8 Months!

I can't believe that little man is already 8 months old...though it also feels like he's been a part of our family forever.  It's strange how babies are placed into your family and somehow just fit.  Charlotte is constantly trying to get me to put Milo ("Milo-boo") down so that she can make him smile or laugh, and all that Maya has to do is cross his field of vision and he is cracking up.  Of course I am still his favorite person EVER and if I walk away his little brain must go crazy because he either cries as if in pain, frantically belly-crawls toward me, or (most likely) both.  Once he is in my arms I am rewarded with a hug and sometimes a bite on my shoulder (we're working on that...he gets a little too excited!).  This phase of not being able to put him down is exhausting, but I know that it will pass all too quickly so I am trying my best to enjoy it.  

Don't let the pictures below fool you ~ he was happy for approximately 2.6 minutes before deciding I was much more interesting than the water or grass :)  But, it does give me hope that he'll enjoy being outside this summer!

Charlotte: Mom!  Milo's standing!  Milo's standing up!  Good job Milo!  Mom look at Milo standing!  Milo-boo you're doing a good job standing!
(I put him there for the photo op ;))

Extreme Close-Up!

We've had two amazing days here, weather-wise.  We've all been in great moods, too ~ the sunshine definitely brings out the best in my kids!  I even got them to look at the camera (!!!) and smile (!!!!!).  I told Maya that I was working on a new project to make her have super sparkly eyes in my pictures (after reading an article I found on Pinterest...shocker, right? :)).  I didn't get exactly what I was going for, but I was excited to get some close-ups of my beautiful girls!  Milo isn't featured in this set ~ every time I tried to get a close-up of him, he either started crying because I had put him down or he crawled frantically to try to get my camera strap.  Maybe next time :)

She made me take this one, and thought it was hilarious :P

Seeds!

We planted our seeds yesterday!  The pots are sitting on my table, hopefully getting enough light and happiness from our home to sprout beautiful, hardy seedlings that survive transfer and grow amazing peppers and tomatoes :D

I thought I would have an opportunity to take lots of pictures of the kids planting the seeds and having fun and all that, but then I woke up from my fantasy dream and realized that having fun with DIRT and SEEDS does not go so well with taking pictures!

What matters is that the kids had fun, though, right?  Maya is absolutely convinced that one of her tomato plants has already sprouted.  Maybe we should rename her Jack ;)

Here are the pictures I *did* manage to get (though there is a spot on some of them...turns out I got some soil on the lens, oops!)

Easter Part 2

 I have more Easter pictures (nothing too terribly exciting happening, so today you just get some pictures ;))

Maya's hair was what she calls, "swacky whacky" lol

om nom nom

She is a Schaub through and through, lol :)

FaceTime with Elmo.  NBD.

upon reviewing these pictures, I realized that I made them all face the sun.  Oops!  Next time...

On that spatula was batter for vegan, healthy deep dish chocolate chip cookie pie.  It was pretty tasty, I think!

Making "Resurrection Rolls"

Easter

Easter was fun this year.  We tried to emphasize the real reason we celebrate, and I think we did a decent job of overshadowing the egg hunts and baskets with the resurrection of Jesus.  Michael and I discovered that explaining death and resurrection to a 4-year old is a tricky thing, what with her concrete thinking and all that.  Fortunately she also has child-like faith and took our fumbling explanation and ran with it, even attempting to explain to Charlotte what was happening when we made resurrection rolls :D

Mostly unrelated to the above paragraph, my grandma bought Maya a megaphone for Easter.  Because, you know, she needed to be louder.  Michael joked that she collects peoples' unused words and uses them for herself...and now the neighbors get to hear them, too ;) 

 

It's MINE!

And it's DELICIOUS!