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.

We’ve had a fun and busy summer so far! Eden has been taking ballet and gymnastics classes and Andy has been taking a gymnastics class. There have been a lot of trips to the park, time spent in the sprinkler and visits to the zoo. We’ve loved time with the Keipers, Carey and many others!

Our first adventure of the summer was to go ride on Thomas the train. Andy LOVES all vehicles and is particularly fond of Thomas and Friends. Thomas came to Connersville, IN, so we went there, too! It was a very hot day, but the kids liked all of the activities that were available before the train ride and they had a great time on the train. They still announce loudly and proudly that they RODE on Thomas, anytime someone mentions that useful engine!

We had a very fun weekend visiting the Cooks in Evansville several weeks ago. It seems like not long ago that it was just the four of us but this trip we totaled six kids ages 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and 5 months! The kids had a lot of fun together and we loved watching them play and entertain each other. We went swimming, visited, saw Madagascar 3 and laughed a lot. It was a wonderful time with wonderful friends and the suburban was a very sad place on the drive home.

Heidi has been home this summer, which has been really fun, and she got to experience a wild road trip with us when we all went to Cleveland to visit Uncle Colin. We went to the beach, to the market, to the swimming pool, to church, and ruined the quiet atmosphere at a lovely Indian restaurant. We definitely wore Colin out! It was great to have Heidi in the car with us (although she might disagree… :-)) and Ben and I decided we never want to travel without her again!

Most recently we went to a fabulous state park outside of Columbus, OH for a Smiley reunion. It was great to see everyone and the kids loved having so many playmates! Ben and I were really on vacation! There was always someone else eager to do a potty run or change a diaper (go figure!) and the “lodge” where we stayed was really nice. We got to go on a boat ride and grilled out near a playground, as well as spent a lot of time at the pool.

And to top off our summer, we bought a house! We’re looking forward to moving to the Brownsburg area at the beginning of September. Ben is anxious to cut his commute in half and we will all be glad for a shorter trip to church. But, we’re very sad to leave Deda and Papa, and it’s going to be quite an adjustment to handle the three kids on our own! We’ve been spoiled by having all of their help and have loved being with them. We’re so thankful that they’ve let us invade their home for the last nine months.

With lots of traveling and time with family and friends, we are enjoying our summer and hope that you are as well!

Eden has become such a little grown up. She’s a great helper with Grace and likes to do “grown up” things like make her bed, drink tea in the morning with Deda and do almost everything by herself. She’s also very bossy (I have no idea where she’s learned that…) and I often joke that Andy doesn’t really need me because he has Eden to mother him!

I often see Eden taking care of younger kids, even at child care, but it was really fun to see her trying to keep up with the older kids this past weekend while we were visiting the Cooks. Eden was quite inspired by the things that 4 and 5 year olds can do and decided very quickly that she wanted to be able to do those things as well, like swimming without her float and having races in the yard.

Eden is currently taking gymnastics and ballet and really loves both classes. She’s normally the only student in her ballet class and I think she likes the attention, although we have to continue to remind her to watch her teacher instead of herself in the mirror! She is thrilled by the stamps that she gets in her classes and was VERY proud of herself for the extra stamp she got in gymnastics last week for being a good listener. Eden has learned to flip around on the bar all by herself and is the only one in her class that can do it. She’s also started watching gymnastics on tv and is now a HUGE Gabby Douglas fan. We’re quite excited that Gabby is going to the Olympics!

Eden likes going to “school” and enjoys her Thursdays at child care and Sunday school. She also had an opportunity to attend a Wonderful Wednesday class without Andy for a few weeks and loved going to school without him (and talked about it constantly!).

While Eden is still a very happy and outgoing girl, she has entered a whiney stage which is not so enjoyable. Ben and I work hard to be consistent in not responding to her whining but it’s a challenge to not say to her “Stop whining!” 🙂 We’ve done a lot of traveling already this summer and Eden has been a trooper and has been pretty flexible with all of the changes.

We’re very proud of Eden and the enthusiastic, over-achieving, and loving rule-follower that she is becoming. It’s very fun to watch her grow up and we are so glad to be her parents!

Well, I’m sure it’s hard to believe, but things aren’t slowing down at all around here! Grace is starting to sit up and is desperate to crawl. She pushes herself (face first) across the floor which has resulted in some bright red spots on her cheeks and forehead. She really wants to be involved in whatever Eden and Andy are doing and hates to be by herself for even a few minutes.

Gracie is doing really well with her baby food. She’s had peas, green beans, squash, sweet potatoes, carrots, bananas, peaches, apples and pears and continues with the baby cereal for breakfast. She’s not a huge fan of the green beans, but seems to do alright with everything else. It is sometimes a little bit hard to feed her because she wants to pay attention to everything at the table EXCEPT her food.

We’ve regressed back to swaddling at nighttime. Now that Grace can roll over onto her stomach, she can’t sleep without the miracle blanket because she rolls onto her belly. The problem is that she hasn’t quite figured out how to turn her head to the side yet. She ends up with her face buried in the mattress, screaming, until someone comes to roll her over. Obviously, it’s much easier to just swaddle her and avoid this drama, so for now, she’s back under wraps.

Grace has been a good sport about all of our travels recently, although she doesn’t do very well sleeping in the same room as me. Fortunately, she likes her car seat and does great eating and sleeping in it while we drive.

Below is a picture I took and happened to catch her sitting up! She fell over after the flash, but looks very grown up in the picture. 🙂