Six

We interrupt our regularly scheduled back blogging to bring you our six month post on our Sam The Man!

It's been a busy month for this boy. He has really started making his milestones in his major muscle movements and some fine motor skills.

Up until about half way through this month, he has felt very much like a "baby" still. Then magically one day he started sitting up more on his own and engaging his muscles and moving all over the floor. Part of this is that he finally spent some TIME on the floor! It's been hard to leave him on the ground, there is always so much going on in the house and it hasn't felt safe! Plus, he prefers to be held or stuck in the corner of the couch where he can see the TV, haha!

I think one of the "lightbulb" moments for this guy was when we put him in Grandma's jumper. He was able to use his little legs and play with toys and he just started moving. He also started yelling and using his voice more. Especially if he's being ignored. I think he would really enjoy a gumbo, but Mom didn't have much success with a bumbo and Iva because of our predisposition to massive thighs.

In the last few days, Mom has finally started sitting him up with the boppy pillow around him and that has really gotten the switches flipping. He's starting to really correct his tips and falls. He doesn't love to be on his tummy, but if you give him something to push off of he will lie on his side and just kind of spin.

We did have some fun trying rice cereal and despite the pictures he actually liked it okay. Mom just mixed it with lukewarm water even.

Mom thinks he was actually the best initial eater out of us all. Or she lowered her expectations. She's not really sure!

Sam has never been a binkie kid which tends to be problematic with Mom teaching so much. He just started being able to attend the daycare at the gym and it went great until it didn't and he was screaming. He likes to suck on material more than a binkie. He wants either human skin or your shirt on your shoulder. He will take a blanket even. He also really loves this cute little fabric square our cousin, Romney, made him for Christmas. It's minky material with different kinds of ribbon sticking out all over. It's perfect for his sucking needs!

This kid lights up for his sisters. He loves it when they make eye contact with him and loves to watch them run around the house. He still laughs the most for Mom, but he sure smiles the biggest for his sisters. I think it might be Iva that gets the BEST smiles.

We also gave him peas one day to try. He seemed to like those okay all though he didn't exactly gulp them down.

Iva loves to play with her brother although sometimes she gets very frustrated that he's playing with her toys that she gave him. Hahaha!

We went to the doctor today and found out our Sam is 17 lbs 8 oz which is totally average! 51%! (A fun fact, he was in the 50% at 2 months and then again at 3 months, dropped a little to the 43% at his 4 month visit because he had been so sick and we are back up!) I think he was also only in the 43% at the fourth month visit because he had gotten longer. He was in the 43% for length as well at four months and he is back down to the 27% at a whopping 25 3/4 inches. That's why his legs are so deliciously chunker!

We hopefully will get a video put together at some point to show you all of Sam's fun giggles. He's so great at laughing.

LOVE YOU SAM THE MAN!

The first week in April

If you can believe it, we have finally caught up to the right month in blogging! We are still quite behind and we have many stories to tell but we are slowly getting there!!

This is Sparkles. Our cousin, Lexi, found him in a golden egg at her other cousin Easter egg hunt and so now our Grandma has a new pet. We go in waves of being obsessed. He loves to be held by Lexi and tends to scurry away from the rest of us.

Cara doesn't like to hold him, in fact, I don't know if she has held him. Iva likes to pet him and squeal.

On April Fool's Day, Mom and Dad put a For Sale sign in our neighbor's yard. We had been holding on to that sign for almost an entire year with the intent of putting in our yard, but with the possibility that we might actually be moving for work we decided to put in someone else's lawn. The best part? No one suspects us! And they left it up all day and we snuck back and put it back in our garage!

On April Fool's Day, Mom and I got to go on a Mother Daughter hike with Activity Days. It was so much fun.

It was conference weekend for our church which meant lots of good talks from our leaders and we decided to take advantage of the weather and listen to the talks while playing on the beach!

Mommy loves this photo so much...

On Sunday, after listening to all the conference talks we also decided to go to our other favorite conference spot. The White Sand Dune!

This very much necessitated a bath on our part. Sam didn't like it so much.

Mom teaches very early on Thursday mornings ( like 5:15 am ) and when she finished class one morning this was the picture that was on her phone. Apparently all of my siblings decided they needed to be up too! I was sound asleep however!

Easter Weekend and Friends and New Things!

Oh good grief. Easter was in March and we are here in the middle of April trying to catch up!

Our Easter weekend started right after our Preslar cousins left. We ironically had Friday and Monday off of school, but we had to stay in town because Mom and Dad had things to do on Sunday. Cara was disappointed that we weren't spending actual Easter with the Preslars because it had become somewhat of a tradition!

Her disappointment was short lived, however, because we had some awesome friends come in to town and we hung out A LOT and ended up doing Easter with them! The Corey family is one of our favorites. Darren is one of Dad's good friends and luckily Maddy and Mommy get along great and so do us kids! They have Ruby who is basically in between Cara and me and then Johnny, Mae, and Jemma. Mae matches Iva and Jemma matches Sam! Johnny is kind of a lone wolf because we don't have another boy!

On Friday we even got to see Aunt Margaret and Mary Grace for a few minutes as they passed through town and because Aunt Angie was going to have to work all Easter weekend we were holding our grandkid Easter Egg hunt in the afternoon!

Cara and I were too quick for pictures so Mom only got some of Iva.

This egg was supposed to be for me, but somehow I managed to not see it and Iva got it!

We went out to dinner with Coreys and it was funny to see Sam and Jemma together. Jemma is so little and light compared to our boy, but they match with their creamy skin and bald heads!

We went to their hotel and went swimming which was probably one of our favorite parts even if the pool was a little crowded since St. George seemed to be THE place for Easter weekend.

Thanks to the Coreys we even did some things that we had never done before! They had heard about Sparkle Mountain out on the Arizona strip and wanted to check it out. We joined them and were so happy to play. Sparkle Mountain or Glitter Mountain is an old gypsum mine essentially. We had a lot of fun trying to hammer out pieces of rock for ourselves, but there was plenty on the ground too! It was pretty windy and we were certainly not alone out there so we didn't stay super long, but we brought back plenty of extra rocks!

Dad helped us build a fairy house out of gypsum!

Oh and how could I forget? We actually started the morning by attending an Easter Egg Hunt at Fiesta Fun. They greatly underestimated how many people would show up but we still got a few eggs in the 10 seconds that the hunt took!

Unfortunately that afternoon while doing our own pretend Easter egg hunt in our yard, Cara took a basket to the head. It was a plastic basket that was empty, but it managed to almost split her head open!

Easter morning we invited the Coreys to join us for church and then an Easter Egg hunt at our house. Despite the fact that church is at 9 am, Iva somehow managed to spend the morning eating lots of chocolate. That was the favorite part of her Easter basket.

Trying to get a good picture of the four of us is pretty hard. Mom liked the after church shot more than the before church shot...

She once again managed to get mostly photos of Iva enjoying her egg hunt.

Wait! There's a picture of me!

All eight of the kids!

It was so great to play with Coreys. We love Ruby and had so much fun. They also had to return up north so we said our good byes after eating a lovely Easter brunch of ham sandwiches!

We, of course, went over to Grandma and Grandpa's house still and the adults had their Easter egg hunt. This year, instead of just money, Grandma decided to make things interesting. Uncle Marty thought he had SCORED with ten eggs until FIVE of them were these!

Hahaha!