Our first Army crawler

Our sweet, happy E has been a true joy to us, a blessing in a time when a bright spot has been something we sorely needed.  He never fails to shine, and we love him endlessly.  Sometimes I smile as we sit watching him discover things that we've watched our other four babies discover - we haven't grown tired of watching them learn and be baby-cute.  E has surprised us by being our one and only "Army crawler," and it just cracks us up.  He will get up on his hands and knees and rock like mad, but when he needs to get anywhere he drops down and guts it out.  So cute!  Maybe I'll get some video put up of it soon, but til then, here's a (slightly blurry) pic from church.

L has been having a lot of fun with the LeapFrog Letter Factory she got from my parents for Christmas.  We're thinking that it may even help ZP end up learning his letter sounds, too, one of these days.  Those two have enjoyed the shape sorter that E got for Christmas, too, and they're quite good at picking each of them up when they're done.  ZP also loves the wacky goggly glasses and Darth Vader slippers he got in his stocking!  

Below are a couple of pics of the new playset that was a joint gift from us and both of the GPs.  I think that might have been my best Christmas gift idea ever - reduced the number of presents (and, let's face it, junk!) greatly (supposed to have reduced it altogether, but the GPs could not be constrained from sending gifts anyway, lol).  I spent a LOT of time looking at different playsets, and had kind of assumed we'd go with one of the wood ones that you see pretty much everywhere, but when I saw this one B and I both agreed pretty quickly that this was the one; we are all really, really pleased with it!  The steel is large, heavy gauge, and it has the elements that were most important to us:  swings and monkey bars.  The kids also love the trapeze bar, fireman pole, and the new, higher slide.  It has a weight limit of something like 1100 pounds, and I expected it would have to be anchored into the ground with concrete but it didn't need to be.  A does enjoy swinging as high and hard as she can to get it to lift off the ground all of about 1/8 of an inch, making S scream, but I'll save that post for someday when I feel like relating a compilation of kids-driving-each-other-and-thusly-me-crazy stories.  ;)  The playset had the added benefit of taking B and one of our friends only about three and a half hours to put together, which they did the Saturday before Christmas.  Yay for helpful friends!