{8} months

Here's Hayda-bug at eight months old!!

Chomping on Sophie the Giraffe

While I was taking Hayden's pictures, Preston wanted a picture with her.  He can be a tad rough with his little sister, but she loooooooves Preston!  I wish her hand wasn't blocking their faces here. 

Speaking of how much Preston loves Hayden, I found this on the back of her leg when I went to change her diaper one day!!  I'm glad he's watching out for her!

Since she is sitting up well at home, I thought we'd try sitting up in the shopping cart.  The first time was at Target (of course) and it didn't go so well.  She kept falling over and was pretty unhappy.

The next time was at Costco and I think she felt more cozy with Preston sitting right next to her. :)  She did great that time! (sad about this blurry pic)

Hayden is taking swimmy baths in my big bathtub now.  Her very first one was during our cabin trip last month.  She loves being free to splash and wiggle around and I like it because I don't get as soaked. ;)

It's not surprising she loves the bath so much because she sure has loved the pool this summer!

 Oh those baby blues~  Matt's genes pulled through one final time, hallelujah!

A few weeks ago, Hayden started doing this crazy back bend thingy where she lifts up on her feet and HEAD!  This picture doesn't do the height justice because her outfit is baggy.  It's been nearly impossible to catch on camera (not blurry) so I had to have Preston help me by dangling my phone for her to go after.

Laundry helper

 Opening night of the Olympics, such a little doll!!

She has 7 teeth now, and it looks like she'll have a big gap between her two front teeth, just like Preston!  Those two top chompers look so giant!

She thinks she's such a big girl now, pulling up to things on her knees~  I'm not ready for this!!!  I already forgot how you have to keep EVERYTHING up off the floor and vacuum EVERY day because she will find every.single.speck on the floor and put it in her mouth!

I about had a heart attack when I saw her pulling up in her crib like this! She has a death grip on those rails!

Her favorite place these days is under the kitchen table!  She likes to slap the tile floor and does circles around the island.

She's doing well eating purees, I'm still lacking the consistency of feeding her every day, though.  Poor fifth kid gets the shaft!  Dinner time is the craziest time of the day and I just forget that she's supposed to be eating real food too!  The other night, we did breakfast for dinner and I broke up part of a pancake and put  it on her tray.  She did pretty good with it!

I feel like my baby time is slipping right through my fingers.  She's going to be a 'toddler' in just a few short months!  I've loved every second of this sweet little girl since the day she came into our lives and it's so fun watching her discover the world around her, but can she stay little forever, please??

First Day of School

Well, summer break has come to a close and yesterday was the first day back to school!  Summer kinda started off rough for me but I felt like I ended up enjoying the time with my kids, even if we didn't do all the fun things I had in mind.  I forgot how much harder it is to do certain things with a baby in tow! Matt gave all five kids (and me!) blessings on Monday night so we weren't rushing to do it the night before.  I love watching my husband exercise his priesthood in giving my children each a father's blessing to start them off right for school.  Matt always encourages me to ask MY dad for a father's blessing and I look forward to that special opportunity as it doesn't come along as often now that I'm married.

I stayed up pretty late the night before, baking cookies for lunchboxes and making sure everything was set.  Still, the morning ended up being horrible!  I had a fussy, crusty-eyed baby, a kid complaining about soggy breakfast then dumping his bowl in the sink, one kid spilled food down his front so we had to change shirts, I was in a panic trying to come up with a backpack for another kid**, lunches were already a struggle on day 1 since no one will eat the same thing as the next kid and of course I had to take pictures so we left the house a lot later than I wanted to.

Brooklyn and Blake are in fourth grade this year.  Every year school starts, it astounds me that I actually have kids this old!  They're going to be 10 years old in less than 6 months!  When I went to pick up their teacher assignments at the school a few weeks ago, I was shocked that they had placed them in the same class.  I quickly fixed that as they seem to do better in different classrooms.  After meeting their teachers, Matt & I both agree that once again, they were matched well with teachers for them.

 

Gavin is in first grade!  It's the big time because he gets to eat lunch at the school!  I ordinarily would be worried about that transition but Gavin is my third child, therefore I find myself a bit more relaxed than when Brooklyn and Blake started eating lunch away from me (that was in kinder for them), and Gavin is a get-down-to-business kinda guy when it comes to lunch.  The thing I look forward to the most about having Gavin in school all day?  It's not that I want him gone (because we all know he's my favorite child, right Matt?), but being able to run errands and not only having less than a 3 hour time frame to do it in!  Preston and I can go fun places and not have to rush back by 11am to pick someone up.  The teacher he got we absolutely adore and she loves our kids-  all of them!!

What did I do with my nearly 7 hours and only two kids?  Practically nothing!  I just wanted to relax!  Preston enjoyed having free reign of the house.  Poor Hayden wasn't feeling well and you can really tell in this picture with her sad, swollen eyes. 

Everyone was all smiles when I picked them up this afternoon and we saved our annual trip to get ice cream on the first day of school for after dinner when Daddy could join us.  We got Thrifty ice cream from a nearby water & ice store.  Brooklyn and Blake always get the psychedelic cotton candy ice cream, gross!!

  Hayden had her first taste of ice cream!

** I ordered backpacks and lunchboxes for the twins weeks ago and got Gavin a lunchbox, but somehow I neglected the fact that Gavin wanted a Pokemon backpack until the last minute.  I hadn't seen one anywhere in the stores I normally frequent so last week, I found one on Amazon from a private seller (no two-day shipping) and ordered it, praying that it would be here in time.  On Monday, it showed as delivered so imagine my disappointment when it wasn't in my mailbox.  We did, however, receive a package for our neighbor so I was sure there was probably a mixup in delivery. I asked the neighbors if they could check their mailbox, but nada, nor did it show up in my box on Tuesday either. :(  I called USPS and told them it showed as delivered but I had nothing.  I felt like a horrible mom, having to send Gavin to school the first day with Blake's backpack from kindergarten (thank goodness it's held up so well!) as I had gotten rid of the two hand-me-down backpacks he had used for preschool and kindergarten.   He was bummed of course, but took it in stride and I promised his backpack would be here soon.  Thankfully, it came that afternoon and he was able to take it today for the second day of school!

 

A bit obsessed, we are.

 

Hopefully we'll fall back into a groove with our morning and afternoon routines soon.  We're working on making morning scripture study as a family a habit, even if it means waking up 15 minutes earlier.  Every day as I send my kids off into the world with an "I love you,"  I hope that they will have positive experiences at school and be able to make good friends that will influence them to do what is right. 

Wrapping up the summer with a trip to the AZ Science Center

I bought a family summer pass from Living Social for $22 to the Arizona Science Center.  Even though you can use it as many times as you'd like until Labor Day, it pays for itself in one trip.  The one thing I still have a hard time with living out here is how far away stuff like this is.  I would have annual passes to the Phx Zoo, the Children's Museum of Phx and the AZ Science Center, but they are all nearly an hour drive from our house, so trips to these places don't happen nearly as often as I would like.  The last time we went to the AZ Science Center was four years go (and I blogged about it!) and when I look at those pictures, the kids look like babies!

We ended up spending almost 5 hours at the science center yesterday.  Gotta make the drive worth it!   We took our time, looking at everything and trying everything.  My kids are totally fascinated by stuff like this!

 The fun begins right in the entrance hall!  That's Brooklyn's eye in the upper left hand corner!

Your dermis is showing. haha

This was awesome!  The idea is to relax your mind in order to move the ball to your opponent's side.  Blake won every time! And Brooklyn pouted every time!

 An unsuspecting Gavin throwing balls into the "sneezer."  Blake & Brooklyn have been talking about this since the last time we went to the Science Center. I'm pretty sure it terrified Gavin back then and right after it sneezed this time, he kept his hands over his ears until we left the vicinity!

This heart beat drum was awesome!  You put your hands on the sensors and the mallet beat the bass drum in the rhythm of your heart beat.

Brooklyn and Blake competed in a wheelchair race.  You actually spin the wheels with your hands to make your person on the screen go.  Blake won!

 Afterward, Brooklyn said, "Mom!  Look at my muscles!" :)

I let Brooklyn and Blake go on the Sky Cycle, which basically is a bike on a tightrope across the second floor of the science center.  Brooklyn may be the most adventurous of the group; she's always wanting to do things like this!  Blake baaaaaarely squeaked by with his height.  Here they are all harnessed up and ready to go- 

I swear,when I look at this picture of Blake, I fast forward 7 years and see him as a grown up teenage boy, handsome little dude!

 

Here are videos of them each taking their turn riding the bike.  Sometimes I should just be quiet while I'm taking video.  I'm such a nagging mother!!

 You may think Brooklyn is crying in this picture.  She's not.  She's laughing hysterically!

 Gavin lifted his body weight

 Again, the brave one.  Blake didn't trust me that he wouldn't die lying on this bed of nails.

 Spin spin spinning!

 Blake joined this group of boys to have a tug of war between two older teens.

Perfect exhibit to keep them happy and nearby while I nursed the baby on a comfy couch.  They said they were catching Nerds (candy).

 Learned their names in Morse code

 Creating waves

With our summer pass, we got free tickets to the Math Alive! exhibit.  It was these ordinary, every day things and how math is involved in it all.

 Preston gives the rock wall a go

Such a ballerina!  It's funny how many times I catch her in poses like this.  It was fun to watch the computer translate your image into designs.

 

Blake on the snowboarding simulator

I was amazed by this!!  All these numbers, rotated and at varying depths put together to make this silhouette of a child! Brilliant!

 Blake loved this!  You had to figure out how many degrees to rotate and spaces to move your rover to pick up rocks.

 Oh, the elusive Miss Hayden!  She was there, behaving like a perfect little lady!!

 B&B powering the light bulbs by pedaling bikes

 We saved the water play for last and spent a good 30 minutes in here! 

  I gave them two options from the souvenir shop- a 99 cent rock candy or nothing.

It was the perfect way to end our summer, by stimulating our brains with all things science!  School starts next week!