Where did February go?

Here we are in March, I guess. We've been keeping busy doing who-knows-what and not blogging about it. Here's an attempt to remember what happened last month, for posterity.

February is La Fiesta de los Vaqueros here in Tucson. AKA the Rodeo. The kids even get two days off at the end of the month for Rodeo Break. Ryan got into the spirit early with my boots, which fit him more like fishing waders.

 A lot of this goes on around here:

 Tackling and wrestling and chasing and punching and kicking. Sometimes in fun, sometimes in anger. We're trying to let the kids work out their own problems a bit more because stepping in to break up their fights isn't solving anything. It works sometimes, and when it doesn't I've given up on time outs most of the time for fights between siblings (it's mostly reserved for disrespect aimed at Mom or Dad now). The new winner that seems to work a lot better is "Take a break! Everyone in their own rooms in 10-9-8..." They drop whatever they're fighting over and run to their own rooms and lock everyone else out while they play with their own toys. Of course it wouldn't work for Rachel and Annie, since they share a room, but since the two that fight all the time are Ryan and Annie, it works perfectly.

And in good news in that arena, we have actually had a break through this month with Ryan and Annie. There have been several days where they have played together in the same room with the same toys for over an hour without any yelling or fighting. That has not happened since before Ryan started crawling, I think. That must be one of the best things that has come out of February. The month of love, I guess. :)

Speaking of which...

 We celebrated Valentine's Day with a few little surprises for the kids, and a date night for Jacob and me. We planned to go to Outback Steakhouse for dinner, but didn't actually plan it out by calling or getting there early, and apparently on Valentine's Day a lot of people go out to dinner. Weird. Since we weren't willing to wait forever for dinner we ended up at 5 Guys for some tasty burgers instead. I got a milkshake, so it was a pretty decent Valentine's date anyway.

 Rachel keeps on excelling at school. We had parent/teacher conferences and the feedback from her teacher was very positive. She is already far exceeding expectations for the end of the year in all areas. She is reading at a 5th grade reading level (she's in 1st grade). She's a math whiz and the teacher said she is also patient in helping kids who don't get it, so she has started asking Rachel to help other kids sometimes when they're struggling. The only complaint is that Rachel has a hard time not being perfect. She sometimes will avoid harder books because when she takes the AR (accelerated reader) test on it to test comprehension she might miss one or two questions. And when they started new DMS (daily math skills--timed tests, like addition/subraction/etc.) sets she hates how her scores drop for the first few days.

 I say give her the hard stuff. It's good for her to miss problems and get used to not being perfect. :) In the meantime we are happy to have such a bright girl on our hands.

 Her big homework project last month was to make a timeline.

 Typically Rachel tries to get all her homework done on the first day of the week so she can have more free time after school the other days. So she was a little frustrated to realize that this project wasn't something she could whip out in 15 minutes. But after making a plan of what steps she needed to do she did a great job picking out events and pictures that were important from her life. And it was good for her to have something a little more challenging than her regular homework that she does whip through in 15 minutes for the whole week.

February was an incredibly warm month. With temperatures in the end of January hovering around 70-80 degrees it was hard to imagine that it would get cold again before spring officially arrived. And it hasn't gotten cold again. Unless you count a couple of days last week when the highs were barely in the 60s (we do count that as cold, actually). With no freezing temps in sight we spent a lot of time out in the back yard working in the garden. Most everything is planted now and some plants are beginning to peek out. The kids wavered between helping me plant seeds and this:

 They do love the play set. Even Megan loves her swing and will be pretty content sitting there watching the kids run around as long as they come give her a push or two when she yells out for attention (they happily comply).

For Rodeo break we headed to Reid Park to play on the big playground they have there. McKenzie and Peyton and Grandma met us there.

 I missed out on getting any pictures of the actual playground, but for the first 10-15 minutes that we were there Annie would randomly call out every few minutes, "Mom! This is AWESOME!" It was. We had a picnic near the cement turtles, then went off to find some live turtles.

 Some would come to the edge of the pond and sun on the rocks, while we could see many more out swimming in the water. There were ducks, too, and all the kids were very happy to watch the wildlife.

 (Grandma was there, too--I would not be brave enough to attempt that outing with 6 kids alone.)

After the park we headed to Little Anthony's for ice cream.

 After waiting and waiting and waiting we finally got our ice cream just before we were ready to give up and leave. We had ordered the Wipe Out, which is 14 scoops of ice cream on a brownie, with chocolate sauce, pineapple topping, whipped topping, Twinkies, and Nilla Wafers. It was delicious. With 4 kids (Ryan got his own gluten-free sundae) and 3 adults (Grandpa joined us) eating we almost were able to finish it off. But not quite.

 It was a fun way to wrap up the month.

As for Megan this month, she has become a crawling champ and an eating champ. She eats a lot of table foods now if they're soft enough to gum (cooked potatoes, peas, strawberries, bread, etc.) and prefers food that she can pick up to baby food we try to feed her on a spoon. And today she finally drank formula out of a bottle for a whole feeding! Woohoo! I can now run an errand without timing it perfectly around her feeding schedule. Or even, wonder of wonders, go to the temple in Mesa (a 6-7 hour round trip) and leave her in the care of my parents. A nursing baby who will take a bottle every once in a while is great!

She is also beginning to try to climb/pull up a bit. She doesn't really try to stand up, but likes to get to kneeling position. She'll be 8 months old in 3 days, and soon I'm sure she'll be pulling up to standing. Another month and a half and she'll probably be walking. Crazy baby.

January Catch Up

Megan became mobile this past month and with her new-found freedom she's free to explore. She discovered the curtains for the back door and absolutely loved them.

She does this all the time, both at the back door and at the curtains hanging in her room instead of closet doors. She also likes playing in Colette's skirts that hang in our closet at just the right height. Apparently it's fun to be blinded by fabric.

Here are some shots of Rachel and Annie entertaining Megan, while they wait for the movie night to start.

The kids often take pictures but most of them aren't worth keeping, some are. This one is Ryan. At first Colette thought it was Megan.

We have family movie night every Friday night. With the projector Santa brought at Christmas, and the HUGE screen Colette got for her birthday, we decided to have some friends over to join in the fun. We watched Aladdin and the kids all loved it.

Maybe next time we'll do a game night for the adults while the kids are occupied by the movie.

We got out the walker for Megan to try out. She only likes it for small chunks of time, but it is pretty fun when her siblings decide to pretend it's a race car.

Snow!

The kids woke us up bright and early on New Years Day and that's when we discovered we got a New Year's Day treat for Tucson: snow!  We bundled up as quickly as possible and went outside to play in the cold white stuff.  The snow wasn't great for making snowmen or even snow balls: it was very light and powdery.

It was great for snow angels.

 Being the desert rats that we are, we don't have sleds, so Colette got a laundry basket and a rope and we had fun pulling the kids back and forth across the yard.

 If you squeezed hard enough you could make a snowball and who doesn't love throwing snowballs.

 Here's a picture of an upright snow angel (named Annie).

 Here's another upright snow angel (named Rachel).

And now we're back to enjoying highs in the 70s. I was kind of hoping for a few more days of freezing weather to kill off all the bugs. Last year we only had 3 nights where it got down to freezing and the summer was really bad for bugs. This year we've had a few more days, 5-7 I think, but if it doesn't freeze more we'll have another buggy summer. The lizards will love it.

Family Pictures-Knight version

We did our family pictures back in November, but since Todd and Savannah were visiting for Christmas we wanted to get some pictures with everyone together. We almost forgot to arrange it and left it for the last day, which happened to be a freezing cold day, so we nixed our plans for going to Agua Caliente Park for a family photo shoot and just opted for some pictures at our house. My friend, Karolee, was nice enough to come snap some pictures for us.

Jared enjoyed photo bombing as we did test shots to check the lighting.

 Annie was being fancy...

The day happened to be overcast, so our natural lighting through the windows wasn't as bright as we had planned, but we got a few decent pictures inside before we headed outside for a few quick (cold) pictures.

 Grandma and Grandpa and all the grandkids:

 And just the grandkids:

 Check out Ryan in the following pictures. Trying to get "grandpa pants" going on, I guess.

 Not that his grandpas wear pants like that, but that's what we always call pants up to your armpits. Ryan is one funny kid sometimes.

We managed to get his pant fanatics calmed down and snap another good one:

 And a couple pictures of the happy couples...

 We threw some super nachos in for lunch and enjoyed the fun of having all the cousins together for one more time.

 It sure was fun having Todd and Savannah visit. Now that they're gone, we're contemplating a visit to their house this summer. Playing with cousins is just so fun!

And another picture of Ryan that doesn't fit anywhere, but he sure is looking good. :)

Megan is 6 months old!

Megan hit half a year old at the beginning of this month. To celebrate her half birthday she began army crawling. It took her about a week before she realized she was actually moving around, then she really took off. She has since started to get up on her hands and knees, rock back and forth, then dive forward, sometimes face planting. She knows there's a more efficient way to crawl, but can't quite get it just yet. Give her another week or so.

We pulled out her Johnny Jump Up and Annie and Rachel were more excited about it than she was. She tolerated it just fine, but hasn't quite caught on to the jumping aspect of it.

At 6 months old some of her favorite things are Ryan, pulling out fistfuls of hair, Ryan, gouging out eyes or gums with her fingernails, Ryan, eating paper or cardboard, Annie, biting a finger with her two new teeth that came in a week before she turned 6 months, Rachel, cords, Daddy, shoelaces, and Mommy. She is becoming a bit of a Mama's girl. She's happy to be crawling around, playing, or hanging out with Ryan, Annie, and Rachel, but if she sees me walk by, she starts crying. But Ryan can always cheer her up. He is the best big brother and loves making her happy. And as soon as Megan sees Ryan she'll break out into a huge smile. They're so cute together.

Ryan loves his cars and won't share with just anyone. Except for Megan.

Megan was rather fascinated with Ryan's helmet.

He was happy to accommodate her.

Ryan decided it was time to introduce Megan to all his big cars.

She was a fan. In this picture Megan looks so much like Ryan. Everyone says Megan is a mini, girl version of Ryan.

Ryan at 6 months:

Ryan taking a picture of Megan:

Megan is enjoying being able to eat like the rest of us. (Another picture Ryan or Annie took.)

Watching people chew is one of her favorite pastimes. She is totally fascinated by it. It even will calm her when she's cranky.


We took Megan to the doctor for her 6 month check up on Friday and her stats are in: 27.4 inches, which is the 94th percentile (no wonder she's growing out of some of her 9 month size clothes already) and 15 lb 6 oz (30th percentile). She got her immunizations like a champ--screamed at the nurse good and loud, then as soon as I picked her up she quieted down in less than 5 seconds and was totally happy heading out to the car. It somehow made me think of the very first time immunizing Rachel. It made me tear up to see my baby screaming in pain from the shots. Now it doesn't even phase me. Maybe because I know how resilient babies are. Or I'm just callous and unfeeling. ;)

Megan is a very smiley baby, but doesn't laugh all that often. It takes some real effort to make her laugh. Or she has to be almost too tired, then it's a little easier.

We got a pretty good video that captures her happy personality (and skillful hair-grabbing) pretty well.

We sure are happy to have Megan around. She makes getting things done around the house super hard because she prefers to be held or have someone (preferably Mom) sitting with her the whole time she's on the ground. But she makes everyone happy with her squeals and smiles and even hair pulling. And everyone in the family is learning how to serve and help out, both around the house, and with the baby more. When Megan starts crying now I hardly ever have to ask anyone to go help her, they just jump up and run over to try to cheer her up. It sure is fun to see her learning and growing and progressing. 

And speaking of growing up, Ryan thinks he's approaching the age where he can give up naps. Yesterday I couldn't prevail upon him to nap for anything. We finally settled on sitting on his bed reading books for quiet time, which he did. A few hours later the kids were watching a movie and Ryan couldn't hold out any longer.

He woke up SO cranky he wouldn't stop screaming for a half hour. His sleep needs are a delicate balance and getting too much or too little or falling asleep at the wrong time makes for a very cranky 2-year-old. I do not enjoy this stage so much.