the big move

This photo of Phoebe is the "before" picture of what is now her room. On October 8-9, we made the transition of Lewis into Owen's room (sharing that big room) and Phoebe out of our room and into her own space. She was almost 6 months old and was barely fitting into the bassinet she had at the time. She is much happier in a crib now, and the boys adjusted much better than we expected too.


Phoebe has a crib, and a trundle bed in case she wants to invite friends over to spend the night.

The boys have a lot of space still in their room too. The train track has more room to grow.

The first night in their new room, they read books together on the couch.


Lewis in his bed.Owen in his bed. They actually seem happier this way, and enjoy saying prayers together and our new routine. And we are happy to have our room back, and to have Phoebe sleeping soundly in a big crib.

Awana

Our church, Grace and Peace Presbyterian (PCA), is a church plant and does not have a lot of programs for children just yet. Because we want the kids to be involved in activities that help their spiritual development, and to give them another outlet for social activity, we have been taking them to an AWANA program at another church. I stay with Owen and help him and Beth goes with Lewis. They are actually really good at scripture memory which is the main emphasis in AWANA, although there is a story and craft generally, and sometimes games to play.

Owen's group are all 3 year olds and there have been up to 16 kids on any given night which can be pretty overwhelming.


We got a cd of the songs that go along with Owen's scriptures and both boys have memorized them, and Lewis even learned to play them on the piano. Justin and Phoebe have special daddy daughter date nights while we are gone. :)

a couple videos

Here are a couple videos to track Phoebe's development. The first is of Phoebe rolling over. This is from Oct. 3, when she was 4 1/2 months old. She got really good at rolling from back to belly in this one direction.



The next one is from a few days later when she was trying to balance and keep herself sitting up, but Lewis and Owen were trying to make her laugh so she would fall over on the bed.

the pumpkin patch

It seems like every fall we spend a lot of time at Jackson's Orchard which the boys refer to as "the pumpkin patch." This year was no exception. Lewis and I went on a field trip before his fall break. He picked this pumpkin to bring home. He was pretty happy that day.


His class had yummy apple slushes and he willingly drank some and even ate a few bites of a cookie with a lot of prodding from me. I was pretty proud of him for trying it.


I think it was the next day, we took the whole family out there, and we were joined by my dad and Martha who had come for a visit. The boys played in the play area, and on the bails of hay they had set up.We took some rides down the cider slider.



One of grandma and grandpa and the boys. One of our goals that day was to take pictures of Phoebe. We have really cute pictures of both boys at Jackson's Orchard when they were babies. Phoebe started out happy, but we had a hard time getting a collection of decent photos.


This was one of our attempts.

We also tried to get some family photos.


Owen and a pumpkin.

And we got a couple smiles from her before we left.

mammoth cave discovery tour

At the end of September, Justin went to Seattle for Coffeefest (not sure if this is hyphenated or what) and so Beth and Ellen joined me and the kids for a weekend of fun. The highlight was going on a free Mammoth Cave discovery tour. It was Smithsonian weekend so we were able to walk through for free and the kids did pretty well. Phoebe got pretty heavy in her carrier, but the boys walked nicely until the end when Owen seemed to drag a bit. It was about 45 minutes to an hour total, with optional input from the park rangers.

We also stopped to walk around the little boardwalk with the pond (can't remember what it's called) and that also went ok, but my other photos were really bad. A ranger took this one.

september highlights

From the balloon fest, we drove to Louisville to celebrate my dad's (aka Grandpa's) birthday. Owen was excited to help him blow out his candles. As usual, we had a good time with him and the rest of the family. The boys did a lot of running around and Owen still swore he was not going to sleep in the car.

This was maybe 10 minutes later. All 3 kids sleeping soundly (Phoebe is in the mirror). Owen clutched that purple balloon all the way home.

We spent a lot of time in the park when it was still warm and sunny in the evenings.

And Owen and Phoebe had some afternoons at Keriakes after Owen got home from preschool. Both like swinging and neither fit well in the baby swings at that point.


These two were from right at 5 months old.

The boys have been into the Wii off and on. They are currently "off", but Owen has learned this fall too and is actually a really good bowler and is more likely to play correctly. Lewis currently likes throwing the bowling ball behind him at the spectators more than anything. He likes to golf into bodies of water to hear the sound as well. But at times they play and play pretty well.

back to september: balloons, tunes & bbq

So, at the beginning of September, there is a "festival" in Bowling Green called Balloons, Tunes & BBQ and it basically revolves around those three things. This year, I took Owen and Lewis by myself and tried to manage the two of them at the "fly in" early on Saturday morning. A few minutes after they got out of our van, they started talking to some girls who were maybe 5th or 6th grade and pretty quickly climbed into their van (which I was not happy about!). I got them out and we watched the balloons fly in, but it was rather stressful!




We still had fun, but next year I will be taking along assistance!

Phoebe's 8 months old!!

Phoebe's 8 months old today. It has flown by and she is so big. We are taking her picture each month with this lion to monitor her growth. She's doing great. Still working on mobility. She rolls both directions now, but mostly side to side and not really going anywhere. She is making efforts to move around though and goes in a circle while on her belly and wants desperately to get up on her knees, but she hasn't figured out how to do it yet.

She loves peek-a-boo more than anything and initiates playing. We wanted to post a couple videos of her playing and laughing at Owen who hides and jumps out at her. I am overwhelmed by all the blog posts I have missed this year, but I'm setting a goal to get caught up by January 1st, so look for tons more posts in the next couple of weeks.