Bennett at Eight Months

We were a couple of days late taking Bennett's 8 month pictures, but that's what happens during a busy week while you're preparing for a trip to Mexico, having in-loves in town to visit and still working full time. So one day after work Judy reminded me that we needed to take the pictures and I got straight to it after she picked up the kids.

Bennett is eating solid foods about three times a day. Mostly purees, but we have also given him little pieces of cooked food and meats. He still nurses or drinks a breastmilk bottle about 5 times a day. That means I'm still pumping about 3 times a day on work days.

Bennett can sit up really well on his own. He can also crawl around, but he still doesn't really get up on his knees, so he slaps his hands on the ground and pulls his body along. He has also learned how to pull himself up on things. It started on the rungs of the chair, pulling himself up to sitting or crouching on his knees. Then, while we were on vacation, he pulled himself up to a standing position! He now does it all the time...up on the chair, up against the couch, on toys and on our bodies. And in his crib, so we've needed to lower his mattress so he's not in danger of falling out.

He doesn't babble a whole lot, though he giggles and shouts and blows raspberries a ton. Although he did whimper "Mamamamama" the other day when I was out of the house and he was being fed solids. 

Some of my favorite things about him right now:

- When he's laying on the floor, he will push himself on his side, lounging in this super casual pose while he plays with toys or just looks around

- He loves to touch peoples' faces. He sticks his fingers in your mouth or nose or eyes and just watches to see your reaction

- He has two little teeth that show during his big smiles

He's still sleeping really well at night. For the most part, he sleeps from 7 PM to 5 AM, when he eats and then goes back to sleep until 6:30. Still probably not the ideal, but so much better than where we were just a couple of months ago.

June and Bennett are best friends. June loves Bennett so much and always wants to be the first to kiss him goodnight. As long as he's not drooling on her toys, June loves on him and hugs him.

Pumpkin Carving Party

On Sunday we had a little family pumpkin carving party. (Let's hope these 'kins make it to Halloween! We've had some warm days, so it's not looking good.)

Anyway, we set up a spot outside and a blanket or two in the grass for Bennett and got to work. 

June was not interested in getting the seeds out. It was too slimy for her.

All she wanted to do was cut with her little carving knife. (Don't report me to CPS, but we let her have this one knife that has the large-scale cerrated edge, so it's not very sharp on its own. And she did great! If you count 'great' as puncturing many random holes in her poor pumpkin...which I do.)

It felt so nice outside.

And the finished product!

When June saw Laurent's bat pumpkin lit up, she said, "Your smiley face is upside down!" Which makes total sense and I can absolutely see an upside down smiley face now whenever I see it.

Lauren's Visit

We'd had plans for a long time to have my mother-in-love, Judy, come to visit us. A more recent turn of events brought Michael's sister Lauren over too!

The kids really liked Lauren and we were so glad to spend some time with her. We can't believe that the last time we saw her was at her wedding two years ago!

We took it easy mostly, a couple of meals out, a couple of meals in, going to the park, carving pumpkins.

The long walk to the 'big' park should have had Bennett napping on the way there, but he didn't, so instead he fell asleep on Grammy on the swings.

Pictures of pumpkin carving to come!

The Fog Willow Pumpkin Patch

We had such a sweet, perfect Fall day on Sunday. 

We headed off to the Fog Willow Pumpkin Farm, which was about 30 minutes away from home. We invited three of our family friends to join (all the girls go to school with June) and they could all join!

This pumpkin patch was perfect. There was a structure made out of hay bales to climb on (complete with a goat run/track suspended off the ground surrounding it! A playground, pony rides, a petting zoo. Food, tractor rides plus the pumpkins to select (if not actually pick). In the morning it was pleasantly cool, especially in the shade, but it started warming up quickly. That was the only bad part...that we had all dressed for the cool morning and were surprisingly warm by the time the afternoon rolled around. 

Still, it was so fun. So cute to see June and her friends playing together, with their different personalities and little relationship dynamics. Bennett did really well, napping on the way there and on the way home and being happy in between. 

So without further ado, I present roughly one million photos.

(Caption: "June! Stop Bennett from eating that leaf!")

They wanted to put their heads in this way since they couldn't reach them from the other side.

After some short naps at home (a little too short for my liking!), we spent the evening at home. Bennett has been crawling up a storm, so he's increasingly happy to scoot around the house and explore things. There was even time for Michael and me to veg out together on the bed while we watched both kids play nicely on the floor...a rarity on most days. We decided grocery shopping could wait another day, popped a frozen pizza in the oven and hung out some more before bedtime. 

Really awesome day, y'all. 

Six

It was our sixth anniversary on Saturday!

We left the kids home with a babysitter and went to a Moroccan restaurant called Marrakech. It was SO FUN. You eat on these little couches or cushions close to the ground. You get served family style, often without utensils. 

The food was delicious (I got lamb with honey, Michael got lamb kabob with cous cous) and we got a bottle of wine. 

A belly dancer came out and danced for us. Afterward, when she came around with her tip jar (jug?), she made you get up and dance with her to give her the tip. It led to some funny moments, with us seeing dance moves from middle-aged women and men to teenage boys. 

When she got around to us, of course I was the one to go up and dance!

After dinner was over, we didn't really know what to do. We'd been so excited about our cool restaurant that we hadn't made concrete plans for afterward . We went to Old Sacramento and had a drink on the Delta King, an old river boat moored permanently. Then we got some dessert in midtown at Rick's Dessert Diner. 

It was so much fun, we've been telling everyone about our awesome find in Marrakech and have talked about wanting to bring June back (we saw a bunch of young girls dancing with the belly dancer in another room and it was so cute). We loved getting to celebrate our anniversary...at least the preliminary round. Round two of celebration is our upcoming trip to Mexico sans kids!!

So, fun fact... my parents get a picture taken on every anniversary of them toasting their drinks to celebrate. We borrowed their tradition and now have our own growing collection! I thought I'd share.

This year:

2013: Fifth Anniversary (I was drinking a Coke - pregnant with Bennett):

2012: Fourth Anniversary:

2011: Third Anniversary:

2010 - Second Anniversary (pregnant with June):

2009 - First Anniversary: