PLAY!

We played a lot this week!  On Tuesday the Vandenberge girls came over to play and have lunch, but I didn’t take any pictures.

On Wednesday we went to Theresa’s house to play with her boys and to look through their old clothes for James!  Wahoo!!  The boys and girls played so sweetly together!  But I didn’t take any pictures that day either.

On Thursday we went to Amy’s house to play with Abby and Josie.  The big girls played so sweetly as well!  I did manage to take a couple of pictures that day, but only because Abby’s Nana was there, pulled out her camera, and made me go, hey, that’s a good idea!  I guess I’ve been in a picture taking rut.  (You know, honestly I think it’s because I’ve been wearing skirts a lot lately.  And you know what most of my skirts lack?  Pockets.)

So anyway, they managed to all pile on the cozy coupe.  I did not know that the cozy coupe had a trailer option.  That is pretty fancy. 

They played dress up and dolls and kitchen and who knows what else.  This wasn’t their only disaster area, but it might have been the most colorful:  :)

We actually managed to help pick up before we left.  Oh, and Josie and James were there and played really sweetly too.  I just didn’t get any pictures of them.

Let’s see… that brings us to Friday!  We met Lisa and her girls at this indoor playground at a local church.  Veeerrrry nice.  And did I mention, INDOOR!!!  I’m a fan of all things air conditioned.  Oh, and my skirt had pockets today.  :)

I love this look on Natalie.  :)

The blur!

This is what it looks like from my spot on the bench.  :)  It goes back a little ways too.  The girls had lots of fun!

One exciting thing for me was that I got to leave James at home sleeping!  Matt’s been feeling a bit run down, and stayed home today to rest and recover.  (Now, you might not think that taking care of James constitutes resting, but my precious boy slept the whole time we were gone!!)

One more week until “school” starts and we begin our somewhat regularish fall schedule.  I’m pretty much looking forward to getting into the groove of things.  I’m excited to see how our schedule is going to feel.  We haven’t had Ray at our house much this summer.  His dad has had some breaks and different things have come up like his sister coming into town for a week to watch him.  So, while it’s kind of been nice being a little more free (you know, three kiddos instead of four!), we’re looking forward to starting our fall schedule with Ray next week and getting back into that routine as well!

Mostly food, also some James

James has been practicing his pulling up.  He hasn’t gotten all the way there, but he’s enjoying the journey!

I read in the comments on a blog somewhere a lady liked to eat a fried egg on top of her pinto beans.  YUM!  So we gave it a try the other day for dinner.  I defrosted then warmed up some leftover rice and beans, then fried some eggs in coconut oil for the top.  We finished it off with a little shredded cheddar.  We all LOVED this meal!  The girls are not normally crazy about rice and beans.  They’ll eat them, but they devoured these!

It reminded us of how we eat enchiladas at Grandma’s house – always with an egg on top!

Yesterday I just had a hankerin’ for homemade cookies so I hunted around for a recipe I liked.  I knew I was going to use whole wheat, and I wanted a chocolate chip cookie, but I also wanted a little oatmeal in there for some meatiness.  So, lo and behold I found a recipe for whole wheat chocolate chip oatmeal cookies.  :)  So I made them.

And they were good.  :)  They have a bit of a granola-bar-like taste, over the more sweet, slice-and-bake taste.  I like ‘em but they’re not my favorite cookie.  I have a couple of other recipes/methods I want to try soon.  This recipe made about 5 dozen using my little cookie scoop.  We baked one dozen and froze the rest.  I love having cookie dough in the freezer!

I made a couple of little changes to the recipe (which I don’t usually do the first time making something) due to what I had on hand.  I didn’t have regular ol’ oats around; all my oats were in their “instant” form.  And I didn’t use quite the whole package of chocolate chips; I reserved about a half a cup to use for something else.

One reason I’m feeling very much like baking cookies lately is that I’m planning a “cookies and milk” party for James’ first birthday.  I’ve seen so many cute ideas out there, and I just love the theme!  It will probably be an after dinner party for extended family during the week.  (Ya hear that everybody – how’s October 18th look on your calendars?  Clear?  Okay, write this down!)  It will be kind of like a “cake and ice cream” party, except better.  :)

Monday Monday

Today was a very enjoyable Monday at home!  I caught up on laundry and did some vacuuming today.  It feels good!  So even though the living room is a mess, I know all the laundry is folded, the dishes are done, and underneath everything, the carpet is clean.  :)

After helping me do a little work (or mostly just waiting for me to finish), the girls got to enjoy a fort in the living room! 

Ever since Joanna saw the fort that Anton built for his little sisters, she’s been wanting us to build one.

James enjoyed it too!

Eventually it fell down, which is good, because I’m planning to watch some TV with the hubs in a little while.  That would have been hard with the fort up.  Unless, of course we were in the fort.

James woke up early this morning which meant his morning nap was early and then he really wanted to go down for his afternoon nap early.  The thought of that just made me sad, (I need some down time during the day!) so I tried extra hard to keep him happy until the point I could put the girls down too.

James LOVES to stand up, but he can’t get himself up on his own yet.  And he’s not exactly what I’d call sturdy.  :)

He had a blast looking out the front window!

And he really did do a good job of holding himself up.  He used his hands, his body, and sometimes his face to steady himself.

Natalie wanted me to take her picture too, but she was between outfits.  So I took a close-up.

I sure do love that little girl.

Speaking of her, she slept in panties last night… dry panties!  I guess that was too much dryness for her though because she had three accidents early in the day.  :)  One was very near the potty, which almost doesn’t count.  One was outside, which is just about the best place for one.  And one was in their bedroom.  Drat.  She’d done so well at avoiding the carpet!  We’re trying panties again tonight… we’ll see!  My plan for if she wakes up wet in the wee hours is just to put a diaper on her and let her sleep on the playroom couch.  We’ll clean everything up when it’s properly morning.  :)

Joanna just night trained sooooo easily that we never had to deal with a plan for frequent night accidents.  She was a bit older than teeny Natalie though.  If she trains easily like her sister, whew!  If not, that’s okay!  If she regularly wets, then we’ll just go back to diapers at night.  But if she just wets sometimes, I may start putting a large pad under her after she goes to sleep and laying out extra sleep stuff at the foot of her bed or something.  Just to make it easier during the night.  She really wants to wear panties to bed, which is the only reason we’re even messing with this right now.

Ruffle Socks

We are exquisitely blessed and super thankful to receive lots of handed down clothes from our friends.  It just fills my heart up with joy and gratefulness to go through bags and boxes of gently-used things to dress my children.  Sometimes Joanna gets something handed down to her from an older/taller/bigger friend, then Natalie wears it after that.  I love it!  James doesn’t get much use from the girls handed down clothes (though there are a few neutral things still to be found in the drawers), but I have a couple of girl friends who are finished having babies and happy to pass along their little boy clothes to my little boy.  It’s so much more fun to dress my children in clothes with a little story behind them.  Joanna LOVES to wear clothes that Riley has outgrown.  Natalie asks for her “Emma dresses.”  James doesn’t talk yet, but I love dressing him in little outfits worn by other little boys over the past few years. 

In the last couple of years especially, I’ve been more inclined to have simple wardrobes for the kids.  (A few seasonally appropriate outfits, couple pair of shoes, enough underwear for the laundry cycle)  I haven’t quite mastered keeping the numbers of outfits down (Sure, she has 20 dresses, but they’re all so cute!), but I’m working on it.  :)  That being said, sometimes we’re able to pass clothes along to others even though I’m not actually technically totally sure we’re done having children.  There are kinds of clothes I like dressing the kids in (or they like wearing), and the other things can hopefully bless someone else!

I’m also very very thankful that it doesn’t bother the girls not to get brand new things.  So far it simply has not occurred to them to mind, and I’m hoping that sticks for awhile.  To them, their new things are new things.

The few things we do frequently buy new, though, are socks, leggings, panties, and tights.  Even though it’s not quite time to put away the white sandals for church, I’ve been on the hunt for new ruffle socks for Joanna.  I’d hate for her to have to go to church in tennis-shoe socks!  :)

Anyway, I found some at Tarjay yesterday, and Joanna was very excited about them!

Don’t they look good with her hand-me-down black shoes?

On an unrelated note, I noticed that today is Joanna’s “half birthday,” not that I keep track of such things… Well you would not believe how excited she was when I told her!  Ah, the simple things.

Eating and Shopping

This was at Cici’s yesterday.  Natalie was pretending to be asleep.

I love that sweet silly girl!

I gave James little tiny cut up pieces of things, but he wanted my PIZZA!

Today my mom went with us to do a little shopping.  We stopped in at Ross.  James was past his naptime so we were holding him.  Waiting in line Mom let him sit on Natalie.

They both thought it was very fun.  :)

James is TEN Months old!

Yesterday James was ten months old!  Every time I would look over at him I would think “Man, we really need to go outside and get some good ten month pictures.”  And then the thought of actually going outside made me want to cry.  So I kept putting it off.

That evening we decided (due to a lack of defrosting-ahead-of-time-ness) that we would go to Cici’s for dinner.

So it was in the 5:00-5:30 range, which is usually a very beautiful time of the day, light-wise, and I decided to get a few shots outside the restaurant. 

I’m sure he was thinking something along the lines of “Why did my mother bring me here to put me on the ground?”

“Hmmmm…”

He has been a chewing machine lately.  He has at least one tooth coming through on the top, and it’s causing a bit of distress.

I like this one of him looking up and Natalie looking at him.

I think he was trying to pick up the rocks.

I like how you can see Joanna’s (maybe grumpy?) face in the picture.  I say maybe grumpy because it looks grumpy but I don’t remember her being grumpy at that time.

My sweet boy!!!

Trying to shove his entire fist in his mouth, I guess.

Ah… Ten Month James.  Here goes. 

James…

• loves to sing and dance.
• quiets down in the car if there’s good loud music on.
• is very clearly teething.
• is otherwise in good spirits these days, thank goodness.
• will be starting “school” in a couple of weeks.
• is the oldest of the three kiddos when starting school.
• can now (usually) drink from a sippy cup!
• eats anything he can get his hands on.
• LOVES bananas and Baby Mum Mums the most I think.
• is hot-natured.  He sweats a lot.  (Although, these days, who doesn’t?)
• can scootch very well on his tummy and is toying around with crawling on all fours.
• often scootches into the kitchen to find me.  I love this.
• Can sign “more” and sometimes does.
• is attached at the hip to his mother.  :)
• wears size 12 month clothes.
• wears small diapers and the Bum Genius on the middle snap.  I put him in a size 3 disposable the other day, and it fit well.  He could probably wear a size 2.
• LOVES to wave.  It is the cutest thing ever.
• loves to stand up but can’t get himself in that position.
• Will be one year old in just two months.  Sniff, sniff… I’m not ready!
• Is so desperately loved by his Momma, Daddy, and big sisters.

Inside Fort

Earlier this week at a playday, James had a tutorial on bottle drinking from his future wife Josie.  She’s a bit older and has been doing the bottle thing more regularly.  I know he paid attention, because the next day, James was actually drinking instead of chewing!

Here he is just flirting with the camera though.

The girls have discovered they can both fit under this end table and play.

The pictures are bad because I was sitting on the couch and didn’t want to move.  :)

They’ve been playing with their Smurfs under there.

They’re funny.  :)