Gregory

Gregory is getting so big and is at such a cute, fun age. He keeps us all entertained. The girls are always saying they want a dog, but I tell them we have kids instead. Gregory is as close as they are getting to a dog.

He loves climbing the stairs. The other day I left him playing in the toy room and was working in the kitchen. I checked on him a few minutes later and he was gone. I found him upstairs looking through books.

When I catch him climbing the stairs, he looks at me and giggles and laughs like he knows he's doing something he's not supposed to.

See, who needs a dog when you have Gregory to chew on your shoes. This is probably his favorite activity.

He also carries his toys around in his mouth all day. For some reason he has latched onto this duck and really likes it. He can often be seen like this.

He is getting close to walking. He loves to stand and walk around things or walk pushing things. He never sits in the bathtub, only stands and holds on to the edge. He can stand by himself until he realizes what he's doing and then slowly lowers himself to the ground.

He even sleeps good most nights. Last night he slept from seven until four, ate, and slept till 6:30. It is great.

Gregory is a wonderful baby, unfortunately for Scott I guess because now I probably will want another baby someday . . . just not yet.

First Day of School

I don't know where the summer went; I obviously didn't blog about it. Maybe I will soon, but probably not. We had a fun three weeks in Utah which was the highlight of the summer and probably my girls' lives. Other than that we just hung out at home and played a lot.

Since it's been over a month since the girls started school, I thought I had better post some first day pictures.

Lydia started kindergarten and has done great. She was a little nervous her first day, but no tears at all. She has enjoyed school even though she is usually cranky by the time she gets home. She seems to be doing well even though the day is a little long.

Maren started 2nd or 3rd grade. I'm still not exactly sure which. She has the same teacher and pretty much the same class as last year. She is loving school even though she does NOT love her homework, except for reading time. She just read the first Harry Potter book and enjoyed it and is all about Harry Potter right now.

Martha Ann and Gregory love walking to pick up the girls after school. Usually in the morning we just walk to the corner you can see there. We wait and watch the girls until they turn onto the street the school's on. We live about two blocks from the school so it's not very far.

Work Party

Scott's work had a family day on the army base last weekend. The army base has a really nice park with tarps over all the play areas and a great little water park for kids. Scott had to work at the Borstar area during the party. I debated about dragging the kids out there and finally decided we would go but wouldn't swim.

The girls swang, pretty much their favorite thing on earth.

Gregory just hung out.

There was a helicopter to sit in which the girls loved.

And of course there was daddy.

I really don't know why they are posing like this.

After hotdogs and chips and playing for a while, Gregory was done. So we packed up and headed home. Despite the heat we had a fun morning.

End of School

Maren has loved her teacher, Ms. Jenkins, this year. She is in a 2-4 grade class and should have the same teacher next year.

I had to laugh as I was going through Maren's papers. On almost all her papers, she had written I love Ms. Jenkins with a heart.

Maren got an award for being a straight A student all year. There were only three out of her class, two 1st graders and one 2nd grader. Considering she was doing mostly 2nd grade work, she did excellent. She really is a hard worker, even though she doesn't love homework.

(Sorry for the picture, but with three other kids grabbing on to me I take what I can get.)

Lydia and Martha love going to these assemblies. They always immediately want to run to Maren. Lydia was really mad that I wouldn't let her go to Maren in the middle of the assembly. Maren really is a great big sister.

Six Months

It's hard for me to believe but Gregory turned six months on Friday. Time has really flown by. I have really loved the last few months of being his mom. He really is a great baby and I am loving it.

I'm continually amazed at how much personality babies already have at this age. Gregory constantly keeps the whole family entertained. The first things the girls want to do when he's awake is hold him.

Gregory loves his walker. He follows me around the kitchen and can pretty much get wherever he wants. Last night I blocked him in with chairs so I could sweep and he got so mad. He also gets frustrated on the carpet because it's hard to move.

This day he was out watching Scott work on the truck in the garage and loving it!

Gregory is a little mover. He loves being on the floor. He loves to do the Superman as we call it and balance on his tummy.

He can't do a real crawl yet, but he gets up on all fours and lunges forward. He gets from point A to point B, just not very fast.

He also likes to get in the push-up position. We think he just doesn't like his knees on the carpet.

He can also sit up balanced on his hands and he can sure smile!

I just need to work on him going to bed before midnight and he'll be absolutely perfect. Sleeping through the night would be great too, but I don't want to be greedy.

First Hair Cut

This is Gregory being cool, flashing the peace sign. Unfortunately, the mullet he's had since he was born was starting to interfere with his coolness. So at Scott's insistence, Saturday night he shaved it off.

He had this patch of hair since he was born and none had really fallen out. It was just a really skinny line of hair that was long, like someone growing out their hair for a comb over.

He also had these really long wisps of hair on top, at least a couple inches long. They had to go too.

His head feels really funny now. Most is just soft light baby down, but he has a couple of patches with dark hair where it feels scratchy like a buzz. He's now just a cute little bald baby. We'll have to see how long it takes to get real hair.

I thought I wouldn't like having a bald baby, but it is actually way easier. I never have to worry about combing or washing. It's great!

Easter Egg Hunt

Sunday after church Justin and Michelle and their kids came over for dinner. After dinner we had an Easter egg hunt.

Michelle and Scott hid all the eggs in our backyard.

We gave the little kids a little head start and set them loose.

There were only a few tears as Maren wouldn't put on shoes and tried to climb the chain link fence in bare feet and ended up dumping all her eggs out which Chauncey unknowingly then picked up.

Martha Ann kindly shared the money she got in her eggs with Lydia and Maren who hardly got any money in theirs.

My mom needed a family picture for something on her side of the family. We did not even have any type of family snapshot since Martha was less than two. So Michelle took some before dinner. The lighting wasn't great but we needed to do it before all the kids got filthy and Gregory took a nap.

Liyara was screaming almost the whole time while Michelle took the pictures, but at least we quickly got something with everyone in it.