Ella is 4 months

Ella turned 4 months old today and she is definitely no longer content sitting still. She has become quite the active little baby rolling from tummy to back and back to tummy in order to get herself around the family room. She likes to grab onto things and often ruins my folded laundry piles (assuming one of the other three kids hasn't plowed over them first). She is not crawling, but she loves to be on her tummy now and she is able to sit in the exersaucer and play until she falls asleep (see pic above). Ella loves to talk (much like the rest of her family) and often babbles to us about everything. She's still the most "smiley" of all of our babies and she is super easy as long as she can see one of us and know that we are still close by.

At her well baby check up, the doc said she's perfect. She is 13 pounds 7 ounces, now in the 53rd percentile. Her length is amazing- she is just over 25 inches long (83rd %ile), less than 1 inch from Catherine at 9 months!! Unlike all the other children, she has kept her blue eyes and they don't look like they will change, so we might finally have our blue-eyed baby!

Enjoy the pics...

The mom.

CRASH! BANG! BOOM!

Na, na, na, na, na, na, na, na,, na, na, na, na, Batman!
...and Batgirl, along with their sidekicks, a Ladybug Butterfly and Tinkerbaby!

Halloween has come and gone and we now have more candy than any 4 children (ok, 3 children and 2 adults) can eat! The kids picked their own costumes this year and despite my crafty and creative abilities, all of them are store bought :) Harbin debated between being Darth Vader or Batman, but ultimately decided to be Batman. Catherine wanted to be a Butterfly, but after seeing the Batgirl costume at Walmart, she changed her mind. Of course, by then Lydia was convinced she too wanted to be a Butterfly and since I already had a Ladybug costume in her size, she became a Ladybug Butterfly. Ella fit in the Tinkerbell costume we had when Catherine was little, so she didn't really get a choice of what to be.

On Halloween we went to our church's Fall Festival. My mom joined us and we took the kids around to all the activities. There were bounce houses, horse rides, games, and hay rides. The kids enjoyed getting to do all the activities and see all their friends from Sunday School.

After the festival, we headed over to mom's house to "Trick or Treat" at her door. She was nice enough to give the kids candy and pretzels and grilled cheese for dinner! Then we headed on to meet up with one of Harbin's buddies from church, Dalton. The kids all Trick or Treated in their neighborhood and the kids had a blast being with one another. The girls kept up with the boys the best they could, but eventually Lydia tuckered out and caught a ride on the top of the stroller.

At the end of the night the kids were wired, the parents were worn out and we had more candy than anyone could ever need! (Speaking of candy, check out this website for cool things to do with your candy rather than eat it http://www.candyexperiments.com/).

Happy Halloween!

The mom.

(The pic of me and the kids was from Farm-O-Ween with Young Life and I am dressed as one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles- and yes, that's a homemade costume :)

Pumpkin Goop

We finally got to carve our hand-picked pumpkins the night before Halloween. Harbin and Catherine picked out what they would carve and this year the kids didn't seem to mind the goop as much. In years past, they wanted to help, but didn't want to touch the inside of the pumpkin. Lydia was hesitant at first, but then seemed to get used to the feel and decided she, too, could help get the goop out.

Lydia ended up getting grumpy and started to whine and get in trouble, so she went to bed before the actual carving started, but Harbin and Catherine stuck it out. They attempted the carving, but decided it was hard to make the knife cut, so Scott and I pretty much did the carving. They were pleased with the outcome and were proud to display them on our porch Halloween night (despite the fact you can't really even see our porch from the road).

Stay tuned for pics of the kids Halloween costumes!

The mom.