5 months!!

Isaac is 5 months old (about 15 pounds)! How time flies. He has cute chubby legs with rolls that remind me of when Zoey was a baby. His skin is so soft and squishy-smooth, I love it. He's found his hands and feet and is learning to use them quite well! 

He started rice cereal and really likes it. He's learning to roll and pick up toys. He loves sucking his thumb! He even sucks his thumb between bites of rice cereal, which makes feeding time a bit messy! He's sleeping 10 hours through the night on most nights, although we do get an occasional 12 hours here and there. Those nights are the BEST!  

He wakes up happy from naps. I love leaning over his crib to get him and see him squeal with delight while kicking his legs and flapping his arms. He may not be able to say words, but it's the best language that tells me he's excited to see me! 

"Bye-Bye Dad-O!"

Of all the morning routines we do each day, our favorite (by far!) is running to the window to wave good-bye to dad (called "Dad-O" at our house) as he leaves for work. We are starting to fill up our window space now that we have five kids crowding to get their share of a view of dad's truck leaving, but we've done this every morning since Jackson was a tiny tike.

We even have a little song that goes like this "Bye-bye dad-o. Bye-bye dad-o. Bye-bye dad-o, we hate to see you go!" We all sing it while we wave and wish him a good day at work. He always reminds us to do something nice for someone else that day. It's a great morning routine. If the weather is warm enough, the kids will actually run after his truck to the corner of our driveway and wave him off.  I will miss this when the kids outgrow it.

Another one bites the dust

Jackson lost his other front tooth last week....literally! He came into our room at bedtime and said he had pulled out his tooth. The bloody mouth and lip and gaping hole in the front attested to this. We went to the bathroom to wash him all up and the darn thing got all slippery and fell out of his hand! At least it didn't go down the drain :)

It took quite a while to find the tiny thing... amidst the dust and other dirt lurking under our bathroom counter, but we finally found it, washed it up and got a proper picture to remember it all! And he had the tooth all cleaned up for the tooth fairy that night (he wondered what would happen if he never found it- I reminded him of the time he swallowed his tooth and the dang nice tooth fairy still left him something under the pillow)!

Birthday Time!

May is full of Birthdays at our house. I couldn't be happier to have these 3 boys in my life! I really feel blessed. Jackson is thoughtful, Calvin is gracious, and Brian is the best thing that's happened to me!

Jackson celebrated his 7th birthday on May 1st. He got a bike from mom and dad, harmonica from grandma/pa Beutler, and outdoor toys from grandma/pa Gray. 

He wanted a fire-breathing dragon cake. So I made a BTS cake with a dragon on top. The fire coming out of the dragon's mouth was "lighting" his birthday candle.

  We celebrated the birthdays by visiting Thanksgiving point (we got free passes from our Tulip Festival Race). We rode horses at the Farm county, went for a tractor ride, and walked through the dinosaur museum. I would have loved to walk through the Tulip Festival Gardens, but we ran out of time, and we were really there to do what the kids wanted anyway :)

Playing in the sand digging for dinosaurs was the highlight for Eli and Calvin at the dinosaur museum. They loved the hands-on displays. Zoey and Jackson loved the star bridge and the new tinker exhibit where they could explore how things function with different science projects.

All the boys had a combined birthday party. Calvin turns 2 on May 8th and Brian turns 35 on the 15th. I made them a 7 layer strawberry cake (vanilla cake layered with pudding, strawberries and whip cream). We enjoyed the company of the grandparents, Danny and Christina and Paul's family. Calvin got a shovel set from Grandma/pa Beutler, a push-along ball car from Grandma/pa Gray, and Legos from mom and Dad.

I gave Brian a day of fishing with a friend and gourmet breakfast/lunch, and a dinner/movie date later that night. I also planned to take care of his fix-it items so that he could really enjoy the day off. He got a gardening book from his parents and spending money from my parents. Overall the boys were spoiled and happy with their birthdays!