another month gone by! this little guy is starting to roll--no more leaving him on top of the furniture! he's smiling and  laughing and reaching for toys. number one skill is getting his first two fingers into his mouth and chewing away. perfect little baby tricks. we are just so enamored with him over here. i'm especially pleased when he gifts me with a long stretch of nighttime rest. this tubby chubby weighed 15 1/2 pounds at his checkup last week... i have got myself a big fat baby and i love it!

the big kids think he is just the best toy around. we're getting more comfortable letting them hold and play with him.  it's easy to see that he thinks the two of them are pretty cool--as long as they're not smothering him (literally) with their love.

we love you tucker-boy! 
 
baking soda and vinegar have long been good friends of mine for cleaning around the house, but hudson and lucy have befriended them too, as of late. this is a perfect outdoor activity that requires pretty little in the way of set up or clean up. just throw down a few interesting containers, a couple of sets of measuring spoons and let the little ones have at it.
they get the most mileage from vinegar in a squeeze bottle, as opposed to a large pitcher which seems to make flooding the table just irresistible. my only rules are no fighting and when it's gone, it's gone. they're learning how to conserve. 
both baking soda and vinegar can be gotten in bulk, for cheap, at costco. we tint our vinegar with liquid watercolor that i buy at discount school supply. because, you know, bright pink foam is way, way cooler than white. for extra kicks toss in some glitter.
my kids would do this every day, if i let them--how are you keeping your kids busy???
 
we had time to kill this morning before shlepping not one, not two, but all three kids to the dr's office for routine checkups. bless that lovely woman. she put up with a whole lotta drama from my brood, and she did it with a smile while handing out stickers. i mean, really, shoes were flying and i'm sure our shrieks could be heard in the waiting room and beyond.

the good news is that, after nearly 2 hours of poking and prodding, all three are healthy as can possibly be, current with their vaccinations and don't need to be seen again for a good long while. good thing, because i can't handle the havoc!

anyway, back to this morning. the kids had amassed a bunch of bottle tops and were playing with them in their playroom, sorting them by color and putting them into little rows. fighting ensued--she's got mine and he's got too many and ohmygod those are MINE and wah wah wah. so we talked about working together--combining those coveted stashes--to make something that they could both enjoy. with a hammer and a screw and some string, a little bottletop snake was put together. hudson was surprisingly adept at punching the holes (he only hit my fingers with the hammer 842 times) while lucy enjoyed stringing the tops together. a good fine motor skills workout, this project. 
now we have a pet snake. they fed it cucumbers for lunch. because, you know, bottletop snakes love that kind of thing.