Here come the holidays!

The holidays are fast approaching. I realized that I had absolutely zero family pictures of the four of us so I bravely and stupidly set up the tripod and self timer. 20 minutes and several mosquito bites later, we gave up and decided to try again at my parent's house so that someone else could hold the camera and snap at just the right moment. Turns out, that was difficult too. My dad just kept shooting away and I think we ended up with one acceptable one. Notice I did not say good. Good is everyone looking their best and making eye contact with the camera. The one we ended up with was good for everyone but Gabe,who looks a little weird, but since he can't talk yet and complain, we're going with that one since I've given up on this whole family picture idea until I can afford one of those nice photographers to come to my house and get us all looking really natural.

Gabe is eight weeks now and Carter is officially 21 months. Gabe is beginning to lose some of his wonderful mop of hair and I am curious to see what grows in its place. He also no longer looks like he spent all day at the tanning salon. It's so funny how much they change in the course of the first year of their lives. He is still very sweet and smiley, but he is difficult to keep entertained. After 15 minutes doing one thing, he gets really fussy and needs a change of scenery. I have this rotation that I do every 15 minutes before I finally give in and nurse him to quiet him down. We sing songs, make faces, roll on top of a beach ball, take a trip outside, play under the baby gym, look in the mirror and then lastly, we do tummy time which makes him really upset and usually wears him out. He has learned to roll over so I have to get after him to make sure he stays on his tummy, that sneaky guy.

Carter is doing great right now. He is really into trucks and can name all different kinds of vehicles. He always asks us to "sit" and play with him and then gets a little possesive when we try to make one of his trucks move. If we do something funny with the truck he will usually oblige us though and let us play too. He is talking up a storm and is always describing what's going on and repeating everything we say so now we are beginning to spell stuff. I love his sweet little voice. I have gotten a glimpse of how limited the days of sweet voice are. He likes to roar and scream just to make loud noise and see what our reaction is. He is still happy to have a brother and rarely displays jealousy.