The Gang's All Here

I figure it's about time I did an update on my kids.

The main reason for this is because of our big news around which is that Camille IS MOBILE!  Unlike all my other children, she didn't bother with army crawling at all.  Instead, she got really good at sitting herself upright (I'm pretty sure that Bentley couldn't do that until after he figured out how to crawl), and then she kept leaning all over the place to grab stuff.  And eventually that led to rocking on her hands and knees, and then finally crawling.  So that's exciting.  And, of course, now I have to be a lot more careful about what stuff she can get into.  And the door that opens to the basement steps MUST remain closed at all times.  So she's keeping me on my toes.  But in a happy way!

She also got two teeth at just about the same time last week.  It meant for lots of crying on her part.  In fact, she'd been so cranky that it was something of a relief when I saw that first tooth poking through her gums because I finally understood why my normally happy baby was such a wreck!  Unfortunately, I proceeded to try and run my fingers along her gums-- with my other kids, they found that soothing-- and this made her sob for a solid five minutes.  I felt terrible and will definitely not try that again.

We also did 9-month portraits of her today.  These are the two I ordered:

Laughing as I made her giraffe give her kisses.  You can barely see those bottom teeth here...

Colton is mostly working on talking.  He's got complete sentences going on now, and loves to repeat stuff back to me so he can learn new words.  My favorite is when we read The Paper Bag Princess together and he'll do all the dragon noises, complete with coughs when he runs out of fire, and snoring when he falls asleep.  It's awesome.  He's also been trying to count stuff, which none of my other kids have ever shown the slightest interest in doing.  So I just started filling out his MENSA application.  Of course.

Colton also continues to be a generally sweet, all-around fun little guy to have around.  I suspect this will disappear the moment he turns three, so I'm trying to enjoy it as much as I can.  He's starting to get more opinionated (about which story we read, or how fast I'm allowed to turn the pages), so I know the momentum is just beginning to build.  But for now, he'll still give me hugs on demand and try to make Camille smile every chance he gets.  And every time we get out of the car and I go to unbuckle him, he'll close his eyes and pretend to be asleep.  It melts my heart.

Playing with a big stick at soccer practice.  Of course.

I like how that rock behind him is the same blue as his eyes.

Ryder is still as wacky as ever.  I hope when he goes to kindergarten next year that his teacher will be able to reign him in a bit, because I seem to be having little success there.  But he's a fun sort of goofball and he loves to make people laugh.  A friend of mine once commented that Ryder had a certain joie de vivre about him, and that really is the best way of explaining him.

Also, any time he's bored, he tells me he's hungry.  Some day he'll need to learn to not eat out of sheer boredom...  Come to think of it, I still need to learn that lesson, too...

Killing time in the car

Squeezing into Camille's sweatshirt

Kendra is my little social butterfly these days, and I feel like I barely see her at all.  She is BEST FRIENDS with the girl across the street from us and they are always together.  They like to play outside with our chickens-- I found them the other day carefully stretched out on the trampoline with all the chickens between them having a chicken nap.  They're kind of weird, but they're happy and having fun, so I'm not complaining.  (They also rigged a bucket up to be a chicken swing, but apparently that wasn't a huge success amongst the hens.  Go figure.)

We had parent-teacher conferences with Kendra's and Bentley's teachers, and were not surprised to learn that Kendra is doing well in all her subjects (especially math, which made me happy because I suspected she was probably pretty good at math) and is super friendly to all the kids in her class.  She's my little peace maker, so that was also not a surprise.  But it was still nice to hear.

She also just lost one of her front teeth and now the other one is loose, too.  She's very excited about that!

And Bentley continues to be a fascinating study in extremes.  He is usually super helpful-- if I ask him to do something, he'll just pop up and do it.  Except when he's not.  And then he'll pitch a fit and be so ridiculous about the whole thing that I want to throw him.  (I don't, though.)  According to his teacher, he's doing great in school and made friends with some really good kids.  Except he constantly complains about how much he misses his friends in Manassas (even though we rarely saw those friends since one of them was being homeschooled and another moved to China).  But then when I asked if he wanted to go to Manassas on Saturday, he said No!  So I think we're dealing with some major "grass is always greener" issues...  Also, while I'm on the subject, he wants everything he sees, but then as soon as he has it, he's bored by it and wants the next thing.  I don't think this is too unusual in a kid, although I think he's a bit extreme this way.  I hope he'll grow out of it eventually, though, or else I fear for the girls he dates some day...

So yes, Bentley is at times a bit of a puzzlement.  But I think he's getting better at dealing with his (sometimes rather intense) emotions.  And the times when it's just him in the car with me, we usually have really interesting discussions, so that's pretty awesome.  It's awfully fun to genuinely enjoy your kids' company, especially since he'll put up with me raving about how amazing George Washington was!

Wearing an Angry Birds costume during scouts.  I'm not really sure why...?

So that's where we are these days!  As I was searching through the pictures on my phone I found a ton that never made it onto the blog, so I suspect I'll need to do a major picture post some time soon.  You have been warned!  Maybe then I can add in all the stuff I forgot to write here about these crazy kids of mine!

Ta ta for now!

That's my crew!  (Minus Camille, who was strapped to my chest)