Nathan @ 3 months

So one advantage to being really behind in blogging is that I have lots of pictures of 3-month-old Nathan that I haven't posted yet!  (give or take a few weeks).  And since he'll be 4 months old in 12 days, I better put these up now.

So. He's growing!  I still stress out because he isn't the chunker that his older siblings were at this age (Juliet here, Isaac here, Luke here, and Abigail (sort of) here).

But he's not that worried about it.  He's like, whatever, Mom, it's all cool.

 I do have to say that his medication is helping SO much and that while he still spits up occasionally, it's not the horrendous repeated projectile vomiting that necessitates a bath for everyone in a 5-foot radius.  Which is amazing and wonderful and I am SO grateful for modern medicine!!!

And he is learning to do all the things that babies his age should do--reach for toys, try to roll around, etc.  He hasn't quite managed to roll over but he's pretty close (I've noticed that the cloth diapers tend to slow milestones down a bit since they're more bulky).


And, as ever, he is the most DARLING baby imaginable.  We are all so in love with him!  Abigail is especially tender and sweet with him and spends a lot of time hanging out with him while I'm frantically trying to take care of other needs (read: Luke).

 The one thing I've been really bad about is his sleeping schedule.  When he was born, I was so desperate to get enough sleep (and let's be honest, in an awful depressive fog) that I didn't even try to be regular about his sleep patterns like I've done with my other children.  He still sleeps either in his magical swing of wonder and amazement or in his vibrating bassinet (but I'm trying to transition him more towards the bassinet in preparation for going to a crib, because he's outgrowing the swing/bassinet combo).  If only he would take a pacifier...I think it would be way easier.  The paci in this picture is deceptive.  Very deceptive.

Just like Luke, he's a wiggle machine and so full of energy!  And he is probably my loudest and most talkative baby ever.  Tons of coos and very very loud "conversation" (to the point where sometimes I have to take him out in church because he's laughing so loudly that nobody around me can hear!).  He is a total doll and so good-natured.  He's also still very alert and interested in everything going on around him--he doesn't fall asleep in the carseat or in my arms or playing on the floor like my other babies did--he just watches what's going on and coos away!

I love love love love my little Tot Tot so much!  So thankful for the joy and delight that he brings into my life.

Potter Party

The last day that we were in Michigan, my sister Elise had the genius idea to celebrate Harry Potter’s birthday a day early and throw a Hogwarts party for the kids.  Juliet is in the middle of reading Order of the Phoenix right now, Abigail finished Deathly Hallows earlier in the summer, and the boys have both listened to the first three books…needless to say, Harry Potter is very popular around here and they play it just about every day (Jules is Harry, Isaac is Ron, and Abigail is Hermione).  And Elise is wearing our "Sorting Hat" late that night.

Anyway, after a few hours running all around town to get supplies and then cooking up a storm at home, Elise and I had a bunch of balloons decorated with owl faces to deliver the Hogwarts letters (we artfully tore the edges and then baked them in the oven to make them look more like parchment).  We also printed off signs for Diagon Alley, Madame Malkin’s robe shop, and Ollivander’s.  And I cut a bunch of “bricks” out to put on the glass door at the front of the house (behind them on the real door was the Diagon Alley sign…so that you open the bricks and then you’re in Diagon Alley.  Cool, right?)  We also made a Sorting Hat and individual caps for each kid, plus printed out badges for each house to stick on their hat once they were Sorted.

For food, we made butterbeer (in these cool little goblets we found at the party store), pumpkin pasties, Licorice Wands, Jelly Slugs (gummy worms), Cockroach Cluster (melted chocolate mixed with lo mein noodles…really good, actually!), and Chocolate Frogs (sort of…we couldn’t find any molds so I freehanded them).  

When we were done with the prep, my mom took the kids on a walk while Elise and I frantically got everything ready.  When they returned from their walk they found their owl balloons tethered to a tree…

 

Mom pulled out a wand and tapped the bricks on the door to open the gateway into Diagon Alley, and the kids came on into the house (we had the Harry Potter movie music playing).

  First, they went to Madame Malkin’s where Mom (using an awesome accent!) fitted them for their hats.  

 

Then they went to Ollivander’s and Elise had this GREAT Trelawney-based character and accent as she helped them select wands and told them the properties of each.  



And then they went to Hogwarts, where I helped them be Sorted (no pictures because we just took a really long video)…and then we had the feast.

 I don’t have a ton of photos because I mostly took videos, but it was so so so fun and Isaac has told me repeatedly it was his favorite thing all summer.  Kudos to Mom & Elise for making this happen!  (and thanks to Paxton for accompanying us when we went shopping and not telling us straight-out that we were crazy.) :-)
 

Still here, just soaking up my babies.

everything from the last couple of weeks, part I

Here’s the thing—I am so behind in blogging that I will never catch up if I give everything the attention it deserves.  So I’m just going to dump a lot of photos and forget about witty little captions for each one, because I am so tired and I promised myself I would do SOME blogging tonight before I went to bed, but all I want to do is sleep.  Anyway, these are the photos from my camera from the last couple of weeks, and sometime this week I’m promising myself that I’ll upload all the photos from my iPad as well, which tend to be the ones where we’re better-groomed (I hope).


These photos cover painting our papas an chairs gray (which the kids thought was SO COOL!!), hating the gray and changing it to blue, going to our local science museum (and its tornado wind-simulator), checking out a snake show at the library (you better believe I raised my hand when they asked for two adult volunteers to help with the biggest python), the day of beautiful weather where I declared we were going to celebrate my birthday a bit early with a hike through my favorite woods, a picnic dinner, a quick stop by the blueberry farm, and ice cream cones at the playground (that was an awesome evening), swimming in the freezing lake in Michigan on my 30^th birthday (check out the gorgeous and incredibly delicious cake made by my mom and sister Elise), a single photo from our family water balloon fight (didn’t really lend itself to photo-taking but it was awesome, especially because the kids and I ambushed Neil when he got home from work), photos from hanging around the house, and painting my kitchen cabinets.  Only one more coat to go on the cabinet fronts, and then we can hang them! 

Mostly, this summer has swung back and forth from go go go crazy fun activities! All day long! to oh my goodness I am so tired from yesterday that I’m going to wear my yoga pants all day and we’re not leaving the house, so let’s just live in our swimsuits and read lots of books and make cookies.  And I’m expending all of the creative energy that’s been pent up inside of me for who knows how long—I’ve done more projects this summer than I’ve done in the last two or three years.  It’s so nice to feel like me again.  I’m so grateful that the antidepressants have been so effective and so…amazing.  Just amazing.  And I am so so so grateful for my children, who are total stinkers sometimes, but are reliably well-behaved to the point where I'm fine taking them to museums, restaurants, libraries, etc. by myself.  They're a great little bunch and I'm lucky to be their mother.  Abigail in particular has really stepped up this summer and is awesome with Nathan--it's going to be hard to send her off to school next week!