them as we could! Bennett and Tristan chose to play football. Look at that form. Brent will be so proud!

My boys! I pray that they'll always be friends. Maybe they'll bond over a shared love of balls, or perhaps they'll just fight over said balls. What looks like a peaceful exchange in the photos was actually Bennett squealing as Tristan tried to steal his ball. Bennett has learned to stand up for himself!

Super Bennett! At ten months he's mostly on solid foods. He's still nursing, but he's beginning to wean himself, to the point that I've been giving him cups of formula with his meals so that he gets enough fluid. He's FINALLY napping reasonably well, taking a 1-2 hour nap at 10 and 2 hour nap at 2. He's still not consistently sleeping through the night. It seems like every time he gets to a point where he's sleeping well, he gets a cold and we're back to 1-3 awakenings a night. Agg! I would think that the shear amount of physical activity he does every day would wear him out so that he'd sleep at night! He is a mover and a shaker. He's attempting the stairs now, much to my dismay. He will pull up on anything and will climb over obstacles in his way. He's beginning to be interested in books and will sit and read with me for short periods of time before bed. I love watching him read "Pat the Bunny" with me. He does all the activities in the book without being shown what to do. He's still not talking much. He says, "HI" all the time, but otherwise is just babbling. I think he may be trying to say "kitty" but it doesn't sound much like it! He just LOVES his Mommy right now, and his Daddy too. I figure that I have about six more months before I get replaced as the most important person in his life, so I'm going to enjoy and relish those months as much as possible! I guess I'd better go squeeze a few cuddles in right now!

Teddy Bear Picnic

I LOVE our library. We have some of the most wonderful, kind, creative children's librarians in the world. They make the library a warm and welcoming place for my little ones and I appreciate the library so much. It doesn't hurt either that the library is in our neighborhood. My kids have spent so much time there over the course of our life that it seems almost like a second home to us. We try to make it to story time every week, depending on nap schedules. Lately we've been a bit hit and miss due to Bennett's two nap a day schedule. When they announced the second annual Teddy Bear Picnic, though, I knew it was a can't miss event. It coincides with National Library Day and the librarians invited everyone to bring their lunch and picnic blankets for a picnic behind the library. We met Dawn and Lily there for a fun afternoon event.

Maura and Lily had so much fun trading animals and pretending their animals were climbing trees. The kids ran around like crazy, blew bubbles and generally had a wonderful time until they were called in for story time. Ms. Kathy read "Teddy Bear Picnic" and then it was time for bed.

We tucked our animals in for a Teddy Bear sleepover. You can see Tristan's T. Rex up at the top of the photo. He tucked his T. Rex in nice and tight, we gathered up all our things, walked to the parking lot, and he sprinted back to the library. When I finally caught up with him, he was pulling his T. Rex out of the "bed." No amount of explaining could get him to leave his animal there. Oh well! When we picked up Maura's kitty the next day, they had a book prepared with photos of all the animals and the mischief they'd gotten into that night. It was so cute! Love those librarians!

I just had to include this photo of Maura with a bird she made out of clay. I thought it was pretty awesome! She's a talented one, she is!

Spring Break

Although we weren't in Tennessee for the happiest of reasons in early April, we decided to make to most of our time there. We were blessed that the funeral coincided with Brent's spring break so that we were able to spend time with our family. We don't often have the chance to spend time with Amy, Ava, and Myla, so we planned some fun activities. One day, we travelled to Murfeesboro to a wonderful children's museum. The kids had a great time playing on the exhibits and having Nan and Poppa there was an added bonus.
I was especially glad to be there with Nan and Poppa as it gave me the opportunity to play on the exhibits with the big kids. Bennett loved hanging out with Nan, but he ESPECIALLY loved the baby exhibit with lots of climbing obstacles, mirrors and shiny things. He was just getting good a crawling and he loved having the freedom to get down and crawl all over the place!

Poppa took charge of Myla and helped her to use the digger. I think Poppa was having more fun than Myla! Bennett "helped" Daddy build a boat out of sticks.

One of my favorite exhibits was this "garage" The kids changed into work smocks, grabbed their power tools and changed the tires on this car, changed the oil, and filled it up with gas. I love the look of intense concentration on their faces! I could see Tristan growing up to work on cars someday.

Tristan and I took a ride on this antique truck and the kids took a walk along the simulated wetlands before we headed home for dinner. Tristan crashed in the car and could not be awoken, despite several attempts! We eventually carried him in and laid him on the floor in the noisy house and he slept through it all! Poor tired boy!

Meanwhile, Maura and Ava were having loads of fun together. It's amazing to me how well the kids get along together. I'm not going to lie--my children fight with each other on a fairly routine basis. Somehow, when we add Ava to the mix, everyone seems to get along. Perhaps it's the novelty of having a cousin close in age, but they just have a wonderful time together. On this trip, all three kids camped out in Nan and Poppa's room. They LOVED it! It was non-stop fun at Nan and Poppas; snacks, popcorn and movies were the order of the day. No wonder my kids love a trip to Nan and Poppa's--it's almost like Disney World!

One morning, all the kids wanted to play computer games at the same time. We settled that by setting up three different laptops for them. All three kids sat and played games for a really long time. It looked like a computer lab in there! Myla was a bit young for the computer lab, so she just stole Nan's shoes for a little high heeled fun.

Aunt Amy loved the chance to snuggle her youngest nephew and I think Bennett was enjoying his cuddles too! It was a wonderful visit with some great family time and we felt blessed to be able to be there and spend extra days with family. Nan and Poppa sure do have some beautiful grandchildren. We are so blessed!

Goodbye to GG

Brent's grandmother, Carol, was a wonderful lady. Throughout the fourteen years that I've known her, she's been such a warm, gracious, loving person. She accepted me into her family and treated me as though I was one of her own grandchildren. She and I shared a love of christian fiction and we enjoyed trading books back and forth and discussing them. Grandmother loved our children and I still remember how special it was to introduce each child to her for the very first time. She had been sick for a number of months and we knew that she would not survive her illness. We knew that her health was declining, so Brent took a day off school to spend time with her. He visited with her and Grandpoppa, read her the Bible and tried to make her as comfortable as he could while he was there. He spent a number of hours with her in the early afternoon and that evening, she slipped from this world into the next. I'll always be glad that Brent had that time with her to say his final goodbyes. I wish I had had a chance to say goodbye too. We soon travelled to TN to pay our respects and attend the funeral. Although it was a really sad occasion, we enjoyed the family time so much and I know that Grandmother would have been pleased to have her whole family together. We'll miss her so much at family gatherings, but we have some amazing memories of her life and love.

On our trip down to Tennessee, Tristan asked me if he could color. After an extensive discussion about which coloring page he wanted, I handed him back a coloring book and a blue marker with which to color it. When I looked back a few minutes later, this is what I saw. Coloring fail. He thought he looked awesome!!!

Below: Soon after arriving in Tennessee, we headed over to GG and Grandpoppa's house for a family gathering. All the cousins were arriving and we were anxious to spend time with them. Maura spent her time at GG's house gathering up wisteria. I think I'll always connect that flower with GG as she had a gorgeous vine growing up a tree at her house.

Nan got in on the flower collection and they made a beautiful basket of flowers together.

Below: Tristan disappeared for a moment and I knew exactly where to look for him. He and Jack found the tractor and had a great time pretending to drive it. When I found them, Tristan was getting ready to head back to the house to look for the tractor keys. Believe me, if he had found them he would have started that tractor up and they'd be halfway to Texas by now!

Poppa got some cuddle time with Sweet Bennett. Actually, I'm surprised that Bennett survived his cuddle time--apparently he swiped three grapes off Poppa's plate and managed to pop them into his mouth before he was discovered! Yikes! Go-go-Gadget arms! Uncle Matt got a chance to hang out with his youngest nephew too. Bennett loved showing Uncle Matt his new moves!

It was Tristan, though, who most enjoyed his time with Uncle Matt, because Matt likes to rough house with the kids. Right up Tristan's alley! He kept encouraging Tristan to run at him and knock him over. Tristan was more than happy to oblige. I even caught Matt inviting Tristan to jump off the arm of the chair in true WWF fashion. I quickly nixed that idea. I think even tough Matt might get a bit hurt by 45 pounds landing on his chest! I truly wish that Matt lived closer so that he could have a closer relationship with his niece and nephews. Uncle Matt is COOL with his guitar playing, motorcycle riding, jet flying activities. Truly the stuff that little boy heroes are made of!

The fun didn't stop there for Tristan. He and John Henry found a tennis ball suspended from the garage ceiling. They looked like a couple of monkeys trying to catch that ball! Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum. These two are going to get into serious trouble together someday. They're only five months apart in age.

Below: Speaking of monkeys--this little guy is truly a monkey these days. Now that he can crawl, he spends all his time trying to wiggle out of the arms of whomever is carrying him so that he can GO GO GO! He especially loves the challenge of trying to make it out through an open door before it's shut. He's a wild man!

We loved having the chance to visit with Caroline and Walton. Grandmother would have loved having all her grandchildren together at the same time. I'm really glad that she had the opportunity to have almost everyone together back in November at her birthday party. We were back at Aunt Claudia's house for the wake just like we'd gathered last November. I couldn't help comparing the two gatherings. In November, we were all together, celebrating GG's birthday and GG and Grandpoppa's 60th wedding anniversary. We knew GG was sick, so we wanted to celebrate her as much as possible and enjoy as much time with her as we could. We had a great party with all the kids present and took lots of photos. This time, we had a wonderful dinner provided by other people and talked over the good memories we had of Grandmother. It was still a wonderful time together, but we were missing a very important piece to our puzzle. We're going to miss GG a lot!

Even the subdued atmosphere of a funeral and wake couldn't dampen the spirits of these three loons! Riley, Ava and Maura had a great time playing together. Maura taught them all some gymnastics, to the detriment of the furniture!

Below: What a handsome husband and great daddy!

Amy, Ava and Myla flew in for the funeral. We were so happy to have them their and I was so excited to see my sweet nieces. The kids couldn't wait to play with their cousins...until Myla fell and cut her head open not long after this photo was taken. Amy and Poppa took her for a five and a half hour wait at the ER while Brent and I took over babysitting duties and threw Ava in with our three kids for a bath. Rub a dub dub--too many kids in this tub! Ava loved being part of all the commotion and Maura, Ava and Tristan pretty much played non-stop for the remainder of our visit. We can't wait to have Matt, Amy, Ava and Myla nearby when they move closer this summer!

In spite of our loss, we were able to have a wonderful visit down in Tennessee. We were blessed to be able to spend a few days there because it was Brent's spring break. More pictures to come!