Allie turned 7 on Friday.  We had a birthday party for her yesterday.  It was a cooking party.  She invited 5 friends.  It was a perfect number and went really well.  We made cheesy shells, pigs in a blanket, and decorated cookies.  Here are the little chefs at work.

Here's Allie with her cake.

Kyle got ahold of Allie's balloons.  I didn't notice that he was close enough to grab them until he was doing this.  He really liked them :)

Here are a few other random pictures.  Allie likes to feed Kyle.  She actually decided that she's in charge of taking care of Kyle on the weekends.

Kyle was playing on the floor and when I turned around, Romeo was right next to him.

Eli with a green tomato he picked.

Kyle was sitting on the grass and fell over.

I'm not sure where to start.  It's been so long.  Everyone is doing well here. 

Kyle is almost 6 months.  He's sitting up well now.  He still spits up, but not as bad as he had been.  He's also getting up on his hands and knees and rocking.  We think he'll be crawling within the next month.  It's too soon for me.  He's such a sweet baby.  He started baby cereal two days ago, but I think it gave him a stomach ache.  He loved it though.  I'll try it again tomorrow.  If he gets crabby again afterwards, we'll just switch to a different kind of baby food - green beans or peas.


Eli is doing well too.  He goes with me to the gym every day.  We go through the same dialog every day before he'll go into the kids club.  It goes like this
Eli :  Mommy, toys? (toys is what he calls the gym)
me:  Yes Eli
Eli:  Mommy back?
me:  Yes, I'll come back for you, Eli
Eli:  Me cry?  No
me:  No, don't cry, I'll come back
Eli:  Mommy hug and kiss here (he points to his cheek)
me: Yes, I'll give you a hug and kiss
Eli:  Mommy back?

And we start all over.  He likes going to the kids club, but apparently wants to be sure I'm going to pick him up before I leave.

Here we were playing with the camera.  Eli loved doing this.

And here's Eli at the soccer fields. 

Brotherly love.


Ben is doing great.  He's back to the good Ben we had before Kyle was born.  He loves school and his new friends.  And he loves playing soccer.  He's agreeable almost all the time. 

Ben also loves his new legos.  Here he is after his birthday party with the loot.

And here he is with the firetruck that he put together.  He's able to do them by himself in his room.  At first, I sat down with him and helped him a little, but he doesn't need me to do that anymore.


Allie likes first grade.  I feel like it's a lot.  She's gone from 8:30 - 4:30 and then she comes home with a worksheet every night, she's supposed to read for 15 minutes/day, and has spelling words every week.  She does it all happily, but I wish she could play more.  She can't seem to take a nice picture anymore.  She always is silly.


We bought a bike rack for our mini van so we can go to bike trails now.  Allie and Ben are both riding two wheelers.  It's been a lot of fun.  Ben keeps track of weekends so he knows when we can go again.  Here are a few pictures.



Note : Eli's wearing one shoe in this picture.



 

Allie had her first day of 1st grade today.  I was sad last night because she's gone all day, but it went well.  Her bus comes around 8:30 in the morning.  And today, she got home at 5pm.  That was 1.5 hours after school ended.  I guess it's always really late the first day.  I expect it to be more like 4pm once they have the routine down.  Allie was tired when she got home.



We read books tonight before bed.  Allie is supposed to read 10 minutes a night.  Ben just really wants to read so he read one too. 

One day last week, Ben said "I know how to ride a two wheeler."  Chris and I were both confused.  We think he just decided that he could ride without training wheels.  I wonder if the bike show at Cedar Point helped him come to this conclusion.  He was very interested in the tricks the bikers could do.  We took his training wheels off and he rode off.  No help from me.

Kyle is sleeping well.  We had a few rough nights when I stopped using the swaddle wrap,  but he started to see it as a challenge and instead of sleeping, wiggled until he was free.  And once he was free, I think he wanted to be swaddled again.  It was a vicious cycle.  Anyway, I ended up moving the air purifier into his room for white noise and it worked like a charm.  He's getting up once a night and waking up smiling around 7:30.  I hope this continues!  Here he is as a burrito (swaddled).


I am loving the gym!  It's nice to drop off the kids and not have kids arguing or complaining while I work out.  I can't remember if I blogged it before, but I joined a gym on a whim.  Again, so nice!

Allie and Ben saw our neighbor who babysat them once riding her bike.  They got this brilliant idea that she should babysit again.  So we called her on Saturday and she came over in the afternoon.  The only problem was that Eli was sleeping when she got here and then freaked out when he woke up.  He calmed down after 40 minutes of screaming.  Hopefully she'll come again.