Ceili Rain has found a spot in the kitchen to stash her valuables (sibling’s water bottles, their blankets, her giraffe, and such). When she had snack time, this same spot was where she chose to eat it.
Ceili Rain enjoyed helping me with their Christmas dresses (one day I’ll get a picture of them in the dresses). In fact, whenever I’m sewing, she’s usually right there helping me. She’s sat in my lap as I’ve sewn since she was about four months old.
Sleeping arrangements while our friends were here, included Ceili Rain in our room squeezed between the night stand and our glider. Bryant slept in a playpen in our room. Kristina’s two little ones slept in Zoe’s room and the rest of the kids slept downstairs. It worked out really well and they all seemed to enjoy it.
Yes, I’m well aware that I completely forgot to give a four month update, so for all those waiting patiently, here’s his stats from November 23rd.
Weight: 15 lbs. (75%)
Height: 26 1/2 inches (greater than 97%)
Head: 17 3/4 inches (90%)
He continues to be the “wonder” boy of our kids and trying to do things early. He’s not sitting up yet, but he is crawling! He started around Christmas day. He’s been getting stronger and stronger in his legs and trying to push himself forward. Finally, around Christmas day, he became more deliberate in propelling himself forward and by the next day, he was pushing/commando/hopping forward! And here’s the video to prove it!
Bryant Crawling-Five Months Pt. 1 from justabunchofcharacters on Vimeo.
Bryant Crawling-5 months pt 2 from justabunchofcharacters on Vimeo.
He’s a very happy baby and his favorite past time is watching his brothers and sisters. He thinks they are all equally goofy. He also loves to reach for us when we walk by. I’ll post next week about his eating!
When last we left off, we had just finished up Thanksgiving. The week after, our friends came to visit (I believe I posted some of those pictures here.). Their last night here was a prep night for our activities the next day. Zoe had a Public Speaking activity to attend at a local assisted living facility. We also had a Christmas party to go to.
Zoe didn’t just have an activity, she was “Curly Sue” in a Community presentation on the real meaning of Christmas. They took parts of the Charlie Brown Christmas special and added in scripture and poems. So, Zoe needed curly hair. And while we were rolling her hair, Laura wanted her hair rolled too. And so did Ceili Rain. I still can’t believe she sat still long enough for me to put curlers in her hair and she slept in them…but it helps that the two girls she looks up to the most did the same things!
And this is what two of the girls looked like in the morning. Zoe’s hair was so cute and I can’t believe I didn’t get a picture. I have a friend who did take pictures of their presentation, so, one day, I’ll get them from her and post them on here!
My two week posting binge is ended. So sad. I must confess that I was planning on posting yesterday but someone had a birthday and we just had to celebrate.
That would be Zoe and she is now eight years old! I can’t believe that eight years ago, I was holding my first born and a daughter to boot. We celebrated in style with a Hershey’s Cookie Exchange Party. I’ll give all the details later in the week. Needless to say, I spent all of Sunday night into Monday night in the kitchen. I really enjoyed it because Zoe was in there with me.
We also traveled this weekend to visit my family and celebrate Christmas with them. It was a blast! And I plan on getting those pictures up soon.
Bryant enjoyed his first “baby food” meal today. He was super cute about it but very serious. Those pictures are coming soon (because who doesn’t enjoy seeing a baby covered in mush).
And then today, Ceili Rain woke with a fever and has been feverish all day. She’s been a little congested but mostly just clingy (possessively so…she’s only wanted Bryant around me and fusses and pushes her other siblings when she can). No pictures of puny kids as of now.
We’re finishing up school before we take a few days off so posting may continue to be sporadic. We shall see.
Yep, I know. It’s almost Christmas. I know. I’m a month behind. But this was worth sharing, for the first time ever, we actually had guests for our at home Thanksgiving celebration! Mark had to be on call this past Thanksgiving so we actually had to stay at home! I can’t believe it either 🙂 Mark’s parents were able to come and help us celebrate so we pulled out all the stops. Place card settings, beautiful folded napkins (by Zoe), fine china, and our nice tablecloth. Not to mention our first ever whole turkey roasted, sweet potato casserole, cream corn, green beans, homemade dressing, and the cranberry jelly from a can (yuck on that one). And for dessert, apple cake and pumpkin pies.
We all enjoyed it and I think our guests did too!
Mark was the turkey man. I bought it (on sale for a great price) and found the recipe, and he dug out the gizzards and such, and cooked it! We’re a great team. He also got to carve it.
Stop taking the picture already and give me some food. Peeaaasss!
I have been asking Mark if we could schedule a camping trip sometime before the spring. We never really could settle on a day and he wasn’t really looking forward to sleeping in a tent with a newborn (at least until we knew how well he could sleep). After oogling over camping gear at a store one night, we finally agreed to plan a trip and settled on the weekend before Thanksgiving.
And we had a blast! It was nice and cold at night (which meant lots of snuggling) but just beautiful during the day (no coats needed). We traveled to Hunting Island, SC, which turned out to be not too far from home and the towns we passed on the way were very nice. Hunting Island is a state park so there was a lot of naturalness to it. The campsite was full and we met a lot of nice people too (most of them couldn’t believe we were tent camping with ten kids!).
Ceili Rain and Josiah were in heaven with all that dirt and sand! And Ceili Rain has clothes that will be thrown away to prove it (thankfully they were one dollar or less clothes).
We utilized our dutch oven this trip. It was given to us by some camping friends and I love the oven. Unfortunately, we forgot coal briquettes and had to purchase them at the camp store. Anyway, the above picture is of a most extremely yummy apple cobbler deluxe. It was awesome!
Okay, so the weather was nice but the water was freezing! That didn’t stop our water lovin’ children. They kept wading in more and more until they just came out plumb soaking wet! And grinning from ear to ear.
Ceili Rain was still a little timid around the waves but loved playing in the foam they created.
And finished with the dirt bath!
I was bound and determined that they were not going to take a shower while we were there (that’s just a lot of work with all the kids) but by Saturday night, we couldn’t stand it any longer and threw Ceili Rain in to be washed. The next morning, she got up and within five minutes we could no longer tell she had a bath the night before.
Zoe has been learning to cook and her first task was learning to scramble eggs. She does a great job (even if she’s on pins and needles as she works because she doesn’t want to mess it up)! She loved helping out during breakfast time. (Check out Mark’s “Love Me Tender” pj pants…oh yeah!)
And the coolest thing that we barely caught on film occurred Saturday night. We were eating supper and I heard a noise in the leaves beside us. I turned and saw three deer. One doe and her two fawns. They were just standing there and then slowly walked through the camp. All of us were in awe! I don’t think I’ve ever been that close to deer before.
Our local homeschool group had a field trip to the state park. It was a ton of fun and the kids reviewed a lot of what they’ve learned about life cycles of various animals. Zoe and Ceili Rain are pictured above with some friends from church.
While visiting with Ge & Granddaddy, we also attended a reunion of my grandmother and granddad’s families (on my dad’s side…got it??? Just know we’re all cousins). I got to see a lot of family that I knew growing up but hadn’t seen in a while. I have two great aunts and one great uncle who is still alive. My great aunts are awesome! For my wedding, they showed up in matching dresses. And they’re not twins. They, mostly my Great Aunt A, have an awesome sense of humor and I love to hear Great Aunt A laughing. I visited her home once when I was younger and I just remember everyone there being so happy and laughing (maybe that’s not how it always was but that’s what I remember). My great Aunt A is in the middle in the green.
Oh, she also took my dad with her when she was dating! And my dad will be quick to tell anyone that she also bought him his first Easter outfit.
We traveled to Ge & Granddaddy’s the first of November. This was the first time that Bryant got to meet his aunt, uncle and cousins.
