Poor Little Guy

It's tough being the younger brother of two little girls.  You'd think his big brothers would put a stop to it, but when they're not looking, the girls get their chance to play dress up with Nathan....

Caleb's 12!

It seems like I'm putting a birthday blog on here all the time. I pretty much am. Nine people in the family makes for a lot of birthday blogs...

My little man is growin' up. Caleb is totally the typical "first-born" child. Super responsible, respectful, orderly, scheduled, helpful, and just a plain, good kid. The winds of change are coming. I can feel it. Not that he's turning bad, but that annoying boy stuff is coming out. He'll walk by a brother and whomp 'em on the arm for no reason, or maybe just play drums on his head. He might have a friendly teasing for the girls, and a bit of, "maybe you don't quite know everything, mom". He doesn't actually say it out loud, but just gives me that silent thoughtful look as he's evaluating something I've said. I'll be the first to admit that I don't know everything, but it's interesting to watch him start reasoning things out for himself.

Caleb has been in need of a bike this summer, and we had planned to do some biking at ICHE Family Camp the week after his birthday, so daddy did some searching on Craigslist. I'm sure you know by now, we buy ALOT of things second-hand. I'd rather spend my money on a gently-used, high-quality item than something mediocre for the same price. Paul found a nice Trek mountain bike for a great deal. Needless to say, Caleb was thrilled (although he still borrows Noah's beat-up bike for wheelies and stunt riding).

His little sisters still adore him, even with the little bit of teasing. I imagine next year I'll be writing that he's passed me up in height, but he's still waiting for that big growth spurt. His looks are starting to change. He's just starting to lose that "kid" look, and get a bit more mature look to him. He's a good one to be the first to go through the whole "growing up" thing. I'm going to enjoy the changes that will be evident in the next few years.

Selah's 8 months

I'm a bit late in posting this because although the title says 8 months, she's actually closer to 9 months. Oh, well.

This month our little munchkin got her top two teeth. They seemed to appear overnight as teeth sometimes do when I'm not watching for them. I saw them poking through her gums as I was changing her and thought in retrospect, "hmmm, maybe that's why she wasn't her happy self yesterday". That's about it. Most of my kids are good teethers. Nathan was the only one who had a hard time with it, and that was only when his molars were breaking through...

Yes, that's Selah on the potty. She did go this time, and has gone a few other times. She has definate actions/expressions when she is going number 2, so sometimes (if I'm free), I'll catch her and put her on the potty. It's not my goal to train her now, but a few less dirty diapers are a nice bonus.

Selah and mommy

This is one of Selah's FAVORITE places to be... in my baby carrier. I LOVE this carrier. It's only taken me 7 kids to find it. Throughout the years, I've gone through every kind of sling, wrap, and baby pack you can think of. This Ergo Carrier has Baby Bjorn beat hands down. It is so comfy and I can where her on my back, in the front, and on my hip. Sometimes, when I'm busy and Nathan (my 2 year old) wants to be held, I'll stick him in the carrier on my back, and continue working. He loves it, too. The Ergo is pricey, but I got this one, brand new, for a deal through Ebay, and it is well worth the money!

Selah's visiting the chickens. She was quite content to watch them pecking at the grass all around her.

Food!! In this last month, she's come to love it. Grapes, blueberries, cooked carrot chunks, black beans, applesauce, pieces of pancake, cheerios... she's taken to it like a pro.

Soccer season starts

It's soccer season again!!

This year, the girls wanted to play, so that makes five of the seven kids into soccer stars. We are still playing at the Christian Youth Center and Paul coaches one of the teams. With those things in our favor, we managed to get all 5 kids (3 different teams) practicing on the same night. Yay! And all the games are on Saturday morning. Yay, again!!

The girl team is so cute, and so, well... girly. At the first game, they looked more like little ballerinas than soccer players. Even having the three older brothers in soccer didn't prepare them for the push and shove of getting to the ball. After a few minutes, Ellie caught the hang of it. She joined the mob of kids huddled around the moving ball. They looked like a swarm of bumblebees migrating along with the ball. (The yellow jerseys help with the word picture too :)

Grace, on the other hand, just stood on the outside of the mob, looking in. I'm not sure that she got the idea of exactly what she was supposed to do. What? Get in there and kick at someone's shin to steal something that someone else is kicking? And risk getting MY shins kicked? She finally caught on in the last few minutes of the game and gave the free ball a good whallop.

At one point in the game, Ellie was just kind of standing out in the field kicking at the ground. I figured she had just ran out of enery and was giving up, that is, until Paul pointed out that her cleat's sole was half off her shoe and floppy. After going through the boys, those cleats have seen their last game.

We still had half of the game left, so Caleb ran up to the van to get the duct tape (the fix-all), and Paul had her good-as-new (almost) and back in the game in a flash. Good thing we didn't put the duct tape away because as we were finishing the game we had another shoe to fix. The same exact thing happened to Gracie's shoe!! Same foot! How does THAT happen?

We stopped at the resale shop on the way home and found some new (to us) cleats for Ellie and Grace got some extras that we had at home. Problem solved for now, but I'm guessing we'll need to keep that duct tape handy, just in case...

Our new pup

On our way home from the lakehouse at the end of last month, we added to our 15 passenger crew when we stopped near Dwight to pick up our new puppy. We've been patiently awaiting the newest member of our household since she was born in June. She's a Great White Pyrenees.

If you're not familiar with that breed, let me introduce you... they are big dogs. The females are around 85 pounds. They are courageous, obedient, and loyal. They are very gentle and affectionate with its family and children. We chose this breed for all of those reasons, plus what they are most known for... being a livestock guardian. After watching a coyote chase a chicken right up onto our porch with Lady (our blue heeler) barking at her the whole time, we decided that Lady needed a team mate. At ten weeks old, she's just about the same size as Lady, so next year at this time, we'll be asking that ol' coyote to give it another try... ha, ha, ha (cynical laugh)...

We all fell in love with her right away. She is a big ball of fluff and oh, so fun to pet. Even thought she's a ten week old puppy, she is soooo calm. I love it! We came up with a few different names, and finally narrowed it down to two... Tiny or Mini. The kids loved the irony of naming a huge dog such a small name, of course, so we settled on Mini and changed it to Minnie (not after the mouse). We looked up her name and found that it means, "determined protector". Perfect!