8 months and 2 1/2

Sweet Annabelle turned 8 months old today!  She's getting to be such a big girl.  She is still so happy and content, and she is all over the place.  She's still army crawling most of the time, but she is super fast.  I keep thinking she's going to start crawling on all fours, because quite frequently she'll get up on all fours and take a few "steps", but then she'll plop back down on her belly and speed across the room army crawling.

Caden turned 2 1/2 this past week.  He just loves puzzles.  He speeds right through putting together a set of jigsaw puzzles that are for ages 3+ that he has had since his birthday.  We got him another set of jigsaw puzzles for his "half birthday" mostly because we were interested in seeing how fast he blew through puzzles that he hadn't seen before.  He, of course, did them quickly and without any assistance the first time.

Caden and I were at the grocery store this afternoon.  He saw a truck that he wanted.  I said, "Maybe you can get that for Christmas".  Then he said, "I want it now.  My half birthday was this week.  Maybe I can get it for my half birthday."...funny guy. 

Here he is with his puzzles tonight.

 

Caden is very into taking care of his monkey "baby" right now.  Earlier this week, we had to put pj's on him, and put him in a sleep sack for bedtime, "like Annabelle".  When I went in to cover him up after he fell asleep, I found his "baby" next to him covered up with a blanket.  He's so sweet.

 

Here's Annabelle in her month sticker.

 

She did not want to stay put for her picture...

 



Our Little Bear and Construction Worker

One of our play group friends had a Halloween party this week.  So I got both kids in their Halloween costumes and tried to take a few pictures.  Caden, unfortunately had no interest in getting in a picture with Annabelle.

 

Here's my sweet little Bella Bear before we left for the party.

 

This was as good as it got trying to get them both in the same shot.  Caden spent half the party in this little car. 

 

There were a ton of people there because it was Annabelle's babies playgroup and Caden's 2 year olds play group combined party.  Here's a picture of all the babies.  I'm holding Annabelle over on the right side of the picture.

 

And all of the two year olds with a few Mommies.  Our little Construction Worker is the third from the left sitting in the front.

 

Annabelle loves crawling around and playing peek a boo.  I grabbed the camera today when she was playing in the dining room playing peek a boo with the curtains and hiding under the table.

 

 

 



Fun in the Sandbox

We are so enjoying this awesome Fall weather!  Yesterday we spent the morning at the Arboretum with some friends.  And then after naps, Annabelle played in the sandbox for the first time.  They both had a blast playing with each other in the sand.  And I love being able to hang out on the patio and not end up sweating the whole time.

The pumpkin patch part of the Arboretum was crazy crowded yesterday, so we spent most of our time in the Pioneer Village area.  Caden just loves this wagon.

 

Here are some pictures of the kids having fun in the sandbox.

 



Annabelle's first TX-OU weekend

Brian had a few friends come in town for the game this past weekend.  They had fun playing golf on Friday and going to the game on Saturday.  The kids and I didn't do anything exciting; we just hung around the house.  But I put the kids in there Texas outfits. 

Here are the kids playing in the kitchen.  I could not get a picture with both of them looking and smiling.  Caden doesn't have much interest in getting his picture taken right now.  Annabelle is not very happy here.  Caden just took away her soccer ball, which is probably her favorite toy.

 

That's my happy little girl! 

 

Annabelle and Daddy.  Caden refused to get in the picture with them.

 



Going to work...

Caden got the first of his "2 year" molars this week.  He is growing up so fast.  The things he says and remembers just amaze me.  We've had a few issues with our fence gate, so our fence guy stopped by twice this week.  The first time was in the evening, so he rode his motorcycle.  The next morning right after Caden woke up, he told me, "The man came to fix our fence last night on a motorcycle.  He has to be very careful."  Today our fence guy came back and replaced a part, so hopefully, we're done having these issues. 

Caden has really been doing more imaginative play lately.  We have a cat; he's blue and we named him Fluffy.  Yesterday, we were getting out of the car at Kindermusik, and Caden was standing by the side of the car while I was unbuckling Annabelle.  And he tells me, "Mommy, there's a monster on our car."  I was like sure, ok, now we have an imaginary cat and monster.  But then I turned around and realized that he was pointing to the Michelin man on our tire.

Caden still loves everything about yard work.  We still watch the lawn crew that cuts the grass at our across the street neighbors' houses every Tuesday morning.  And he still loves pretending to cut grass.  Yesterday, he built a truck with a trailer full of his lawn equipment out of our kitchen chairs.  He pretended to "go to work" about twenty times.  It was so cute, he kept sitting in the drivers seat of the "truck" and would then tell me, "I'm going to work Mommy.  I'm going to cut the grass and blow leaves.  Love you"  Then he would blow me kisses.  Then he would get up and do "yard work" all over the kitchen.  And then repeat the whole process.

Here he is driving his "truck"

 

I tried to take a few pictures of Annabelle with her pumpkin jumper on yesterday.  She wasn't very interested in smiling or really looking at the camera, but here are a few of the better ones.

 



Peek a boo!

Annabelle really loves to play peek a boo.  A week or so ago, I taped her playing peek a boo with a kitchen towel, while I was getting dinner ready.

 

Fall weather has definitely arrived.  Here's Annabelle in her pumpkin peek a boo shirt.

 

Annabelle just loves playing with this music table.  Both our kids have loved this toy.

 

Caden just loves playing in my car whenever we get home from anywhere.  After we got home from school today, he was pretending to drive Annabelle.

 

 

 



Army crawling

Annabelle has been moving for a while; mostly log rolling with a little bit of scooting, but she does it pretty sporadically.  She's just so content and laid back, I'm not sure she really cares that much about heading across the room to look at something.  Most of the time, she's extremely happy sitting in one spot being entertained by her brother.  Last week, though, she really started army crawling. 

Here's a video I took of her heading for her soccer ball.

 

The Annual Hunt Picnic was last Saturday at the State Fair of Texas.  Unfortunately, it was raining, but we made it there for a short time.  We didn't eat as much as we sometimes do, but we did share a corndog. Brian also tried the new fried jumbalaya, which was better than I thought it would be. 

 

Here's a picture of Brian and the kids in front of Big Tex.

 

The main thing that we wanted to see were the animals.  They have a great Children's Barn that has tons of animals including...Camels, Giraffes, Buffalos, Porcupines, Alpaca's, and many more.  You could pet most of them; although, Caden just wanted to look from a distance.  They also had two Zebra foals, which I petted.  They were so cute and little and very soft.

 

 

 

 



Annabelle is Seven Months!

It's starting to feel like Fall around here.  The weather is definitely cooling off, which means I have to hurry up and dress Annabelle in all of her 6-12 mo winter clothes before she outgrows them.  She had an ear infection last week, which is her first time to be sick.  She weighed in at the doctor at 19 lbs.  I measured her at home over the weekend, and she is 28 inches long.

Here she is in her month sticker.

 

And how she's changed over the months...