Seven Months

Carolena, my sweet little love. You are seven months old now and still the sweetest little baby I have ever known. You are getting big, though. You have gained 3 pounds since last month, which makes sense because we have found out that you LOVE to eat. Pretty much anything I put in front of you, you will devour. I can't feed you fast enough! You must get that from your mommy. It has been such a fun month trying new things and seeing your sweet reactions and curious eyes. You got to try out the baby pool this month and at first you were unsure of what was happening, but when you figured out how to splash the water, you wanted to play for hours!

You are starting to figure out how to wave at people and I could have sworn that you said "mama" the other day. You have been able to feed yourself puffs and love when I give you your own cup with juice or water. You also love when mommy fills up a cup with ice and water (for herself) and you reach for the cup until I give you a drink for yourself.

I have realized this month that I might have a heartbreaker on my hands. Just the other day when I was getting my hair done, you started flirting with the man who was washing my hair. You tend to do that with all of the cute boys around! I think we will instill a strict "no dating until 21" policy with you. I am sure your brothers will help me keep those boys away!

Carolena, every day with you gets sweeter and sweeter. You have made our family whole, you have made our family happy. The final piece to the Saylor puzzle! Kisses, my sweet girl.

Our Free(ish) Summer - Week 1

I really wasn't planning on officially starting this until June, but the opportunity presented itself, and who am I to pass up on a little neighborly fun. Our next door neighbor was over the other day, and the boys started playing a game of "flag" football without any prompting from me. "This counts", I thought to myself, so here we go with Free Idea #11 - Invite neighbors/friends over for a game of flag football, soccer, or basketball.

Ratings (on a scale of 0 to 5)

Cost - Free!

Fun - 5

Mom Stress level - 1 (would have been "0" except the "flag"football quickly turned into "tackle" football)

The boys had a blast with this one, and Carolena had the best time watching them run around. We didn't keep score or anything, just would run with the ball and tackle each other. It was pretty amusing to be honest with you. I think thew must have played for about 30 minutes or so. Probably would have played longer except I made them stop because the tackling was getting to rough. Ahh boys, I can always count on them to turn any sport into wrestling!

What started out as this...

Turned into this...

In the effort of full disclosure, today we attempted Free Idea #22 - Make some bubbles...bend wire hangers into loops to make giant interesting shapes. It didn't work out so much. Apparently bubbles = tantrums. We will leave it at that. So instead, we did this...

Carolenas first time in her swimming pool. She loved it. She thought she was hilarious every time she made the water splash. Love her! And yes, that is food on her chin, too lazy tonight to photoshop that out.

Next up on our list: Louisville Nature Center and kids eat free night! 2 down, 23 to go!

Our Free(ish) Summer

With summer quickly approaching and my fears of how we are going to fill our days, I was ecstatic when my Southeast Outlook arrived last week with the headline "25 ideas for free summer fun in Kentuckiana". "Perfect", I thought, "just perfect". You can only spend so much time at the pool and I had desperately been trying to think of things that we could do that didn't include making a run to Walgreens for some cheap toy to keep the kids occupied for five minutes. Sure, we have our Zoo Pass and Science Center/Art Museum Pass, and those things are great, but we are in need of something new and exciting. I was pleasantly surprised looking through the Outlook and found quite a few ideas that I had never thought of before. Sure, some of the things may not be quite age appropriate, but I can work with that. So then came my idea, "Let's try to do all of these things this summer and blog about it"! Cue the lightbulbs. So thats what we are going to do. We are going to pick a few different things from the list each week, do them, take pictures, and blog about it.

Anyone care to join us?

You know you do, I mean, how can you beat a summer full of free (or almost free) family fun! I am being realistic, I am sure even though something may be "free" entry my crew will find a way to spend money on something, but hey we will give it a shot. So come join us (if you dare) as we celebrate our Free(ish) Summer! Now the only question is "where do we start?" Posts will begin June 1st.

Holes

Can you believe that this sweet little boy has a tiny hole in his heart? I don't believe it, he is to full of love, and plus, I couldn't even really see it on the monitor while the doctor was doing his heart ultrasound. But there is a hole the doctor assures me, he called it a PFO (Patent Foramen Ovale). I knew he had one, we found that out when he was about 6 months old or so, but the doctor promised me that it would close up by the time he turned three. But that pesky little hole is still there, and now he is "hoping" that it will close up by the time Joe Finney is five. So "what does this mean", you ask? Well for now he can't scuba dive, and he can never be a Navy Seal. But he can do pretty much everything else, including sports (which is what I was worried about). We don't have to see the doctor again until his fifth birthday, and if at that point it hasn't closed up, he will have a 1% chance of surgery. I can live with that. I can live without him scuba diving too.

Six Months (Two Weeks Late)

Wow, just look at my little one! She is starting to get the best personality now! I am almost two weeks late with this post and Iam blaming it on being really "busy". But, truth be told, I am just in denial that she is so quickly moving from infant to toddler. This is the last the last baby we are going to have, so I am trying to enjoy every (messy) minute. This has been a really big month for milestones! Carolena can sit up by herself now, and I don't even have to surround her by pillows any more (incase she topples). We have been really consistent with the baby food now, and are starting to figure out likes and dislikes (likes=sweet potatoes, dislikes=everything else). She has just recently started sleeping in her bedroom, and has actually let me have some good sleep the past couple of nights. She loves being tickled and likes playing peek a boo with her daddy. She also loves giving kisses now, especially to her grammy. And she is still the happy girl that she has always been. I was blessed with such a sweet little pumpkin!

Can you see her teeth coming in down there at the bottom? She has two in and I think maybe working on another one up on top. They are some sharp little teeth too, I might have to stop nursing earlier than I had wanted to!

And just check out what we do every morning. No wonder I am always running late every day, I just love cuddling with these little monkeys!