Random thoughts and photos

Caeden is quite the chatterbox these days........ he has an opinion on everything and offers constant commentary on any and everything :-) His latest is mastering recognizing all the letters of the alphabet and knowing their sounds. He won't always remember on command, but he knows them. We have had this leap frog dvd home from the library and he loves it. Caeden is napping still in the afternoons, with Colm. And his bedtime going to bed is improving - though it has been quite the challenge for some time. 

On the 4th of July we ended up not going anywhere to watch fireworks but see what we could from our deck. I let the boys watch the "Capitol Fourth" on PBS - which conveniently does fireworks at about 8:15 :-) After enjoying those I put Colm to bed but let Caeden stay up and watch the re-run; figuring he would either fall asleep on the couch or he could watch with us outside in a while. He ended up awake by the time we went outside and we sat out on the deck and watched a show off toward Peyton or so. After watching for a few minutes Caeden asked "where's all the instruments"?  :-) I guess he had rather enjoyed the musically accompanied display on TV! So, we made instrument sounds while we watched the rest of the show. 

Caeden enjoying the afternoon rainstorm with a new umbrella! 

After a hail and rainstorm - same storm as noted on Uncle Ben's blog -

they had fun watching the storm and thunder and lighting and then when it stopped we had to go out and check out the hail

Colm is walking well now. And is usually choosing to walk rather then crawl wherever he goes. It is so cute to see him toddling about. Chasing big brother and listen to him try and talk and explain himself. He understands everything that we say, though his spoken vocabulary is rather limited, he can usually get his point across. He loves to play outside and dig in the dirt. He loves to eat, pasta is a favorite - any flavor or style. He loves to wear hats and can ask for "hat". He is sleeping well, down to one nap in the afternoon - usually 12:30/1 for a good 2 hours. And is sleeping a good 12 hours at night. Often sleeping in till 7:30/8 - even past 8 occasionally! Too bad big brother doesn't do this as well and really thrill mama! 

"Train up a child............." - now that Colm is walking so well we figured it was time for him to be helping out :-) He loves to sweep! 

Kieran has been working around home the last couple weeks. He is keeping busy and has a couple jobs lined up over the 4-6 weeks. We enjoyed a nice visit with his mom and dad and they are now off visiting around Ireland for the summer. I am keeping busy with the constant circle of laundry, dishes, kids, cleaning - repeat for the day and the week as needed

We have a baby appointment this afternoon and will hopefully be back later tonight with some nice pictures and updates in that department. He or she is getting more and more active and I am enjoying feeling baby kicks and turns during the day pretty often. Caeden asked this morning, "when the baby grows up will it be a boy or girl?" Rather sweet since we have told him the baby needs to grow quite a bit before it is ready to come out and he knows this afternoon we are going to "get pictures of the baby inside and maybe find out if it's a boy or girl" - he is excited about it and often gives the baby kisses and tells it good night.