I Get Around

Camryn is quite the mobile girl these days. She's 5 months, 3 weeks old but she can already "crawl" around the room. Here's a quick video of her latest skills.

We can't believe how quickly she's growing up!

(By the way, I thought the music that happened to be in the background - from Sleeping Beauty - was kind of cute and fitting.)

Hooray for more space!

I finally finished getting a picture of each room in our new place. So here is your grand tour:

living room shot #1
living room shot #2

dining area in the kitchen

kitchen and backdoor
downstairs half bath
upstairs full bath
avery's bedroom
camryn's bedroom
our bedroom

Some of my favorite features of the house:
-outer screen doors in front and back
-magazine racks built in the bathrooms
-custom wood valences above most windows
(perfect to keep knick knacks away from the kids)
-gas stove (way better cooking than electric)
-full unfinished basement (not shown)
-super huge yard (7/8 acre) and neighbors with swings
-within walking distance of post office, library, grocery, dentist, etc.
-built in shelves in the master closet

Happy Birthday Stephen!

I tried to get Avery to sing Happy Birthday for her now four year old cousin, Stephen, today but she was too interested in the camera (and keeping Camy out of it). So here's the best shot we got.

Happy Birthday Stephen! We love you and wish we could be there to share your special day with you!

I want a birthday party.

I haven't talked about the girls too much lately so I thought I'd share what's been going on with them.

CAMRYN is exploring the exciting world of baby food, including rice, oatmeal, applesauce, squash, and pears. She's liking them all pretty good and is getting increasingly better at swallowing. Her biggest development lately has been her manuever ability. At 5 1/2 months she can already "skooch" forward a few inches at a time, mostly by pushing on her tippy toes. To supplement, she rolls back and forth and pulls her body around using her arms. I wouldn't say that she is technically crawling yet but if I put a toy a six inches from her reach, she can usually get it. Pretty impressive. She has no teeth yet but is showing some early signs of teething, although I still don't expect them to make their debut for another month or two. Eye color is still inconclusive, but her daddy and I suspect hazel as a possible end result.



AVERY is our little talker girl. She constantly amazes us with her vocabulary and the sentances she constructs. The other day after finding the crown she wore on her birthday, she came up with: "I want a birthday party. A Dora one... I lost my Magenta one." (It'll be a while, kid.) We're in the process of acquiring a toddler bed for her so that the crib can finally be passed on to her younger sister, but we're a little nervous about getting her to stay put (any advice?). Potty training is still far off in the horizon since she hasn't ever had any success with her potty seat. Oh well, we've got time. Some of her favorite activities of late have been: ripping packing peanuts into tiny little pieces and scattering all over the house, pretending to go shopping at Walmart with her purse, eating the corners off of library books, bouncing Camy in the jumper, and playing with her friend Elizabeth. She's a good kid, very smart, and only drives us crazy a few times a day. :)

Labor Day Weekend

Well this weekend has definitely been full of labor for us! We're now official residents of Sussex, Wisconsin and really like our new place. We've almost got all the boxes in the right place, but now the task is opening them up and putting them somewhere.

The move went well. We started loading the truck at 9am and it was unloaded at our new place and back to our apartment by 11:30am. We had some great help with everything and were checked out by 2:30pm Saturday. Then the REAL work began!

So we're pretty pleased with it here and the kids have been enjoying their new rooms. And we're enjoying not having Camryn in our room anymore. It's also definitely cool to have this unfinished basement to fill up with all those storage boxes we've shoved in closets, etc. the past few years.

No pictures yet but I'm sure I'll have things in order enough to give you some views of the inside by the end of the week.