a little ketchup...

Grab a cup of tea and a cookie, maybe even two because this post is a long one! I have been silent for far too long and thought you deserved a little ketchup...not on your cookies, but rather...

...on the Twins!

S, my brother L and I attended the best baseball game. EVER!:

• Twins vs Tigers, 10/6/09
• tie-braker for Division Championship
• section 202 row 6 (paid $85 a piece for the $11 tickets, but they were SO worth it!) - GREAT view
  
• ~54,000+ fans with homer hankies in attendance
• TWINS WIN in the 12th inning!
• Fantastic baseball by both teams - good and close game all night!
• G at friend A's house, Aahma rode along with L to watch W&C

Such a fun time with S and L and so great to see one last Twins game in the dome - thanks for asking us to go to the game with you, L! Love ya!

video after a home run by the Twins - shows how LOUD it was in the dome!

...on little C!

Oh the forgotten third child. I started this blog to hopefully be able to keep track of baby milestones and have failed this boy miserably! I looked back and I think the last official baby C update was when he was 2 months! Well, he is certainly not forgotten in our day to day life and is such a fun and good baby. But to catch you up a little bit, here are some quick C stats and updates.

• 4 months in May (27" tall - 97%, 17 lb 6 oz - 90%)
• fun giggles, especially at brother and sister, could reach for things, pick them up and hold onto them, started to clap too!
  
• at 5 months got his first two teeth on the bottom, two on the top quickly followed
  
• 6 months in July (27 3/4" tall - 90%, 20 lb - 88%)
• could finally roll over in both directions - lots of chub to move!, babbled a lot and was definitely not the quiet third child, got two more top teeth and one more bottom tooth
  
• at 7 months starting to sit up well

• at 8 months he loved to sit up and play with toys or just watch what was going on. So much fun to be able to just take him from room to room and have him be happy on his own on the floor as long as he wass by us, and he was getting good at rolling to whatever he wants too. Definitely mobile!
• and he got that last bottom tooth and had 8 teeth!..and no hair...and wore 12 month size clothes
• 9 months in October (29 1/2" tall - 80%, 22 lb 8 oz - 80%) - C was the exact size W was when he turned a year! He is our big boy and the 12 month size clothes are starting to be too tight
• C could finally handle solid foods at this point (digestive issues and could not process them earlier)! Started off easy with oatmeal cereal and quickly moved to baby food and before we knew it he was chowing down 3-4 jars of baby food a day! Too spendy for our budget and I was not having good luck with our blender or the baby food grinder, so we splurged and got a magic bullet for buzzing up our food into baby food for him. LOVE IT! It works so great and is really easy! It will definitely pay for itself!

• C is already betrothed. Good friends from church, M&A, had a daughter, G, in July. They also have a little girl, A, who is our G's age and good friends with her. One day they came over to play and turned out that our C and their G had the same outfit on! Without us even realizing that the other even had the same outfit (G's is 0-3 month, and C's is 12-18 month though)! We decided they were destined for each other, although I am not sure how C feels about it!
  

• right at 9 1/2 months C's mobility moved beyond rolling! He army crawled for about 2 days and realized he had too much weight to drag along the ground, so started getting up on all fours, and in a day or two had the crawling thing down!
  
• at 10 months he now moves quickly and is determined to get into anything that he is not supposed to - cords, computers, rocks, shoes, paper, books, shoes, brother and sister's things (G gets frustrated, W has all out tantrums!), shoes (he's like a puppy - loves to chew on shoes!)...it is so funny to see their little personalities already at this age - he is beyond sweet, but definitely could be our little stinker!
• C also signed his first word! We have been using American sign language with him from around 8-9 months when we are doing things like feeding him, picking him up, etc. And when Steve was feeding him one night and signing "more" to "eat" for him, he signed "more" back! And did it again and again for "more" bites, so we know he got it! So much fun to see their little brains really start to work and get things
  

...on W!

Oh this boy can be the sunshine of our lives one minute, and a frustrating "terrible 2 yr old" the next!

• W's has always had a advanced vocabulary, but it has really been taking off lately! With it went the ability to understand him for a while since he was trying to talk in big people sentences, but now is really talking clearly, and a lot! He also has known all his colors for quite a while and knows his alphabet and letter sounds too. (Helps to watch big sister there!)
  
• He is such a boy. He loves being outside, getting dirty, trucks, throwing balls, making noises, and is just now starting to get into the rough-housing and tough-guy stage (which momma is not liking as much, especially when he tackles baby C!).
  
• Even though he is a boy-boy, he does have an older sister whom he loves and wants to copy every thing that she does. He will tell you his favorite color is pink, can be seen wearing his snoodle as a "princess dress" and has a baby-doll named "BA-nana" whom he nurses "just like momma!"

• W is also very into coloring lately. He concentrates very hard when he colors and loves to show off his pictures
• He loves books. All our kids do and we foster that as much as we can by reading to them, having them around all the time (in every room practically!), and going to the library often for storytime and to pick out new books, which is a favorite outing of W's lately.
  

...on G!

She's 4! We can't believe how old she is some days. Seriously, how did that time go so fast! Don't even start me on how she will go to school next year...unless you want to deal with a blubbering puddle at your feet!

• our fabulous family photographer has been uber busy lately (like with this...and this...and this!), so 4 yr old pics of G by her did not happen around G's birthday which we totally understood! So one nice day in September I decided to channel my inner auntie C and took some pics of G in the backyard:
  

• She is growing up so much! And she wants to be part of the "grown-up" conversations so bad! She listens intently to S and I when we talk and regularly interrupts them trying to re-say or re-tell what we just did so that she can be a part of our conversations. Like when we were discussing rearranging furniture on our yellow level. After talking about different ideas over breadsticks one Sunday night, G says "wait a minute! I have a GREAT idea! We can move this couch over here and this couch against that wall...and the TV over here (basically what S and I had just talked about doing)...and then W and I will have a LOT more room to run and play!"
• Her big interests lately have been coloring and drawing. The little kids table we had purchased from IKEA quite a while back was proving to be way too small for her and her brother to both work on, so we rearranged our office and desk area and now have a new "art table" desk for the kids that has plenty of room (can fit two more cousins to color too! =), and also "their" computer on it as well. We might as well buy stock in 3M too, because this girl loves her scotch tape! She loves to cut things apart with her scissors and then tape them back together again! She tapes drawings and coloring pages into books, fixes holes ripped in her paper, and "decorates" things by taping little shapes that she has cut out and colored
• She loves dancing (we have watched Dancing with the Stars together for years now!) and singing and is always coming up with a new "show" to put on for us. She catches on to songs and lyrics very quickly, and also likes to make up her own!
• Her favorite outing lately is church and Sunday school. She loves her friends at church and learning new songs and Bible stories in Sunday school. She is really a social bug who loves to be around people and we have to drag her crying to the van every Sunday because she doesn't want to go home!
• Being able to do things on her own has been one of the biggest joys of her being 4. It was almost like there was a switch in her head "I'm 4, I'm a big girl, I can do this by myself!" She can dress herself, go potty by herself, pretty much get anything that she needs by herself or with only a little help. She is also my big helper around the house! G loves and cares for her family and genuinely wants to help with everything.

...on random other stuff!

• We had a big snow on October 11/12 and the kids had SO MUCH FUN! My grumbling about it coming so early quickly melted as I watched their sheer joy at playing in the snow and making a snowman. October was very wet and cold, and we just weren't ready to go from that into winter! Fortunately, November has been really nice so that we have been able to get out and do more things outside.
• G and W have had a new game in the backyard - G calls it "pulley." She stands on the deck and lowers a rope tied to a bucket, and W fills it with whatever treasures or toys he finds and G pulls it up to her. They can do this for quite a long time and giggle and laugh at all the things W puts in the bucket! They came up with this on their own - their imaginations continue to impress me every day!
• Our computer's motherboard went out...AGAIN! So we had to ship it off to HP once more as it is still under warranty. I like the comment that my friend T made about it: "Perhaps there is a lot of mothering going on in your house?! Maybe all the mothers are just tired?" You have no idea, T! =)
  

OK. Phew. Are you still with me? Am I still with me? I probably would have fallen asleep by now. Really though, this was just as much for me as for anyone else so that I could journal a little bit about the little people that fill my day that S and I love so much. But now I feel like we can move on not feel so behind that I don't even bother! Hope you all are doing well - we love you all and think of you often (even if we don't always communicate that =)!