A Little Miles Overdose (9mo.)

I LOVE this baby, his sweet wispy baby hair, his chubby kissable cheeks, he pearly white teeth, the squishy rolls of chub, the faint smell of graham cracker, I love it all!

He found a snow saucer full of rain water and had a blast exploring it. It was a little cold, but I promise I brought him inside for a warm bath after he was done.

Miles has started giving kisses. It's pretty sweet, once he kisses me I say YEA and clap. He loves it.

It looks like he's blowing a kiss in the first picture, but he's just slurping rain water from his hands (it WAS fresh rainwater, does that make it okay?).

Miles has been pretty cranky the last week or so, and I took him into the doctor and had his ears checked, but they looked fine. Well today I discovered the reason for the crankiness -he's got a new tooth, now he has three on bottom and two big hippo teeth on top (My sister Sarah is the teething queen, she always knows when a kid is teething. I totally needed her this week).

Goodbye Party!

I've been lucky to have some really great friends, with some really great kids, here in our apartment complex. Kaori, Yashmine, and I took all the kids to a park for a farewell picnic.

All of the kids get along real well and love playing together. We'll be sad to leave. Hopefully we'll be able to stay in touch.

Porter and Emyir. They are great little friends. They are always together. Emiyr's mom always calls him "Fish Poop". She said that in Japanese they call little kids "Fish Poop" because they trail around after people just like fish poop. FUNNY!

Porter and Bella playing on the twirly pole, and Bennett sporting a super messy face. We made homemade Oreo's for the picnic and he really liked them.


I remember as a kid swinging like this. I always pretended the swing was a horse. Aaahh, the good ol' days.

Maya, Porter, and Husker.

Maya is such a BEAUTIFUL person. I am so lucky to get to spend so much time with her. Sometimes she tells me "I think we were friends in Heaven and that's why Heavenly Father sent me to you". She's precious, even if during her treasure hunting at the park she found a water bottle full of a yellowish liquid. I told her to put it down, it was gross. She said "But it smells good" YUCK!

Casey took Miles to run some errands with him, and it was so much easier to just watch three. It's a good thing too since my kids love scouring for trash, and during his scouring Porter found a "Balloon" that wasn't a balloon. YUCK again!

By the time we left Maya was pretty soaked, but I think she mostly did it on purpose. She probably wanted to catch that swan.

Benny the fisherman and Porter the Pirate.

Maya and Bella, they love trading stuffed animals and exploring nature.

Playing here made me miss Pennypack Park in Philadelphia where we use to explore EVERY day. I loved that place!

Guess who's a BIKE RIDER?

You guessed it, Maya Jane was officially declared a bike rider today! She got up the nerve to try riding yesterday, and did pretty well, but I told her we'd try again when Daddy was around to help. I gotta give it to Dad's, it's not as easy as it looks hunching over a bike holding onto a wobbly seat. I think her real motivation was when we told her we'd get her a basket for Sea Star (her bike) when she learned to ride.

It was pretty rainy, so we took advantage of the parking garage and she supervised as Daddy took off the training wheels. Monumental!

Then they cruised around the pillars for a while until it stopped raining and we could venture outside. She was a real champ, crusin' around like she owned the road! She started out riding around in the grass, but eventually got brave enough to try out the cement.

One of the memorable moments was when she was riding around pretty well on her own and all of a sudden we heard a loud musical "BONG" and looked up to realize she had ran smack dab into a metal pillar. She was sad at first, but after a while thought it was funny. Porter kept saying "I think you woke everyone up all the way down to Harvard Square". Oh, and check out her Velcro 'Nurses Shoes', I hate them, but hey, she picked them out.

She kept switching back and forth between Sea Star (whose chain kept falling off) and Stingray (Porter's bike). In the above picture she is holding her own on Stingray. After I took the babies in Casey took Porter and Maya on a longer bike ride over to a nearby park. Maya's chain kept falling off and she was getting discouraged when Porter said "Maya you can ride Stingray and I'll take Sea Star. I want you to be happy." What an angel!

I love this picture (i know it's grainy), her look of concentration, Dad waving in the background. Priceless.

Kids with PERSONALITY!

Bennett LOVES his bike. He's crazy about it. Every time we go outside he just rides around and around. It's pretty cute especially when he's sporting his snow boots!

I sure am lucky to have such great helpers around. What would I do without Maya? Miles thinks he is so big. He's started balancing without holding onto anything. He'll just stand there for a few seconds like "look at me, I'm awesome".

Miles was ready for his nap, but the other kids were having so much fun I didn't want to take them in yet, so I bought myself some more time with the swing. He's not one of those kids who LOVE the swing, but he loves attention, so if I just talk to him he's happy.

This kid LOVES his legos. He found a "house" set someone was throwing away, so he nabbed it and he and two of his friends built the day away at the park. I was amazed when it was time for the friends to leave and Porter said they could keep the Lego creations they had made. When I asked him about it he just said "They don't have very much Lego's, I just wanted to be nice". That's pretty big for Porter.

I love the splattering of freckles across Maya's face. She is such a BEAUTIFUL little girl.

Bennett sat on the couch for the longest time today (in just his undies) playing with all these miscelanious junk items the kids had collected. He just kept putting them together in different ways. He was being so good. And when he was all finished he told me he had made me an ice cream.



Finally a day with Dad HOME. Usually he makes us really amazing breakfasts (waffles, poppy pancakes, etc) and even though we were out of eggs today he DID NOT disappoint. He whipped out the blender and spun out some killer fruit smoothies. Then he found out where each ingredient came from and mapped it all out for the kids, so they could see the distance each of the ingredients had to travel to reach us (crazy tree hugger). Check out Bennett's wicked cool Bert eyebrow!