Halpin Falls Water Park

To commemorate the beginning of summer, we dug out our tiny baby pool and hose and re-created Halpin Falls from last year. The kids were so excited! I just love it that with minimal set-up time and energy and no money at all, we can have an absolute blast in our own backyard. Kids are great that way!

Curious Jones crawled right over to see what all the gleeful shrieks were about.

He really enjoyed watching, for awhile...

...until he got a face-full of water. Poor Tiny Jones. If you can enlarge this photo, you will see one very distressed little boy. He steered clear of the pool after that!

We all had so much fun! We splashed and played and ran and laughed until our teeth were chattering and little eyes could barely stay open. What a great kick-off to our summer!

Lego Mania

The Biggies at our house have a new obsession. While they have always enjoyed playing with their Legos, they have taken it to a whole new level in the past few weeks. We have Lego games, Lego competitions, Lego sleeping companions, Lego talk and plans all day long. Sadly, Tiny and Legos do not mix well. Noah especially is so concerned for Jonah's well-being when the Legos are out. "He might suck on one and swallow it by accident!" I am thankful for the doors on our playroom so O and Nosy can play without worrying about Jones ingesting a Lego. Jones, on the other hand, is not so thankful for the doors. He is totally aware that he is being excluded from something wonderful.

Where are those Boys???

Found them!

Can I come in? Please??

Lego genius Numero Uno

His trusty sidekick

I think Daddy has just as much fun as the Boys!

Today's creativity line-up

Memorial Day

To celebrate Memorial Day, we had a barbeque and swim party at Gigi and Papa's house. The water was way too frigid for any of the adults to even attempt to swim, but the kids didn't mind a bit!

Little Sox Together Again

Coach Jeremy is at it again!  With both Boys begging to play baseball again this year, how could he say no?  We bumped the kids up to coach pitch, a league technically for 7-8 year olds.  No matter that our team members are mostly 6, with a 4 year old and a 5 year old for good measure.  We'll see how this goes!  So far, the practices have been super fun!  Especially since Cousin Oliver and bestie Grant joined our team.  It has been really fun for Jeremy too, co-coaching with so many of his great friends. 

 My three before the first game

Dedicated spectators

 Ready to play!

The season is off to a great start!



Puuuuuuuuuuuuuuull Up

Jonah.

Amazing, wonderful, joyful Jonah.

Jonah that is so laid back and content that he is developmentally lagging behind just a bit.

I am not at all worried. His muscle tone is great. He is fine neurologically. But the Boy is not motivated to advance to the next stage. He just started crawling at nearly 11 months. Maybe part of that is my fault. I do love to tote that darling baby around on my hip all day long. And maybe part of it is the Biggies fault. They dote on Jonah so much and bring him anything his heart desires. We are probably all to blame. Anyway, we have been working on pulling up lately. Owen, Noah and I will put tempting items in the middle of the table, trying to entice tiny Jones to go after them. The problem is, tiny Jones doesn't care. He'd rather play with a crumb on the floor or my shoe than work to reach the tempting toy.

But one glorious morning, Nosy put his Good Lizard and Owen's Orange Frog (we are all about creative pet names around here!) up on the coffee table. Jonah's interest was piqued. He had not been allowed near Good Lizard or Orange Frog for fear of drooling on them. He crawled right over to check it out.

Stretch, Jones!

Glory be! He pulled himself up!

He received abundant praise from two very proud big brothers and one happy Mama. However, I guess that incident was both the debut and the finale of this stunt. He has yet to perform the trick again. I know it will come all in good time. Honestly, I'd rather him take his time so I can baby him just a tiny bit longer.

Busted!