My friend Katie calls it the baby haze. The first year with a new baby. The year when sleepless nights, and learning schedules, and adjusting to new family dynamics makes everything else seem a bit of a blur. Every day tasks like brushing teeth and getting dressed become not so necessary, or at least less necessary than protecting your infant from her two-year-old brother. And at the end of the day (8:30pm) you're so tired and mentally exhausted that you can't speak a coherent sentence and you go to bed only pretty certain that all 6 of you made it through alive.
Well, folks, that's where we are around here. Crazy and fuzzy-brained and exhausted and playing a constant game of catch-up. Lucky for us, our kids don't seem negatively effected by their mentally-challenged parents! Quite the contrary, actually. They are loving having a baby, doing their different activities, creating and exploring. Each of our kids has SUCH a zest for life! Even little Stella lights up when something exciting is happening! I am so thankful to whoever invented cameras so that we can capture something from this season of our lives. And someday (like in 20 years) we can look at our pictures and discover what was really going on back during the baby haze!
At the end of January, we went to our friends' ranch for the weekend. SO FUN! Landon of course really liked climbing into the Jeep and Tractors and trying to drive them!
Dylan got the kids their first rockets. Perhaps not the safest activity for a 6, 4, and 2-year-old to do, but they thought that launching them was pretty much the coolest thing ever.
Stella got to meet Stella :)
Emma wrote her first book,
Emma the Rainbow Fairy based on the books in her favorite series,
Rainbow Magic. Getting my little type-A, literally minded child to write a non-literal, fictional story was quite a feat, and it turned out great!
I'm pretty sure she only did it because she knew she was going to get a medal for it! Grady wanted a medal too, so he made his own!
Each week we do an art class with my nephew Elijah and niece Arielle. We've been learning about some Impressionist artists and this month we've been looking at Edgar Degas. He has a famous sculpture of a 14-year-old dancer. Emma made her impression of it...
...complete with LOTS of sparkly details!
I had the opportunity to take a digital photography class taught by some super cool sisters,
Rachel and
Becky. The class was great and it has been really exciting for me to learn how to actually use our dSLR camera. I mean, what's the point of having a fancy camera if you don't know how to use it! I'm not
quite a professional yet, but I have been loving being able to better capture some of life around here! I hesitate to show some of my favorites because they aren't amazing. But these
do capture my kids doing what they do and I got my fancy pants camera to cooperate in fully manual mode :) ...
I still haven't figured out how to take a decent picture when my subjects are actually moving so if any of you have tips for that, let me know ;)
So there you have it. The last month in a nut shell. Maybe next month I'll be able to recall funny things and be able to tell good stories again. Then again, Stella is only 4-months so I may have another 8 months or so of fuzzy-brain before I can find humor in life again!
Next they located the perfect tree, rigged up a swing.... 
And then the fun began.... 
