Finners

Finn turned ten months old yesterday. Double digits. Just two months shy of the big ONE. Crazy. Here is a little video of him cruising around with his little walker. He's maxed himself out on four teeny little baby steps unassisted, but he happily zooms around the house with his little dog as much as he can. He's quite good at getting himself turned the way he wants to and, if he does get stuck, there is usually a sister handy to get him pointed in the right direction.

T and Finn visit the doctor. And, my manly man husband builds a deck.

I took Teresa and Finn to the doctor last week for their 5 year and 9 months check ups, respectively. They did great, and were quite relieved that neither of them needed shots this time. Teresa was so funny and was just very solemn and serious the whole time. She failed her hearing test the first time through, because I was chasing down Finn while she put the headphones on herself, and she didn't bother moving her hair out of the way. Once we got her hair properly out of the way of the headphones she did great. She was 46 1/2 inches, so just shy of four feet tall. 

This girlie loves to read. She's started reading on her own quite a bit, she's getting very good at it. Still needs help with a word here and there but can do it herself for the most part. One night the girls were being a bit too loud after they were supposed to be in bed, so I went upstairs to tell them to quiet down, but when I opened the door I saw that they were snuggled together and T was (very boisterously) reading Nora a book, so I just quickly backed out of the room. It was such a cute sister moment. 

Finners was a rascal and wouldn't hold still while he was being weighed. He's just about exactly 20 pounds, which was bad news for him, apparently. He's down to the 50th percentile for weight, so the doctor was not too happy about that. He was 31 1/2 inches, though, and still off the charts for height, so he is at least growing in some directions. He is practicing walking as much as he can, he loves to play with the little walker we've had since T was a baby. He's taken one and two steps here and there by himself, but nothing too significant yet.

Anyway, here are some pictures from recently...

Marc completely rebuilt our deck. He did such a good job, he had some friends come over to help a few times, and then did lots of work on it in the evenings after the kids were in bed, too. The deck was a mess when we moved in, the boards were all splinter-y and the railings would just pop out if you put any sort of weight on them, so we had to keep the kids off. Luckily the support boards were in good shape, so he didn't have to replace those, but he ripped out all the rest of it down to a skeleton. The girls were quite concerned when he was doing that, they were just sure he would pull up too many boards and fall off and die. 

We had this lovely and safe pile of old deck boards (full of rusty nails) in our yard for a while...

Since he was rebuilding it anyway, we decided to put a slide and some stairs in, too. It turned out so well! And he just figured it out on his own, with help from the internet, the workers at Lowes, and his friends. The girls LOVE the slide, of course, and just wear themselves out going up the stairs and down the slide over and over again. We still need to decide if we are going to stain it, and then seal it, but the hard part is done, for sure.

  

Teresa loves to take pictures and videos with my phone. I found this cute one of Finn that she took.

And here are a bunch more from the 4th of July. We had a bunch of friends over to eat some good food and celebrate the 4th, and Marc finished the deck just that same morning.

I love this boy so much! His hair gets pretty crazy.

Enjoying the slide. Finn doesn't love going down it just yet, but he sure likes to watch his sisters.

He keeps trying to slip himself through the bars, little rascal. He doesn't fit, but still makes my heart jump a little bit when he flings himself forward.

Love these two girls, too. 

A blog post of miscellany.

I'm pretty sure one of the millions of papers you sign getting out of the Army is a requirement to finally grow some facial hair. Marc had a nice goatee going for a while, but then shaved it down to just a mustache. He kindly let me snap this picture of him half-way through the shave.

He shaved the mustache off this week, and poor Finn was NOT a fan. He gave Marc quite the stink-eye for the whole day after it was gone.

No, this is not a mug shot. It's a picture of Marc's ID badge picture. The best one we could find of how long his mustache got before he shaved it off.

The girls have been loving the bow and arrow sets they got for T's birthday. Nora willingly filled her role of the exploited little sister and acted as not only the target, but the arrow retriever as well.

Teresa got her hair cut. I am so, so sad about it. Seriously, I want to cry when I see how long it used to be. Of course I think she looks adorable and gorgeous with the short hair, too. But I just loved her long hair so much. She was so excited to get it cut, though. Her main motivation was to make hair combing easier. We sometimes spent up to 45 minutes working on getting all the tangles out, and there were always lots of tears involved, poor kiddo. She was so funny during the whole haircut, she looked so solemn and serious.

Here it is right before we went to get it cut. I pre-combed out all the tangles, so it was a bit frizzy, but look how long! She was hoping to donate it, and we were a bit surprised it wasn't long enough to do so.

But that means we can't do as much fun braiding now, like this cute hairstyle T requested.

We rode the train up to the Baltimore Science Center a few weeks ago. Finners had a blast in the two and under room. He loves to kiss that handsome baby in the mirror.

Whhhhyyyyy couldn't they have put them in ROYGBIV order?

We had some snacks on the harbor before heading home.

 It was about a fifteen minute walk from the train to the center, and by the time we walked there, spent the afternoon exploring and started the walk back our girls had some tired little legs. Luckily they have a super-strong dad that was willing to help them out. That's about eighty pounds of little girl he's carrying.

Finn had fun at the park with his little friend. 

He still hasn't figured out the whole water bottle concept just yet.

Tried to get some pictures of these cuties after church last week. It was semi-successful. 

How much longer until he is bigger than her, I wonder...

Things unraveled pretty fast after this.

Church is a bit of a struggle with Finn. It's right when he wants to take a good nap, so he is generally a mix of sleepy, grumpy, or just really loud. Last week I took him to the mother's lounge to try to help him settle down and he passed out pretty fast.

I may or may not have followed suit shortly thereafter. Hopefully no one else came in during that time...

We are eating as much watermelon and cantaloupe as we can this summer. Have to make up for last summer when I couldn't eat it due to this little rascal that was inside me.

Selfies with Finn.

We had a couple of days of awesome thunderstorms this week. Which meant there were lots of puddles to play in at the park today.

Nora put this box on her head and asked me to take a picture. She's a funny little thing.

Aaaaand that brings us all the way up to date!