Every time I get out my camera, Nathan wants to take pictures. He's getting pretty good at actually capturing what he wants in his picture. Here is a picture of Donald (that he took). This is his most recent train aquisition. He received it a few weeks back as a reward for staying dry 7 naps in a row. He is still doing very well with naps. Nights, on the other hand, are a little less successful. Matt has been getting him up in the vicinity of 6:00 a.m. and taking him (mostly asleep) to the bathroom. It seems to be working. He apparently goes sometime right before waking up otherwise. If he makes 7 nights in a row (yes, even with Matt's help), then he will get Donald's twin...Douglas.

Caroline likes playing with her big brother. He is quite interesting! This day, I had just finished feeding her and she laid back (headed upside-down) to watch him. She ended up looking at him under his "tent" and he liked that. So...she joined him. He liked having his little sister playing with him. I think she enjoyed it, too.

I think Caroline wants to be just like her cousin, Kate. She's been on her way to sitting up for a little while now, but she hasn't been steady enough to stay for any length of time. Well, after looking at
Liz's blog this morning and seeing the picture of Kate sitting up, she decided to sit for a little while. Don't get me wrong, she's not going to be sitting for a long time, but she stayed long enough for me to snap off a few pictures.

...and then she rolled gracefully back onto her tummy. This is her prefered position as it allows her pretty good access to her toys. She has gotten really good at using her hands. She can scoop things and pull them to her. She can also grab on to the toys on the exersaucer and pull them to her mouth. If I remember correctly, it's a separate milestone when babies start using both hands simultaneously. Well, she's also doing that. She'll move both hands toward an object and grab on.

Nathan doesn't like to be left out of the picture taking, so he often jumps in when I'm taking pictures of Caroline. That's fine with me...I don't have to beg him to let me get pictures of the two of them. This isn't my most favorite picture, but you can really see the difference in their skin colors. Nathan's is like Matt's and is more yellow. Caroline ended up with very fair pinkish skin just like me...easy to burn. :(

Since Nathan was interested in taking pictures this morning (and because I often feel guilty for not taking more of him), we tried to capture some good ones this morning. This close-up shot is in the kitchen. I lightened it a little bit because the original may be just a little too dark for some of your monitors.

This one is a strange angle, but I thought it was interesting. Actually, the first couple like this were blurry, so we went back after looking at them and took more. This one is my favorite...at least for the moment.

Nathan wanted to play outside in his sandbox for a little while this morning so I thought I would try to get some more pictures. He was in full sun, so the pictures of all of him didn't make my favorites (though there were plenty that I liked). I did like this one, though. I love little feet!

And last but not least, here is my favorite of the bunch. I often have a hard time capturing a good smile. This one is at least close to natural. My favorite part, though, is the grass in his hands. When we went to take pictures of him laying down, he proceeded to pull up grass. He's a boy! Again, I also like to see his feet. (In case you're wondering, Matt hasn't been lax on cutting the grass...it's just that it didn't rain here for a while so the grass was all mostly dead. Now that it's finally rained, we've been letting the grass grow so that it will get back to looking decent.)

Ok. That's all for now. I hope that you have enjoyed the picture show. Since we are closing on the house tomorrow, things are about to get even more busy than they have been. I don't know if I'll do too much posting over the next month. I will at least try to get some beach pictures up, but otherwise, it may be August before much happens. We'll see. This is a sit and do something enjoyable outlet for me, so I might still be able to make time for it.