Avery and I took a little walk to get some fresh air. This made me think of how when I was a little girl we used to always go take a walk around my grandparents farm after Thanksgiving lunch. Sweet memories!
A few weeks ago the kids, my parents, and I accompanied Scott to Miami Beach, Florida for the annual American Academy of Periodontology Meeting. From navigating the airport with 3 small kids to walking the streets of South Beach in search of kid-friendly food it was definitely an adventure of a trip! But we did a lot of fun things and had a great time along the way. Since it was November, it wasn't exactly what you think of as a traditional beach vacation, but the weather was nice enough (high 70's, low 80's) to go to the beach, play in the sand, and splash around in the water a little. The girls had not been to the beach since Avery was 2 and Kendall was an infant, so it was a lot of fun to watch them play and get so excited about it. They tried to karate kick the waves, made mud pies, built a sand castle, and enjoyed sitting on the beach and letting the waves wash up on them. We even took Judson to the beach with us on 2 of the days and he was so fascinated by the waves. . . and then they put him to sleep! He took a great little nap right there on a lounge chair under a cabana we rented. On the last day of the conference, the girls and I convinced Scott to ditch the afternoon session and come out to the beach with us. Avery and Kendall had a lot of fun riding the waves and building a tide pool with their Daddy. Stay tuned for part 2!
This is soooo overdue, but since I am living by the "better late than never" philosophy these days, here's a little recap of our Halloween activities this year. We wanted to kick things off by going to a Trunk or Treat at Heritage Church of Christ the weekend before Halloween, but our entire family got the stomach bug that weekend! We were all fully recovered by the following weekend, so we met my Mom at Hall Farms pumpkin patch in Grapevine to let the kids explore and to take some pictures. This was our second time to go there, but this year the girls got their faces painted and got to pet and feed some farm animals. Avery chose to be Wonder Woman and Kendall chose to be Super Girl for Halloween this year, so naturally Judson was Superman. Kendall was able to wear her costume to school on Halloween day and got to trick or treat around the church building and pick a pumpkin at the pumpkin patch that they set up every year outside. After dinner that night we got the kids all dressed in their costumes, handed out a little candy to the early bird trick-or-treaters, and then set out to do a little trick-or-treating ourselves. The girls definitely had the hang of the whole process this year and ended up with full bags within 30 minutes or less. Those superpowers must've been working well for them!
Judson- 5 months old
playing in the exersaucer
hanging out with Momma in the kitchen
Superman!
Up, up and away!
Then we have Avery with her newly pierced, red ears. She did awesome-- not one tear! I was really proud of her.
Avery initially chose pink flower earrings, but they were out of those, so her second choice was a pink birthstone. She doesn't like her birthstone because it's blue, so she chose the pink one, which is for October. We told her that was pretty neat because not only was it the month she got her ears pierced, but it was also her Mimi's birthday, which we were going to celebrate right after she got her ears done!
All smiles and looking so big!
Another month has flown by and Judson is busy growing and learning to do new things all the time. At his 4 month check up he weighed 16 lbs 1 oz (74%) and was 26 in (85%). He laughs a lot now, which is so much fun. When he first started laughing the girls would ask me, "What are you doing?" when I would do silly things to make him laugh. But then the more he laughed, the more they started getting into the act of trying to make him laugh too. He absolutely adores the attention from them-- especially Avery. I can tell already that he's going to have a cute little sense of humor and be a little stinker. Speaking of being a stinker, he likes to smile and flirt with the ladies lately. He flashes a big squinty-eyed, open-mouth grin, and then bats his eyes and raises his little eyebrows. What a mess! He can roll over both ways easily now and has started sleeping on his tummy a lot. He still plays with his feet a lot and sometimes even sucks on his toes, which Avery thinks is so gross even though I tell her she did it too as a baby. In just the past week or so he has really gotten into grabbing things and playing with toys. It's fun, but it's going to get challenging once he's mobile considering all the small toys the girls have. I think we finally broke him of wanting us to come in and give him his paci back multiple times in the middle of the night (yay!), but he is still waking up between 4:30 and 6 am some mornings. For now I just go feed him and put him back to bed. The only good thing about it is that if I feed him at 5 or 6 then he will go back to sleep until 8 or 8:30, which gives me some time to myself after Scott and Avery leave for school and work since Kendall usually sleeps later too. Hopefully he will eventually drop that early morning feeding on his own even though the pediatrician thinks he's probably waking out of habit. Time will tell I guess! We are enjoying him as much as ever though and looking forward to celebrating all the upcoming holidays with our youngest family member.
