Father's Day before we dedicated Alden at church.
Snuggling on the couch because they are best friends (most of the time).
Incidentally, if you call Alden a sweet potato, he will respond with "I'm not a potato head." (we have watched a lot of Toy Story).
Love, Anna, Kara, and Alden
(and Kristan and Andrew too)
PS - I am aware this is not a great picture. And I am unsure if I am going to keep blogging at all. Certainly not as in days of yore, but leaving the top post as Alden's dancing is not fair to his vastly improved skills, now including arabesques.
How does one blog after taking 3 months off? Randomly.
Emerald Isle, NC - early July
Dad and Ald at the bar...also Emerald Isle, very late June. :)
Borrowed hat, Mandy and Stuart's wedding reception in Raleigh, late June
Strawberry picking in IL near Mother's Day (thinking of wearing pants or long sleeves ever again at this point in the summer is laughable)
Raleigh hotel late June, matching Daddy and Alden, down to the navy cargo shorts. Cuties.
"On your Father's Day on your Father's Day, I hope you have a very nice time, on your Father's Day on your Father's Day, I hope you have a nice time."
Our computer has been broken, a lot. (One excuse for my non-blogging). We got it partly fixed. It broke again. This is Andrew's for work and has none of our pictures on it.
Alden walks and almost runs ALL day every day. At just after 10 months he willed himself to walk almost exclusively, so now he does. He loves to walk the circle we have downstairs (living, family, kitchen, dining rooms) as his sisters run it. He also loves when they crash him over in this process.
Alden climbs the stairs, all of them (15+), in under 2 minutes. This happens many times a day without me knowing he has done it until I notice he is no longer downstairs with us.
Anna and Kara (still) sing and dance all day. They memorize song lyrics after hearing them once. They come up to me often and say "look at this new dance" - they are all wonderful.
They (still) have amazing memories - we went to a baseball game tonight and Kara asked me if when we went the misters would be on a movie ( she meant a TV) or outside, because she remembered watching them on a TV when we were in a suite last time we went to a game, in September.
I will (still) choose to remember happy things and not my daily trials (many as of late, as Alden has decided he does not want to sleep, eat, or nurse). And because I just remember happy things and everyone is suddenly so grown up, I am starting to badly want another baby again (like when Alden was little and I felt cheated since I only had 1 baby this time). Tiny babies are so nice.
But don't worry Mom, Andrew doesn't! :)
Alden has been fully accepted into Anna and Kara's little circle. The first thing they ask for when they wake up, a lot of times, is to play with Alden. If Alden is awake, no matter how tired they are, they'll stay up instead of going back to sleep. He refuses to sleep when they're awake, and doesn't want to nurse, no matter how hungry he is, if they're playing in the same room. They are ridiculously rough with him, not always nice, boss him around, etc. And he mostly just laughs and loves it. He idolizes his sisses.
Here was my first evidence of their pair becoming a trio - Anna opened up the blind to let Alden come in too - at Andrew's parents' in early March.
Watching a train together, also in March.
Adoring brother, adoring sisters.
My favorites. I'm so happy they're best friends and will always have each other.
Alden started standing on his own when he was just over 8 months, and is really good at this point. He's also really fast at cruising on and between furniture. Andrew decided to finally introduce him to push toys this past weekend, and he loved them. He tries to run instead of walk. He also tries to run instead of walk when you hold his hand (I just hold one) and tell him "let's go walking."
I had some good pictures of the girls standing on their own when they were around Alden's age, so I was attempting to get a good one of Alden as well. Not so good, but sisses make picture taking hard, because he just wanted to crawl over and play (he's looking in their direction).
I did, however, capture a video of some of his first steps. Wednesday he took 3 steps in a row, twice - his very first steps. This wasn't quite as good, but I was happy to get it on video anyway.
Note the sister attack that I chose not to capture on video - typical Alden-Kara-Anna interaction. :)
Our parents have helped a lot (in person and from afar) in outfitting our home, and especially the kids' rooms. Here are our most recent additions, wall letters.
And here are the girls' big girl beds. We're working on actually SLEEPING in them, but they look nice for now, anyway. (and yes, Alden crashed the shelves and is eating a disabled smoke alarm - we've since put it back up).
And little Jamie's room. It's kind of hard to see since the picture's a little dark, but we painted it a light light blue. We are still loving our house and enjoying decorating it - a work in progress, of course, but we're getting closer.
Too many cute things happened today, and I couldn't handle not remembering them. I think I already forgot most of them, though. I remember the most memorable (apart from Alden getting both of his 2 front teeth on his 8 month birthday!): Anna telling me the AT&T person I talked to on the phone was named "Turnip," then walking around saying "that's a pretty cute name." I've never said a thing about turnips, so I think she overheard it from afar at story time last week (we sat in a corner and read books ourselves since there were too many kids). There was also the game in which Anna and Kara went in different rooms only so they could call "Anna!" and "Kara!" to each other, then look for each other so they could reunite with big hugs.
We also have too much hair these days, finally enough for pig tails (we achieved tiny pony tails in November or so). Heaven forbid you put something in their hair, though - it's taken out immediately and you are chastized thoroughly, by Kara especially. She prefers her hair "crazy."
Clearly we no longer have models. These pictures took a lot of tries to achieve, and you can see how lovely they are.
A couple more notes about A and K. Kara is getting a little less bossy, which is a good thing. She is very nice to Anna and takes care of her when she's hurt or upset. She is not, however, nice to Alden most of the time. Anna is the sweetest to Alden, but not very nice to Kara, and cries about everything (including when Kara takes toys from Alden). They both finally call him AlDen too...not AlGen. We sing "Friends for Dinner" from one of the Land Before Time movies, "I Know You" from Sleeping Beauty, and "Portobello Road" from Bedknobs and Broomsticks almost constantly.
Kara: Is really good at asking complex questions and fully speaks like an adult, well, for the most part. She's started waking up at night or during her nap when she has to pee, which is a good thing.
Anna: Tells everyone "my name is Anna" when she sees them; guess she's been asked enough. Really wants to wear only underwear, but doesn't wake up when she has to go, so has taken to wearing underwear on top of her diapers when she sleeps.
After over a month of trying, little James can finally crawl! Thursday I felt it time to officially declare that he could pull up to stand (on his feet now), and while I saw his first real crawling steps that day as well, it wasn't until Friday that he made repeated efforts. He still only goes as far as the toy he wants, but that's just fine with me.
Please note, his crawling style is on all 4s. The girls had a 2 hands, 1 knee, 1 foot approach.
While a comparison may not be fair, since there's only one of him, I wanted to see anyway. 4 nakey Aldens and 1 set of nakey girls.
There's no perspective, but he weighs what they did when they were about 12 months, and I feel like he's as long as they were then too, though maybe a bit shorter (he's definitely rollier). I also don't really think he looks like them, but then again, I think that Anna and Kara don't look all too much alike either.
I have a penchant for giving my children strange nicknames and then calling them exclusively by those names. Alden is currently referred to as "Jamie," "Jamie James," or "Mr. James." I have to remind myself to call him Alden so that he'll actually learn his name.
He's now 5 months and has acquired a lot of new skills in the last month. Just after I told a lot of people he couldn't roll front to back, he started doing it, preferring that to tummy time. He started sitting all the time mid-month - I'm so excited - it's definitely my favorite baby stage. And the last couple weeks he's been talking a lot more, adding bla bla, other consonant sounds, and most importantly, dada and mama - he only says mama when he's crying, so we'll pretend he knows what it means. :)
Pictures from the last 2 weeks or so.
Toes are a big favorite of his, since sisters can't take them away...
Smiling at sissies always comes first. (This is how I trained him to sit for longer periods of time - hanging a toy off the edge of a crib).
And the new talent of the day...
I loved all of these silly pictures...perhaps just because the girls actually wore bows for the majority of the afternoon? We celebrated with the Brooks family, as we did last year - thanks guys! Oh, and poor Alden was asleep during photos, so we missed capturing his first Thanksgiving. Sorry, bud. You were the best and sweetest, as always. Thankful for silly girls, a sweetie boy, and the best husband.
A little bigger than the last foot-to-foot pic we have of them, just after we brought them home...they've nearly doubled their birth lengths.
Here are the incoherently yelled greetings...separately, then together, to add to their unintelligibleness. :)
(These are from Oct. 24th; note we still had our wagon).
And just a little less of this...given the choice of anywhere to go, the girls always choose the playground. And we always sing the 90s ABC "Playground" song because it gets stuck in my head. Ha.
These 2 are actually from apple picking in early Oct. in Cleveland.
And Alden's first time swinging, Oct. 17th. None too impressed. We do always take him out when he'd rather be sleeping, in his defense.
