Retropost: Anna ~ 6 Months with Ben "Almost 3"

This is a little out of order timewise, but I just realized I hadn't posted these.  Of course, they must be included in this blog for posterity's sake!!  These are Anna's 6 month photos...she was just barely sitting up - in fact, it was hard to get many good ones because I had to keep pulling my hands out of the photo when I was holding her up so she wouldn't tumble over :)  As smiley as she is, she just wasn't up for a photo shoot on this day, but that's ok...the photographer still managed to get some good ones (even with a grumpy brother Ben, too, ha!!)

Of course, we needed some of Ben, too!  I can't believe how grown-up he's looking lately!

Brother and Sister, so sweet.  If you only knew what bribes were offered in exchange for these photos ~ ha!



Anna ~ 8 Months

Slow down, baby girl!  You are growing up way too fast!  In the past month, Anna has gone from just rolling around everywhere and doing her favorite pose ALLLLLLL day....to crawling like a pro.



To the left...



...To the right!  I bet Anna has struck this post 1,000 times!

Here she is doing the pose again, but, *ahem* "somebody" jumped in the picture with his own insta-pose, ha!!

Then she did the army crawl everywhere for a week or two.  Somewhere in there, she learned to push herself up into the sitting position and now she can sit up so tall and strong all day without me worrying she'll fall over.

In a matter of days, she was then crawling like a pro and I can hardly keep up with her now!  Baby gates are going up this weekend! 

In her 7th month, we had a bit of sleep regression and now Anna's waking up to eat around 3:30 or 4 a.m. each night.  She's also napping exclusively in her swing because for some reason, her naps just fell apart and wouldn't last more than 20-30 minutes in the crib.  I thought maybe she was getting a tooth, possibly disrupting her sleep, but as far as I can tell, no chompers are coming through yet.

The more mobile she becomes, the more she chases her brother Ben.  She is absolutely crazy about him! Here's a game they play at night sometimes before bed:  Ben jumps off the chair, lands and rolls into a flip and runs over to kiss Anna.  Anna HEE HAWS :)  Now that I look at the picture below of Ben jumping, it is pretty funny!

Baseball season is upon us, and Anna has been to several games already.  She looks pretty pumped about it, huh?

Finally, we're still getting the hang of this eating business.  She's not that into eating the solids lately, and that means lots of spitting it out, grabbing the bowl and spoon, and rubbing the dirty face.  Unless it's bananas on the menu - this little girl will eat anything as long as I cover it up with bananas :)  So, she ends up looking like this a lot of the time!

Busy Ben

Little Man has been having a ball this spring.  He's got quite the social calendar....preschool, open gym playtime, time with Grandmama, the park, the track...I don't know how he fits it all in! :)

Playdates ~ here's Ben and Sophia "sittin' in a tree"....ha ha!!

Anna is FINALLY willing to take a bath without being held by Mommy!  Ben loves to "help" bathe her, and it's a great distraction for her since she adores him.

The school year is coming to a close and Ben had a great time performing in his preschool's Spring Program.

Hanging out with Little Sister.  He likes to say to her, "Open your mouth!" while demonstrating proper technique, to get her to take more bites...so sweet!

Finally, Ben is the proud new owner of a big boy bike!! 

 He scoots around on his bike, so proud!!  He asked me if Bunny could ride with him, so we tied him to the handle bars :)  You can't see it all in the photo, but Bunny's little shirt says, "Best Friends Indeed".  So SWEET, and so true.  I don't know what we'd do without Bunny ~ good thing we have two, ha!