14 Months

Our gorgeous little lady is now 14 months old. She is getting more independent, although she still loves to stick with mom quite a bit. She still hasn't walked (as predicted), but she does stand up all on her own for a few seconds at a time. She gets very excited about it and shows her pride with raised eyebrows and a huge smile. If Austin is in the room, she looks at him to check if he's watching her. She cruises around by hanging onto furniture, pushing along a giant exercise ball, or using a little walking toy that we've had forever. She loves to dig through book shelves and get as many books as possible down before she is caught, loves to explore cabinets (I've figured out how to lock most of them with rubber bands) and is interested in most anything her older siblings are doing.  She still only say "mom" and "dada", but she babbles a lot and its clear that she understands much of what we are telling her. She's just at a perfect age where I wish she's stay forever: She sleeps through the night, takes good naps through during the day, is super snuggly, can eat just about everything, and is as sweet as can be! I'm trying to get better at using the nice camera Austin bought me almost 5 years ago, so I was playing around with taking pictures of her, hence there are quite a few:

Photo shoot with Heidi for practice

The year Heidi was born, Austin bought me a nice camera for my birthday. I use it when I want to take nice pictures of the kids, but I'm always on "auto" and I still don't get that nice of pictures. I also only use one lens and I've gotten a lot of good pictures over the years, but I know I can get more. So, 5 years later, I'm trying put the camera to better use. I'd rather just let Austin take the pictures since he has more of an artistic eye than I do and knows a lot more about cameras, but I'll never get better if I don't practice. Heidi was my most willing participant for modeling, so here are the best shots I got of her today:

 (yes, that is pink marker on her face- Trevor colored on her for some reason)

Easter Eggs

To celebrate Good Friday, we decorated Easter Eggs.We actually started yesterday as part of our chemistry lesson experiment- the boys learned how vinegar helps to make colors brighter. But we only did a few eggs yesterday (all of which were eaten before dinner) and did more today. I only let the kids do 4 eggs each (Natalie just watched) because with what we did yesterday, that makes for quite a few eggs and I was afraid they would get tired of eating hard boiled eggs and let them spoil. So far, they've eaten about half of them, though, so hopefully they will finish them up without wasting any. I tried to talk a little color theory to the kids to teach Heidi and Trevor about primary and secondary colors, but no one was very interested in that, so we just had fun coloring. We wrapped rubber bands around a few eggs to make stripes, used a net Austin had to make a cool pattern on a few eggs, and used the age-old white-crayon trick to make secret messages or pictures (Trevor was excited to find a T on one of his eggs- he is very proud of himself for knowing it and loves to find T's all over the place). I'm pretty sure they will all be gone (or nearly gone) by Easter, so they'll have to do an Easter egg hunt with just the plastic eggs.
The main event only lasted about an hour, but the kids kept on re-dying or partially re-dying their eggs for a few hours, before I finally said enough and dumped all the dye down the sink. I think this was one of the funnest years we've had dying eggs since most of the kids are old enough to handle it on their own and I mostly just supervised, gave ideas, and took pictures. Natalie can't wait to join in the fun next Easter!

By the time I got around to taking pictures of each kid with their most special egg, Asher and Leif had stripped their clothes off (not sure why) and Trevor had eaten his.

13 Months

I'm a week or two behind on this, but our little Natalie is now 13 months old and growing like a weed. Her hair is getting thicker and longer, she now has a total of 6 teeth, she loves to babble but mostly only says "mom" and "da", she is into everything, and she has no inclination to walk. All my kids were late walkers- everyone was 14 months old, except Asher who was 15 months. It looks like she might be that late too. She crawls all over the place and pulls herself up on everything, but she just doesn't stand independently or even cruise all that much. I'm not at all worried though- she'll get there. Her favorite toys right now are stacking cups, blocks, bean bags, and a play tunnel she loves to crawl through. She also loves to push buttons on a fan and have it blow on her.
 Here are some photos I got of her at 13 months: