Well, what d'you know?

Surprise, surprise...guess what showed up last night? 

Zachary's first tooth, ha!

And reading over yesterday's post, I can't believe I left out a couple of his best little milestones:

He waves hello & bye-bye. 

We walked up to the school this morning to drop off Christopher and he waved bye-bye to anyone and everyone we passed. I love that.

He points. 

This is new as of just a few days ago. We're working on a few basic baby signs now...now that he's got pointing down, I'm sure it won't be long 'til he's signing.

He loves dogs and cars.
Such a boy... He will spot a dog way out ahead of us along our walks and instantly perk up and say "Ooooooooh! Ooooooh!" And better yet if he gets to touch the dog. He has a stuffed dog that he rolls all over and snuggles with at home--sometime soon I hope to catch it on video, it's that cute.
One day while walking through the Costco parking lot, he started to perk up and say "Oooo!" just like he does when he spots a dog so I looked around to see what he was staring at. I couldn't see a dog or animal of any kind anywhere...that's when I realized he was excited about the moving cars, ha! He wasn't interested in the parked cars, but each car that rolled past us was a big event. So funny.

Mr. Blue Eyes

So you may or may not have noticed that I haven't been doing the weekly photo shoot of Zachary anymore. So much for that...I tried but then we had that big huge summer trip and I lost track of everything then. No matter...I don't think he changes as much from week to week anymore anyway. 

So now he's a big 9 month old...and a lot has happened since last I wrote about him.

While Ellen was here visiting over the summer, he started crawling and pulling up on everything.

That was fine and dandy until it interfered with his sleep--he treated me to 2 solid weeks of uninterrupted sleep ALL night before the new pulling up trick began, in which he pulled himself up at all hours of the night and couldn't get himself back down. Great fun.

He's doing better now in the sleep dept again but he has his moments still.

He babbles all day in the cutest way. He's a slobbery mess (plus a nasty runny nose too lately).

No teeth yet, but that bottom gum looks like there's a tooth on its way (and the uncharacteristic crankiness could be another MAJOR clue.)

He's a crazy little Mama's boy...the separation anxiety has set in, and that would be manageable if it weren't for the overly clingy, needy 3 year old who picks the worst possible moments to display his wild maniac side...don't be surprised to spot me trying to balance screaming boys on both hips while pushing a loaded cart of groceries and trying to beat the clock before having to pick up the older boys from school/gym/scouts/whatever... Life is really fun at times. (Have I mentioned how much I hate '3's? SO much worse than the so-called "terrible 2s"!) Good thing these little guys are cute.

School's in Session!

The first day of school is always bittersweet for me!

I tried to get this year off to a good start with a sweet start to their first day:

We were all ready SUPER early that morning. Too early, but at least we had plenty of time for pics.

Three handsome boys! Anthony's in 5th, Christopher's in K, & Aaron's in 3rd.

I love the way Anthony & Aaron are both doing the embarrassed-Mom-stop-taking-our-photos-faces while Christopher is totally cheesing it up!

We got there nice & early so I'd have time to walk each one to his class. We started with Anthony, who's got a great teacher this year.

Aaron was next in his 3rd grade class with his teacher who had Anthony a couple years ago in her class. Aaron was so excited to get her too.

And I saved Christopher for last, dropping him off for his very first day ever, thinking he might need me to linger around for a bit...but he could've cared less. He was rarin' to go and dove right in.

I started feeling nostalgic & thought it'd be fun to see a little side-by-side of first days...

And look at my Anthony! I can NOT believe he's in 5th grade this year...his last year as a little elementary school kid, cry! Look at that cute little guy in kindergarten...where did the time go???

(And notice the jacket he's wearing...that's a favorite around here--all 3 boys are wearing it in pics above.)

Now look at all 3 when they started kindergarten:

 Every kindergarten year, we wait for the bus to bring the kindergarteners home...here it comes up the hill:

 And my little kindergarten boys hopping off the bus on their first days:

 Fun stuff. Why can't they stay cute little kindergarteners forever though? At least I have 2 more future kindergarteners to look forward to. : )

Bye-Bye Baseball....

This makes me so sad. And I didn't take advantage of it as much as I could have while it was here, and that makes me sad too. 

Portland had a AAA baseball team, the Portland Beavers and they booted them out. For soccer, boo. I like soccer, but I like baseball better. I LOVE baseball. The baseball team here had shared a stadium with a soccer team. The city politicians decided they wanted a major league soccer team here instead and so now baseball had to go (despite the support of the local community in favor of baseball)--the team tried to get a new stadium locally but no one stepped up and now the team is headed off to San Diego. 

My neighbor down the street happens to be a huge baseball fan and had season tickets to the Portland Beavers games. He had tickets to the Beavers' very LAST baseball game in Portland on Labor Day and offered them up to the neighborhood. I wanted to go so badly but George had already planned to spend the day working on the bathroom floor (remember that project from FOREVER ago? Yeah, still not done.) so he wasn't going to be able to come and that made me a bit nervous to take all the boys myself...but I talked to the neighbor in the morning and still no one had taken the tickets, so I did it. I took the tickets and took my boys to the last baseball game in Portland (while George worked hard at home.) I had enough tickets to invite Katie & Scott to join us.

Scott, Katie & the boys

Here is our neighbor Sophie--it was her dad who so kindly shared his tickets with us. They had seats elsewhere (I'm sure they got the best seats ever!) Sophie came over to say hi...she helps me with Zachary all the time, she's the best!

(Wow, I do have a lot of boys.)

Zachary's first baseball game! 

I grew up with baseball, going to Orioles games with my dad first to old Memorial Stadium, then snazzy Camden Yards...and regularly saw AAA Frederick Keys games...my brothers played and I loved playing with the neighborhood kids--I can remember almost entire summers spending day after day playing baseball in our huge backyard with all the neighbor kids. It makes me a little sad that my boys don't have that...they've played a little but they just haven't developed a love of the game like I did. 

At the end of the game (Beavers won!!!) they dug up home plate and did a short little ceremony saying goodbye to the team and to Portland. 

I couldn't think of a better way to wrap up the summer on Labor Day than with a baseball game!

Bye-Bye Beavers!

The Last of Sunset Bay

So, remember when we went to view the seals (on the trip it was the day before...I know, it's taking forever to finish with this)?

Well we finally got to SEE all those noisy seal lions: 

They were everywhere! We only wish we'd thought to bring along binoculars for a better view.

 After enjoying the sea lions, we went back & hit the beach at Sunset Bay...finally it lived up to the promise of its name! Such a great little protected cove there. The waves are very gentle and it's pretty shallow all the way out. 

Zachary played so happily in the sand that I was able to sit & read a book...such luxury!

 He played and played and played until he crawled up to me, whimpering...I fed him and he went right to sleep and napped on the beach. That alone made the day perfect. : )

The other boys were hard at work with various sand projects.

Christopher was so proud of his sand creation.

The tide was coming in--the boys gave it their best shot but eventually the tide won the battle.

After 2 nights at Sunset Bay, we bid adieu to our yurt and came home a day early. It wasn't our greatest yurt experience ever--it wasn't the yurt's fault though. Zachary was the problem. He wasn't sleeping well, and well...if the baby ain't happy, then Mama ain't happy, and then of course nobody's happy.

Sunset Bay...Shore Acres

So now it's day 2 of our adventure at Sunset Bay...and you can see for yourself what fabulous improvement we had in the weather department! It was gorgeous that 2nd day--we were SO glad we stuck it through that miserable 1st day.

Just down the road from Sunset Bay is Shore Acres Park, which was a mansion owned by some great rich man around the turn of the century (1900, not 2000) and eventually it became a state park and its beautiful gardens are still maintained there.

The views of the coast were simply amazing.

The geology of this part of the coast had me fascinated...clearly all this area had been under water recently but it was way too high up the cliff to be affected by the tides... I'd love to go back with a geologist sometime and get some professional insight into it. I'm guessing it is just evidence of earthquake activity or plate tectonics or whatever.

There's a great big cliff in front of the boys that you can't see...it makes me nervous still to just look at this photo, knowing the drop-off on the other side.

See, now look at the geology there...those round boulder-ish things embedded in the eroded sandstone...I think it's cool anyway.

We stayed in this area for quite awhile...so fun to explore!

I dare you to look at this photo and not smile. Can you do it? We sure can't.

Now, entering the gardens...

Behold!

Les fleurs!

Looks like a scene out of a Maxfield Parrish painting.

Waterlilies...

The boys were fascinated with those little rowboat bugs (whatever they're called...)

This cove here SO reminded us of Hawaii, only Pacific NW style.