5 Months!

Natalie celebrated 5 months of life on Saturday. I can't believe how quickly the time has flown by. She is so cute and fun...and so different from Kenna. It's been fun to have our little girls so close in age. Kenna has started playing with Natalie. She plays peek-a-boo with her and tries to tickle Natalie. Natalie loves the attention.

I started Natalie on solids this month. She's not so sure about them. I think she likes them. She doesn't grimace! But she doesn't open her mouth much.

Anyway. I had a hard time choosing from my pictures of Natalie. So cute!

In other family news:

Kenna's vocabulary is growing by leaps and bounds. Her favorite word right now is "two". She also has started putting a few words together if you listen carefully, and/or a few vowel changes. Such as saying daddy instead of dada. She understands a lot of what we say to her, and can answer yes or no questions - though not always correctly. Today she was crying for some reason - no one knew why. To distract her Josh asked her if her finger fell off. She immediately stopped crying and sadly said, "yeah". And then she was fine. I guess she just wanted us to know about her finger! She can say "help" and "helper" and will do just about anything if she feels that she is a helper.

Logan has turned into a stellar reader. I just love watching children learn to read. A whole new world opens up. He's so smart. Our tiny little man. He's been taking care of the pets lately (Satin and our visiting dog Gideon) by making sure they have food and fresh water. He does such a good job with that. He is anxiously waiting till he turns eight. Why? No, not because he can get baptized, although I know he's excited for that. But because then he will be old enough to walk to church by himself like his older sisters. He's very jealous of their freedom and he hates riding in the car with mom and the "babies".

Brynne starts soccer this month. School will also start at the end of the month, although we'll be on vacation for the first week. I will be taking her school shopping and am wondering about that experience because of both the big girls, she is by far the picky one when it comes to clothes. I remember a couple years ago when we were exchanging a birthday gift that was too big for her. We wandered around the children's department for a good 30-45 minutes while she looked and thought, and didn't like any of MY suggestions. She has her own sense of style.

Hannah challenged herself to read a book a day this summer. I think some days she's read two, to make up for days when she didn't quite finish one. But her average has been a book a day. All chapter books! The librarians are being kept busy filling her hold requests. She's getting excited for homeschool to start and this week asked me if she couldn't start early. I told her no! I'm not quite ready for MY summer to end. :-)

Josh is so busy. He is such a great Dad, though, always making time for his family. We're learning to appreciate the times when we do get to just hang out together even more than we used to!

I've been busy reading, planning the camping trip, and planning for the upcoming soccer season. My co-coach and I are putting on a mini camp for our team and because she has something happening that is keeping her pretty busy right up until soccer season, I am doing the planning for now. I have really enjoyed spending time with Brynne out on the soccer field. I would have loved to play soccer as a kid - too bad tiny Cloverdale didn't have a team!

Life is good! I've been so busy organizing the kids. We're switching bedrooms around again probably. It's time to move Natalie out of the office into her own space. So we have to consider which children will sleep best together in which room. And with 4 girls and 1 boy, that throws things off again. :-) Thank goodness Logan is so easy-going about his solitary masculinity.

Oh! I forgot to mention the best news of all. A couple days ago Josh proposed to me! And in his hand was my restored wedding ring! What a fun surprise. It's so nice to be married again. :-)