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Ickity has been taking five steps for about a month.  She is upping it to six or seven lately.  She has also become quite the master.  She can clap and walk, dance and walk, walk and pause and walk again, take sharp corners, and stand from a sitting position.  I am positive that if I worked with her, she would have been real-deal walking a month ago.  But at officially 10 months now, I don’t have any desire to chase a walking kid instead of a speed crawler.

There is a beauty to a plug.  It pacifies, it occupies and it even babysits.  So when Icka wasn’t into plugs from the get go, I was pretty bummed.  Especially since plugs were Scout and my best friends.  I always thought that Icka didn’t have the ability to keep one in her mouth.  But come to find out….it isn’t ability she lacks.  I know this because Icka ALWAYS has something in her mouth.  No matter where she finds it, or how big it is, Icka is sucking or chewing on something.  In just the past few weeks of pictures, I was able to find a few examples.

Trash digging at Seth and Bretts.

Tub Time.

Playing with the trains with Scout.

Oh…so you can keep a plug in.

Seth and Brett headed to Hawaii, and I headed to Vegas to watch their kids.  They took Covey Lovey and Rose, so I had their other four boys and my two.  I loved when I arrived to Brett saying, “why are you doing this for us?”  And then she said repeatedly, “You are so nice!”  I then had a brief conversation with her and realized that it appeared as if I just offered to do the favor.   But in reality, the story went a little more like Seth called me and said, “So….what are you doing for the next week or so?”  When I stupidly answered that I didn’t have any huge plans, he said, “so …uh…..so…you think….uh…you think you want to come and watch our….uh….kids?”  And then he just started cracking up.  When I told Brett, she said that him asking wasn’t in the story she heard.  The fact is that I didn’t really care, and ended up having a good time with the boys and Navy.  The only hiccup came when I got sick on day two and lost my voice by day four of seven.  Can you believe that the only time I have lost my voice in 15 years is when I have to bark out orders to 6 kids.  Classic!

Here are the charts which proved to be really effective.  Notice that the Tiny Size Chiklets for Saturday were no longer….that’s because before I even made the chart, someone had swiped them.  Notice also that there was a “Final Prize” involved.  It was a four hour stint at Chuck E. Cheeses with every other person who lived in Vegas there at the same time — and YES they earned it.  I will have to admit that it was a total blast, because I used Seth’s money to buy as many tokens as we wanted.  How many, I don’t know….but four hours of nonstop play for 5 kids and me can account for a LOT of tokens.

Glued.  Scout never gets to watch television, and these boys get very little too, so when they get to….they are glued.  This was Scout’s first time seeing a dog and his friend named Scooby Doo and Shaggy.

Do these two look alike?  I can see similarities and differences.  Time will tell.

This is one of the zillion times I had to tell Scout to not jump on the furniture.  Then he informed me that he was jumping “off” the furniture.

My two were in heaven with their cousins.  Can you tell, in the middle picture, by Scout’s eyes that he was utterly exhausted?  In the bottom picture, I was trying to catch Icka taking some steps, but Scout intervened.  I love that my two adore each other.

The drive home was bittersweet.  Great to get home, and sad to be driving at 4:00 am.  Ha!  You thought I was sad to leave the chaos behind…..only a little bit.  My kids took a day to adjust, and just when  they were back to their schedules….they got what I had.  What a rip.

When I talked to Brett, she told me that they were obviously paying me.  I told her that was ridiculous, and that they were not.  I told her that when I want the favor returned, I will call her up.  Then after her expression, I said, “you would rather pay me huh!”  Too bad for her….I’m taking the favor.

Thanks to my sister-in-law Brett, I have learned the art of making Navy a bazillion baby bracelets.  I have been known to whip one out in the morning to go with her outfit of the day.  I will have to admit that I have made a few masterpieces lately.  And it’s a good thing, because Tristen has been calling Navy “SheMan” lately.  And my mom “struggles” to find much feminine about her.  I can sort of agree that ever since she learned to rip off her bows, she has not looked quite as girlie.  The beauty of these bracelets, is that she can’t get them off — so far.

About every two days, I come down to Scout on the counter as he chows down on fruit.  He is such a stinky eater, but healthy fruit is always a sure bet.  This day, I caught him in the berries.  He had already finished off the raspberries, and was about 2/3 of the way through the strawberries.  Too bad that he hasn’t learned that more than just the teeny tiny tip of the strawberry is edible.  I love how my mom would have had a heart attack if she had seen them, and would have personally finished off every strawberry.  I, on the other hand, just laughed and packed them back up for the salad I am making for my mom’s birthday dinner.  Not really — Ibut I did pack them back up for him to eat later.

Micah and I have always been opposed to having season passes to Disneyland, mainly because we want our kids to think of it as a treat.  But when we went last year to go for a day, it was only a few more bucks to get a year pass.  And since we were probably going to do our annual Disneyland day in the spring with all of the cousins, I bit the bullet.  And better yet….so did my mom.  We got a decent amount of use out of them (I think we went about five times), and the fact that we didn’t feel obligated to be there for more than a few hours at any given time, they were a good buy.  Our year has come to a close, and in an effort to really get our money’s worth, we went for our last hurrah.

Funny thing is that the “last hurrah” was very different for each of us.  My mom couldn’t have been happier that it was the last time,(especially because she was sporting a boot because of a broken foot — talk about a trooper!), but she then tried to talk me into renewing the year membership.  I was stoked that from now on, we will do Disneyland the right way — the Club 33 way with all of the cousins.  In my opinion, there really isn’t another way to go.  Scout was in heaven, because he is now finally thinking all of the rides are really fun.  And finally, Icka was just crazy.  The girl won’t sit still to save her life.  She is as good as gold, but will never stop — NEVER.

Here are some comparisons of the two kids:

The Spinning Apple Ride: (at least I think they’re apples)

The Dumbo Ride

A Bug’s Life:

It wasn’t until she got to ride on a horse all by herself on the carousel, that she was happy and content.  She laughed and smiled the whole time unless I came close to touching her.  The crack up is that I checked up on what Scout was doing at 9 months, and he was just beginning to crawl.  He most definitely was not riding the carousel all by himself.

Good thing that was the last ride of our year…..with both as happy as can be.