Creature Report

I think it'll be best this time to go by child.  

ANDELYNN

We've been having smoothies for breakfast a lot, because they're easy and I can disguise vegetables in them.  Unfortunately, smoothies are not really a food Annie can feed herself.  She likes to drink out of a cup; she is not very good at it yet.

I guess we could always go this route though. 

 Everybody loved that curry.  And the awesome things are 1) it's ludicrously easy, and 2) the mix is readily available in the states!

Her healthy appetite for people food and the return of my milk supply after going off hormones have popped this baby back onto her growth curve for her 9 month check-up.  I am relieved.  She's right  on track for all her developmental milestones now.  She babbles . . .

. . . and plays games with her psycho mom . . .

. . . and has added climbing stairs to her list of conquests.  (Note the hovering hands of the safety professional.  I'm kind of kicking myself now for creating this hazard in a place where we didn't have any stairs before.) 

Our branch moved church to 10:00 to help some of our single marines be able to get there a little easier.  It did not go well for us.  I tried to put Annie down before church, but she'll usually sleep between 1.5-3 hours in the morning, so when I woke her up after 45 minutes she was foggy and bewildered instead of bright and happy.  Then we had a sacrament meeting of the kids getting into noisy fights whenever I was in the middle of a hymn, and for some absurd reason I packed carrots as a snack, which they snapped and smacked loudly all through the passing of the sacrament.  I had to take Annie out to feed her because the outfit I chose today was not compatible with discreet breastfeeding, and when I got back in both Vivi and Rafe were sitting with Drew on the stand.  Not reverently.  I've decided I need to hire a nanny to sit with my children at church.  Or better yet, Heavenly Father can please send us someone else who plays the piano!  

 Last thing for Andelynn this week.  She's started making this judgy face all the time.  It's a little much, coming from someone with spit-up all down their chin.

 

RAFE

Drew plays hide and seek with the kids every now and again.  Rafe thinks he's really good at hiding.  

 But I think he's got a flaw in his logic in there somewhere.

 He is blurry in the vast majority of pictures I take of him.  The only time he is still is when he's watching Dinosaur Train.

For breakfast he likes toast with "acre-pot par-serves" (apricot preserves), he's been carrying around his "CheeseBob" (SpongeBob) shovel a lot this week, and today when he walked in from church, he said "I can't take off my shoes because I'm full of hands."  Here are Rafe and Vivi (in Rafe's pajamas) carrying in "logs" to build a "campfire" in our room. 

They like to switch clothes.

VIVIEN

 Vivien spends a good portion of her time carting Annie back and forth from room to room, sometimes to bring her to play, and sometimes to keep her away.  

It reminds me so much of this page from one of my favorite books:

She loves to play games and being silly.  She just chose the sticker for her reading lesson chart tonight like this:

Eeny, meeny, miny, mo.

Press a catter on the toe.

If he hollers let him go.

Hot dog, hot dog, hot dog, hot dog.

She had the family night activity this week, so we all got to participate in an elaborate scheme she made up.  Earlier in the day she had cut up a piece of paper into strips and written words on all but one of them (words like "EIFL" and "RIF") and then hidden them around the house.  When it was activity time, she had us turn out all the lights and close all the blinds, then we had to use the flashlight on my iPhone to look for the word strips.  She showed us where to look.  When we got to the last word strip (the blank one), she threw it in the air and exclaimed that now the monsters were dead!  It was quite an activity.  Here she is giving the scripture in Primary today.  

And here she is observing an earthworm at the park.  It was so big we could see its mouth opening and closing.  And then Rafe sat on it . . .

DREW

You may have noticed Drew in the background of each of those updates.  I know I did this week.  We are so lucky to have a husband/father who anxiously engages in being a part of this family.  He reads books, plays games, gives baths, sings lullabies, goes to the park, comes home for lunch, picks things up at the grocery store, takes out the trash, helps implement my ever-changing parenting stratagems, feeds people, gets the mail, prays with us, and takes the kids for Sunday walks while I blog (because my writing brain shorts out when there are distractions).  He says things like, "A bad day with you is better than my best day single."  He makes sure we never lack exposure to Dad humor.  He's just a really good man.  And we love him :)