Caitlin Quote

I was cooking Italian flat beans for dinner tonight, and I noticed Caitlin scowling as she watched me cook.

Me: "Caitlin, I know these aren't your favorite, but it's important that be able to eat things you don't like."

Caitlin: "I'm not frowning because I don't like them-I'm just upset that you sat on them!"

(oh honey...if mommy had sat on the beans there would be nothing left!) 

Pictures from Tallulah Gorge coming soon!  Tomorrow I'm going in to get to know my "class" prior to actually starting student teaching.  I'll update as soon as I can. 

Look What I Got Today...

I start Sept. 20th!  I am both excited and nauseated.  Everyone tells me this is normal :)

Digital Natives...*

*Thanks to Madame Queen, for the much catchier title ;)

12 Days!

New Camera

Yay!!  It's here!!  In the two weeks that I was without a camera there were a million and a half occasions that I REALLY REALLY NEEDED A CAMERA.  Matthew's first ball practice, playdate with friends, fun at the Mall of Georgia...but today the new one finally came!  I haven't decided if its The One or not...the quality of the pictures is not even close to the quality of the old one Nana and Dee bought for me...(y'all spoiled me!!!), but it is easy to use and was cheap, so I'll probably keep it.  (*note: I just posted pictures and actually the quality is much better than I thought!  It's a keeper.)

Of course once it did arrive, there was absolutely nothing going on.  It was rainy, the kids were playing wii and were not into posing for mommy and Ben was seriously cranky.  However, because I feel the need...I'm going to post what I have. Let me know what you think of the quality...can you tell a difference?  Because it would make my life a lot easier if I didn't have to send it back and wait another long week for a replacement.  (by the way this is the one I ended up with if you are interested)

So!  On to the most boring sequence of pictures ever posted:

 "Leave us alone Mommy, we are BUSY."

 See?  Cranky.

Shut up! The camera adds ten pounds.

I did manage to catch this one of Hannah.  Who cannot resist posing..even right after waking up from a nap...

However she quickly became this:

'Ok mom, get OUT of my face.  And my room.'

Even the cat thinks these pictures are boring. 

Enough with the pictures lady!! Geeze I'm practically falling asleeeeee (zzzzzzzz). 

Ben's Stats

Boring post y'all, but I wanted it for my records.  I'll be back with some pictures soon.  (as soon as I figure out how to fix my camera that is.  Thanks Ben!)

Yesterday was Ben's one year appointment-four shots and two toe pricks!!  He took it like a man and the shots seemed to have no effect on him.  Here are his stats:

Head: 50th percentile
Weight: at 21.1 lbs he is in the 25th percentile
Length (which is height now I guess ;)) can't remember his number but he's in the 97th percentile. 

He's pretty much following in the footsteps of his oldest sister and brother who always measured tall and
skinny.  Pea has always been short and stocky in her measurements. 

They had to prick his toe twice because his first hemoglobin reading was a bit low...the second came out a higher but still slightly lower than expected.  The doctor did not seem overly concerned.

He is hitting all of the appropriate milestones except for waving bye bye (which none of the kids did.  I think we just don't wave bye bye that much) and his speech is slightly lagging.  He can say the words mama and dada, but not really on purpose.  He is mostly just using the piercing scream to communicate these days!

Overall he's doing well-he has almost all of his teeth already-two eyeteeth have come in and the other two are lurking right below the surface. 

Lately Ben has started doing a LOT of crawling and crying, which I attributed to teeth, but recently I changed his schedule so that he is back to two naps  I had him on one nap at the same time as Hannah so that I could have a few hours in the middle of the day to eat bonbons and watch soaps work around the house, but it just was NOT working for him.  Since I've switched him to a nap around 930 and 3, he is the happiest, sweetest kid ever.  So nice to have my boy back...totally worth the alone time in the middle of the day!

It's about that time, so I'm going to get him his bottle of milk (yes, he's still on the bottle.  The doc gave me three months to wean him.  I'll start in two and a half months)

Hi Everyone!

Caitlin here, reporting live, from the shoe.  My mom is busy (of course) except now it's not school, it's theBen who needs juice or golfish or someone's soul, I'm not sure.  Anyway, thought I'd give you an update on whats really been going on. 
So, I'm in second grade now, which means I'm pretty much eight.  Well actually I won't be eight until October 17, (which is sooner than Hannah's birthday by the way) but still I'm the oldest around here, and GRACIOUS that is a big job.  What with all the helping Pea get out of her carseat, or keeping theBen happy, or even making sure Matthew is NOT wearing socks with holes, it is a MAJOR undertaking.  But Daddy tells me it's okay, he was the oldest too, and he lived through it so I'm gonna make it too.  But back to me, I'm doing GREAT in second grade.  I have three great friends, and a couple of other friends too.  Oh, and Zachary, from last year is also my friend again, even though he's not in my class.  I know he is because today and yesterday he was chasing me on the playground.  I love being faster than him!!
Anyway, Matthew has my teacher from last year, and I think he's doing fine.  I told my old teacher that if she needed ANYTHING regarding Matthew, to let me know, because I can totally handle it.  I also coached Matthew about how to handle first grade.  Especially how NOT to make your teachers think your mom is ghetto, cuz y'all I got in MAJOR trouble for that one. 
Hannah continues to plague me, you guys.  Seriously, how many times does a person have to say 'STOP COPYING ME HANNAH' before she actually stops????   Like, I'm upstairs, minding my own business throwing stuff down the stairs to see what was the loudest (bag of blocks wins, FYI) and she's all "Cake-Yin.  Let me frow too!  I frow stretch!" And I'm all, "NO!  STOP COPYING ME HANNAH!"  and then she's all like, "I FROW BALL!"  and then I have to be all, "NO! STOP COPYING ME HANNAH!"  and then she's all, "I FROW BEN!???!"  And then I have to be all, "MOMMY!!! HANNAH'S THROWING BEN DOWN THE STAIRS!!!"
And y'all know how I hate tattling. 

Anyway, there's not much to say about Ben except he's walking and eating stuff.  Like dog food.  But Mommy says we all ate dog food and its full of protein so he'll be fine, so I'm not worried about that. So really everything at the Shoe is great!!!  I have to sign off now because it's bedtime but don't worry.  I'll be back soon!!!
Love, Caitlin

So, yeah. The baby's walking now....

Ben's Birthday & Uncle Dick's Winging

The Birthday Boy-ready to party!

Happy first birthday Ben!  We got to celebrate a tiny bit early, but Ben did not complain.  He loved being the center of attention (without having to shriek to get there).  We started with a little cookout:

He IS a year older, but still not old enough to leave the kids table...(or even sit there without a tray)

Then we moved on to chocolate cake.  Ben was so excited about this!  We had talked it up-told him how wonderful chocolate cake was, and how fun it was going to be to eat AND play with.   He's ready:

Yes.  We made him 'nekkid' to keep his shirt nice.  Futile effort...

The poor boy was horribly, horribly disappointed (see video two posts ago).  Evidently he is not our son...perhaps they switched babies at the hospital?  Because he hates chocolate.  He let us know this by flinging cake from one end of the living room to the other.  Chassie must have known what was coming because she stationed herself directly in the line of fire.

This was what was left after cakeflingfest:

The "1" candle escaped his wrath.  Barely. 

Then we moved on to presents.  In this, he was not disappointed.  He got some trucks, some much needed clothes, and some very special UGA attire:

The Hat.  Which Matthew promptly relieved him of:

And the polo:

All ready for football season!!

He also got a helicopter...with four colored balls...he loves it. 

So does Hannah...guess how often Ben gets to play with it??

The following weekend, we got to go to Uncle Dick's winging!!

Congratulations Uncle Dick!!  We are all so proud!  Ben is proud too, in spite of spending the entire ceremony shrieking for attention.

The Schroeders and the Learys and the Learys :)

Afterward we got to tour Dick's airplane.  Which is a P-3.  I think. 

Matthew was first up!

The big kids...in the big airplane

Trouble!! 

All the excitement wore Pea out! 

Afterward we went out for Mexican to celebrate.  What better way to celebrate than with Margaritas and Mexican??  Ben...well, by then he had had it.  He decided about five minutes into dinner that he wanted to go home...so he yelled, and wiggled, threw food and yelled some more.  The only thing that would make him stop was taking his picture.  Everytime I held the camera up to take his picture he would stop screaming and make this face:

Or this face:

I have about six more of these...they bought me 5 minutes to suck down my margarita and gobble my dinner.  I'm going to remember this trick!

After dinner, Ginny and Dick and Mr. & Mrs. Leary came back for the afterparty at our swingin' hotel room-

Mrs. Leary bonded with the big kids...especially Matthew, who tripped on the way in and scraped up knees and elbows.  Mrs. Leary knew just what he needed: A heavy dose of sympathy mixed with amazement at his bravery.  He was in love!

Pea found a captive audience in Mr. Leary.  And no, he did not get a word in edgewise:

Overall, the mini vacation was way too short.  We had so much fun though!!

Awwwwwww!

Back to School

First day of school! I cannot believe it. This summer did not exactly fly by with my school schedule from hell, but my time with the kids definitely seemed too short. The kids are in uniforms this year, which is the only reason Caitlin is wearing a "boy shirt"...after some grumbling about it I think she has finally resigned herself. But! She has assured me that she will be changing every day after school. (Yay! More laundry.)

Matthew ended up with Caitlin's teacher from last year, which he was happy about (and so was I)..Caitlin has a teacher that I don't know much about, but who seems really nice. Unfortunately Caitlin doesn't have any of her friends from last year in her class...poor girl-when she saw the list of kids I could just see her starting to stress out. It took her a while to make close friends last year and I know she hates having to start all over. But she'll do fine. As I dropped Matthew off at his class I spent a few minutes talking to his teacher and then said goodbye to Matthew...but he was way too busy getting settled in to pay any attention to me! I suppose it's better than crying, right?

It feels really wierd not having the bigkids home right now...Pea and Ben are sitting here playing/fighting together and they are really reminding me of Lil' C and Matthew at that age...better not blink I guess...before I know it these two will be off to school!