10 months!

my little salsa baby you are growing up!  10 months! ahhh!

what a big month we have had!  we are in our new house!  i love to imagine what it will be like watching you grow up in this house.  you have loved exploring all the nooks and crannies in this place and because we now have stairs, we have been extra vigilant watching you scoot around until we install our baby gates.

you are still army crawling everywhere and getting faster at this.  you can go from sitting up to crawling with ease now and you are learning how to go from crawling to sitting up.  you ram your head and use it to force your body up.  it cracks us up!  your head size is in the 84th percentile and so we laugh that this is a good use of your huge head!  you want to pull up on us all the time but you haven't quite figured out how to do this and cruise on the furniture yet.  i am not worried and in no hurry for this, ha ha!

you have also figured out how to hold our hands and walk and you love to do this.  it is so funny to watch you go and sometimes you go so fast it is like you are running!  your brother burrito did not walk alone until 13 months but your brother noodle was walking at 10 months.  it is fun to wonder at what age you will figure this out.

you are talking a lot now and making new sounds and syllables everyday.  there's not a day that goes by that we don't laugh at something you say now.  and to think i was worried that you were such a quiet baby...boy has that changed!

you are still chowing down on food but you have your definite favorites and green vegetables are not one of them!  the big change this month is you have mastered eating the fruit puffs.  you can grab them and get them in your mouth and gum them to death.  and you love them!  we are thankful to have this little snack to keep you interested and happy while we are out running errands or trying to fix dinner.

sleep...oh the elusive sleep.  i will say that we have had a lot of change in our lives the past couple of months but one thing has not changed and that is you being a lousy sleeper.  that's right, i said it.  i miss sleep.  the pediatrician thinks it's normal though so i will keep trudging along but my gray hairs and bags beneath my eyes are growing and have your name written all over them!  i know that this is just a season (though too long of a season if you ask me!) and one day (maybe) i will look back and miss this (maybe).

your favorites still include bath time and we even had the opportunity to visit a water park this past week and you loved it!  we were there for 4 hours and you were happy as a peach.  you love splashing and moving in the water and we were all so thankful that you did so well.  your favorite toy is a drum set we got you because you love to beat on anything and everything!  you will scoot through the house with a drum stick in your hand banging on the floors, the walls and the doors.  you are sitting in your big high chair at the table and it is so sweet to eat at the table as a family of 5!  you still adore your big brothers and love to watch them be crazy.  you are all boy already and love to wrestle in the floor with dad.

salsa we are still so thankful for you great health even though God made you special with backwards organs.  it is so fun to watch you grow and learn!

summer fun

while we are crashing at my parents' house, we are also watching my 4 year old nephew, known here on the blog as porkchop.  it has been interesting to imagine what life would be like with 4 boys.  having one more kid really doesn't seem any different except for the noise level.  it seems like that goes up exponentially with each child added.  we've also enjoyed getting comments while out with four boys.  we've had more than one person tell us we need to try for a 5th to get a girl, ha, ha!  trust me, i would have another boy.  and we are not trying for a 4th or a 5th!

nonetheless, we have had fun running around with 4 boys and making the most of our time in limbo between houses.  we took the boys to the museum.  they had so much fun building and exploring and we even caught a little show at the planetarium.

this is a piece from tower 1 from the twin towers.  very sobering to see.

the next day we took a trip to a local park.  it was fun even for salsa because it was a handicapped accessible park and we rolled him around in the stroller everywhere.  he finally is okay with the swings and did that too.

then the next day we went to the zoo.  i LOVE the zoo.  this was salsa's first trip so that made me love it even more.  all 4 boys had a blast and it was such a good day.  the zoo has an exhibit right now with these giant robotic bugs so the boys had fun looking for all those.  we've discovered that salsa really loves animals and he grunts and talks to them and was so cute talking to all the animals at the zoo.

trying to fit in some summer fun before the next round of moving madness hits!

moving out day

last thursday was move out day for us and it was a little bittersweet.  and exhausting.  this was our happy picture taken at around 7:30am.  we fell into bed that night at 11:00, only for salsa to wake up at 11:30, 2:30 and 5:30.  um, he doesn't adjust well to change. 

we can't move into our new house for a couple of weeks so we packed up ALL our stuff and moved it to my parents' house about 40 minutes away.  they are saints to let us crash their house for 2 weeks with all of our stuff. and with 3 boys. and with a baby that doesn't sleep.

and the real sad part was we had to get up early and go back to our house to clean before handing over the keys to the new owner.  i had to take one last picture of the boys outside the front of our house.  burrito was 3 and noodle was 1 when we moved here and salsa will never remember this house.  sniff, sniff.

i thought this was a really funny picture of salsa in front of our huge uhaul.  i was convinced that after already having made several trips to my parents' house with stuff, that this truck would definitely hold the remainder of our things.  i was wrong!  john and my dad had to go back a second time that day to get the rest of our stuff while my mom and i set up camp and got the boys ready for bed.

it's been a little rough being in close quarters with all of our stuff packed up and a baby that doesn't sleep and now has a cold.  there were a few moments this past week where i found myself crying out to Jesus for help and wanting to run away, ha, ha, but the past few days have been better and we are only a week away from being in our new house.  this is the new rutherford casa!

we can't wait to have everyone over (just as long as you help us move a box!).