Giggly Baby

I was blowing at Charley through a straw and he thought it was hilarious so I thought I'd catch a little on tape...

Charley 9 months- giggling at table from Laura Sargent Bennington on Vimeo.

Yeah What She Said

I realize that my blog is often just cute pictures of my kids without alot of meat or provocative insight...and maybe that's why people like it?

In any case, I aspire to one day sit down and write thoughtful and awesome entries about God or feelings or emotions, interjected artistically with personal photos to offer perspective.

But alas today is not that day. I'm tired, hungry and worn. Instead I will simply refer to one of my favorite Mommy blogs and and her awesomely identifiable entry about church and say, yeah...what she said!

The Cuteness Continues

Today at dance class we learned about the recital. So the dance school is so big there will be FIVE separate recitals. All the same but there's just that many classes (the little girls class like Tessa's caps at 10 students). Our recital is on June 4th, and like class itself , it will be half ballet and half tap.

We were all waiting on pins and needles (okay not really) to hear what the theme of each section would be and today it was revealed. The theme of the tap section is Candyland. All songs related to sweet treats. Tessa's class will be wearing bright pink and green outfits and doing the song 'Lollipop'.

Then in the ballet section the theme is princesses. Well you can imagine how excited the little girls were about that. The teacher was trying to show them the book of pictures and Tessa kept saying 'I wike dat one!' For ballet Tessa's class will the the Sleeping Beauty dance. The teacher (Miss Allison) will be Sleeping Beauty and all the little girls will be bluebirds. They have blue outfits with sequins and feathers.

Cute cute cuteness.

To fill the cuteness quota yesterday we put Charley in the wagon and made him ride around.

9 Month Well Check

Charley is perfect, but didn't y'all know that? We had his 9 month appointment today and all is well. His stats are:
-- 19.4lb, 25th %tile
-- 29 inches, 75th %tile

Tall and skinny. He had no shots and when I asked doc about swine flu shots he said they didn't have any more and didn't know when they were coming. So we'll just hope for the best on that. Maybe by the time we can get it the swine flu will be over?

Tessa took along her toy stethoscope and syringe and gave Charley about a hundred 'shots' and told everyone she was a doctor too. The nurses got a kick out of her. That's all there is to report!

Our New Addition

Well there it is- our new car. Yup, after 7 years of living as a one car family, we have added to our fleet a hybrid Ford Fusion. We knew the time would eventually come when we needed one, and Jeremy knew exactly what kind of car he wanted. So you all know Jeremy, one day we decided we needed a car, and the next day he was driving it home from Plainfield.

It's pretty cool. It has more bells and whistles than my technologically inept mind will ever use, but I am a fan of the display that show what's behind you as you back up, not to mention the heated seats.

This will be Jeremy's car for the most part (a point possibly proven by the fact that he hasn't let me drive it yet), meaning it will still be spending a considerable amount of time parked in the garage since Jer is either working from home or has flown somewhere.

Tessa approves. We were on our way to Olivia's Princess themed 2nd birthday, hence the Snow White outfit.


this is the shot you get when you stick your camera out the sunroof

We had to clean out the garage a bit in order to make this happen.

It's still a little weird to think of us as a two car family. Not because it's a weird thing, but because we've never done it. We've become very adept at working around each other's car needs, doing the pickup and drop off thing, planning our weekend errands to meet everyone's needs. How strange to think we can each take a kid and go our separate ways, and honestly I hope that doesn't happen very often. Two kids, two dogs, two cars...are we the picture of suberbia or what?

Biscuits

Charley's getting more and more into finger foods every day and yesterday he tried some biscuit. He loved them and may very well become a biscuit addict. He also likes little pieces of egg yolk, green beans, mandarin orange, tortilla, cheerios, bananas and any kind of bread. Like his sister and parents, he knows good eatin'!

A Classic ?

I have never heard of this movie but Jeremy downloaded it onto our Netflix on Demand. Made in 1956, he insisted that this movie is a children's classic and he watched in school as a kid. So we thought we'd give it a try.

Tessa LOOOOOVES it. She is glued the whole time that this little boy is chasing his magical red balloon around Paris and she shouts at the tv 'oh no!', 'find it'...'the balloon!!!' The first time we watched it she actually cried, yes real tears, when the boy lost his balloon.

Just a few days ago she started handing out invisible balloons to us and likes to pretend like it's flying away and she's trying to catch it.


If you're like me and have never heard of it, here's a little info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048980/ The cool thing is that it's only 30 min, so it's a nice little snippet of tv time for Tessa. Who knew?

Pre Halloween Festivities

Friday Jeremy was still out of town so we decided to head down south to show off Tessa's Snow White dress. First we stopped by Room 42 at Hayden to steal some snacks and visit the 4th graders. Tessa has been there enough times that she just made herself at home drawing on the board, hugging kids and visiting the 5th graders who knew her from last year.

Watching The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown and eating popcorn balls with the 4th graders.


Practicing trick or treating at Mamaw Sargent's house

Yup, he's wearing his sister's headband. I gotta do a better job of watching out for Charley's masculinity.

David and Charley with Aunt Becky

Saturday morning we went out to a farm out in the country in Jennings County where they do a huge pumpkin display. We would have gone to see it lit up at night but a cranky toddler and rainstorm kept us in


When we got there they were carving some replacement pumpkins.

Becky is involved in the pumpkin carving. She said she made something like 72 of them this year. Can you believe she did that freehand?
Chilly cousins, including Charley snuggled up on my back

Becky also made the boys dinosaur and duck costumes including the hat Charley is trying on. I requested a couple for Christmas presents. I wish I could say I was artsy like Becky but alas, if I made their costumes one of these years it will be pretty sad (think pillow cases with eyes cut out like in the Charlie Brown movie).

Halloween!

What a fun time we had! As you saw last week Tessa had a beautiful Snow White dress made by her Mom-Mom which she totally loves. Her little friend Olivia was planning to go as Cinderella so we decided they should go together in our neighborhood.

Why oh why wasn't I smart and creative enough to make Charley a dwarf or prince? Well I just wasn't, sorry people. It didn't even cross my mind really. We had a hand me down chicken outfit from our friend Traci that fit him perfectly so that was that- free and cute!

On our front porch ready to go. At first she didn't know what was going on but she had practiced trick or treating to the Hayden Elem classrooms (stay tuned for a post on that) so it didn't take long to catch on. By about house number three she was on the move, running down the sidewalk from place to place saying 'dis way Via, dis way!'

As we progressed her manners were a little faulty too. We went from 'trick or treat' to 'I want one TOO, THAT one'. I was proud that she said thank you every time though, that's my girl.

Charley the chicken

Snow White and Cinderella having a great time. They even stopped for a little leaf fight.

Now once Charley started to get heavy and squirmy I told Jer to run back and get a stroller and blanket...and he came back with the pink stroller and Tessa's flowery pink blankey from the car. So Charley is not only a chicken here, but apparently also a girl . Two different people saw us walking and said 'oh she's so cute!'. Again to be clear, Jeremy's fault not mine.

We were out for about 45 min until we all got cold and came home. Happy Halloween!

Catching Up

I realize that it's almost the weekend again but I neglected to post some pics from last weekend's visit to the farm. Just went to visit and was perhaps a little bit motivated by the rumor of the world's best dessert, persimmon pudding.

The kids and I are on our way down there again tomorrow to go to the Hayden elem. Halloween party and hopefully (rain permitting) catch the Boyd pumpkin display all lit up.

Charley hung out with Dad

And Mom (can you maybe tell what he had been doing right before the pic?)
And rode in style on my back for a walk around the pond
and visited his great-Mamaw

Tessa played with one of her favorite cousins, Ashley. They found doll furniture..
sported hoodies
pretended to nap without ever actually napping
and played dressup with some of Ashley's old clothes

And everybody ate!