God's Little Blessings: June

It doesn't seam possible that Austin is 8 months old already...but he is and he is one busy little rascal! June and July have basically come and gone and August is right around the corner. Between company in June, T-ball, Soccer, softball, church, being sick, and VBS, it has been a busy couple of months.

I am having some issues with the blog. It won't upload the videos that I want, maybe they are too long. But there are a few that will upload so enjoy those along with a bunch of pictures from the past month or so. I am also having issues with the formatting and spacing and I can't figure it out so it may look like a total mess and I hope you can still follow along...sorry if you can't. I will attmept to fix it later, but for now here is a ton of pictures and a not so brief commentary about what is happening in our life.

About four weeks ago he started "dropping" the ball or so we thought, but we soon realized that he his actually throwing it on purpose. Grandma Harsh was down the middle of June, she brought him the husker football you will see in pictures and introduced the "throwing" concept. Since then he has perfected it. Well, perfection that is, for an 8th month old! He is so proud of himself when he does it and now next to jumping, this is his favorite thing to do. I am sure that mom, dad, sister or whomever he is playing with, clapping when he does it lead to his being proud of himself. It also led to the idea that if we clap at him throwing the ball, surely we will think throwing everything will be cute and fun. It isn’t so cute and fun while we are eating. While we are eating, he has no intent on putting anything that he gets hold of (except what he shouldn't) in his mouth. It all goes straight to the floor. Needless to say, he probably won't be feeding himself for awhile. He still grabs with his whole hand, so he isn't ready transfer food into his mouth. He has tried, but hasn't been successful. I don't find clearing everything within reach very amusing, but I am sure it won't take to many "No’s" for him to figure out when he can and can't throw things. Boy does he cry when I tell him "NO." During mealtime is not the only time he hears "NO".

He is so much busier than the girls were at this age. Granted I had two of them, but he is definitely going to give us all a run for our money. The baby gate is going up soon, as he is mobile. He can crawl, but fortunately it is still at snail speed. I don’t think it will be for long though! For about two weeks before he figured out crawling, he would throw himself as far as he could get and then scoot forward, sit up, and do it again until he got to where he wanted. I am sure it isn’t very comfortable on hardwood floors, but if he has his mind on something he will work at it until he gets it or is completely exhausted and gives up. I am predicting we have an early walker as he already pulls up on anything and everything that he thinks he can, most of which he shouldn’t be. He also grabs my hands to pull himself up and then acts like he is ready to go. He does go, just not very balanced and it takes forever. He definitely has a goal in mind and usually that goal is where ever his sisters are or where to ball/toy rolled. There is no more getting away to get something done unless the girls are there to keep him safe, which they are usually happy to do…usually!

He is quick to smile and demands attention. Good thing we all love giving him attention and he has two older sisters who love him and love to get him smiling and laughing. They are great help when he is in a good mood. As soon as he gets tired and crabby, they are done and call for mom’s help! Kaylee has definitely come around now that he is able to interact with her. They still can be a little too much for him, but most of the time he loves all the attention that they are willing to give. He doesn’t always make it easy for them though. Especially when he is crabby and gets their hair, he isn’t exactly gentle about anything. He is definitely all BOY. The girls love to rough house with their dad and Austin just sits and watches in amazement. It won’t be long before he wants to be right in the middle of it all and will beat up on all of them. He is very sweet and he looks like it in most pictures, but don’t let him fool you. He can be very naughty and he is a bruiser. He will have and give lots of bruises over the next few months/years as he a monster at times. One of the cutest little monsters I have ever seen though!

He is very opinionated and isn't afraid to let you know how he feels...he throws himself around already. He isn’t waiting until the "terrible two's" to do that. If someone is holding him while sitting down and he doesn't like where you are holding him, he will push your hands out of the way. Most of the time he just wants to hold onto them so he can stand and jump, but sometimes he just doesn’t want your hands where you have them. If you are standing and wants to get down or just be anywhere but where he is, he literally tries to buck himself out of your arms. Let us just hope he never is successful at that! He is not a one handed child!

Onto the girls, sometimes I feel as though they are not equally represented on the blog now that Austin has "stolen" the show. The are a joy to have and they are changing so much. It is exciting to see how much they have changed in the past year. Last August they turned five and started preschool. Many parents had their kids in preschool for 1-2 years by then and some parents sent their children to kindergarten. That is fine and I am not judging, we just felt that it would be in the girl’s best interest to give them one more year. I am so glad that we did. Jaylin struggled with the "size" of preschool and making new friends and it was a very small classroom with only 15 kids and two adults. She got over it, but it took some encouragement and there were a lot of tears and an upset tummy. She didn’t want to go to school at all for about a month. If we had sent her to kindergarten last year, it would have been a much bigger hurdle to jump. This year is different, she says that she is excited to go to kindergarten and meet new friends. I hope that attitude doesn’t change! Now we will see what will happen with Kaylee, last year she was pumped to go to school and children’s church. Lately she hasn’t wanted to go to children’s church, but Jaylin says she is going with or without Kaylee. It was just the opposite last summer. Twins are interesting this way, just when you think you have them figured out, they switch on you. All kids do that, but it is fascinating to see it happen with both kids at basically the same time. Not so fun at times, but I still find it very interesting. Kaylee still goes to children’s church and has fun while she is there, but she is showing some anxiety. I hope and pray that it is nothing more than a very short phase! They did have VBS last week through a local church, not our church, as they weren’t old enough to participate this year. They loved it even though they were in the preschool program and it ended up being more like childcare than the full VBS program that I grew up with. They had fun and looked forward to going each evening, so it was a positive experience.

They finished t-ball the 12th of July. They learned a lot this year and by the end of the season, we were left wishing there were a few more games as most of the kids were really getting the hang of it. The first game they barely got through the line up twice for each team in one hour. By the fifth game, we had accomplished that in 30 minutes. Up until their fourth game, we had never seen an out in the two years that they had played and we saw two. Not that they actually made the kid go out, they let them keep running, but we were impressed that it actually happened. The last game was a lot of fun for the girls. Kaylee is very aggressive and though she appears to not be paying attention, she is and beat the rest of the kids to the ball when it was hit into the field regardless of the side of the field it was hit to. She played right behind second and was able to get 6 or 7 of the hits that game. One of the balls she managed to outrun the other kids to, ended up getting her a glove thrown at her b/c the little guy was mad that she beat him to it. He literally took his glove off and threw it at her. Needless to say, he also got to sit the rest of that inning on the bench. She didn’t get hurt, but was mad that he did that and stomped back to "her spot." T-ball is very funny at this age. Each time Kaylee got the ball, she had to return to "her spot," pick a wedgie and wipe any dirt off of her or the ball before she could throw it to first. All the kids would return to their spot and wipe any dirt off themselves and the ball before throwing it. There were a few dog piles this year, but not nearly as many as last year and I can proudly say that neither of my kids participated in them. They did try to get the ball this year, which is different than last year when they wouldn’t dare leave the circle that coach drew for them to stand in. They both were able to hit the ball of a pitch, but I didn’t always get that one on video of course. They got three pitches and if they didn’t hit the ball, the tee was brought out for them to hit off of. They had their fair share of doing that, but they are improving.

This Saturday the 24th of July will be their final soccer game. Soccer is fun to watch there isn’t as much "down time" like there is in T-ball. There are only 6 kids on the team and they play 4 on 4 soccer so the kids get to play most of the game. It has been pretty hot and muggy during the games and they are sweaty and tired when they are done, but they enjoy playing. Kaylee enjoys it more than Jaylin. Kaylee is a little more aggressive than Jaylin and when she gets knocked down she gets right back up and goes after it. Jaylin has actually spent more time on the ground than Kaylee and it takes her awhile to get back, brush herself off, feel a little sorry for herself and then get back to the game. She does play pretty good defense though and that is the reason she is on the ground more than Kaylee. Some of the boys play pretty hard. Kaylee has scored a few goals and Jaylin has almost scored one. The most recent game was not all that fun for the kids, b/c the other team had one little boy that was REALLY good for this age and pretty much owned the field. If fact the other team was all boys and our team only has one boy. Not sure how that ended up happening, but oh well! We play our final game this Saturday and then we will watch dad play softball during the Sunflower State games.

Brett is playing softball on Wednesdays and his team hasn’t won to many games. He gets really frustrated with it, but he enjoys playing softball and the kids and I enjoy going to watch when it isn’t too hot or the game isn’t too late. The girls don’t end up watching but half of the game, but it is good exercise for them.

Sorry about the novel, and I even left out a few things I am sure...like Father's Day weekend when Brett's Dad, brothers, Grandpa Del and Sherry, Greg, Dee Dee and Morgan were able to join us for the day and supper. The guys went golfing that afternoon after church and the ladies stayed home where it was cool and then we all ate supper at our house. I failed to get pictures as I was busy, but I know someone did so send them my way when you have time.

The following 4 pictures were taken while Grandma Harsh was here. She is playing ball with Austin. She came down to watch the girls play t-ball, but it got rained out so we played inside most of the time and went outside to practice when we could. It is a good thing she brought some inside braclets to make and the girls had a good time making them.

The following pictures are ones that I snapped of Jaylin and Austin playing together. Check out all the differt expressions on Austin's face.

Couple of Soccer pictures and T-ball pictures:

Kaylee is kicking the dirt during the second game.

Jaylin in the back kicking dirt too.

Kaylee thought is was funny to put his bib backwards and make him into a super baby.

Just the two of them.

Jaylin just lost her top middle tooth and she is SO excited...can you tell? We had just watch the movie Tooth Fairy as a family and she has been waiting to loose this tooth for a month now. We should have waited another day or two as this one hurt to be pulled, but she really wanted to have it out. She is going to loose the other one anyday now and will have a lot of fly holes in that mouth.

The following pictures are a few that they girls took. They love to grab the camera and take very weird and random pictures. Good thing for digital cameras that you can delete the really bad ones.

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