Bella, Gabe and Josiah

Apparently eating the laundry is an essential part of folding the laundry. I'm glad that I now have someone that can help me out with that!

We've reached another new milestone: we have a mobile baby! Now that he's figured out how to roll both directions, he's figured out how to roll to get things. He's spent most of his time getting stuck in his activity mat, which he just finds frustrating. But tonight he started escaping. I left him on his mat and this is where I found him a moment later. Then later he rolled across the room to Pat to pick him up. And so it begins...

Today was a momentous occasion around here: I went back to work. I've been working one day a week all summer, but today was my first day back full time. I haven't worked full time since I went on bedrest 9 months ago, so it's a little strange! This also means that today was Gabe's first full day at day care. He's gone twice before for just a couple of hours, but today he was there all day. His daycare is in the building next to mine, so I get to go over and feed him during the day, which makes this much easier. It also means that full time is a relative statement. I'm going to work every day, but I'm going to be a bit shy on hours for a bit here as long as someone is eating every two hours... Gabe is continuing to grow and develop as he should. He's officially tickleish! His big belly laughs are pretty adorable! He's also come along ways on hand coordination. He sees something that he wants and can grab it and get it to his mouth. He can even get his

In the interest of taking full advantage of my last day of maternity leave, the kids and I went on a walk yesterday after Bella  got home from school. Apparently our timing was perfect because just as we showed up, we saw this: I've been out there many times, but this was the first time that I'd gotten to watch a bear grab a salmon and then eat it. There was even a third cub that didn't make the picture. It was pretty amazing. Even Bella was impressed and she's not usually terribly impressed with wildlife. Gabe was more concerned about the color of the coat the lady next to us was wearing... After the bears left, we walked out to the falls. The water level was a lot higher than I'm used to and we had to get our feet wet, but it was okay. The water was pretty cold though...

Gabe is officially 8 months old! To celebrate, we had a photo shoot. :) Things started out well. Gabe and the moose were laughing and telling jokes. Gabe even tried to tickle the moose! Then things got a little out of hand and Gramps had to settle things. It's a good thing Gramps is funny!

Today was the first day of school! Bella looks all grown up starting 5th grade. How did she get so big??? Gabe and I chose to take advantage of one of the last few days of maternity leave by going on a walk just the two of us.

Gabe has a new friend. He loves him so much that he just wants to kiss him all the time. His new friend even kisses back! He actually figured out the pucker kiss too!

A year and a half ago Bella and I went on a girls trip to Portland. We stayed with my college girlfriends and had all sorts of fun things planned. Unfortunately, two days before we left she got crazy sick. I figured she'd get over it pretty quickly so we went anyway. Instead she got sicker. You know that your 8-year-old is sick when you tell her to go to bed and she gets up and walks straight to bed without saying anything. Then you put her to bed, walk out the door, pick up the hairbrush that she left in the bathroom, walk back in the bedroom and she's already asleep. It definitely wasn't the fun girls trip that we'd planned, but we had a good time in spite of her being sick. Anyway, we went to a cute fabric store and bought a bunch of fabric so that I could make Christmas stockings for family. I also bought fabric to make curtains for her room. Then life happened and the curtains didn't. I've been feeling bad since I've been doing lots of projects for Gabe

We had a pretty low key day on Friday. We don't have cable, so we haven't been able to watch any of the Olympics, so the kids and I went over to my parents to catch up on an entire weeks worth of Olympics. When you fast forward the commercials and the sports you don't care about, you can watch a lot in one day! :) After getting through three evenings worth of Olympics, I left the kids with Gram and went home to get dressed up. Then Pat and I had a lovely dinner out just the two of us! It was wonderful! I didn't take any pictures though, because apparently I only take pictures of the kids anymore... (As a side note, this is a pretty small town. It was a very small restaurant, yet we ran into one of my old co-workers, one of the my doctors, my 7th grade language arts teacher and a lady that reminded me of my boss' wife, who it turns out is a good friend of hers...) After dinner we picked up the kids and went home to open presents and head to bed. All in all, it was a

Well, we've survived our first bout of illness with Gabe! It actually wasn't a very bad bug, although it is hard to get the extra sleep needed to get over a bug when the baby doesn't want to let you sleep... Bella was the only one to escape it. Poor Gabe didn't get it very bad, he basically just didn't want to eat and refused to sleep for longer than an hour by himself. That meant that he and I slept in our bed, Pat slept in Bella's bed and Bella got the floor in Gabe's room. She wasn't very happy about that... The good news is that it didn't last very long and we're all feeling better. The bad news is that Gabe's sleep schedule is still not back to normal...

We've had a bit of a crazy week over here and it's only Thursday morning! On Monday I dropped Gabe off at daycare for the first time. I'm not going back officially until school starts, but I went in for a couple of hours on Monday and dropped Gabe off for an hour and a half. It was pretty strange to leave him, but he did great. I survived as well, even doing better than I thought I would. Maybe I react to this all differently because I spent three months leaving him in the hospital already?  Tuesday we went fishing. Bella, Dad and I each got one. Plus, Bella will always be able to say that she got a fish bigger than her brother!   Yesterday I was supposed to go have a minor procedure done on my foot, which I wasn't particularly excited about.  Gabe must have sensed my anxiety because he was cranky all day, not wanting to eat or sleep. The doctor decided not to cut my foot open, which is great, and my  mom decided to keep the kids for an extra hour anyway so that I could