More Pictures and Random Events

We've had a nice few days around here. We blessed Nathaniel in church on Sunday. I will post pictures from that later. I just wanted to post some new stuff before I forget it.

Taking care of little brother

Some recent Elizabeth events:

-She has been using a lot of big words lately and I'm always surprised to hear them come out of her mouth. For example, she was spinning around and around and said, "I can't stop rotating!". Also, one day I was in the kitchen with the dishwasher on and I asked her to go check and see if Nate was crying since I couldn't hear him. She came back and said, "I didn't hear him. All I heard was silence." I don't know where she gets this stuff. Probably PBS Kids--where she learns most everything. :)

-Her reading has really progressed lately. She has finally got a lot of words down by sight so it's not so tedious for her to read by herself. She likes to read a lot of the same books over and over again so when she's reading, I mostly think she just has it memorized. But, today she picked up a book we had never read before and just started reading at a really good pace. I couldn't believe it. She blows me away.

-We were cooped up last week when Natalie came down with a little fever and cold. She is basically over it now, luckily. It's always funny to see what sorts of activities the girls come up with to entertain themselves when we are at home a lot. One evening, Elizabeth gathered up a few rocks and leaves in a pile on our driveway. She then made a sign that said, "Free for you" and proceeded to try and sell her wares. Well, not sell I guess since they were free. It was funny though because she kept yelling "Free for sale!" This was about 5 o'clock at night so there were actually quite a few cars driving by but sadly no one stopped. If you know of any interested buyers, send them her way. :)

Natalie is as cute as ever although we have had some major difficulties with whining lately. A lot of it is because she has been sick or tired or both but a lot of it is because we have fallen into some bad habits. We are kind of trying to come out of the post-baby watching-way-too-much-TV phase. She is not happy about this. Her favorite activity is "watching a show" and she asks about a million times a day if we can, even if they've watched all morning. Her favorite show is Dinosaur Train on PBS and she likes it so much that I think it has even displaced princesses as what she would like featured on her birthday cake. Yes!

Her other favorite thing to whine about is treats. She wants a treat after every meal. Literally. She will frequently ask after finishing her breakfast. Pretty much every day when Joe comes home the first thing she asks him is if he has any candy. This is, of course, because we basically have had treats all day every day between having a baby, Halloween, and just our general love of baking.

I made chocolate chip cookies the other day and we had just finished them when we drew from our Thanksgiving jar (see a couple posts down) "I am thankful for my kitchen" and had to bake something again. So, we made some more cookies. We still have those around but Joe really wanted to try making something new last night and made some delicious cream puffs. Combine that with leftover Halloween candy and our standard tub of ice cream in the freezer and you get a whole heck of a lot of sugar. Not good for any of us. Anyway, so we are also trying to wean off of treats, although I don't think we'll have much luck with that with the holidays around the corner. Let's hope our teeth haven't all rotted out by January!

Little Nate is doing good. He had his 2-month old appointment last week and he is now 11 lb. 7 oz.! Hurray! He was average in height and weight and 75th percentile in head circumference.

He still has reflux issues but is doing a lot better. One evidence of just how much he arches his back all the time is the fact that he can roll over right away when you put him on his tummy with his arms under him like so:

Ta-da!

The girls actually love watching it. In fact, he even rolled over one time when I didn't put his arms under him. It is amazing to me since I don't think Elizabeth or Natalie rolled over at all until they were 5 months.

He loves his bouncer

Here are some more smiles from our happy guy: