Father's Day before we dedicated Alden at church.
Snuggling on the couch because they are best friends (most of the time).
Incidentally, if you call Alden a sweet potato, he will respond with "I'm not a potato head." (we have watched a lot of Toy Story).
Love, Anna, Kara, and Alden
(and Kristan and Andrew too)
PS - I am aware this is not a great picture. And I am unsure if I am going to keep blogging at all. Certainly not as in days of yore, but leaving the top post as Alden's dancing is not fair to his vastly improved skills, now including arabesques.
How does one blog after taking 3 months off? Randomly.
Emerald Isle, NC - early July
Dad and Ald at the bar...also Emerald Isle, very late June. :)
Borrowed hat, Mandy and Stuart's wedding reception in Raleigh, late June
Strawberry picking in IL near Mother's Day (thinking of wearing pants or long sleeves ever again at this point in the summer is laughable)
Raleigh hotel late June, matching Daddy and Alden, down to the navy cargo shorts. Cuties.
"On your Father's Day on your Father's Day, I hope you have a very nice time, on your Father's Day on your Father's Day, I hope you have a nice time."
Our computer has been broken, a lot. (One excuse for my non-blogging). We got it partly fixed. It broke again. This is Andrew's for work and has none of our pictures on it.
Alden walks and almost runs ALL day every day. At just after 10 months he willed himself to walk almost exclusively, so now he does. He loves to walk the circle we have downstairs (living, family, kitchen, dining rooms) as his sisters run it. He also loves when they crash him over in this process.
Alden climbs the stairs, all of them (15+), in under 2 minutes. This happens many times a day without me knowing he has done it until I notice he is no longer downstairs with us.
Anna and Kara (still) sing and dance all day. They memorize song lyrics after hearing them once. They come up to me often and say "look at this new dance" - they are all wonderful.
They (still) have amazing memories - we went to a baseball game tonight and Kara asked me if when we went the misters would be on a movie ( she meant a TV) or outside, because she remembered watching them on a TV when we were in a suite last time we went to a game, in September.
I will (still) choose to remember happy things and not my daily trials (many as of late, as Alden has decided he does not want to sleep, eat, or nurse). And because I just remember happy things and everyone is suddenly so grown up, I am starting to badly want another baby again (like when Alden was little and I felt cheated since I only had 1 baby this time). Tiny babies are so nice.
But don't worry Mom, Andrew doesn't! :)
Alden has been fully accepted into Anna and Kara's little circle. The first thing they ask for when they wake up, a lot of times, is to play with Alden. If Alden is awake, no matter how tired they are, they'll stay up instead of going back to sleep. He refuses to sleep when they're awake, and doesn't want to nurse, no matter how hungry he is, if they're playing in the same room. They are ridiculously rough with him, not always nice, boss him around, etc. And he mostly just laughs and loves it. He idolizes his sisses.
Here was my first evidence of their pair becoming a trio - Anna opened up the blind to let Alden come in too - at Andrew's parents' in early March.
Watching a train together, also in March.
Adoring brother, adoring sisters.
My favorites. I'm so happy they're best friends and will always have each other.
Alden started standing on his own when he was just over 8 months, and is really good at this point. He's also really fast at cruising on and between furniture. Andrew decided to finally introduce him to push toys this past weekend, and he loved them. He tries to run instead of walk. He also tries to run instead of walk when you hold his hand (I just hold one) and tell him "let's go walking."
I had some good pictures of the girls standing on their own when they were around Alden's age, so I was attempting to get a good one of Alden as well. Not so good, but sisses make picture taking hard, because he just wanted to crawl over and play (he's looking in their direction).
I did, however, capture a video of some of his first steps. Wednesday he took 3 steps in a row, twice - his very first steps. This wasn't quite as good, but I was happy to get it on video anyway.
Note the sister attack that I chose not to capture on video - typical Alden-Kara-Anna interaction. :)
