Happy Birthdays!!

We have lots of birthday wishes to send out. Saturday was my sister, Katie's, birthday, and today is Dave's sister, Ryane's, birthday! Happy birthday to two of our favorite aunts! Our kids are lucky to have so many great aunts and uncles. They are especially lucky because birthdays mean cake!!!

Mairead is an old pro at eating cake. She uses a fork (most of the time) and everything.


Ben and Jack are new at it, and kept looking at us like, "are you sure we can eat this? No one is going to stop us?" They were a mess, but they had fun eating it! Surprisingly, Ben liked it enough, but didn't love it the way I thought he would. Jack, on the other hand, had HUGE fistfuls of it and cried when it was gone.

Ben

Ben

Jack

Jack

On an almost birthday note, the boys turned 11 months old on Saturday! That means that they have less than a month until they are one whole year old! I can't believe it- they have come so far and grown so much in the past year. It's crazy to think that they are reallly getting to be toddlers and not babies any more. I will say that I love the snuggly baby stage, and I will miss that. But, I am excited to see them doing new things and really showing their personalities.

My parents were nice enough to babysit on Saturday so that we could go out for Katie's birthday. They had their hands full with my three AND their new cousin, Lily. She is getting so big and is seriously cuter every time I see her.

Jack is fascinated by Lily. He babbles and coos to her whenever she comes over. Ben is not as interested, and is a little more jealous.

Christin's mom made this adorable little strawberry hat for Lily. How cute is that?

She is such a pretty baby- and so alert, too! I am not used to big, alert newborns. Lily weighs as much right now at about 7 weeks as my guys did at 12 weeks!

Everyone here is doing well. It seems that the boys are over their ear infections, though Ben still has a very runny nose. He is still waiting on some teeth, while Jack's bottom two are more visible every day.

Mairead is learning a ton of new words and is communicating more. We would still like to see her using more sentences and being a bit more conversational. We are hoping that her school helps with that, and we will see if she needs some extra help getting to where she needs to be.

We went to a playdate yesterday and everyone did pretty well with the other kids. We are a traveling circus going out in public, but it's worth the effort to get everyone out! I can't wait until the weather is warmer and we can play outside!