Strolling Along

I told you in an earlier post about Emilia and her stroller. She still walks all over with it, but she's started something new with it, too. She puts her toy of the moment in it to stroll around with. When she gets as far as she can (she hasn't learned how to turn, yet) she bends over the back and takes out her toy to play with. I think it's cute! The day I took this picture, the shopping card was her toy.


OH! The pictures of Micah! I finally did get a picture:

He can write his name!! All by himself! Most of the time he even knows the correct names of the letters! :) Yea Micah!!

This last one is a picture Josiah drew for me last night. It's "a big bursting heart with Micah and Mommy and me (Josiah). Micah has the biggest face and mommy is in the middle."

I LOVE getting pictures from my kids. And though I know its not practical to keep it all, part of me wishes I could. Someday, they wont be drawing me pictures and I know I'll miss it. But really, what would I do with it all? So instead I sneak some of them into the garbage can...when the kids aren't looking, of course, because I sure don't want to be the one to tell them that mommy throws some of their precious artwork away!

I'll tell you about the snow later--yes! We have snow!!

My Micah Man

Finally! Some pictures of Micah! I don't have one (yet) of what I want to tell you about him, but he did 'let' me take some pictures this morning. I use the word "let" loosely, because he didn't cooperate at first until I guilted him into it by pointing out that Emilia and I had cooperated with his photo shoot earlier and it would be quite mean to not do the same. (Forget bribery, guilt works so much faster...just kidding...kind of)

Micah still twirls his hair when he's tired or bored. In this first picture, the loop of hair sticking out is what he had just been twirling.


Then he found out that I was taking his picture and he laid down so as to not participate in my picture taking.

You can see the furrow in his mad little brow in this picture.


This is him zipping his mouth shut so he absolutely can't smile for me.


Hiding from me


Checking to see if I'm still there


After the guilt trip...I mean, after he...well, no, I do mean "after the guilt trip." But look how well it worked!


And this one is my favorite from this morning. Isn't he just the cutest? How can I possibly care that he doesn't always cooperate with pictures when the times that he does I can take such awesome pictures as these? :)

New Things to Play With

First of all, thank you, thank you, THANK YOU to all of you who contributed to my camera fund. I am now the happy owner of a Nikon D80 and have been playing with it all week! I LOVE it so far! I'm still slow to find the settings for the look I want, but I'm getting better and thought I would share some of the pictures I took this week while I've been messing around.

This first set is some I took while Emilia was eating some cheerios one day after nap. I don't know what all the faces were about, just that she's a goober like that! :)




This is Josiah reading a bedtime story to Micah and John.


The other "fun" I've been having this week is that Emilia has been EXTREMELY clingy...I think maybe she's getting another tooth? Whatever the case, this is the face I see a lot of the times when I am not holding her:


Oh yes, and I had a birthday on Saturday. This is Josiah singing to me...with his fingers up his nose?? Don't ask, but he sang most of the song with one or both nostrils plugged by his fingers. Boys are so weird. :)


This next set is Josiah TRYING to be serious and have a stare down with me. He was protesting more picture taking, but in the end his good humor won out and he couldn't hold it in anymore.








Emilia LOVES books. She spends a lot of time at this bookshelf. I have to take her away from it because it is all of her brothers' books and she rips the pages. Her favorite book right now is "Gallop" by Rufus (something) Seder. Have you seen that book? The pictures in it "move" when you turn the pages. She loves to turn the pages back and forth, watching the animals move. She also likes to "hide" things she finds in the pages. For example, she found a puzzle piece, stuck it between two pages and closed the book. Then she goes through the pages until she finds her treasure again. She's also done this with her hand as the treasure, but it doesn't work quite as well :)


The books in these pictures is another favorite because it has animals in it. She is a HUGE animal fan. She loves our cats. When they walk in the room she kicks her legs (or bounces if she's standing) and flaps her arms and usually squeals, too! We were at a friends house not too long ago and they have a dog. She wanted to follow that dog everywhere! She didn't even care when the dog licked her in the face! She just giggled. An animal lover, for sure!



One more for now...Josiah has been "experimenting" with his science set. We haven't made any real "potions" yet, but he has fun pretending. He's made several pretend potions (mostly that turn the person who drinks them into a frog, but there's been a couple other transforming drinks) and he insists on wearing his safety glasses, even though he's only mixing air with air. Gotta follow the rules, ya know, and the rules say to wear the glasses. He's a first born, what can I say? This is him weighing some little red blocks--and wearing the glasses, of course. Those scales can be dangerous!!



If you are wondering about the lack of pictures of Micah it's because he can get very MAD about me trying to take his picture. I mean, screaming, crying, yelling MAD. You have to catch him at the right time, in the right mood and then he'll let you click away, but I haven't caught him like that yet, at least not at times when he's just by himself. I do have something about him I want to tell you about though, but it needs a picture to go with it, so hopefully soon...

It's a Big Day in My Neck of the Woods!

**Emilia slept through the night last night--all the way through the night! 8 p.m. to 7 a.m. SWEEEEEEET!

**Josiah has ANOTHER loose tooth! (the other middle bottom tooth)

**Emilia got ANOTHER new tooth! That makes 4 on top and 2 on the bottom!

I've got to tell you, too, that with all this excitement of losing teeth, learning to read, getting new teeth and all the other new baby accomplishments, Micah is feeling rather left out. He tries to come up with news about himself that is equally exciting, but he's not getting the same responses. Poor kid. It's really sad!

Finally! The Christmas Pictures!

If you can't see the pics or if it goes too fast for you to read the captions, just click on one of the pictures. It will pull up the album in Picasa. The pictures will be bigger and you can click through them at your own pace. Enjoy!