You know you are the third child when one of your first foods is smiley face french fries!

So this actually happened on Sunday. Sully has been working on hands and knee crawling for awhile, and was pretty consistent about it by Saturday. I made a comment to DH about it on Sunday, and then he told me to turn and look at Sully. Sully had apparently decided to top his hand and knee crawling before 6 months old, by grabbing hold of the sofa and pulling himself to a stand! He wanted to get a toy that had been put on the sofa, and so he did.

So he is now pulling to stand, though not cruising yet. The biggest issue is when he is done he tend to just drop and fall and hit his head and scream. So he stands is happy, decides he is done with this standing thing, or even better decides to try standing without support (really kid you aren’t 6 months old for another 2 days standing without support can wait a month or 3), falls, hits his head, and then screams. I go comfort him, put him back down and he repeats the above process. It is so much fun! Apparently he has decided he has to be mobile so he can keep up with his big siblings.

Oh and Desmond loves it when he stands, so he now deliberately moves Sully’s toys so they are up on the sofa so Sully will stand, and then tells me, “Look Mommy, I moved Sully’s toys so he would stand.”

Walking with my brother

So last Thursday I told Eloise and Desmond that we could go to the playground after preschool if it was nice out. It wasn’t it was raining, so I offered to take them to the big indoor playground/play area close to our house. I have been meaning to visit there for the past year or so. We went once when they were under different management and were not impressed, so didn’t go back. They were bought out around 2 years ago and I’ve been meaning to check them out again ever since. So we headed over and I paid for the two bigger ones (Sully and I were free). We got in and the terrors had a great time. There is a full size fire truck, a couple of bounce things, a huge indoor sandbox, a large kitchen area and a bunch of other things. They both really enjoyed it. Unfortunately they are closing at the end of the month, so we won’t be going back. It is too bad, they really did enjoy it which would have made the monthly membership cost worthwhile, oh well.

Here they are having a great time playing.

Desmond fighting a fire at a little house because Mommy left the cookies in the oven to long. Fortunately he is a well prepared fireman and once he had the fire out he also had all the ingredients in his pocket to make new cookies (flour, sugar, eggs, milk, butter, strawberries and sprinkles).

Sully sitting and looking around

So we went to the playground Sunday afternoon, it was the perfect afternoon for it, temperatures were in the high 60s/low 70s and it was nice and sunny out. We got there and the two bigger ones started to play, Sully was up on Dan’s back for awhile, and then came down to play a little as well. He got to go down the slide with Eloise and Desmond, and he sat and explored the playground surface as well. Everyone had a good time playing at the playground, it is nice that the weather is getting back into the temperatures that is a reasonable trip to make.

Here they are at the playground.

Sully sitting and exploring the playground surface

Eloise sliding

Desmond climbing the rock wall

Sully going down the slide with Eloise. Daddy helped, and supported.

Sully and Desmond going down the slide together

(more…)

So we were at the playground this afternoon, and I snapped this series of pictures of Desmond in a 2 minute time period. He is just so cute and photogenic.

I think this one is my favorite.

Sully is now 5 1/2 months old and has been doing a bunch of things recently. He now gets on his hands and knees and pushes forward. He isn’t hand and knee crawling yet but he is getting close. He is army crawling, and he is fairly fast too. He goes all over the room when he is put down now, guess it is time for baby gates.

He now has 4 teeth! Two on top and two on bottom, he is still drooling a bunch, so he may have more show up soon. He is also babbling a bunch, he likes to talk to his brother and sister. He also likes to blow raspberries at them.

He can sit now for about 3 minutes by himself. He also has almost conquered going from a crawling position into a sitting position! He is almost there. He has also started looking at low hanging things and grabbing them in preparation of pulling himself up, he isn’t quite there yet, but getting close again.

Here he is sitting yesterday.

So yesterday after dropping Desmond off at preschool we headed to a local playground. I had two different playgroups that just randomly chose the same playground to meet at. We got there about 30 minutes early, since it didn’t make sense to head home just to turn around and come back.

Eloise had fun watching the guy cut the grass and swinging when we got there. There was a little boy, who showed up a bit after us with his Grandmother. He and Eloise had fun swinging next to each other. As he was leaving some of the people from my first playgroup arrived. Shortly followed by people from my second playgroup. Eloise played decently, she didn’t play with the other kids a lot, but she did play with them some, she went on the spinning circle merry-go-round thing, with some of the other kids, and she also played in the sandbox and actually talked to some of the other kids. She had a good time at the playground.

We stayed for 3 hours, and had lunch there, it was a little hot, but it was a fun morning. Sully stayed on my back most of the time, getting down to nurse a few times, and for lunch, when he finally sat for longer then 10 seconds. He stayed up by himself for close to 3 minutes. Of course I didn’t have the camera out at the time because we were eating.

Here are some pictures of Eloise playing at the playground.

Nap time

So over labor day weekend we did a bunch of things, the first thing we did that Saturday though was go to Renfest. We go yearly, sometimes two times in a year, but we try to get there at least once a year. I like going towards the opening because you can normally get a coupon and it is far less busy, so not as crowded which is nice with little ones. So we headed over on Saturday morning, we weren’t expecting long lines to get tickets since we got there about an hour after opening. Unfortunately, there were extremely long lines, though it wasn’t that crowded once we got in. So Dan waited in line with Sully on his back (for almost an hour), and I kept the two bigger ones entertained.

Eloise had been talking about riding the ponies since we got there, she loves ponies. In fact she wanted to ride one from the car into Renfest, which since we don’t have a pony wasn’t happening. As we were waiting however, the elephants walked by. Desmond looked at me and told me, “I want to ride the elephants!” I told him we’d see, since I figured those rides, unlike the pony rides were not going to be free. They played outside, and rode the decorative lions while waiting, doing a great job of waiting.

We finally got in and decided to get some lunch, first we stopped at a shop, and the two bigger ones debated play shields, but decided against them for now. So then we headed towards the doll shop, before lunch. We got each the older ones another doll, and Sully got 2. Then we got lunch. The food is fairly mediocre at best, but it was fine. We then kept on wandering. We found the elephants, and I asked how much to ride, after getting the pricing of $12 for an adult and $7 for a child, I told Desmond no way. Since if he went Eloise would want to go, and they couldn’t both go with me at once, they are too little for that, so we weren’t paying $40 for elephant rides. I told them next time we went to India they could ride an elephant instead.

Then Desmond played a couple of medieval type carnival games, he almost one one too, kid has good hand eye coordination, which he did not get from his parents *grin*. After that we headed to the ponies and both kids rode their two pony rides (kids get 2 free pony rides per visit to the Renfest). We then headed over to the playground where they played for a bit. One of the families that has twins in Eloise’s preschool class was there, so we said hi and hung out for a few minutes, before they headed on their way and we headed on our way. We bought some honey, spices (they have good curry powder there, who would have thought), and swords for the hooligans (including Sully). We then had a snack, their snacks are better then their real food, and headed out with two fairly worn out little kids and one hungry baby.

Everyone had a good time though, and Eloise was quite happy to get her pony rides.

Waiting for Daddy

Riding the ponies

Eloise is crying here because Desmond cut in front of her in line to get the horse he wanted. She still loved the pony ride itself.

How Sully spent his time at Renfest.