D'oh! Old and new...

hi again!  I know it's been awhile, but here are some of the things that we've been up to...
This post used to be called "3 months is a long time between posts," but I wrote it almost a month ago, and never posted it.  So I'll be putting updates in with my original comments to keep you up to date.

-Scott is quite a mover now.  He rolls and spins himself around, so he can travel around.  He can travel really far, until he gets himself stuck under the couch. :)  He's starting to crawl, and he's starting to cruise (pull himself along the furniture while standing).  He can sit himself back up from laying on the floor.  It took him quite a while to start rolling, but now that he is moving, he just won't stop!  He'll be a super crawler before I know it.  Then we'll have to child-proof the house and put our gates back up.  [Scott IS a super fast crawler, and quite exhausting - he just never stops!  He gets into EVERYTHING.  He has a particular affinity for power cords (to pull out and chew on) and floor lamps (to hang from.)]

-Scott waves and claps. So cute!  His first wave was to some random guy at Panera Bread, so I felt kinda bummed, but I let the guy know that he should feel honored to be the recipient of Scott's first wave.  [Scott loves to stand at our front window and wave, whether someone is outside or not.  We always wave goodbye to Daddy when he is going to work.]

-Scott eats all kinds of solid foods now.  He loves to eat!  It's just so distracting to eat when that older brother of his is around. :)  Jared has taken to eating some of Scott's food, which is usually vegetables, so I usually let him.  Poor Scott, his brother is stealing his food already!

-Speaking of Jared, he is a great big brother!  He's not keen on sharing his toys, but he likes giving Scott the baby toys.  Now that Scott is getting more mobile and can help himself to toys, the fights have started.  But he is very loving toward Scott, which is wonderful to see.  [ummm...Jared is not very tolerant of Scott getting into his stuff, to put it nicely.  He is starting to rough-house with Scott, which makes Steve and I very nervous.  Jared nicknamed Scott "Bend-a-saurus," and calls him that when he is pushing him, pulling him, or laying on top of him.]

-We hosted Easter at our house this year, which was so fun!  I love being able to have a house full of family for the holidays.  It brings back wonderful childhood memories.  Jared was very excited to go to the neighborhood beach for the Easter Egg Hunt.  The little kids got to go in first, and they had a special area where the eggs weren't really hidden.  Unfortunately, Jared started finding eggs in the middle of the big kid area, since they weren't allowed in yet.  Just then, the big kids were let in, and a wave of kids came rushing right at Jared.  Luckily, I got to him before he got trampled.

-We've started giving the boys baths together, which makes for pretty crazy baths, but the boys really seem to enjoy it.  [Scott is now a constant splasher with his hands and feet, so he gets very fast baths.]

-Jared and I flew kites with our friends Claire and Jen.  Claire and Jared had a fun time playing beneath the kites, but Jared didn't really seem interested in holding the string.  Jen's kite got away from her, which lead to running across the park numerous times, since the kite string was caught in a tree, but not the kite.  Every time we turned around, the kite would drop to the ground, but by the time we got there, the wind would pick up, and the kite would be flying high again.  It was quite the first kite flying experience!

-We had 7 trees removed from our property, and a lot of pruning done.  The funny part is, that you can hardly tell that the trees were removed, we had that many trees!  Jared watched the tree guys all day long!  Their little climber guy was awesome!  He would run up the tree with his ropes and cleats (if they were taking down the tree, no cleats if they were just pruning), and just start trimming away with his chainsaw.  Pappy had to help out the tree guys too by trying out their big chainsaw on a log.  

-Jared got a tick bite when we went to our cabin over Memorial Day. :(  He was fairly good at letting us dig into the back of his neck to get it out.  A little piece of the tick remained (not the head), and it is healing nicely, so the Pediatrician isn't worried.  [All healed!]

-Scott used to be a great sleeper, but he is a terrible teether!  They seem to bother him much more than they did for Jared.  My theory is that since he's a thumb sucker, he is pressing down on his sensitive gums.  Poor kiddo gets his fair share of ibuprofen to help ease the pain.  [He's now working on 3 more teeth.  Gah!]

-Jared was never a very cuddly kid, even as a baby.  But since Scott's been around, he really likes his hugs and kisses, so that's nice.  He also says I Love You a lot, so Steve and I are really enjoying that.  He even says I Love You to Scott.

-Now that Scott is getting older, we've been going on more trips.  In addition to going to my parents' house and cabin over Memorial Day, we've gone up to Philly to visit Steve's parents and my relatives a few times, we went up to Baltimore to see my cousin Caitlin's senior exhibition for her art school.  At Caitlin's graduation party, my Aunt Bernie, Uncle Kevin, and Uncle Paul all got to meet Scott for the first time.

-Jared used to pull Scott around the neighborhood in our wagon, but now he wants to get in and rode too.  It was a lot easier for me when Jared did all of the pulling!

-We watched our friends' daughter Samantha for a few hours while the parents went to a wedding.  I think Scott liked not being the smallest kid in the house.  Samantha ate well and slept a lot (which was unusual for her at the time), so Steve and I had an easy time of it.  At one point, all three kids were sleeping at once!

*new stuff*
-Jared has been talking in more complete thoughts and sentences.  He is definitely sounding more like a mature 3 year old, than his 2 year old beginning talk.  One of his phrases is "Mommy, are you okay?" which cracks me up, since it sounds so adult.  Jared has had to use it a lot lately, since I have been gasping at a lot of "nature" on our property.  Over the past 2 months, we've had an ant invasion, a centipede sighting in the tub, a dead bird and a dead squirrel outside.  Luckily, we have a good burial plot outside that the kids can't access.  Jared and I are getting good at saying eulogies for random outside animal at their burials.

-Since Scott has been nursing less and moving a lot more, he has really started to thin out.  Jared hasn't called him "Baby Scott" for month, since he isn't looking like such a baby anymore.  He has reddish blond hair (getting more, but still thin) and gray eyes (just like Jared.)  At Scott's 9 month check-up, he weighed 19 pounds, 1 ounce (the 30th percentile), he was 27.25" tall (25th percentile), and his head was 46 cm around (the 75th percentile!!)  I know my kids have big heads, since they seem to have trouble getting their shirts on over their heads.  And Steve's Mom says that Steve also had this problem as a baby.  Scott looks so much like Steve did as a baby.

-Now that it's warmer, we've filled a baby pool up on our deck, but I'm not sure how long Jared will be satisfied with that.  I foresee many trips to our neighborhood beach this summer.  Jared is pretty good about only going up to his waist, but I think he'll need swimming lessons before too much longer.

-Jared had a great time going to a local park to see the Tall Ships come in to Baltimore's Inner Harbor with my parents.  The next day, they all went up to Baltimore, and actually toured two of the ships.  Jared was very excited that he was able to touch the enormous flag on one of the ships. 

-Steve and I took Jared to an air show last month.  It was really cool with lots of static displays, and tons of neat demonstrations!  Jared got to sit in the cockpit of a Maryland Air National Guard plane.  We saw demos from sky-typers, a Harrier jet, a V-22 (Pop-Pop's helicopter that he used to work on), an acrobatic flyer, the Golden Knights, the F-22, the B-2, among others.  The weather was warm, but not nearly as hot as I remember air shows as a kid.  Jared liked the air show (except the Harrier which was too loud), but his main highlight was that he got to ride in a school bus!  We had to park and go through security at FedEx Field, then they drove us in school buses from there onto the Air Force Base.

-Steve is running fairly regularly now.  He hasn't gone back to soccer yet, but the doctor has given him the all-clear.  Maybe in the fall.

-I'm enjoying getting back to the gym as much as my schedule will let me.  In addition to my weightlifting and kickboxing aerobics classes, I've started doing Zumba, which is so much fun!  It's fun to get out by myself for a little bit, and I feel good after exercising.

I know this is the longest post ever, but now that it's done, I'll start entering in the pictures, which I know is what people really want to see.  I'll put up another post to let you know when the pictures are up.