Grace has entered such a fun stage! She’s been very busy changing and growing over the last month. Grace continues to be very mobile and loves to chase Eden and Andy. She likes to play peek-a-boo with towels and blankets and waves and also said her first word, “hi”! Now she loves to wave and say “hi” any time she sees someone for the first time (like when the kids wake up from their naps or Ben comes home) and she likes to wave when she is being carried out of a room.

Gracie is pulling up on everything and has let go a couple of times for just an instant. She is eating more solid foods and has had tiny bits of hotdog, puffs, yogurt guys, bread, cheese and a few other things. She demands more solid foods now, but still eats a little bit of baby food as well.

Grace had her 9 month check up today and was 28 inches long and weighed 15 lbs, 15 oz. Grace seems to look more and more like Andy, but she’s MUCH smaller. Andy weighed slightly more than Grace does now when he was 3 months!

Grace is 8 months old and she is becoming such a little person! She is very active, crawling everywhere and pulling up on things. She has crawled up to the second step and climbed onto the kitchen stool. She chases Eden and Andy all around the house and has started pulling up by the backdoor to peek outside. Grace can flip herself from a crawling position to a sitting up position without a wobble although she still can’t crawl very far on her hands and knees and resorts to an army crawl after a few minutes.

Grace got her first tooth this past month. It poked through on the 16th and her second tooth came through the next day. She chews on everything and really prefers eating yogurt bites to baby food.

Poor Grace has had nonstop colds since the beginning of September and while she has been pretty pleasant, she hasn’t been sleeping or eating well. Grace and I get a lot of time together from 3-6am because her cough keeps her up, but she takes a great morning nap!

Whew! We’re behind, but tonight is the first night that we’ve had internet at the new house, so I’m playing catch-up.

Andy is now 2 1/2! He’s as busy as ever but is much more articulate and opinionated! It’s been so fun to listen to Andy’s speech develop over the last several months. He loves to talk and is quite good at expressing himself now. He is still plays pretty rough, even when he’s trying to be gentle and he’s always on the move. He could spend hours driving his cars, trucks and trains around and is very happy with his new rug that has streets and buildings on it in the basement. He recently decided he likes to read books as well and is constantly pulling books off of the shelf to read.

The hardest part of Andy’s life is that Eden is going to school and he isn’t. Every day that we drop Eden off is a struggle. He throws himself on the floor of the church and cries when we’re trying to leave because he wants to stay. I look like superwoman dragging Andy out under one arm and Grace in her car seat on the other.

Grace is getting more and more mobile. She army crawls everywhere and is fast! She is getting better at crawling on her hands and knees, but her arms can’t support her for very long. She started chatting a few weeks ago, although the most common sound from her is screaming. That’s pretty much the only way she can be heard above her siblings.

Last week, Eden and I were sitting on her bed talking and Grace was sitting on the floor. Suddenly, Grace’s cute little face popped up over the edge of the bed! She had crawled over to the bed and pulled herself into a standing position.

The kids are keeping us busy but it’s fun (most of the time!).

You may have noticed the new ‘auction’ tab on our blog. This morning, we opened an auction to help raise money for Eden’s adoption. If you’re interested, we would love for you to participate! You can click here to register. After you register with your email address and create a password, you are then able to bid on items. The auction will end on August 3 at 8pm. The highest bidder for each item is the winner!

We will have a reception on August 25 where you will be able to pick up your items. Otherwise we will be happy to make arrangements to ship it to you for $5.

The items in the auction are all from Kenya and were purchased in Eldoret, where we first met Eden. If you have any questions, please leave a comment on this post and we will be happy to help!

Today Grace is 6 months old! I can’t believe how much she has changed in just the last couple of weeks. We have to keep everything out of her reach because she is grabbing and swatting everything! She can roll from back to tummy and tummy to back and travels great distances in this way. I’m constantly reminding Eden and Andy not to leave anything small on the floor because it’s no longer out of Gracie’s reach. Sitting is old hat now, and the new challenge is pulling her knees up under her. Fortunately, she still doesn’t have the arm strength to support herself in a crawling position, but I know it won’t be long.

At her check up yesterday, Grace weighed 14 lbs, 4 oz and was 26 1/4 inches long. She dropped off her curve a little bit on weight, but she grew 2 1/4 inches in the past two months. She loves eating baby food and eats rice cereal for breakfast and baby food for lunch and dinner every day, on top of nursing. We’re using up the last of our 1st foods and are anxious for her to try the food blends in 2nd foods.

Grace goes to bed at 8pm, wakes up around 5:45 to eat and then goes back to sleep until around 7:30. Occasionally, she wakes up during the night for her paci. Normally she’s laying on top of it and just can’t find it herself. During the day she sleeps from 9-11, 1-3 and 5-6:30. We do our best to keep her on a schedule because it makes her much more pleasant!

Today, we went to the park and Gracie sat in a swing by herself for the first time. She’s still way to small to swing, but it gave me a chance to push Eden and Andy and she seemed quite happy to be doing what the big kids were doing. She spent most of her time watching them and laughing.