Houston, we have a crawler

Becca has really figured out the crawling thing the past few days. She was just rocking back and forth on her hands and knees, or scooting backwards, but now if you set her down on the floor, she will actually crawl. She loves being able to get around on her own!

Amazon really does sell everything

Bird Watching

A few weeks ago we found a robin's nest in a bush right off our front porch.



Samuel has really enjoyed checking the nest each day to see the progress of the baby birds:

I'm not sure how much longer the birds are going to be able to fit in the nest. As you can see from that last picture, they are getting big quickly.

7 months old

Becca is 7 months old now. Here is her picture with the bear:

She is growing by leaps and bounds. She weighs 18 pounds now (50-75%) and is 26" long (25%). She loves to wave hi and bye to people, especially other children or babies (and herself when she is looking in a mirror.) She even says something that sounds a lot like "hi" when she is doing that. We're going to count that as her first word.

She is very close to crawling. She will rock back and forth on all fours, but then plop back down the ground. She has figured out how to roll both ways and will sometimes roll to get from one part of the room to another.

She can sit up for a few seconds on her own, but would much prefer that you hold her in a standing position. Or walk around carrying her.

She LOVES any kind of paper and will grab it off a table, wall, etc... She likes to shake it up and down to make noise, and then stick it in her mouth. See how delighted she looks here to find the paper with the 7 on it?

Her 2 bottom teeth have come in. You can sort of see them in this picture:

Our happy laundry helper:

Apparently I have been pushing the whole "Let's Practice Writing Your Name" thing a little too much

This is a bookshelf in his closet:



On the bright side, he actually did a pretty good job with his name:

6 months old

This month we get 2 pictures of Becca and the bear. As you can see, she is no longer content to just lie next to the bear while I take her picture. Anything within her grasp is snapped up in an instant (and then usually stuffed in her mouth.)








Highlights this past month:

• I think she is cutting teeth as she has been cranky and drooling a ton. I don't see any actual teeth in her mouth yet, but I'm sure they will appear soon.
• Trying yogurt. She loved it so much she ate an entire container in one sitting. This should not have come as a surprise since we pretty much single-handedly supported Yo Baby Yogurt during Samuel's first 3 years.
• She has figured out how to roll from her stomach to her back (but not the other way around yet.)
• She loves anything with buttons (remote control, phone, calculator, etc...)
• If you put her on the floor on her stomach, she will scoot backwards. I remember Samuel did that too before he started crawling for real. I think real crawling for Becca is not too far off:

Easter Pictures (better late than never)

Ernie's sister Bridget, her husband Pete, and 2 of their boys (Tony and PJ) came to visit us for Easter. Here are some pictures from their visit:

Samuel and his cousin Tony decorating Easter eggs:





The finished eggs:



The famous Easter cookies (if you are a Jackson reading this, you probably recognize these!)



Bridget, Pete, and I took turns posing for pictures with our favorite little girl. Could she possibly get any cuter?