Another Discovery Kind of Day...

Last Friday I had a "day off" (no babysitting) so my friend Dawn and I took our kids to the children's museum. We had a lovely day. The girls behaved very well and the babies played happily. I usually dread having to drag the kids out of the house for long periods of time, but this time it was completely worth it. I didn't get many pictures of Hannah because she didn't spend much time standing still. She had a great time exploring the museum all afternoon.

Ben in a boat...

Ben and Dawn's little guy are just a month apart. They're becoming good little friends...

Babies overboard!

He didn't go anywhere in this car, but he sure liked it.

Cowgirl Hannah doing a little grocery shopping. She's not wearing shoes because she'd insisted on wearing slippers that day. I tried to fight her on it, but I gave up. All day long every time she walked out of her shoe or fell down I'd rub it in her face. "See! I told you to wear lace-up shoes!"

Standing on the table to make her tower as big as possible. I had to snap the picture before yelling at her to get down.

What a sweet boy! What a sweet day!

Why I'm a slacker these days...

I sat down to get caught up and I couldn't find anything good to post. I could show you the pictures from Valentine's day, but that's kinda pathetic since it was a month and a half ago. And it was nothing special. Heart shaped pancakes, red clothes, and we had 8 kids 5 and under over here decorating cookies. You've seen it all before.

We were cute on St. Patrick's day. Ben wore Hannah's "Baby's First St Patrick's Day" onesie, which I was sure was going to be too big since she was nearly a year old on her 1st St. Patrick's Day. Nope, it was size 3-6 months. What a small thing she was! We all had green hats and I put on make-up long enough to take a picture with the kids, but somehow my pictures dissappeared. Seriously, I took the pictures, looked at them on the camera, put the memory card in the computer and the pictures were gone, never to be seen again. Sad, sad, sad. I had no motivation to do any festive food except make some green jello. Even the idea of throwing together baked potatoes seemed too difficult to me. That might have been more sad than losing the pictures.

So, why you ask, has Lazy Alex been taking over my life? Well, let me tell you. To warn you, this post is going to include a lot of excuses. I hate making excuses for myself, I believe that we make time for what's important to us and if we can't find time to do something, it means that it's just not as important as other things in our life. But in my Lazy Alex mood, here are my excuses:

1.  We've recently inherited a new baby! She's almost 4 months old. We don't get to keep her all the time, but she hangs out with us a lot. We've been babysitting her and her 7 year old brother for about a month now. She gets dropped off at 8:30 in the morning and picked up at 6 and we pick up her brother from the bus after school. We're having fun, but 2 kids under 1 is a lot of work. I feel like my days are being sucked up by so many bottles and so many many diapers. Luckly, Hannah is mostly just in diapers at night, although she still has an accident or two every day.

We don't get out much during the day these days since we don't easily fit 3 car seats into our little 2 door car. Devan has to be at school most nights from 6-10 so he takes the car every night since our extra kids don't get picked up until after 6. I've started to adore Saturdays when I can actually go places in the car, even if it's just for little trips to the grocery store or bank! Luckily it's been nicer outside lately, so I'm hoping for many days spent very productively lounging at the park.

2. We have a baby that we are going to get to keep coming the first week of November! I'm about 8 weeks pregnant. Yay, yay, YAY! I hope I'm not jinxing it announcing it already. We're still about 2 weeks from being able to hear a heartbeat, so I'm holding my breath until then, but for now I feel really good about it. I've been nice and sick and tired, whereas I wasn't much at all with the pregnancy between Hannah and Ben. I've been combating the sick by eating whatever sounds good when it sounds good and fighting the tired by shirking all responsibilities that aren't directly related to keeping these 3 babies happy and fed. As a result, I haven't lost my customary 10 pounds this trimester and I've already had one person tell me they wondered if I'm pregnant because I'm showing a little. But, I think that this is the happiest I've been yet at this stage of pregnancy.

So that's my life. Devan has 3 weeks left of the semester. This summer he'll only be in school 1 night a week! I'm thinking I may see if I can take a class of my own one night a week this summer since he'll be home to watch the kids. We'll see. Between babysitting during the week and nursery on Sunday I'm getting to the point where I feel like I need to get out and learn or do something that's just mine. I can feel my brain turning to mush!

And when I feel like I'm getting too tired or stupid to go on anymore, these little moments make me happy...

The Benjamin!

It's been a big week for Ben. He's learned how to officially crawl, his first two teeth (bottom) poked through, and he's learned to pull himself up to standing. He's also getting really good at his "ma-ma-ma" "da-da-da"s and call my crazy, but he's always looking for the correct parent when he says it. He's ready to take on the world. He's such a happy, fun baby. I don't know what I'd do without him! Here are some of my favorite Ben pictures from the month of January...

Last Sunday before church. He played at the mirror for the longest time. He loves himself as much as I love him!

He officially learned how to sit up on February 3rd.

Big sister wanted to make sure we knew that she could sit up too.

He tried lots of new food this month. The one he hated the most at first was the applesauce. Weird kid!

He loves Hannah's princesses as much as she does.

This night we spent about 45 minutes just playing in the hallway. I'm not sure why the hall, but I'm assuming it was because the rest of the house was too dirty. We had fun.

This was before Ben could crawl and it took him about 10 minutes to get all the way down the hallway.

But he made it!

I love this next series of pictures. I don't like how I look in most of them, but Devan just kept snapping pictures as we played and I love that I have such sweet pictures with my babies.

This was one of my favorite moments of the whole month. This was also before he could fully crawl. I took a break from getting ready for church to come sit on the floor with Ben. He scooted over and pulled himself up until he was sitting on my lap. Such a sweet boy!

This is Ben in nursery. Every week we do puzzles while the kids are getting dropped off. He knows the drill.

That baby to the right is 18 months and actually belongs in nursery. I think Ben could almost pass for an official nursery kid.

This is one of his first times with a sippy cup. He's still learning, but he's catching on.

This probably isn't appropriate for the internet, but a few days before Ben started standing up, I left him on the floor while I got his bath ready and came back to this. He was grunting and fussing and trying so hard to get himself up. He didn't make it, but it was cute. Now he can pull himself up so we don't leave him unattended in the bathroom anymore.

Devan went fishing for Benjamin. He lured him all the way up and down the hall by slowly reeling in and letting Ben chase the princess crown.

And here are just a couple more from last Sunday...

He noticed the baby and decided to go for it...

but Hannah quickly put a stop to that.

I tried to get a nice picture in church clothes, but he will not hold still for a second. We'll keep trying.

A few nights ago he entertained himself for the longest time pushing this box around. Devan used it as further evidence that we don't need to buy our children anything, ever.

February was a good month with the Benjamin.