Amelia - 9 months

We've hit the 9-month mark! Amelia is as cheerful and curious and purposeful and communicative and restful and flexible as I could have ever hoped for...she deserves a big pat on her back!

For record-keeping purposes: Nine months: 4 top teeth have grown in without much ado, fortunately, for a total of 6 teeth; she claps her hands; waving with more purpose; she started to seem a little agitated around mealtimes if I didn't set her up at her high chair and feed her real food, so she's forced me to move forward with that; she's started pulling up from sitting to standing, found her standing in her crib the other day; she does the army crawl; she's still sleeping like a champ - bedtime around 6:30, waking around 7:30, napping twice a day around 9:30ish and 1:30ish and she's happy as a clam when she wakes up; eats a 6 oz bottle about every 3 hours during the day; and she puts every single thing she finds in her mouth. 

The Beach 2015 - Corolla, NC

Sorry, but research shows that it's not summer without a trip to the beach. This summer we waited patiently until the last possible week of summer break to head down to the Outer Banks with Nana and Papa. It was worth the wait. We had great weather, fantastic company, a super location (right on the ocean!), and the house was perfect. I took 800 million pictures of my children (and a few of the rest of us) as is usually the case with me at the beach, so consider yourself lucky you only have 11 to look through below.

 They just keep growing.

Amelia and I spent a fair amount of time (taking pictures together) at the house, between naps and her nonsensical desire to eat sand by the handful, this was our safe place.

Baseball, baseball cards, baseball books, baseball talk, baseball history, have overtaken our world.

A seven-year-old and his birthday cake!

This was Jacob's birthday list - baseball and basketball trading cards.

Road Trip 2015 - Vermont

Look in that mirror behind me, there's a new addition to our roadtripping crew! Amelia's first (of many future...) roadtrip(s) was to the great state of Vermont. Memaw joined us on our journey so she could visit with our old friends Mary and Robert and I could meet up with my friends who were staying sorta nearby. It was a 9 hour drive that took 12.5 hrs to complete, without ANY traffic. Obviously there's room for improvement on the rest stop front.

Robert was kind and patient enough to let Jacob and Owen drive his tractor...and talk his ear off.

The kids and I continued on to Londonderry to meet up with my friends Anna and Jen. We went big the first day taking a nice long gondola ride up Stratton Mountain (see the picture of me and Amelia below? See the tiny gondola far far ahead of us in the background? All five of the "big" kids were in there - ALONE - the lady in charge of the gondolas didn't even bat an eyelash so I...didn't either), and then walked down with all our 10 kids (ages 8 and below, including 3 babies) and their varying degrees of interest in hiking which we became painfully aware of about halfway down. Prior to heading up the mountain we stopped in a store to grab lunch for a picnic and the lady working at the register surprised us with a complimentary bottle of wine!! She must have been very impressed by (...or sorry for) us!

This was taken after the wine, but before the hike. 

Vermont Country Store visit. This place has it all - truly - including ice-cream. Must go back.

We really love Vermont in the summer. There's so much to do outdoors and so many wide open spaces to run around in. The boys explored endlessly in the stream near our house, we saw beautiful views wherever we went, they got to eat ice-cream every day and it was just a nice (though not exactly relaxing, I mean, there were 10 children) change of pace.