My Hoi Polloi

we have been watching finding nemo a little bit lately...have you seen it?

well if you have seen it then you might recall the part when the dentist's crazy niece darla comes in for a check up and says to her uncle, "i'm a pir-aaaa-nha".

i love that part...but have you ever seen one of those things. they are super creepy looking. and their teeth! let's just say that if you were bitten by a piranha the bite marks might look something like this:

can you see that mark? you don't have to look very hard to see a full set of teeth imprinted into his skin.

i was folding laundry today when i heard a blood curdling scream from this little man's room. {sigh...followed by an eyeroll...i already know basically what has happened at this point} i head for his bedroom and see his little sister in the hallway looking at me with wide eyes; obviously going for the look of innocence. who me? i was here in the hallway the whole time? i have no idea what happened!

in the past i have posted sweet pictures of her and stated how sweet she is.

we love her so much. she adds so much fun to our house. and kaleb really does love her.

but when i called her sweet...i lied.

kaleb has been so excited to go to his new preschool. he started this last week and has had so much fun. it looks to be a pretty fun year for him! hopefully he doesn't drive his teacher too crazy with his selective listening...he only hears what he wants to hear. drives me crazy.

i love this kid.

we had grant's baby blessing a couple of weeks ago and i am finally getting around to posting some pictures. it turned out to be such a perfect day and we were able to bless grant and my brother reed's new baby boy on the same night.

corey did such a great job on the blessing. in the blessing corey said, "your mom and i couldn't be happier to have you here with us in our family". i think that was the only part i heard...it is so strange to think that 11 months ago i was in tears because i was pregnant and didn't really want to be. lyla was only 7 months old and it just seemed too soon. but right when corey said that i remembered all those feelings i had 11 months ago and they are gone. i really couldn't be happier to have grant here...even though he cries too much...and refuses to take a binkie...and wants to be held allllll the time...i wouldn't trade him away. we all like him too much for that!

a big thanks to my awesome hubby for the wonderful blessing and for all he does for our family.

our family of 5.

happy blessing day grant! we couldn't be happier!

my little lyla is turning into such a girly girl. she loves to pretend to put on makeup and have her nails painted. she loves her babies and loves her baby brother. she has so much attitude that it usually drives me crazy. we are finally starting to understand some of the things she says (some = about 5% of it. the rest still sounds like chinese!) and it is so much fun. we are so happy to have this little devil around. really, she is kind of a little devil sometimes...and we still love her a lot.

wearing her baby backpack.

my kids love dogs. i mean, really, they reeeally love dogs. kaleb has never been afraid and lyla loves to just sit by them and make doggie sounds {arf, arf}....(but it sounds more like off, off :0)

does it make me a bad parent if i have already sworn never to own a dog (or really just any pet for that matter. maybe a fish one day. a gold fish. they die fast. anyways...). the hubby and i are luckily on the same page with this and i think we are resolved...there is no amount of begging that would entice us to own a dog.

thank heavens for the rest of you that love dogs. my kids would be so sad if they couldn't pet your pup and i would be so sad if i ever had to own one. see, it's a win-win situation for everyone.

lylabean with her cousins and miss ruby the dog at the recent gapp family reunion. ruby let these three tug on her ears for about 20 minutes.

today is our 7 year anniversary.

last night we were sitting on the couch wondering where we should order take out from (we haven't yet mastered going to nice, sit down restaurants with 3 small children) and then call it a celebratory anniversary dinner.

the phone rings. corey's sister asks if the older 2 kids can come play...corey says, how 'bout all 3 of them...she says yes and literally, literally, i get teary eyed.

oh sweet joy. alone time is so sparse these days and we haven't been out to dinner, just the two of us, since before little g.rant was born. it was a great surprise outing and we loved it! ate at our favorite, carrabba's and then picked up a couple items at sport's authority. did i mention we had no kids with us? i was giddy about it all night long.

here we are, 7 years and 3 kids later {i know, right}:

the classic we're-too-embarrassed-to-take-pics-in-the-restaurant-so-we-take-one-in-the-car-afterwords picture.

happy anniversary babe. i hope you know that i like you a lot lately.

my sister in law asked me to come and snap some pictures of her cute little boy max. we spent about an hour dragging him all over and taking pics and he was spent by the end of it. but we sat him at the piano and lyla came running up to join him. i love that lyla has lots of cousins her age. she is just a little over 3 months older than max.

playing on grandma g.'s baby grand.

and here is one of my favorites from the pictures i took of max. he wasn't as smiley as usual for the shoot but i thought we got some really sweet pictures of him. hopefully his mom and dad agree!!

no. grant didn't get to go swimming. he is a little too little for this.

this is what grant did most days while his brother and sister (and mommy) were at swim school. i call this his sleepy glance. it goes like this: pretend to sleep, open eyes ever so slightly and get a good look around, and then repeat. i think he really is asleep when he does this. it is funny.

next year we will find a way to get this little man into swim lessons too!!

kaleb did swim lessons last year and it is so fun to see how much he has grown up over this year. he was so much better at participating this year and had so much more fun with the other kids in his class. for a kid who hates (HATES!) having his head and face in the water, he did so well!!

playing water games with his little class. he was the only boy.

now he says to me, "mom, swim school is over so now it's time for me to start pre school." yay! hopefully he has as much fun at preschool as he did swimming!

before i had grant i decided that i would sign k-bug, lylabean and myself up for swim lessons at the end of summer. as the time drew near i was kind of dreading it. i had to find a baby sitter every day for two weeks to come sit with the babe while i swam in the parent/tot class with lyla. i was stressed, but it turned out to be such a fun thing for us and it made us get up and out of the house every day for two weeks.

here are pics of lyla and i in lessons:

lyla and i after going down the slide.

can't wait til next year when i will have two kids in the parent/tot age class...good luck to me right!!

what a short summer this has been. my poor kids have missed out on a lot of fun stuff since we have been a little stuck at home with baby. i don't have the guts to take all three of them out by myself yet.

kaleb finally got together with his cute friend haley last week...something we should have been doing every week of the summer but i am bad and never plan anything fun for just him.

here they are running down the slip 'n slide.

(kaleb refuses to slide down it.)

we love having haley over. soon enough we will be able to invite haley's baby sister to come and play with lyla so that she will leave the older kids alone.

i enlisted my fab-friend alyssa to make baby announcements for baby g.rant. just like everything alyssa takes on, these did not disappoint. i love them! thanks alyssa for some super cute announcements.

the front. all of his birth info was on the back.

bytheway...alyssa, i took pictures for you and can send you more if you want!!

my little man is two months old today. time has gone by so fast. summer is gone, the newborn stage is gone, my sanity is gone....

life with 3 kiddos has been quite the whirlwind for us but we are sure enjoying this new little addition to our family. kaleb and lyla love him so much and can hardly keep their hands (and their kissy lips) off of him.

a few milestones:

***he can roll from stomach to back...but only when he is really mad about it

***he has slept through the night once and only once (what a glorious night that was!)

***he smiles at us all the time, big open mouth smiles, just like his older siblings did

*** and he tasted his first bit of REAL food just today...lyla fed him a nibble of cap'n crunch. he loved it (but honestly, who doesn't love cap'n crunch?).

my two month old baby.

don't i make such cute, fat babies? he weighed in at just over 13 pounds at the doc today!

happy two months g.rant!

kaleb pulled all the cushions off of the couch and proceeded to stack them into a little building he calls his "cushion house". (on a sidenote: i used to love doing this as a kid. who didn't love doing this though?) i helped him out a little so that the cushion house was sturdy. he played there all day and then asked me if he could sleep in it that night. before i even thought it through i told him, "sure you can!" so he runs and gets his blankets and pillow and makes himself a little bed, climbed in, watched a little tv and then fell asleep. it was pretty cute.

now i have to tell him that he can't sleep there every night, only on special occasions. it is a fight every time. oh well, he is too fun to say no to all the time.

husband sees the tunnel.

husband thinks to himself, i can make it through that tunnel.

husband climbs into tunnel.

wife, knowing how this will end, runs for the camera.

husband gets stuck in tunnel and pulls this face when he realizes wife is taking pictures.

husband is fun and funny. i love him!

this last wednesday we headed up to this waterfall with the fam:

another fun wednesday! we are going to be sad when the summer is over.