four and a half

tennyson turns four and a half today.

he's growing up so much.

he tells me all the time,

"mama, i'm so strong."

it's his way of saying he can do something all by himself.

he loves to microwave his pizzas by himself.

and take pictures with my camera.

he's really into legos and superheroes still.

he knows the names of all the superheroes,

and can even tell you what they do and say.

and he'd still spend all day on the ipad if we let him.

his favorite person is cookie monster.

he has a stuffed animal that he carries around constantly,

much to his mother's chagrin.

and when we do allow him to watch youtube,

he's usually watching a cookie monster video.

tennyson's favorites:

food- candy, waffles, pizza, cheez-its, pirate's booty, and oreos

movie- toy story 2, mickey's house of villians, and wall-e

tv show- peppa pig

song- "animal" by maroon five

drink- root beer

book- "chicka chicka boom boom" and "goodnight moon"

tennyson is such a great kid.

he's incredibly smart.

he's quick to please.

he's an awesome brother.

he's the biggest helper.

and he's such a hoot.

happy half birthday, kid.

we're so happy you're ours.

p.s... wanna follow tennyson on instagram? send a request to @quirkylegokid.

he doesn't post much, but mom got sick of him clogging her feed all the time.

and he really, really loves taking pictures.

seven months

bridget hazel is seven months old now.

she has one tooth now.

it popped through the day before she turned seven months.

she's crawling around now, too.

it's a cute crawl.

kind of like a little frog trying to get around.

she loves her jumparoo.

she'll spend all afternoon jumping, and playing toys, and looking out our big window.

she's also been eating more foods.

she tolerates purees okay,

but prefers to feed herself finger foods.

i'm pretty sure she'll be our athlete,

because at just seven months old, her hand/eye coordination is impressive.

she's still a content little baby.

even right now,

as she battles the croup,

she's always got a smile on her face.

we couldn't have asked for a better third child.

we're so glad she's around.

first day of school

we're a little late for our first day of school.

it's taken us a month and a half to undo the mess that lansing left us with tennyson's iep.

we were lucky to have a wonderful speech therapist in our corner who helped us push for a classroom placement.

but it required a lot of evaluations and paperwork.

and here were are in the middle of october,

and everything was finally finalized yesterday,

and today we got to start school.

he's in an afternoon special ed classroom.

we're hoping the afternoons go smoother than the mornings.

we learned last year that tennyson isn't a morning kid.

and i'm hoping getting him ready for school by noon involves a lot less kicking and screaming than when we were trying to get him ready by eight.

the first thing he found when we got to school today was his very own cubby with his name on it.

he happily unloaded the contents of his backpack and then headed into the room.

i was nervous that he wouldn't want to go without me because he's tennyson and because sometimes new places and faces are hard for him.

but he walked inside and bee-lined for some toys.

and just like that i slipped out the door and drop off was done.

it's nice to be pleasantly surprised sometimes.

i'm so proud of my preschooler. 

and i'm excited to see what the year holds for him.

i'm hoping it's a whole lot of progress and heap loads of fun.

six months

bridget is six months old now.

i don't know how time flew so fast.

as far as babies go, she's a breeze.

she rarely cries,

she smiles at everyone,

and she sleeps well enough.

she's days away from crawling.

right now she gets up on all fours,

and she even rocks back and forth.

one day soon she'll figure out how to move forward instead of backward.

she loves her brother and sister.

she's able to play with them more now,

and they bring her toys and make her giggle.

when they aren't beating her up, that is.

she's recently delved into the world of solids.

she's not too sure about it.

not that i'm surprised.

she refuses bottles and binkies, so why not solids too?

though in her defense, she will almost willingly eat puffs.

she's a joy to have around.

she really is just the most happy, content little thing.

and i can't believe that we're half way to a year.

she was supposed to stay my baby forever!

we actually do things

 we've been doing a lot of stuff lately.

not that you'd know it by looking at my blog.

a while ago we had a make your own pizza night.

we should have taken pictures of the afters,

because man did their pizzas turn out ugly.

but they had fun making them,

and they didn't taste all that bad,

so overall... it was a success.

we've been spending a lot of time at our private park.

i'm a little sad because our pool is now officially closed for the season.

(i'm not ready for winter again!)

the kids have been huge fans of looking through the binoculars at the boats,

and tormenting the local duck families.

we also officially became zoo members. 

yay!

maggie is our animal lover.

so we knew that this would be a necessity.

maggie was particularly concerned about this gorilla.

or "gralla" as she calls them.

she just sat there staring out the window...

"oh no! the gralla has no food!

and his towel is all gone.

it's up in the tree!

oh man. he can't get it.

and he has no food.

the gralla so hungry."

but their favorite part of the zoo?

the animal carousel.

in fact, just yesterday maggie took me by the face.

she has this cute habit of grabbing your cheeks and pulling you in real close when she has something important to say.

so she pulled me in close and whispered,

"mama. i love the animal carousel."

so i'm sure it won't be long before we're back on that carousel again.

because i spoil my kids.

and because we're zoo members.