Joseph Update

Today was Joseph's 2-month check-up with the pediatrician.  It seems incredible that two months can go by so quickly! And yet at the same time, it's as if little Joseph has always been a part of the family. (I know I say that with each of my kids, but it's so true!)

Stats:
22.75 inches long
12 lbs. 15 oz.
(about average)

He has started social smiling now, but this was caught at just a few weeks old: one of those precious in-between-sleep-and-awake smiles.

 

 (Not sure why these pics are turning sideways.)

He was received his baby blessing at church October 20th.  Yes, he's wearing the same outfit that Michael was blessed in.

The men of the family. (Should have gotten Michael in on this one.)

 A friend of mine offered to do some newborn photos of Joseph.(http://www.nr-photography.com/) So, here he is, just one week old. These came out so precious I wish we had done newborn photos for all the kids.

Is it cold in here?

Halloween, etc.

Michael surprised me one morning by coming into the kitchen declaring "Mom look! I have chicken pox!"  . . . It's amazing how useful a red marker can be.  Thankfully, it was the washable kind.

The kids LOVE their new baby brother. Adelaide especially likes to play with his swing and rub his soft head. Sadie can't resist tickling his feet and trying to get him to grab baby toys. Michael loves to get right up in his face and talk to him in baby talk.  I've been feeling kind of guilty that I can't give Joseph as much attention as I would like (since I'm running around keeping tabs on my other kids), but then I realized he gets plenty of attention! It's just not all from me.

A week before Halloween, we celebrated Sadie's 4th birthday. She has been planning a princess party for the last year. (Reviewing and revising her plans pretty much every hour of every day for the last 10 months.)  We had several little princess-friends come over, ate a castle cake (I had sooo much fun making this!), played party games, and broke a pinata. We made the pinata ourselves doing several layers of paper mache over the course of a week.  And, it was actually easier than I thought it would be. Sadly, we broke it apart before I thought to get a picture of it, but it turned out really cute and surprisingly tough to break open --for four-year-old girls, anyway.

Halloween night, my dad came over to go trick-or-treating with us. (Mom stayed home to hand out candy.) Michael was a robot (if you couldn't guess), Sadie was a princess (big surprise, right?), Adelaide was a ladybug (she loved it), and Joseph was a little doggy (you can't see it very well, but he was wearing a little doggy hat).

These girls are soooo very different and yet both so girly in their own ways. They love dressing up together and are learning to be very sweet together . . . most of the time.

Seven layers of fluff!

I am so proud of this boy! Michael brought his first report card home a few weeks ago and got straight Es --E for excellent! (Except an "S" in PE, but whoever gets an E in PE anyway?!)

 

Several of his classmates have already lost teeth, so he was super-excited to discover one of his own teeth was loose.  

And here he is after he pulled it out just yesterday.

Introducing Joseph Taylor Compton

Little Joseph (named after two of his great-grandfathers) joined us just a few days ago. --9/18 at 5:17 p.m. He weighed 8 lbs, 9 oz.  He is going great; eating and sleeping well. We came home from the hospital yesterday.  Aside from being a bit sleepy, I'm doing great too. This has been the best recovery so far. --Not sure if it's because I had him natural, or if my body is just getting used to this by now. Anyway, we love having our new little one with us.

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Rewind (July-Present)

I promised myself that I would completely catch up on the blog before the baby came. And I finally am --with a week and a half to spare!

The kids loved "helping" Popie water the garden.

For the Fourth of July, we did our usual fireworks display at home

and invited our neighbors, the Nelsons, to join us.   Actually, Michael was the only one of our kids who really enjoyed the evening.  Sadie was glued to her seat the whole time; she didn't want to get any closer to the fireworks than she had to --until we set off some blackcats and then she jumped up and ran to Nana's lap with her hands over her ears.

Adelaide stayed like this pretty much the entire time.  She didn't like the noise or the lights.  Even now, several months later, whenever she hears a loud noise, she'll run to me and cry "Fireworks; scare me!"

Happy 2nd Birthday, Ada!  What a sweet, bright, (mostly) happy, and extremely enthusiastic little person she has turned into.  Whether it's playing, dancing, reading a story, or throwing a little fit, she puts her whole heart into everything she does.

If you haven't already caught on, Adelaide loves horses, and she was very particular that she wanted a pony birthday. This is what I came up with, and she LOVED it! She still talks about her "pony cake" about once a day.

Here, the girls are sporting some very fashionable "pony tails."

One of Ada's presents was a pony on a stick, but surprisingly, she didn't care too much for it.  Maybe a pony head on a stick is too abstract for her right now?  Anyway, Sadie latched onto it and is giving it plenty of attention.  She loves ponies too, as long as they are "princess ponies."

Our ward (church congregation), hosts a Christ-Centered Children's Camp each summer, similar to VBS. Michael loved it!  Here he is showing off his "grass head."  I think it was from a lesson about "the wheat and the tares."

Aunt Alison came up one weekend to enjoy some homemade imaginary cookies and pie at this delightful picnic tea party.

A few weeks ago, Nana treated us to a trip to the Downtown Aquarium.  It was our first visit, and we had a blast!

We saw lots of fish,

the famous white tigers (I was so sorry to not get a better picture of this.  The tiger was really active, even jumping up onto the glass enclosure like it was trying to pounce on all the on-lookers.  I thought it was kind of scary, but it didn't phase the kids at all. I guess they just thought he wanted to play.),

rode the Ferris wheel (I think this was Michael and Sadie's favorite part),

and rode the Shark Train. --It's so cool. It takes you into a tunnel full of nothing but sharks swimming over and around you.  The neatest things were the sawfish! They really do look like the pictures in the books.

This is Ada's fake smile.  Whenever you take her picture, she immediately makes this goofy, toothy grin and says through clenched teeth, "Cheese!"

We moved Ada into Sadie's room a few months ago, and to appease the resident inhabitant, we sweetened the deal by turning it into a "princess room."

This month, we got Sadie a big-girl bed, which she loves!!!

Ada got Sadie's toddler bed, which she loves (Here she is showing off Bebe and Horsey.) . . . and the baby will the crib in a few months.

Michael just finished his second week of school.  Here he is on his first day, excited and ready to learn!  Sadly, he came home a little less enthused and said it was "pretty boring."  It has, however, gotten a little more interesting, and he seems to be enjoying it fairly well.  He comes home every day and his big news is not about anything they learned; it's about everyone's behavior and whether or not they got candy as a reward.

 

Last week, Sadie decked herself out in hair accessories, came into my room and announced, "Aren't I beautiful?!".

We do miss having Michael at home all day, but I have to say that the girls are managing pretty well without him.  They have been getting better and better about playing together and making up their own entertainment.  Last week we had some friends over. They all got dressed up and had a dance party. --Girls really are sooo different from boys.

Funny story: I was in the girl's room one day while they were playing dolls. One of the dolls, "big baby," is larger and more life-like than the others.  I said something about how it was about the same size our baby would be when it is born.  The Sadie turned to me and said "Hey, maybe that's where the doll came from.  They dried out a baby."  Of course, I started laughing at the thought of a doll being a taxidermied baby.  The Adelaide picked up the doll, licked it, and announced, "Juicy!" --like it's obvious it's not a dried out baby; it tastes good.

Rewind (April-June)

Okay, so more catching up --before the baby comes and things get really crazy:

Earlier this year, Michael and Sadie raced their very first pinewood derby cars.  We lost miserably, but had a lot of fun doing it.  We are already planning and scheming for next year's race.

In April, Michael got to experience his very first baseball game!  One of Matt's bosses gave him some almost-front-row seats to an Astros game.  While the baseball game itself wasn't all that impressive (at least not compared with playing "Angry Birds" on Dad's cell phone), the two of them had a great daddy-son date.

Less fun, was Matt's "minor" surgery to remove a skin cancer on his lip.  It turned into a much bigger ordeal than we originally thought, but at least they got it all and he won't die any time soon (we hope!).  It looked pretty gruesome for a while. (If you want to see the gross pictures, just ask Matt. He loves showing them off.) But thankfully, we got a top-notch plastic surgeon, and the scar is hardly noticeable anymore.

Here we are at the Houston Temple. If you look closely, you can still see Matt's bandage over his lip. He wore it in public for quite a while in order to not gross people out.  I kept telling him "Scars are manly!"

Princess Sadie all dressed up!

We signed Michael up for our neighborhood swim team back in May. (Go Kleinwood Dolphins!)  The coaches were really good with him, especially considering the fact that he couldn't swim.  He got really close by the end of the season, and we are looking forward to (hopefully) getting in a few actual races next year.

Just a cute picture of my red heads.

Michael in his "tree house"

and learning to do a head-stand.

In June, my parents sold their house in Austin and were in the process of buying a house near us.  But there was about a month gap between the two closing dates.  So, they came to live with us for a while and we loved having them here!  The kids especially loved having a little extra attention.  They made Nana read until her voice gave out!

It was also fun to have Uncle Stephen visit.

Later in the month, Jeremy brought his family down for a visit on their way Oregon (where he is his opening his own dental practice.)  It was soooo fun!  We fit 6 adults and 8 kids in this house for 3 days; it could have been chaos, but turned out wonderfully!

The kids romped and played together so nicely. We had a "cousin camp-out" every night with sleeping bags covering the floors of Michael and Sadie's rooms.  We went swimming and visited a giant aquarium store (Aquarium World is marvelous!) and just had a grand time in general. I can't wait for them to come back!

Home remodeling? No, this is Matt tearing out our ceiling where we had a leak from the upstairs master shower.

Here he is still hammering away trying to find the source of the problem --and discovering termites in the process.

Here are the kids enjoying the show! You can kind of see the chunks of dry wall and plaster that came raining down.

 

Here is the "shower" after Matt and my dad ripped it all out to fix the leak.   . . . I don't have any more photos to show, because we haven't repaired anything yet!  But at least we are getting rid of the termites before they do any major damage.  Matt has been busy every weekend with do-it-yourself termite treatment that involves drilling and digging around the entire foundation to spray in pesticide --in the middle of a Houston summer. Ugghh!  It's times like these that I'm especially grateful I am not a man!

Other things I am grateful for:  three beautiful children,

a happy family,

and lots of friends.

:)