Well, it’s been a while since I’ve posted here but it’s not because we haven’t been documenting most everything that’s happening in the kids’ lives. Since my last post, we took another trip to the Botanical Gardens, visited the zoo, visited with Gigi, celebrated Maggie Belle’s first birthday, watched her take her first steps, went to the Poquoson Seafood Festival, had a fall festival at Little Matt’s school, carved jack-o-lanterns, went to the zoo for Halloween, went fishing at our favorite pond in Newport News, VA and have taken a number of miscellaneous photos. I just finished posting six new photo albums so with a few exceptions, we’re all caught up! The following are the links to the photo albums.

Another trip to the Norfolk Botanical Gardens, August 29, 2008.

A trip to the Norfolk Zoo, September 14, 2008.

A few pictures of Gigi’s visit, September 15-17, 2008.

Maggie’s first birthday party (the day she really took her first steps!)

A cold day at the Poquoson Seafood Festival.

Little Matt catching his first fish!

That’s it for now. I’ll try not to be so long in between updates for the next couple of months. Especially with Little’s birthday coming up and of course, the fall and winter holidays.

Just a quick post this morning as I just wanted to upload a few pictures from Mom and the kids’ trip to the Botanical Gardens in Norfolk yesterday. Unfortunately I had to work and missed the trip but we’re planning another trip for my day off next weekend. We’re going to make a picnic out of it and we’ll make sure the kids wear their bathing suits so they can have even more fun in the fountains. That’s all for now. Check out the photo album here.

I know it’s been a while since posting, but I just uploaded three photo albums tonight covering the last three weeks or so. The latest news is that Maggie Belle is almost walking. She’ll take a few steps if she can hold onto one of our hands, but then she gets tired and plops down to crawl again. We did get her a doll stroller that mainly serves as a walking trainer and she’s been enjoying that. She was so proud this first day of walking behind her little stroller. She hasn’t really figured out which is the front and which is the back, but she’s using it nonetheless.

The next photo album is of our trip last weekend to the County Fair in Franklin, VA. It was pouring rain for most of the drive and for the first hour or so there, but it let up some and Little and I got to go on a few of the rides. I guess “few” being key here as there were only a few rides there. I hadn’t been to this county fair in almost 15 years and somehow I remembered it being much bigger. But we did get to see some blue-ribbon chickens, ducks, rabbits, cows and pigs. And not to mention a humongous watermelon. And while we weren’t quite in the mood for funnel cakes, we did have some deep fried mini donuts.

And the last photo album in this post is of Maggie Belle doing what she loves doing more than anything– eating. This should be a nice way to document how much she’s growing if I can post a few chronological pictures every now and then of her sitting in the high chair. A couple of these are from April, and the rest August. I’ll try to post to this album with a little more regularity going forward.

That’s all for now. As usual, you can check out my store’s best selling toys here.

Today was a nice lazy Sunday here in Virginia. Little Matt and I walked to McDonald’s in the rain for our Sunday morning pancake breakfast. We stopped by Bender’s (our local comic book store) on the walk home and then the whole family drove up to the Virginia Living Museum in Newport News. Little had a mini-fit as he wanted to go to Toys-R-Us instead of some educational museum place but he forgot all about the toys after about two minutes in the museum. Check out the pictures here.

They had a really cool dinosaur exhibit with a Tyrannosaurus Rex, another large sauropod (it wasn’t a brachiosaurus but something similar) and a couple of other theropods. The museum was a really interesting place. Their regular exhibits had all the wildlife indigenous to Virginia including: fish, frogs, snakes, rats and the various river and sea life found in the Chesapeake Bay and James River. And they had a raised wooden walkway that led through several acres with exhibits of wolves, foxes, raccoons, opossums, turkeys, deer, vultures and eagles. It was a very nice setup. If you live in the area and are reading this, it’s well worth the trip.

I also posted some pictures from around the 4th of July here. I had to work all day so we didn’t do anything too exciting like watching a big fireworks show but Little and I watched a few from our balcony off the third floor. And don’t forget, if you’re looking for a list of some best selling toys, check out some of our store’s top sellers here.

A few things have happened since I last posted so I should write a few words to update our baby’s progress. Maggie Belle has a new tooth. She still has her original bottom two and now four on top. I don’t think she’s going to need dental floss any time soon as you can still see a good bit of gums between the top ones. But it seems like she’s enjoying the six teeth she does have.

She also started crawling this week. She’s still not too mobile but she can make her way across the living room floor in a few short minutes. And we think she’s going to be walking any week now. She also discovered a few new sounds this week. She likes to click with her tongue and make hissing sounds. I guess only a parent would think that’s cute. I’m sure the people around us in the movie theater tonight didn’t think it was too cute.

That’s it for now. I also posted some pictures from our trip to Georgia a couple months ago. You can see the photo album here. Oh yeah, anybody who’s reading this who doesn’t know about our educational toy store that sells science toys, please check it out.

I just posted a few pictures Lisa took this week. You can see them here. Little Maggie Belle is almost 9 months old. She still isn’t really crawling yet but she is learning to stand and we think she’ll be walking fairly soon. Nothing much new to report but she did get another tooth this week. The two on bottom came in pretty straight. The first two on top had a David Letterman half inch gap between them, and now she’s got a third one on top.

As far as her verbal skills are coming, well, she is having a hard time enunciating some of the tougher words. She’s getting really good at saying “hmmmmmm” and “baaaaaaaaa.” Only knowing these two words however, hasn’t deterred her from talking all the time. We think she’s going to talk as much as her brother. I guess that means we’re not going to get much peace and quiet around here for the next sixteen or so years. Until she goes off to college (or a good trade school.)

Wow, I didn’t realize it has been a month since I last posted anything on here. I think Maggie Belle can sense that I’ve gotten lazy on her site and she’s showing her displeasure here. A quick recap of the last month… The first weekend in May we drove down to Georgia for a quick weekend visit with Lisa’s sister and my mom, dad and sister. I remember taking a lot of pictures, but I think we were using everyone else’s cameras and we’ve got no photographic evidence of our visit. Oh well, it was still a nice visit- albeit a very short one.

The next weekend back in Virginia we spent a couple of hours at the boardwalk in Virginia Beach. We’ve got a few pictures of that trip here. The following weekend, we spent a couple of hours at our beach here in Hampton. More pictures here. And also, Little Matt and I concluded our Great Tadpole Experiment today and released our frogs back into the lake where we caught them back in April.

Here’s our girl with her favorite Devo hat on. I think I need more pictures of her in this hat.

So, Little and I had our standard pancake breakfast this morning. And as we have done for the last few weeks we went looking for tadpoles afterwards. With the same results as the last few times - we didn’t find any. I don’t know if it’s still too cold here, or if we just don’t know where to look. But we’re going to find some! And oh yeah, today was the first time Little Matt fell into the mud. It was quite a sight. I was dipping the net into the muck along the bank (scooping up water bugs and crawdads, just no tadpoles). Little was being his active self along the slippery bank when he slipped and fell backwards. I’m sure it didn’t hurt as the four inches of water and soft mud he landed in must have cushioned the fall. But he cried nonetheless. Of course, I told him to quit crying and that he wasn’t hurt. He told me chocolate milk and a Kit-Kat would make him feel better. And I guess it did. It made him forgot all about being cold and riding home in his underwear.

After lunch we drove out to Buckroe Beach for a bit of kite flying. It was a little cold for the baby so she decided to just stay in the stroller with her blanket while Little Matt and I got our shark and Batman kites aloft. It was very windy so it wasn’t much of a challenge getting them up. But it was still fun. Maybe next time we can make our own kites like the kids from the Little House on the Prairie. I think that should be kind of fun. We can start studying some of the principles of physics and see how we can put them to use.

Okay, wrapping up now. Pictures of todays events are here. And since last week I added one of Maggie Belle with food all over her, the next picture that every baby needs is one where they’re sitting in a clothes hamper. So there you go. Maggie Belle sitting in a hamper. How cute.

Okay, I think every baby has had this picture taken. Of course, we as parents think it is just so cute when our precious angel makes a mess at dinner time. I have to admit, I thought it was funny too. At least the first time. After that, I kind of wish she would just eat the delicious mushy sweet potatoes.

Of course, what is amazing, is that she can go from this first picture on the right to the next one in about two seconds. She can be all happy with a belly half full of something squishy one second, and then giving me this nasty look the next second. I haven’t figured out if it’s because she’s still hungry, or if she’s full. I figure the only safe thing to do is to keep feeding her. Maybe that’s why she’s in the top 95th percentile of all six-month old kids. And Maggie Belle, if you’re reading this sometime in your teenage years, yes, that means that you were a pretty round baby. At six months old, there wasn’t much you wouldn’t eat. In fact, I can hear you squealing downstairs right now. Yep, probably wanting another meal. You get that from me– not your mother…

Nothing too exciting this week. Little Matt and Maggie Belle are still doing well. She’s still not very mobile but she’s been thinking more and more about starting to crawl. Still only the two bottom teeth (on Maggie that is. Matt has all his teeth.) Maggie Belle is making a few more sounds and we’re trying to encourage her to talk more. And we’re trying to encourage Little Matt to talk a little less. We’re not having much luck there. That’s all for now. Just a few pictures this week.