Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Almost Spring Break

No school today because of the snow.  Yay!!! 


Brennan had an exciting morning... besides the snow.  He lost his FIRST tooth!  He's excited of course, but maybe not as much as Asher who is thrilled that now the tooth-fairy will come.
 

 

I tried to capture how incredibly cute this little one looked last Sunday.  Of course, no pictures that I take can ever capture it well enough.  But believe me, she was WAAAY cute.
 












Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Hollyn Feels Grass

Last week on a beautiful spring day I thought, "what the heck, let's go outside and get a little vitamin D."  I wasn't sure what to do with Hollyn since she still puts everything in her mouth.  Luckily the grass wasn't too soggy.  I happened to be recording her just as she decided to explore, and I quickly realized, this was her first time feeling grass!

Hollyn just shy of 11 months

Hollyn has really been practicing her walking.  The video shows my attempts from 2 weeks ago - she was still very much falling with style.  Instead of working on her balance, she tried to just get as far as she could as fast as she could.  Asher would find this hilarious and was often heard laughing from the sidelines.  Besides Mom and Dad trying to help her, both of her brothers got in on the action and would work with her.  Consequently, Hollyn seemed to find it all jolly-good fun, but wasn't really improving.  She thought it was just a game we played with her and she was having a blast.  In the last few days or so she would let go of furniture and get a couple of steps in, but mainly only if the destination was within two steps' distance.

But then today she seemed to leap ahead.  While hanging out in the living room doing her own thing, I noticed she let go of the couch and started walking across the living room (she only got a few steps in), just going nonchalantly as if she always got around that way.  Then as I was making dinner I saw her get herself up (one of the first times ever) and walked like 10 steps!  Very cool.  She never did quite that well again, but she kept on trying the entire time I was cooking.

At least in addition to getting into cupboards and trying to climb into the dishwasher. :-)

Yes, Hollyn has learned the magic of opening cupboard doors.  For example, on Sunday I managed to locate both of her church shoes and laid them out where I would find them.  Unfortunately she could reach them and I spent the last 20 minutes before leaving trying to find one of the shoes.  At the last second - with everyone in the car - I looked inside of our pots 'n' pans cupboard and found her shoe inside a pot.  Little nut!


Hollyn has continued with this very vocal thing.  She has started yelling and squaking.  A lot.  Thankfully we're home most of the time, but it's making church and errands really interesting.  But we sure love this girl.  Brian and I can not imagine not having her in our lives, making us laugh and smile and overwhelming our hearts with joy.  She is such a blessing!


Friday, March 2, 2012

I can't stop

Asher's lack of control over his emotions is sort of funny (to us, anyway.)  Like other kids, if he's upset about something he may start to cry.  But, unlike other kids, the act of crying upsets him even more, so he'll often wail, "I can't stop crying!"  Conversely, if you look at Asher and he's smiling, he'll suddenly blush and embarrassingly cover his mouth while he laughs, "I can't stop smiling!"  Oh man, I love that kid. :-)
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I don't remember if I did a 10 month update on Hollyn yet, and I'm too lazy to go back and see.  Anyway, she's almost 10.5 months now and doing well.  Hollyn is really developing a little personality now.  Where she used to just be calm and quiet, she's since learned how to be hyper, silly, active, and vocal.  Hollyn is a great mimic and imitates all the sounds she hears or things she sees, evening yawning.  She LOVES her brothers and lights up when they give her attention.  She has recently learned to go up stairs, although her legs are still almost too short for it.  A couple days ago she learned how to go backwards down stairs, however as her confidence grew she got more careless and thought she could sit however she wanted on them.  Not true :-)  Hollyn is practicing walking, but I think there's a ways to go before she's very good at it.  Unlike many other babies who work on their standing balance first, Hollyn keeps trying to skip that.  Consequently, she can't stand for more than a second or two and instead of steadying herself when taking steps, just goes for it.  I will try to upload some video examples, but I still can't figure out how to edit them (what I used to use doesn't work on this old computer) so the videos go rather long without too much to see.  Anyway, she gets a huge kick out of thinking she's a big kid like her brothers and she is very fun these days.


 Hollyn's been sick lately, and this runny nose just wont let up.  Usually she wakes up with wet snot all over her face, but one day it had apparently hardened instead.  Poor thing!


Anyway, things are going well.  It's interesting to see life play out, isn't it?