Colors Run

I've fallen out of the habit of running races in recent years. I was having kids and that kind of took all my energy, lol. But this year has been the year of getting back into running and it is getting slowly and steadily better. Yesterday I ran my first race, a fun, laid back colors run. They didn't even have a clock on the course, which was just fine.

The race was great. I ran it with some friends from church. It was pouring rain the entire time, which made it all the more fun. They threw chalk colors at us every half mile or so and then the rain washed it off/really got it stuck deep in our skin and clothes. Good times. It was a really casual run, not fast, but lots of fun because I stuck with a friend and her kids and we had great fun. I don't run often with others, so it was a treat.

I stuck my car key in my cell phone armband, but apparently got it in the main pouch, not the key pocket, and it fell out somewhere along the way. So I had to call Bill to come save me. It just so happened that the USA Triathlon was having a finals event in Clemson on the same day and the road to my house was literally blocked from turning left for ten miles. So it took Bill a full hour round trip to come get me, though it was only maybe four miles away.  Good times. Thankfully it won't be a big deal to get that key replaced because it's definitely lost somewhere in a muddy field or trail.

I'm still planning on running a half marathon this October, so it was nice to get a short race under my belt, albeit a casual one. The shirt is nice too and we all know that's the real reason to run races, to collect shirts. Hahaha!

A little of this, a little of that

I started a quilt for Genevieve. I decided I was ready to move on from squares to triangles and see how that went. So far it's fantastic, though definitely more finicky. This was the first block I did, just to practice. Don't worry, I just grabbed whatever scraps I could find that were big enough.

This crazy one, though, this is part of the quilt. The paper in the above picture is what the whole quilt design looks like. There is going to be some solid fabric in it, plus a whole lot of these crazy squares. Should be fun. I'm hoping it will take a bit longer than Spencer's, because I thoroughly enjoy this hobby and I don't have enough money to make gazillions of quilts right now, whether I want to or not. :)

The azaleas in my yard and the whole area are blooming like crazy and it's just beautiful. This is a picture of them a few days ago before they really got full of blooms. Right now you can hardly see the bush for the blooms.

I found this when I came in the house one afternoon. I laughed.

We pulled out the wormies, as Genevieve calls it, the other day before the last week of rain and thunderstorms started. The kids loved it. I forecast a lot more use of that as it gets warm again.

It has been raining for what feels like a week. It might be a bit less than that, but it has been a long time. We're getting a bit stir crazy. It's still forecasted until Tuesday. I like rain, but I also like a bit of a break occasionally. I would do awful in the Pacific Northwest. I love me some sunshine. :)

Aaron decided yesterday out of the blue that he could pull himself up. He only army crawls right now, so this is kind of huge. In fact, it's exactly the way Spencer did it, just a few months older than Spencer was when he did it. That kid was a baby on a mission to get moving. Aaron, not so much. But he was super pleased when he pulled himself to standing.

Also, we can finally see the beginnings of teeth coming through Aaron's gums. They're not in yet, but this poor 9+ month old really could use some teeth. He is not enjoying this final push. Nor am I as he didn't go to sleep until 11PM last night and then woke up twice before getting up for good at 7ish. Wooh! Not enough sleep for either of us!

Nine Months

This kid. He is such a joy in all of our lives. He is nine months old today and just so, so fun. I mean, look at that grin. It is huge. That epitomizes Aaron. He is just so happy most all the time. 

He wants to be in the middle of everything. His biggest frustration right now is he just can't keep up with his siblings and it drives him crazy. He hasn't figured out how to fully crawl yet. He army crawls all over the place, which is pretty fast on our wood floors, but his siblings run way faster. He gets up on all fours, or all the way up into pushup or down dog positions, but then he lays back down to move. He'll figure it out one of these days.

I remember when Spencer was this age, he was further along in his movement than Aaron, but he also army crawled for months and months and only normal crawled for one month before he started walking. I wouldn't be surprised if Aaron does something similar. He's really strong. He hasn't started pulling himself up yet, but he loves to be stood up, so I don't see it taking that long before he figures that part out.

The best news about Aaron is that his very misshapen head has finally started to round itself back out. You can't see it from the front, but he had a horribly flat whole side of his head from about two months old all the way until a month or two ago when he finally started moving more and got off laying on his back all the time. We had a follow up visit with his neurosurgeon this week and determined he will not need a helmet to reshape his head, that it has progressed enough that it will take care of itself. I'm SO, SO, SO happy about that. It was flat for so many months that I basically gave up hope that it would change on its own. Then I was nervous to hope that it would improve, but over the last two months it has and I was so pleased to have the neurosurgeon confirm what I thought I had seen.

So we've been taking pictures with his Gund stuffed animal since birth, and there is a story that goes with why we picked that particular stuffed animal. Bill had a similar stuffed animal, same brand, when he was a little kid and he loved it dearly. He carried it around by the string that made up it's mouth. It had come unattached and formed a little loop. The nose is totally rubbed off and it is very well loved. We still have that stuffed animal and Genevieve has actually decided she loves it too. So when Spencer was born Bill's mom got him the Gund in these pictures. Spencer could have cared less about it. He latched onto other loveys. Genevieve couldn't care about it either. At least not compared to her beloved dog stuffed animal she carried until we lost it six months ago at Thanksgiving. So Aaron came along and Bill was determined that he would love it. And guess what? He does love it. It's his favorite toy. He sleeps with it and cuddles it up to his face and just loves on it. It's absolutely adorable and Bill is so tickled about it.

So let's see, things about Aaron at nine months. He loves to eat. I haven't found a food he doesn't like. He has no teeth yet but that doesn't seem to stop him from eating whatever he can find. He hasn't really mastered drinking from a sippy cup yet, though he can handle a bottle on his own. The sippy cup still mostly pours out all over him.

He is quite partial to me, but really he loves everybody. He'll let anyone hold him. When he is tired or hungry he has started to show a preference for me, which drives his Grammy Becky (our adopted southern grandma) totally crazy because she wants to cuddle him to bits. Lately Spencer and Genevieve have gone in when they hear him wake up and they'll play with him until I come in. He adores them and they return the sentiment. It took Genevieve a good six months to get past the fact that he had shaken up her world and she wasn't the baby anymore, but she dearly loves him now. They have developed quite the relationship.

These pictures are from last weekend before I cut his hair. He was pretty pleased to be in this bucket and he loved it when Spencer hopped in too.

He is hit and miss on sleeping through the night. He is growing like crazy and I think he's just genuinely hungry some nights. He started sleeping through the night at probably two months old, but then stopped a while later and he still doesn't do it all the time. He does seem to do better if he eats solid meals during the day. That will be much easier when he gets some teeth and I feel better about giving him more crunchy food. We stick to a bit softer stuff for now, though he does eat just the same things as we do. He weighed 24.5 pounds at the doctor this week, which blows me away since Genevieve only weighs about 30 pounds and Spencer 35. Though my scale said he weighed 19, so maybe my big kids weigh more than it says they do too. But still, Aaron is big. One of the nicest things he has learned lately is to cling to me with his legs, which really helps since he weighs so much and I often end up holding him since he just scoots around.

I've run out of pictures, so I'll call that a wrap. Happy nine months little guy!

Gardening

One of the things I've been really excited about for years is to have a bigger place to garden than just a little balcony container spot. We've never really had a place to do any real gardening until this most recent move a few months ago. There's not really a gardening spot here, but what I did was build a couple raised garden boxes on top of garden paper just in our side yard. We can leave them there, or if need be in the future they can be dismantled and I think the grass will grow back just fine.

I figured I would start small and do two 4x4 beds. That's not a ton of space, but it's a good place to start. Depending on how long we are here, maybe we'll build more in the future, but it works great for now.

I did all my planting today. We had started some seeds indoors but for whatever reason they grew really well and then totally went south and started dying off. Maybe we had them in there for too long? I don't know, but I salvaged what plants I could from that, planted the tomatoes and strawberries and cucumbers I picked up today at the store, and also planted some seeds.

The plants we got from our local garden store. I had some seeds already, but we bought some tomatoes and strawberries and pickling cucumbers here.

This is the finished garden. I did add a little trellis thing for the peas and I'll get some cages for the tomatoes still sometime as they start to grow. I really haven't a clue if I planted too much stuff in there. It was less space than I expected, but I figured I'd go for it and see how it turns out. Gardening is an experiment half the time for me anyway. It should be fun. Hopefully the next time I take a picture of it, the whole thing will be covered in green. :)

Oh, and I have one funny story about planting this afternoon. When we got home from the garden store Aaron and Genevieve had both fallen asleep and I successfully transferred both of them to their beds, where they took naps. So it was just Spencer and I outside for an hour or so. When Genevieve woke up, I headed in to get her, leaving Spencer alone with all the seeds and a pair of scissors. I tried to be as fast as I could, but getting a kid up from a nap isn't always simple. By the time I got back outside, Spencer had "planted" nearly all the seeds. As in he cut open the packets and poured the seeds all out into piles in the garden. Thankfully he didn't mix them. I think I salvaged and/or scooped out most all of the seeds and was able to plant them with their correct spacing. Though I think there are about 100 carrot seeds under one of the tomatoes that are just too small to do anything with, so that should be exciting in a few weeks. The kids totally loved "helping" me plant, but it certainly made the experience more complicated. Haha! Here's hoping everything grows well and we have some fantastic plants come up very soon. I can't wait.

Who decided health insurance was a good idea?

I have spent hours on the phone today and last week and the week before and the week before, seriously for over a month, trying to get the insurance worked out for a helmet Aaron will likely need next month. It's not over exaggerating to say the whole process fills me with rage. I've probably talked to 20 people along the way to no avail.

The ridiculous part of this whole thing is I'm good at this kind of thing. I know how to talk to people to get help. I work in the healthcare industry, so I can talk the talk and share the details I need to so reps will help me. I took a negotiations class in my grad program that helped me even more learn how to work better with people.

Yet it doesn't seem to matter. The insurance industry drives me bonkers. I already know that my current insurance will not cover the helmet, as per my specialist. Yet can I get a straight answer from them? No. Can I get help to switch insurance? Not really. I've talked to scores of nice people, but the industry is so siloed it takes weeks and months to process everything and that is too long. This process has to go faster. So I keep calling people. I keep trying new ways of making my requests, hoping I will get the answers I need. But in the back of my mind I keep thinking this isn't going to work. Their ineptitude is going to result in me getting billed several thousands of dollars. And let me tell you how well our grad school income accommodates those kinds of bills. Yeah, it doesn't. Not without stealing it from other necessary areas. Ugh.

So maybe send a few prayers our way that either this insurance thing will be worked out, or even better, Aaron's head will reshape itself on its own and we can drop this whole process. Oh, and pray that I can keep my sanity because it makes me want to break things every time I get off another phone call that hasn't resolved my issue. We've got 11 days.

What a week

Hello, this week has been rough! The sickness of all sicknesses descended upon us last Saturday and it hasn't completely left even today. I stayed healthy until about Tuesday, but then it nailed me hard: fever, chills, horrible sinus pressure, runny everything, headache, omg, I wanted to die. I thought it had pretty much passed by Thursday but then it ramped back up again and today is really the first day I've been able to do anything besides survive.

In desperation partway through it I took a couple doses of benadryl/sudafed at night to help me sleep and that, plus the recent changes in how Aaron has been eating, plus I believe a growth spurt and my body not catching onto it yet, left me with milk that almost entirely dried up on him. That was alarming and stressful. I got some great advice from my sister and a bunch of friends and have been taking steps to help bring it back. It's back, but not to optimal levels yet. I think another day or two and we'll be fine, but it's awful to wonder if your baby is hungry and only have a few bags of milk saved and be stressed about how that's going to work out. I know I could have gone and gotten some formula if push came to shove, but I'm not ready to stop nursing, and I didn't want to do that if I didn't have to, so it was just stressful. We're making it through now though, thankfully. I still have a part of the cold left, but I've been able to have a normal day today and feel good. That's a blessed thing after such a rough week.

In fact we had a fantastic day. It was glorious outside, in the 60s in the morning, warming up to the 70s later on. We spent as much of the day as we could outside. Bill raked the yard and trimmed out a few unruly plants. The kids played with all their toys, and I got to work on a project for a friend that I've been slowly doing bits of for a few weeks. We also got to run a few errands, including getting ice cream at our favorite Mennonite store, which the kids always love.

So speaking of my project, my friend asked me to make a display box for her set of flutes. I had done the box a few weeks ago but hadn't figured out the best way to cut out the pieces for the flutes to rest against. I was thinking through all my different tools and just couldn't think which one would have the precision on curves that I needed on a thin piece of wood. Earlier this week Bill and I helped one of my Cub Scouts do his Pinewood Derby car and Bill used a coping saw to do the cuts. It struck me that of course, that was the right tool!

Sure enough it worked perfectly and wasn't even that hard. I was so pleased. Then I was able to use a little multi-tool my dad sent home with me at Christmas to sand the curves and it seriously turned out better than I could have hoped. The coping saw came from him too, so this is only the second time I've used it and it was wonderful.

So here's a picture of the box and the inside pieces that still need to be oiled and then glued in place. It's going to look so amazing. The box is done except a final buff with steel wool. The inside pieces are done staining but need a few coats of tung oil to be done. I'm so glad I discovered that stuff recently. It is far and away the best finish I've ever used and I've tried a bunch of different options. This stuff will give you the smooth, satiny feel you want every time and with such a small amount of effort to apply it.

All right, I'm done geeking out about my project. It's the first time I've ever had someone commission me to make something for them and I'm so excited that it's turning out so well. Huzzah!!!

We capped the night off with a little campfire. We regularly battle with Genevieve to keep her clothed. She just prefers to run around in underwear only. I'm not hugely worried about it except that it has been cold for a long time, so that didn't really work if she ever wanted to go outside. She'll run up to me in her puddle jumpers and underwear and be like, I'm ready to go outside! Yeah, no. So this outfit is pretty impressive. She picked it out herself and was particularly excited to have her skirt on over her pants. She has a few skirts and it's been so cold that we've been telling her for months that she has to wear leggings under her skirts. She fights it every time, so it's funny that now she's all excited about having that very thing.

Spencer's mouth is completely stuffed full of marshmallow. They polished them off before the campfire had even been lit. Haha!

It was a smokey fire, but we still had fun. I could wax poetic about how much I love the yard in our house. I don't know what the bugs will be like this summer, but for now sitting out in the evening is pristine.

Eight months

Wow this kid is growing up fast. This has been the month of independence. Aaron has figured out he can scoot around and it has opened a whole new world of exploration. I hear much less frustrated crying now that he can move. He looks kind of like he's trying to swim on dry land when he scoots, which is hilarious, but he is getting places and that's all he cares about. I guess you could call it an army crawl, but really it isn't even that yet. He looks like he's doing the butterfly kick, pushing both feet and both hands at the same time. Whereas before he would get so frustrated when I left his sight, now he is more prone to just follow, albeit slowly. He has started exploring our house on his own too, which leads to the bathroom door being closed and lots of sibling freak outs as he comes and wants to play with their stuff.

In good news Aaron's strangely shaped head is finally starting to improve a bit now that he isn't perpetually laying on it. Time will tell if it will reshape itself on its own or if it will need intervention by way of a helmet, but we have a month before that decision happens. I hadn't seen any improvement on that since he was probably two months old, so it's great to finally see some change.

Aaron is sitting up these days. He is eating everything in sight. He still doesn't have any teeth, but I'm ever impressed with his ability to eat regardless of that.

He loves his siblings and they return the affection. Genevieve is currently sitting next to him cheering him on as he plays with a little laptop toy they have. She just said to him, "I like you, Aaron." Seriously, they are so precious together. Spencer and Aaron seem to have a special bond. They already roughhouse with each other, which is entertaining for all parties.

Aaron will still go to just about anybody. He just makes friends with whoever is holding him. He is back to sleeping through the night most nights. He's not a deep sleeper, so naptimes are sometimes shorter than I would like because the walls are thin in our house and his older siblings are loud, but we do the best we can. Give him his goon toy and a blanket and he's happy as can be in his crib. I do love a baby that enjoys sleeping. :)

And so another month goes by with this little sweetheart. I really don't know what we did without him. His sweet little spirit brings so much joy to everyone and smooths out the rough patches in so many ways. Bless him for that.

The group photo didn't work out so well when Aaron fell over mid photo. Whoops!

Things that have made me smile lately

There have been a lot of challenges lately in my little family, but at the same time there are so many precious moments and I want to think about those as opposed to the rough patches. So here are a few things that my kids do that make me happy lately.

A friend gave us all their old playdough toys right before Christmas. I hadn't brought them out yet because I didn't want the kids to be overwhelmed with new things at Christmas and I was waiting for the right time. They asked me to make new play dough today and I figured now was a great time to get the new toys down too. No joke, Spencer played with the little form making snakes and dinosaurs and whatever else he could imagine for two hours. He has never, ever, ever in his entire life played with a toy that long. He took a break in the middle to vacuum up all the dropped pieces, then decided he wanted to play some more and played for another few minutes.

Speaking of vacuuming, we bought a shop vac when we moved into this house two months ago. Spencer refers to it as Daddy's vacuum and repeatedly tells me my vacuum is up in the attic and he likes the shop vac better so don't bring the other one down. He can operate it on his own and he will of his own initiative pull it out and vacuum the house. It's amazing.

Since I'm talking about cleaning, he has also started helping me clean the bathroom. He asks me several times a week if he can clean it. I stick to once a week, but he actually does a pretty good job helping. He'll clean the toilet and hop up and clean the mirror and the bathtub too. This kid is doing all sorts of things to bring smiles to my face these days. :)

Genevieve has started calling me Mama instead of Mommy lately. I don't know where she picked that up, but it's precious.

Aaron freaks out every time I leave his line of sight. While I wish he wouldn't do that, it's rather endearing to be missed so vehemently.

Aaron will be eight months old in a few days and he has never experienced a moment of stranger danger. Maybe he will in coming months but for now he will go to anyone and just figures they're all his friends. He flirts with anyone who will make eye contact with him. He ducks his head against my shoulder and bats his long eyelashes. What a card!

Aaron has a special love for me. He is happy to see anyone, but when he sees me his face lights up to a whole new level. I swear the Lord knew what he was doing sending Aaron along third in line. He is like balm to my soul when the other kids are throwing challenges at me right and left. I hope he forever keeps his sunshiny outlook on life. It really is wonderful to experience.

Genevieve is a classic second child, knowing all the ways to drive Spencer crazy without seeming to even try. It just comes natural. However, she is also the most giving little girl. She's so willing to share toys to make others feel better and she is forever trying to help out to make someone feel good. It's really sweet to watch, and utterly hilarious when she does things like whack one of her brothers with some item and then hurry over to give them a kiss to make it "all better".

Aaron is officially moving these days. He does this worm crawl thing that looks like it takes so much energy, but he's getting pretty fast at it. I'm sure he'll quickly progress to easier methods of motion, but for now he's getting around pretty well. It's adorable to watch him make his way laboriously toward whatever he wants and then his look of victory when he arrives.

A rare night alone

It's funny the things you value as a parent that you took for granted before kids. Solitude, for example. I would have described myself as a social person before I had kids. I loved being around others, loved spending time with friends, enjoyed work and school interactions, the whole gamut. Now? While I still enjoy all those things, what I almost physically crave at times is solitude. It is a rare treat, so highly valued. And not just solitude, but solitude where I'm genuinely not needed by anyone for anything. When I'm overwhelmed and need a break, Bill is always good to take over and let me disappear for a bit. That is wonderful, but there's still a bit of me that feels like I'm shirking my responsibilities when I do that, albeit only a bit because if I need that break then it's better for all of us if I take it.

But tonight? Tonight is rare. Tonight I'm shirking nothing. Tonight Bill is still at work and the kids are all asleep, and the house is clean enough for my tastes, and it's only 9:30PM. I can do whatever I want. I can revel in the few minutes of time to just do nothing. I can write on my blog, and play the piano, and do some online window shopping, and finish the book club book that we already met about but I liked enough to finish, and whatever else suits my fancy. Here's to doing a whole lot of nothing that is so very rejuvinating at the same time.

Ice storm

I never knew what sleet really meant and why people didn't like it until I moved to South Carolina. In Colorado sleet meant rain that was turning to snow so it was all slushy. It was definitely not a big deal. We did have hail there, which could be a big deal, but I never experienced that beyond small hail. Anyway, here sleet is really freezing rain, where it's below freezing but still raining and it freezes on contact with your car. It's quite trippy to drive in. That's really not the right word. It can be totally terrifying and I got out of it as quickly as I could Monday when it hit us. Well, after I made a couple stops at stores, but hey, when you go to the effort of getting all three kids in the car, sometimes you have to take advantage of that and just go for it. We got home safely afterward and tucked in for the next day and a half and watched the craziness ensue. Apparently friends of ours saw three accidents, including a rollover, right on the main road by where we live just half an hour after I got home, so I guess we dodged a bullet there.

Thankfully our electricity only flickered but didn't go out all the way. Not everyone here was so lucky, but we were super blessed. Yesterday we went outside and played in it. The kids loved it. Genevieve couldn't stop eating it. They both explored all over our yard. Aaron was in his barbaloot suit, and really, how could he not be happy in that cozy thing? :)  It was a good time. Today we're back to the normal grind, but it was a fun little break for us in the middle of the week.

Checking out the "snow" for the first time.

An iced over tree in our yard.

Icicles on the carport.

The fence was iced too.

Love the plants outlined in ice.

Got her stick, she's good.

And he's good too with his stick too.

Oh, that little tongue of his. Why are babies so cute?!?!

It kind of blows me away how small the surface can be and still be encased in ice.

And hey, here's a picture of our house for those friends who have never been here. That's everyone that doesn't currently live in South Carolina. :)

New running buddy

Okay, maybe not always, but today I found myself a new running buddy of the four year-old variety. Spencer came on his very first real run with me! It was awesome. He's been asking for days and days, but it's hard to get the timing worked out to take him. It's hard enough to fit in me going alone, but both of us going is even more of a trick. However, the stars aligned this afternoon as Bill was home for a bit and Spence and I headed out.

We ran .78 miles all together and he ran the whole way and insisted on holding my hand and chattered about everything from mailboxes he saw to the colors of cars to there being no dogs around to how fast we were running. It was awesome. My mother heart sang. He had such a great time and I did too and hopefully we'll be able to do it again soon. My kids are starting to like things I like. It's a little bit of heaven!

A week filled with blessings

This last week has been really strange, but at the same time very filled with blessings and reminders that the Lord is watching out for us even in the little things. These last few months have been financially taxing on us. I work less over the holidays and we of course have lots of holidays and birthdays and anniversary to celebrate. We moved in January. Basically it all adds up to having less money floating around than I'm comfortable with. So at the beginning of last week when the washing machine seemingly stopped working, it was a huge deal. We traded our two year-old set to our friends when we moved into this house because ours didn't fit here and theirs did and their new place had room for ours. It was a good switch, but the machines they left were way older, though seemingly in perfect working order.

Between Bill and me, we can generally fix most things in our house. We're pretty good at DIYing or finding help if we have questions. So we diagnosed the problem, got the part, and waited a few days for it to arrive, all while being unable to wash anything, which is kind of a huge deal with three kids four and under. But we survived with some help from friends doing a few loads for us. Then last Friday afternoon I got the part and installed it only to find that it didn't fix the problem. The other thing it could have been was too much money to be worth it, so we were left scrambling to get a new washer immediately.

Saturday we planned to go buy one, maybe used, but likely new because there weren't good used options for  front loaders available. That put the price point significantly higher than we could afford, but we didn't really have much of a choice. I asked a friend to watch the older kids and she said sure but they were going to get a swingset from a friend so she'd just take my kids along. Without a second thought I offered us to help them do that and then take our kids. So we headed over to help. Turns out it wasn't a swing set but instead one of those wooden forts, so it was a pretty involved process to take it apart. It took several hours, but we had a great time with our friends taking it apart while our kids played together. When we were about done I started chatting with the other friend we were getting the fort from. Her family is moving out of state in a few months and turns out they had things they were planning to get rid of.

So in what could only be described as a sweet blessing from heaven, because there's no way coincidence could cover this, we walked away with a significantly newer washer/dryer set for a price we could afford, one of those sewing cabinets with a weighted table, two bikes, and a bookshelf perfect for toys in the kids' room.

Bill and I were totally blown away. It all came because I offered to help a friend. It made me really grateful for parents, leaders, life experiences such that I enjoy lending a helping hand and it doesn't seem like an inconvenience. I felt very grateful for that this weekend.

I thought the story would end there, but there's actually more. We picked up the washer/dryer Monday and brought it home to install. Our nice neighbor helped us get it in the house and installed, which was quite the trick since the location for this set is obviously retrofitted and only just big enough. We had it all set up and turned the power on only to have it not start. Oh no! It was an utterly deflating moment. I did some acrobatics climbing over the machine to get behind it in this tight, three-walled space it sits in, and discovered that in fact the wall outlet had gone bad somehow. The thought had never crossed my mind to test that. The dryer worked fine, so we just assumed it was a washer issue and went with it. Turns out our old washer still works just fine and the next morning our landlord was there and figured out the problem, a loose screw in the breaker box, and it was fixed.

All I can say is I am so grateful we didn't purchase a new washer, that we went to help our friends and got the amazing deal on their set. So now we have a significantly newer washer/dryer that fits a few needs that the older one didn't do so well, and the old set that we can sell to hopefully cover the cost. So yesterday I put it up on Craigslist and surprise of surprises got a bite on it almost immediately from a person willing to pay extra to ensure she could get it and pick it up in a few days. So that is still in process, but it will cover the cost of the new set we got as well as leave some extra leftover for whatever else we need. Holy blessings! I can't help but feel like the Lord was enjoying sending down these many, many blessings on us. It was a convoluted week but we walked away with so much more after what ended up being a much more minor trial than it at first seemed. I feel very blessed right now.

Aaron is 7 months

Time is a 'flyin. I can't believe I just wrote that title to this post. Aaron is growing so fast. I've heard it said that the days are long but the years short. I completely agree. Before I know it months have gone by in this little guy's life.

Aaron is at both an incredibly awesome and totally drive me crazy stage of babyhood. He rolls all over the place and gets himself stuck all the time, but he hasn't quite figured out how to scoot or crawl yet. In fact he isn't quite sitting yet either. He does a really awesome balance for a few seconds until something distracts him and then over he goes! Since we have all wood floors, I'm chomping at the bit a little to get him moving independently in a way that doesn't involve him bonking his head. He seems less motivated to do that then his older two siblings were by now. Maybe because they'll happily come to him to play.

Spencer and Aaron have a particularly fabulous relationship. They love each other so much. Spencer can make Aaron laugh and laugh and laugh. He'll spend more time playing with Aaron than doing anything else. It's pretty fantastic.

Aaron loves to grab anything he can get a hold of. He's delighted beyond reason when he happens to grab my hair.

I've never seen a child of mine take to eating as well as Aaron. He loves everything and anything that he can eat. He's surprisingly quick to learn how to eat too, especially since he doesn't even have a single tooth. That's part of the drive me crazy stage he's in. He has these stretches nearly every day where he's just so sad and crying because he's obviously in pain, but the actual teeth are coming in really slow. Sometimes he struggles to nurse because of it, and I just am sad for him.

Aside from those patches Aaron is the sunniest, happiest little baby. He has the best smile. He lights up and squeals in delight whenever he sees people he likes. It's fantastic. He still goes to anyone who wants to hold him. He has no concept of stranger danger. It definitely could develop still, but for now he just loves everyone equally.

People always say that they don't know what they would do without a particular child. I feel a bit the same. Our three kids are pretty close together, so it's been quite the whirlwind the last four years. I've almost forgotten what it was like to have just one or just two. It just seems normal to have all three and have their cute little personalities mixing together. Aaron definitely makes everyone happier.