Sweet, sweet Cass. She is now 8 months old (as of yesterday). I've said it before, but there really is no better adjective to describe this little girl. Just perfect. I continue to be astounded by her.
She is all over the place these days and into everything. She is not interested at all in sitting up. In fact, when we sit her up (she still doesn't sit up on her own and even when we put her in that position, she doesn't stay that way), she fusses and cries because she wants to get down and scoot around and explore. She still isn't crawling either, but gets up on all fours and looks as though she's halfway interested in the crawl. But, don't think that stops her. No, she's got the scooting/army crawl thing down pat. Like I said...all over the place now.
She is SO VERY easygoing. Seriously, if every baby was like this little girl, everyone on the whole planet would want at least 25. :)
With Cass, I'll just SHOW you all about her. Unfortunately, my captions still aren't lining up with my pics. Is anyone else having this problem these days? So annoying. Seriously, if anyone has any suggestions on how to maybe fix this, please let me know.
Now for the pictures...and video.
#1-Laughing and playing with a neighbor friend.
#2 - "Hmm...how do I get out of here?"
#3 - Her sibling lounge chair.
#5 - Cass sneaking some popcorn that was dropped. She had some in her hand and had already touched it to her mouth.
#6 - Cass, the reader. She seems to take after Grady with books. Hadley and Eissa (but esp. Hadley) were like little puppies. Our little board books were in perfect condition after Grady. Hadley got ahold of them and they were chewed to bits. :) Eissa wasn't much better. So far Cass is very gentle.
#7- Cass was trying to get Hadley's popcorn.
#8 - Hadley thought it was so funny.
#9 - Hadley moved it behind her.
#10 - So, Cass slung her arm around Hadley's body and was still trying to get to it.
#11 - She was determined to get some popcorn. :)
#12 - A cute little rubbing of the nose.
#13 - Her position for jumping out of an airplane...she also likes to do this often.
#14 - Getting up on all fours.
#15 - One of her favorite things...the nose squench.
#16 - Again with the squench.
#17 - And the head throw-back. :) Too cute.
#19 - Doing a little upper body workout. :) Her tricks are just endless.
#20 - I went to get her after her nap (she had been playing in there a while) and her little toy was all the way up on her leg. Funny.
#21 - "Thanks for my rattle, Enna!"
#25 - And this new trick she did this morning. Grady said, "Look Mama!" :) She's almost pulled up to her knees before, but this time she really did it and stayed that way for at least 5 minutues.
#26 - I thought she'd probably fall trying to get back down, but she didn't...just eased herself down like a pro. Will she be one of those babies that pulls up and walks across the room without ever really crawling? :)
Video 1: 11-17-08 Cass making her way across the floor. Her scoot/army crawl in full display.
Video 2: 11-15-08 Daddy helping Cass see life from a different perspective.
Eissa, Eissa, Eissa!! What a fun girl. And what a challenge right now. ;) What can I say...she's 2. She's learning and shaping into the little person God wants her to be with each day. Makes my heart happy. It's fun to see.
Eissa stuff:
*She's talking ALL THE TIME now and says all kinds of things all the time that we didn't even know she knew the meaning of.
*Her favorite show on TV is Hi-5. When I turn the TV on for it (we now know what times our favorite shows come on), she jumps around and says "fi, Mama...fi!!!!!" all while holding up her hand (her five fingers). She loves all the dancing and joins in wholeheartedly.
*She's super squishy and great to squeeze and snuggle with.
*She's got such a great belly laugh.
*She loves to do her special jobs and feels very important and proud doing them. For instance, she always remembers to ask for their vitamins every morning after breakfast. Me and her walk to the cabinet...she, all the while, saying, "Grady, Hadley, Mama...Grady, Hadley." Every time I give her something, she asks for more of whatever it is to give to Grady and Hadley. She very big-like finishes up her vitamin job by dispersing them to her older siblings. She gets VERY excited about it.
*Speaking of excited, she says 'wow' about everything. The whole world is just such an exciting place. :) So cute.
*We went to the grand opening of our new mall type place last night. We were walking along and I asked her to hold my hand. She said, very diplomatically, "No thank you." :) She's very polite...always says her pleases, thank yous, sorrys, excuse mes, and is very sweet and also says her I love yous, even just out of the blue, when we haven't even said it to her. Really cute.
*She is basically in love with all her siblings. She gets REALLY excited about Cass though...when Cass wakes up from a nap and Eissa hears her in there playing, she says, "Cass, Mama...Cass" as in, let's go get her so I can play with her...now. :) She adores Cass.
I wish you all could actually be here to see her in person. It's really hard to explain on a blog post all that she says, how she says it in her cute little 2 year old pronunciations, and all the fun and funny things she does. I wish you could experience it all for yourself (with all the kids actually). But, unfortunately this will have to do for now.
Alright, now some pics. (Is it just my computer or is it Blogger that isn't lining up the captions with the pictures? Even the old posts that I did long ago are no longer lining up. I'm thinking it might be our computer since this only happened after we had a big computer crash last week. Let me know what it looks like on your computer, k?) And just a little video of Eissa being Eissa.
Daddy is so much fun. With her first braids (and a sunburn). Laughing. She's got a GREAT laugh!
Oh, Hadley. This chic is growing up and it's so much fun. She is now 3 years and 9 months old. She's pretty cool, just like her older brother.
She is definitely more carefree than her brother. Is it that she's a girl, is it that she's the second-born, is it her age, is it just her personality, or a combo of all of the above? Not sure, but she is what she is and it's fun discovering all of her.
Hadley happenings:
*While Grady compliments me by telling me that I'm soft, Hadley always looks at me and gasps and says, "Wow, Mama...you're pretty like a princess." Cuteness. By the way, the word 'pretty' is never said without the phrase 'like a princess' following right behind. :)
*Anything that happened in the past (yesterday and beyond) was "uh uddah day" (the other day).
*She is obsessed with "lips" (anything of the chapstick/lip gloss nature).
*She says 'what' and 'God' like she's British or an old Southern black preacher..."wawt" and "Gawd." It's really funny. She also says 'Mama' like that sometimes..."Mawmaw" (but not pronounced like the grandmother Mawmaw...remember, British).
*She is super obedient and easy these days. I tell her something and she says 'O.K.' Even if she really, really wants to do something else, she says, "O.K. Mama." Ahh, so nice.
*She says really grown-up things these days like, when I ask her a question, "Not really" or "I don't think so." :)
*Although she loves to play and get dirty, she also is very, very girly. Not disgustingly, annoyingly girly, but just cute girly. She loves her sparkly shoes. She loves to brush her hair and have her hair fixed. It doesn't have to be perfect (thank goodness), but she likes the process of picking out what she wants (braids, ponytails, barrettes, etc.). But, she's not a primper, so it's nothing obsessive. She looks in the mirror maybe once a day...she says "pretty" (she's got good self-esteem), and then she's done. :)
*She loves to play with her babies and take care of them. She also loves her real babies here (Eissa still to some extent and Cass) and is really calm and sweet in taking care of them.
*She will eat most anything, although recently has developed a distaste for one particular food. The first 3 years of her life she loved raisins. Now...not so much. She says they hurt her mouth. Joel told her that was silly...they don't hurt her mouth. But, I can relate...they probably hurt the taste buds part of her mouth. :)
*She's really, really affectionate. Every time we are reading books, for instance, she hooks her arms through mine and smashes her whole body up against my side. Every time I sit down by her, she rubs my shoulder and we have to nuzzle. It's sweet.
*She's very creative. For instance, when doing school, she always has to add a certain 'flair.' :) Like yesterday...she was supposed to be putting a circle around something. I looked over and she had started making the circle frilly (not just a straight-lined circle). I asked her why she was doing it that way. She said, "Because I want to make it pretty." She thinks outside the box...literally (ha ha ha...let me explain). "Uh uddah day" we were doing school and she was supposed to draw a line from the rabbit to the carrot. Both items were inside a box with lines sticking up randomly inside the box. She couldn't pick up the pencil and she couldn't touch the random lines on her way from the rabbit to the carrot. Hmmm...I told her those two rules (like the book said), but didn't think to tell her that she couldn't go outside the box to get from the rabbit to the carrot. She nodded her head and smiled letting me know she understood the instructions, then promptly moved her pencil from the rabbit to the carrot, without picking up the pencil and without touching the lines...very easily since she had gone around all the obstacles by just going outside the box. She looked at me like, O.K., that was easy...what's next? Cracked me up.
*Grady can get really excited about things, but overall he is pretty low key. Hadley is not. She is very expressive. I think Grady loves that about her. They're liked a married couple...balancing each other out. :) Ha ha ha.
*She has recently started sitting with her legs crossed and her hands folded in her lap...shaking her foot ever so slightly. :) Not because she is trying to act grown-up or prissy, but just because it has come naturally for her. It's not one of those things where she's said, "Look how I'm sitting Mama" and made a deal out of it. No, it's just one of those things I noticed one day...she sits like that sometimes...and then I look back over and she's stretching her foot up to her head or putting her foot in her lap, playing with her shoes. :) Funny.
*We might have to find a way to get this chic in a dance class. She's quite the dancer.
*She is a very loyal friend and loves to hang out with her friends (she doesn't call them by name usually...just 'my friends')...Sara, Audrey, Maira, etc. It's really cute. She is super social and remains a leader (whereas Grady is more of a follower...although all of his friends are way older which I'm sure has something to do with it...that little factor has never stopped Hadley, but does Grady).
It's so fun to watch Grady and Hadley together, how they interact, how they are different and how they are the same. It's such an honor to see the little adult female (I'm not sure why, but I don't really like the terms 'woman' or 'lady'...they both conjur up images in my head of not cool things) she is becoming, day by day. So, so fun. Can't wait to watch it all.
Now pictures and a little live action. By the way, had a major computer crash last Friday. Joel spent all weekend recovering our computer...thankfully we have it again. But, all the pictures/videos that we'd taken since we moved here to the apartment were lost. Sadness!! Anyway, here are some that we do have. (I have no idea why the captions aren't lining up with the pictures...I've been doing this blog thing a long time and know what I'm doing in that area, but today for some reason it isn't working...sorry.)
Hadley and Eissa taking care of their babies. Loves Cass. Hadley's swimsuit the other day. Eissa did have on a swim diaper...don't worry...not totally nude the whole time. See what I mean about the legs? :) We went over to some friends' house last night. Hadley's little friend put make-up on her. Too funny (also seen in that first picture at the beginning of this post...taken today). Hadley apparently doesn't even know the term 'make-up'...she just said that her friend drew on her with a marker. Oh dear...we take Christmas card pictures in a few days. :) Hilarious.
I am...Michawn. I am married to Joel. He is a pilot/mechanic. We have 4 fabulous kiddos...Grady (13), Hadley (12), Eissa (10 1/2), and Cass (9). See that picture up there? Yes, they've really grown up since then. :( Happens fast. I homeschool, which I *love*...wouldn't trade that time with them for anything. We lived in Brazil for 5 years, but almost 5 years ago moved back to the United States. The 'Joel. Michawn.' blog series explains all of that. We still serve with Asas de Socorro (Wings of Help), a Brazilian mission organization...we just now do it remotely. We are still excited about what God has for us and this blog is still a great way for you to see it all daily unfold...but a lot has happened in the past five years. That is what is currently being written about. (This little blip updated in March 2017)
I am passionate about Jesus, my children, reaching others with Jesus' true love and grace, equality for all, and adoption, along with a few other things. :) Praying I do all that God has for me to do in this life.
#1-Laughing and playing with a neighbor friend.
#2 - "Hmm...how do I get out of here?"
#3 - Her sibling lounge chair.
#5 - Cass sneaking some popcorn that was dropped. She had some in her hand and had already touched it to her mouth.
#6 - Cass, the reader. She seems to take after Grady with books. Hadley and Eissa (but esp. Hadley) were like little puppies. Our little board books were in perfect condition after Grady. Hadley got ahold of them and they were chewed to bits. :) Eissa wasn't much better. So far Cass is very gentle.
#7- Cass was trying to get Hadley's popcorn.
#8 - Hadley thought it was so funny.
#9 - Hadley moved it behind her.
#10 - So, Cass slung her arm around Hadley's body and was still trying to get to it.
#11 - She was determined to get some popcorn. :)
#12 - A cute little rubbing of the nose.
#13 - Her position for jumping out of an airplane...she also likes to do this often.
#14 - Getting up on all fours.
#15 - One of her favorite things...the nose squench.
#16 - Again with the squench.
#17 - And the head throw-back. :) Too cute.
#19 - Doing a little upper body workout. :) Her tricks are just endless.
#20 - I went to get her after her nap (she had been playing in there a while) and her little toy was all the way up on her leg. Funny.
#21 - "Thanks for my rattle, Enna!"
#25 - And this new trick she did this morning. Grady said, "Look Mama!" :) She's almost pulled up to her knees before, but this time she really did it and stayed that way for at least 5 minutues.
#26 - I thought she'd probably fall trying to get back down, but she didn't...just eased herself down like a pro. Will she be one of those babies that pulls up and walks across the room without ever really crawling? :)
