Grant is 7 months!

Grant is getting so big and  is so full of personality! He loves to be right in the middle of whatever our family is doing. He is quick to smile and laugh and is so curious about life. We love him so much!

His feet have gotten really interesting

His sleep schedule is always changing it seems like. He takes 2 or more naps during the day and then sleeps at night until about 2am. I will get up and feed him and then he'll go back to sleep until 5:30 or 6. I will usually bring him in bed with me so I can get a couple more hours of sleep until the older kids wake up. Definitely looking forward to a night's unbroken rest again (whenever that day comes!)

I've been feeding Grant solids and he's a huge fan! He loves everything unless it's peas or green beans.

Wearing a onsie from daddy's work

He loves to chew on his hands

and just recently, Grant learned his newest trick! He is so happy sitting up on his own now! He's always been a curious little soul and now he can look around at the world a little bit more!

 He really is a very happy boy. I tried to get a picture of his cute sad face, but as soon as I turned on the camera, he immediately stopped crying and put on a smile...what a ham!

Love you so much, little man! You are mommy's sweet boy and I can't imagine my life without you!

Groundbreaking Ceremony (and weenie roast)

Here's our big news for April: we bought land!! 1.4 acres to call our own. Searching for land has been such a crazy process. First of all, when we'd go look at a piece it was really hard for me to envision how a house would look on the lot--how would the houses sit, which direction, how close to any neighbors, etc... then the other hard question we had to ask ourselves was: do we like it enough to live here forever? That's a pretty heavy question. We had to think about things like future development (could a subdivision someday be built behind our property?) How busy would traffic get, how far away are we from town/schools and is that going to work for our family? All of these were really important because we are only building a house once and plan on living in it FOREVER.

We actually found this piece of land last summer but the guy selling it told Blake that he was going to sell it to his friend. Blake gave him our number and said we were very interested and to call him if the sale fell through. All through the winter Blake would call the seller and remind him that we were still interested. Finally, this spring we got a call that the original sale didn't work out and it was ours!

view from the road:

 future home of the M. family right here!

Last Sunday after church we drove out to have a weenie roast and have a groundbreaking ceremony/ dig a fire pit.We plan on enjoying our fire pit on our land a lot this summer--baby G. hates the outdoors right now so this is as much camping as we'll do I think.

view from the back of the property looking toward the road:

land selfies ;)

I was afraid the kids would be bored with nothing to do. They LOVED just running around and using their imaginations while playing with sticks.

To top it off, we even saw some deer on our property line.

You can't have a fire without s'mores

I have a feeling we'll be spending lots of summer evenings here

So a lot of people have been asking us the big question "when are you going to build?" So I'll just go ahead and answer it now. We have no plans to build right now. Since this is home will be our dream/forever home we want to do it right. 1) we want to wait until our kids are a little older (maybe 3-5 years from now) so we don't have to be so worried about them drawing on the walls or ramming trucks into our nice kitchen cabinets. Our current house is for all of that! 2) we set a goal to get our land paid off before we build so we can then sell our house and then use the money from the sale to pay for our new house and, if all the planets align, move into our new home mortgage free. 3) we just don't feel the push to move right now. We love our house and our neighborhood.  We live in a great ward and our kids have lots of great friends here. I really will feel very sad when it's time for us to leave. So, for now, we'll just be content with dreaming about floor plans and all the possibilities that the land has to offer. Although I will say that yesterday when I went into our laundry room and saw that our water heater was leaking all over the floor that resulted in an all day/into the night replacement project building sooner seemed pretty tempting!

Grant is 6 months!

 This little guy of ours is 6 months old! I can hardly believe it! He is so happy and has been such a good sport being carted around to his older siblings activities. He interacts with us and is quick to laugh and smile at us. Here are some things Grant is doing at 6 months:

•  weighs 14.5lbs (below 5th percentile) and is 27.2 in tall (75th percentile)

• Wakes up once during the night to eat--we've had some tough love nights to make sure it stays at only once a night!
• naps 2-3 times a day
• is good in his car seat around town, but anything longer than that and the screaming begins
• tries his hardest to "sit up" when he's laying in his bouncer chair or car seat
• puts weight on his legs 
• has better coordination of his hands and can grab his feet and has been putting them in his mouth
• We've started and stopped and started again eating solid foods (I actually just got a talking to from my pediatrician at his 6mo check up about giving Grant more calories..his weight is starting to taper off)
• rolls over onto his tummy and gets "stuck" and will cry until we come to his rescue
• went swimming for the first time
• is loved, kissed, hugged, held often by his older brother and sister

 I love his little face!

 Grant will put his fist under his chin all the time. I think he's trying to put his fingers in his mouth, but his hand gets stuck under his chin on the way up.

 This a 6-9 month outfit that Porter wore. When Porter was this size, it was fall/winter. With Grant we're heading into summer so I'm trying to get as much wear out of these outfits before it's too hot!

 I had to compare my kids: so funny that both Brooke and Porter were major chunks by 6 months and Grant is our long and skinny string bean! You'd never guess now that Grant was my biggest baby at birth.

 

Porter on the left and Grant on the right..they couldn't be more different!

We just love this little munchkin of ours!