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Our little guy has such a fun personality.  He is a happy guy and very curious as well and this combination can make for eventful days.  He even has fun when he is on time out which can make disciplining him difficult.    Here are a few pictures that capture these "events" in all his glory. 

Here is a new twist on dishes!

Here he is chugging back Sissy's snack.  He suddenly wants to eat baby food.  I wonder why?!

Symeon loves to put things in a line.  Her are his car...

 

  ... and here he is lining up Daddy's drinks.  Like I said he likes to line things up. 

 
                  

Gross!

                                                                        

Really Gross!!!

I told him to stop doing this or no girl would ever want to kiss him.  If you look behind him there are tampons all over the floor which he found and dumped.  Today was a potty oriented day.

Marin's Half Birthday

It is hard to believe Marin is 6 months old.  Similar to Symeon's half birthday I spent a little time next to Marin's crib watching her sleep and thinking about her birth and what a blessed day it was when she came into the world.  She has had a busy month learning to crawl, sitting up, and trying food and everything is going well.  She is learning to love food and she crawls all over the place getting into everything.  We thought we were busy before but honestly we had  no idea.  If you turn your back for a minute she is into something that probably isn't best.  One thing I notice is how much more relaxed I am if we ever have any more children God bless I would probably be so laid back they could raise themselves.  When Symeon began to eat food I would only give him one type for several days and then introduce another with Marin I'm like that didn't seem to bother her so let's trying something else.  I would only give Symeon one cherrio at a time and watch him this week I dumped a bunch on her tray and told her to have a blast.  She smiled and began shoving them toward her mouth and granted only a few made it there but still I thought they dissolve she will be fine.

We are enjoying every minute with Marin.  She loves to know over blocks we build up, she drinks out of our water bottles by sucking out of a straw.  She loves magnets that are low on the fridge and she loves anything Symeon does or anything he is playing with.  This love for her brother leads to a lot of refereeing in our house.  Shawn and I didn't realize there would be this much "negotiating" in our house so early.  Marin does not give in easy and she holds her own with her big brother.  God bless Symeon if he even looks at her wrong she lets you know it.  She continues to smile easily and can bring a smile to the face of the most stoic person.

 
Marin is snuggly and a pure delight to have in our family.  We feel so blessed to be her parents and be entrusted with raising her.  Happy half birthday our beautiful baby girl you bring so much joy to us and we love you!

Marin wanted it but didn't like it...

Marin has been looking at food longingly over the past month and I finally gave her a little rice cereal today. After I saw her face I guess rice cereal with a tiny bit of peas was not what she was thinking about over this past month. I am going to try again in a few days, we will see if it gets better. As particular as she has been about eating up to this point I am prepared that she might have similar issues with other food.



Mom I am not sure about this food stuff



Mom I don't think I like this



Yah I am sure I really don't like this

Just some cute pictures

They both had their computers open and they were "working" on them. Symeon was typing letters he knows and Marin was mostly eating the mouse on her toy computer.



Someone gave me these bows for Marin's hair so I thought I would give them a try just to see. Gosh she is cute but she is not fond of the bow. She had it out in about 2 seconds.



Symeon on the other hand loved the bow and would have worn it as long as I let him. I find he likes anything Sissy has so for instance if I want to trim his finger nails all I have to do is put Marin on my lap and begin cutting her nails and he comes over showing me his finger nails so I will cut his as well.



Marin enjoying some lite reading on the couch.



Hanging out in their pajamas.

A nice walk

Our dear friend Rachel likes to take Symeon for walks and he loves to go anywhere Ms. Rachel will take him. He adores her so the other night when she stopped by to pick him up he was ready to go. He had a very short nap on this particular day so I think a nice walk wrapped in a warm blanket made sleep inevitable. Rachel said he managed to point to the small stream with a weak arm before he drifted off to sleep.

Fall Festival

We finally had a nice Saturday so we headed to a fall festival. It was a beautiful day. We went to this festival last year and it was weird to remember being there with Symeon as a baby and I would have been pregnant with Marin. My how a year has changed our family.


Milking a fake cow, Symeon wanted to drink the water which was just gross.


Symeon and I playing in the corn box.


Marin (5 months old) and I enjoying a beautiful fall day.



Symeon (8 months old) and I at the same festival last year. I think it is funny I am wearing almost the exact same thing a year later.



Symeon loved the Alpaca's


This was the best picture we could get of the two of them. They were both so busy we were lucky they both sat there for a few pictures.

Photo shoot

Getting a good picture of Symeon and Marin together can be a bit difficult. Here is one of our photo shoots, I think they are all cute because they show their personalities.

Enjoying the view

Symeon loves to look out our third floor window and watch for truck, buses, anything with a siren, and motorcycles. When I came home from work the other day I found them all enjoying the view.

Football - E-A-G-L-E-S

We are huge Eagles fans and Symeon is so cute in his Eagles hat, he loves wearing it.

A really cute face

Forts

Symeon is really into building forts these days and he usually wants us all to join him which can be difficult but lots of fun.

Marin is very busy

Everyday seems to bring something new she is doing. Here are a few pictures of her in action.



She has been kind of pulling/inching around the last week but the last two days she has been up on all fours rocking back and forth and then she thrusts herself forward. It is funny to watch and it takes her a bit to get where she is going but she is determined and it is amazing how much she has improved in the past couple of days. I am sure she will be cruising pretty soon. She is right on track with Symeon, he crawled at 5 months so we have begun baby proofing again. I found her chomping on my computer cord this morning luckily she doesn't have any teeth yet.


She sits up like a pro and is working on being able to get to this position on her own.


She still comes to work with me quite often and here we are returning home after an evening shift. She gets so much attention when she comes along she loves it.


She was "helping" me blog.


Marin is desperate for "real" food so we busted out the high chair and she is so happy when she is sitting in it. I gave her a piece of crusty bread and she loved it so now whenever she sits there she seems to be looking for the food. I promise Marin it is coming soon.

Trick or Treat

This was our first year taking Symeon trick or treating. Last year we was a duck that my sister-in-law Traci made for Austin and this year he was a moose that she also made. Marin was a pea we borrowed from a friend. They both did well with their costumes although it took a little convincing.



Marin is holding a kit kat and later when Shawn went to take it away from her she screamed and she continued to scream the entire car ride home. I'm not sure what that means except now Shawn does not want to take anything away from her.



Next year I hope I have a bit more time on my hands so I can come up with costumes for Shawn and I as well I love this kind of stuff. It is so hard to get a good picture of us all so it was nice to get this one on our first attempt.


We went over to our friends house and they came along with us since they know most of their neighbors. It didn't take Symeon long to figure out trick or treating and he took great care in choosing his candy. He would fish around looking for M&M's and Hershey bars and every once in awhile Shawn or I would choose for him scoring some of our favorites as well. I realize it is pretty sweet being the parent saying things like you have had enough sweets tonight and then when they go to bed you indulge your own sweet tooth just a bit.


Here is Marin when we first put her costume on her. She was pulling at the hood and really crying but we have learned crying for her is like turning on a faucet, as easy as it starts it stops. She was fine as soon as we were outside walking around.


Here is our Moose before he realized that the Moose outfit equaled candy. He was so cute and it is wild to remember Austin wearing this costume at Symeon's age, he will be 10 in March.

Creative

I don't think I have to worry about Symeon conforming to society. With this outfit he is displaying his swimmie diaper head wear, some beads he received from the lady at the Thai restaurant, two tattoos, a leaf he collected from outside, and no pants. He wore this outfit for quite sometime. Later in the week we went to an oldies dance with the residents where we live and Symeon decided it was a good occasion to wear the swimmie head wear again. Everybody loved it which only reinforced his notion that swimmie diapers are great hats.

My first flowers

Symeon came in from outside the other day with these flowers for me. I was so touched and he was so happy. He is such a sweet little guy. I thought the vase was pretty fitting.

Elmo

Symeon received a hand me down Elmo and it is a big hit. The first few days he wanted to sleep with it and since it is as big as him it was a pretty funny sight.