Hanging in there

Well, we have survived a month without my parents to help out.  It's been busy but hopefully we've found some type of groove. Justine also waited for them to leave so she could start crawling, get her first teeth, and catch a lingering cold (probably multiple colds).  But hey, things aren't dull!

Justine is almost 9 months old and, in addition to her fast army crawling, has learned to pull up and go from sitting to crawling and back.  She is also loving food and continues to try everything we put in front of her.  Spencer is still interested in racing others (and very upset when he doesn't win at anything), but also loving his daily art projects at preschool.  He is learning more numbers and letters every day, and can now get through the S-p-e in his name without prompting (poor kid has a relatively hard name to spell). He is still cracking us up of course and using phrases like a mini-Chris all the time ("This is crucial, Dad").

Spencer in amazing elephant face painting....

 And his pure joy in pet-sitting the school's guinea pigs over one weekend:

Here is lil' miss showing that she is a pro at this crawling thing:

And they actually entertain each other (okay, for 5 minutes at a time), so I tried to document the truly peaceful moment in my day:

 

Justine's first hike (she was not impressed):

 Sibling love/ I love you:

 We're officially into the golden age of gymnastics birthday parties:

I mean, the joy from this girl is very infectious:

 

And gotta squeeze in a tennis lesson from Uncle Matt: