Super Friends

We were dropping Addilyn off at school one morning and one of the other moms came up to Elias and gave him these two masks/capes.  Her boys have outgrown them and she thought he would enjoy them.  She's right!

Check out the backs!!  She said she got them while traveling in Guatemala.  That explains their vintage-looking awesomeness.

Elias is showing you his super-fierce Batman face.

Asher is displaying his less-than-fierce Superman face.

Elias was yelling at himself in the mirror. I guess that's the only way one might experience his own fierceness.

All-in-all these two capes/masks are a hit.  Elias has already worn them to Starbucks and to Addilyn's school and has reveled in every minute of Superhero attention he's gotten along the way. 

I Spy

This week's activity might have been a bit of a cop out.  I really wanted to take the kids to the North Park Village Nature Center and found a way to include our 'I' week activity in the process.

The Nature Center is in the same park as Asher's preschool (which is also where he and Addilyn had gymnastics way back in the day).

It's a pretty fun little area.  There's plenty of trails and area to run.

And run.

It used to be a TB sanitarium and now is a 46-acre nature preserve with 4 different ecosystems for you to wander through and explore.  Hey look, wetlands.

Pausing to pose with my baby.

Hey look, the bottom of my shoe.

I spy with my little eye something that starts with D.

It's kind of eerie to walk so close to one of these guys.  I would have been frightened had this been Kansas but these have grown up in this nature preserve and are used to people wandering by.  It was still cool and kind of creepy though.

See you later. Gotta run!

11 Months

Albert is 11 months old today.  It seems I skipped his 10-month post.  Apparently Elias' birthday overshadowed it.  So I'll update you on all the changes in the past 2 months.

This boy has started to go, go, go in the last couple of months.  He's no longer content to just hang out; he's got to GO!  He is cruising around really well now.  He has stood unassisted a few times for just a few seconds at a time but hasn't mastered that skill yet.  That definitely is the skill he's working on, though.  He stands up holding on to almost anything and then cruises around.

His newest rendition is to hold on to the back of the car and use it to (very slowly) walk around.  He's not the greatest at steering so he never makes it very far but he seems happy to fully investigate the car whenever he gets stuck.

He's getting into looking at books.  He's actually pretty gentle with them and only rips occasionally.

Baby sneeze.
As for foods, I don't really remember where I left off so I'll just give you the general run down.  For breakfast he eats dry cereal.  His less interested in plain Cheerios mostly because we've introduced fancier cereals like Honey Nut Chex or Cinnamon Life.  A lot of the time, the plain Cheerios end up on the floor.  To be honest, most everything ends up on the floor lately.  He has discovered that it's super fun to drop small things through a hole at the edge of his tray.  Stinker!

Just this past week he has started eating peanut butter sandwiches for lunch.  He seems to really like that.  He also seems to enjoy just about anything we are eating.  "Forget the baby food; I want some of that!"  Most meats and spaghetti seem to be the favorites of the moment.  He's also pretty fond of clementines. 

As for teeth, he has all 8 of his front teeth now.  He still seems to find relief from any teething discomfort by biting on people, mostly Tyler and me.  Luckily his biting hasn't been a huge issue with the older kids yet.  Maybe they are just really good at getting out of his way.
I guess that brings you up to date.  We only have one more month until this baby turns 1.   Craziness!

H Week

Our H activity was twofold: paper hats and a hippity hop.  Both are fun.

Put them together and they are extra fun.
"Look, Mom, it's flying!"
(It's only now that I notice that it's actually called a Hoppity Hop. Who knew?  I've called them hippity hops since I was a kid.)

Hop.

Hop.

A Garage and Goggles

I might have fallen behind a little on my letter weeks.  I haven't posted what we've done and then I skipped a couple of weeks as well.  Here's to getting back in the groove.

I had two activities for 'G' week.  The first was breaking out the toy garage.

One of the realities of living in an apartment is that we cannot have all the kids' toys out at once. We don't have room.  Also, if we had all the toys out in our living space at once, Tyler and I would go insane.  That's a fact.

The benefit of this is that when we break out a toy that the kids haven't seen in a while it's like it's brand new. They get so excited.  Don't they look excited?!

Just to really make the 'G' sound hit home (one of them anyway), I broke out the goggles during a bath time. 

Everyone seemed to get a kick out of wearing them in the tub.

See? Smiley face.

And rings around the eyes afterward.  I so remember that from my childhood.

More smiles.

And play.

Even Addilyn got in on the fun with this one.

And she did it right.  She was "diving."

Halloween 2013

Halloween this year was a bit of an odd one.  It wasn't a complete bust and it wasn't cancelled (like it was for some of the communities to the south of us) but it was rainy.  We ended up heading out a bit earlier than we had planned just to take advantage of a break in the rain.  Thus our pictures were a bit rushed. I didn't even get a picture of all of them together this year.  Nonetheless, here are the pictures I did manage to squeeze in before we rushed out the door.

Addilyn was a waitress this year.  It was an idea she got from one of her classmates at school.  It was a costume we also got from said classmate at school. Yay for minimal effort in achieving her costume goal! She's taking your order.  What can she get for you?

We were all set for Elias to be Batman this year.  He already has the full costume.  A couple of days ago, though, he decided he would much rather be a slimy, green monster.  On actual Halloween, that evolved to a slimy, green monster Superman.  He seemed pretty happy about it (even if I was a little bummed that we didn't get to use the new costume). 

Asher was a ghost.  He seemed to enjoy saying, "Boo!"  I thought the uber-traditional Halloween costume was pretty fun.  Unfortunately, it started raining again while we were out trick-or-treating and his costume got pretty heavy.  He ended up ditching it at the very end because he was just too soggy.

Monkey boys!  I didn't get a picture of Albert in his costume by himself.  Nonetheless, he was pretty cute (and has never looked more like his Daddy).