9 months old

Wow! Brian is 9 months old today, and I've already taken his picture with Geoffery the Giraffe. I'm pretty good! A few things Brian has done this month are:
--Babbling. Brian is starting to do a lot of it this month. Of course, when he's happy he makes "da da" sounds. When he's upset he says, "ma ma".
--He will sometimes give a high five or try to wave. He doesn't have either one down to perfection.
--He can play peek-a-boo with you now, and will move the cover from in front of him.
--He has 6 teeth!
--I took him for a weight and length check at the doctor's office. (It's all the doctor wanted instead of a well check up.) Brian is 29 inches long and 23 pounds, which is actually a pound less than he weighed at 7 months. The nurse said it's okay since he is moving around more and still eating.
--He is still working on getting over his thighs to crawl, but he's working on it. We've made more of an effort lately to get him on the floor and put things out of reach so he has to grab for them. It's amazing how he can move around the room without crawling! If he falls over from a sitting position, he will roll to wherever he wants to go. I don't remember Kayleigh doing this as much. But, Brian will also scoot himself in a sitting position, too. I'm not sure how he does it, but he does! It's funny when he's sitting right next to me, and then all of a sudden he's 5 feet away.

Enjoy the pictures. I thought they were all pretty cute, so I had to put them all up for you.

Berry hunt

We had plans to go blueberry picking with our friends, but Jenna got sick, so Kayleigh Brian and I went by ourselves. I didn't know what to expect when we got out there, but where we went was someone's house. They had a few rows of blueberry bushes, but we only made it down two. It was HOT, and Kayleigh and I were both ready to be done. Brian may have been ready, too, but he doesn't voice his opinion very loudly. We only picked about a half pound of blueberries. I was a little afraid to pick too many because I didn't want to waste them. After picking blueberries, the couple who owned the farm had samples of blueberry lemonade/tea. It was delicious, and very refreshing!
When we left, I decided to take the kids to Chick-fil-A for lunch and play time. Once lunch was over, Kayleigh wanted to go in the play area. She played for a long time before I decided we needed to go. Kayleigh heard some other parents talking to their kids about eating ice cream, and we agreed. So, before we were able to leave, we got a cup of ice cream with strawberries. YUM!
I was so happy to be home and get the kids in bed for nap time. We all had good afternoon naps. It was a fun, tiring day.

Beach

I brought the kids over to Jacksonville for a couple of days to see Aunt Val and Tio Teo. Kayleigh has wanted to go to the beach, and I think it's because her friend Jack is on a beach vacation right now, too. We had a great time at the beach. It worked out because there was a HUGE tidal pool that Kayleigh could play in. She hasn't been fond of the waves, so that gave her a perfect opportunity to play in salt water without getting splashed in the face. I took Brian over to the water for him to splash and kick for a little bit. The poor boy had fun, but then really wanted a nap, so we sat on the blanket under our umbrella.
There were lots of little fish in there that would nibble at our legs, which freaked me out a little bit. Some of them really got rough! We tried to catch them, but they were too fast.
While I was with Brian, Kayleigh and Valerie continued to play in the tidal pool. They found shells, which Kayleigh called "sheets". She said "shells" was hard to say. I finally had to convince Valerie to hold Brian for awhile so I could go have some fun with Kayleigh! We went down to the shore, just to where the last of the waves could come over our legs. I wanted to look for coquinas (is that spelled right?), but I didn't find any. I forgot how pretty their shells are! We did find some kind of snail and watched him bury himself in the sand.
When I thought Brian couldn't take being at the beach any longer, I told Kayleigh it was time to go. When we got in the car and looked at the time, we had been there for 3 hours! Whew! Needless to say, the kids conked out and Valerie and I didn't even stay up as long as usual. I'm up because I had to feed Brian a little while ago and should probably go back to sleep. It's hard to get computer time with Valerie and Kayleigh to share with!
We are going to Valerie's friend's community pool this morning, and then hang out before heading home on Thursday. Sorry I don't have any pictures to show you of the beach. We both forgot our cameras. Here is one of the kids wrapped up in their towels after their bath. I was trying to just get Brian because he looked so cute when I set him down, but Kayleigh can't resist the camera and wanted in too. Who was I to say no???

Kayleigh ballerina

You might be tired of looking at pictures of Kayleigh in her dance outfit, but I couldn't resist one more picture of her all decked out!

Playing

Erik and Kayleigh went to the store this afternoon, leaving Brian and me home alone to think of things to do to amuse ourselves. I gave him some Lego's to play with, but that didn't seem to do the trick for long. I started to build a tower, and he thought it was funny to take my pieces away from me. He got such a kick out of it that I had to do it more, and then I decided I had to get a video of it. This is the shortest video. I'm sorry that it's a little bumpy, but I had to move the camera around to see the pieces to put them back together. Hopefully you will get a good taste of the fun we both had.


Okay, change of plans. I couldn't decide which video I liked better, so here is the other one. You can watch it if you want to.

Here it is

Have you wondered about Brian's furniture? We really did get it those months ago, and yesterday I finally remembered to take the camera upstairs for a picture.

BEST PICTURE EVER!!!

A professional couldn't have gotten a better one!

Kayleigh's dance class

Kayleigh had her first dance class tonight, and she had some much fun! When the class ended, she asked me, "What are we going to do next?" I said that we were going to go home and get a bath, and her reply was, "No! I want to dance some more!" The studio has a window where you can watch the girls dancing, and two tvs in the waiting room where you can sit on a couch and watch from there if you don't want your kid to see you watching. A few of us moms were taking pictures tonight, so I didn't feel too awkward doing it.
The slide show has a bunch of the pitures tonight. I'm not going to label them because I don't really know what they were doing. But, I got a couple of pictures with the teacher in it, and you can see that Kayleigh isn't always right on cue. :) Sorry about the tissues and the scissors in the foreground. There were sitting on the window sill on the inside of the studio, so I couldn't move them.

Pony rides and ChickFilA

This morning we went to a consignment shop that was having pony rides, sno cones, and Elmo and princesses. Kayleigh was not happy about the ponies at first, and was TOTALLY freaked out by Elmo! Erik tried to get Kayleigh on a horse 3 times before giving up and putting her in the car to go to lunch. Of course, when she was in the car, she started to cry and say that she wanted to ride the horse. We went to try ONE MORE TIME, and this time she went for a ride. She then wanted to go again, and again, and again. I think she rode 3 times before we said it was time to go. It was perfect timing, too, because minutes after we left it started to pour down rain!
We went to ChickFilA for our free spicy chicken sandwiches. They were yummy! The only thing I didn't like was when they made us pay extra for the cheese, lettuce and tomato. The guy asked, and I quote, "Do you want lettuce, tomato and cheese on it?" Did I quote him saying that we would have to pay extra?? NO, because he didn't say it! I guess I ate everything but the tomato, and Kayleigh got to eat it instead.
As always, Brian was with us, but he's still too young to enjoy this madness. I can't wait for him to get in on the action! I think Kayleigh will like to have a partner in crime as well! :)

National Donut Day

For those of you who didn't know that it is National Donut Day, I'm sorry you missed out on the goodies. Krispy Kreme celebrated by giving out a free donut to every customer. I told Kayleigh we could go after nap time, and I'm glad she took a good nap, because I wanted to get a sprinkled donut! I will say that a hot one might have been a little sweeter, but I did get my favorite. Kayleigh wanted the one with the yellow icing, which ended up being lemon flavored, but she still enjoyed it. Brian didn't get a donut, but you can tell that he too pleasure in watching us eat. (Yeah, right!)
After Krispy Kreme, I wanted to run over to Michael's to check out their scrapbooking stuff. Kayleigh got tired of being there, whipped out her cell phone and pretended to call Jenna. I had to get her to reenact her dialing because I couldn't get the camera out in time, but that is a picture of her pretending

to talk. She said that Jenna told her that we could play with Jack when we got home. Unfortunately, it was dinner time when we got home, and now we are watching a movie.