Hope you didn't get pinched!

Well, Tuesday was Sydni's 8 month birthday AND St. Patrick's Day! Needless to say, everyone in the Brown household was prepared and made sure be wearing green at all times. Dane had to hurry and get his green shirt on and fight off a pinch from Lane at the same time, though, which was pretty funny to watch. That's a very stressful thing for a 3 year old to have to do! Even trickier though, was his change into his PJ's that night. Every night, Dane tries to wear only Transformers pajamas (I know, that's a surprise!), but unfortunately, there is no green on any of them. So, while Lane tried to pinch him, I helped Dane come up with a fool-proof plan. We found a green Mardi Gras necklace and put it on with the pajamas, so he was safe and avoided the dreaded pinch all day! Thank goodness!

Sydni is now 8 months old, and she has stayed the sweet, smiley girl she's always been! She has continued to grow and develop so much this month, and I think she's gotten a lot longer and plumper, too. Her hair is starting to come in a lot more, and it looks like it's strawberry blonde at this point. Here are some of the highlights and achievements of her life this month:

• She can now effectively army crawl anywhere she wants to go.
• She can pull herself up and stand, and she is starting to try to take steps to move around while holding on.
• She is calm and quiet most of the time, but she has starting trying to say a few words (Da-Da, Ma, Hey)
• Her favorite game is to stand in front of the couch and slap the couch cushion. She loves for us to do it with her, too.
• She has starting testing her boundaries. I have a flower arrangement sitting next to the TV stand, and she crawls over to it, sits up, looks back at me, and reaches out for the flowers. I then say, "Eh, eh, eh, no, no, Sydni." And she just smiles, starts laughing and puts her hand down. I don't know how in the world I am ever going to be able to get on to her!
• She got to go to her first real tea party with all of the ladies at church last Saturday. She was so good and konked out toward the end of it.
• Her favorite foods are pears, green beans, corn bread, applesauce, sweet potatoes and bananas, but she will try just about anything.

That's about it for this month's report. Enjoy the pictures!

A Fun Afternoon Outside

In our backyard, we have a koi fish pond, that the people who lived here before us put in. Unfortunately, when we bought the house, the waterfall part didn't work properly due to a leak in the upper pool. Well, Lane really wants it to work right so that we can enjoy it, so for the last few weeks, it has been his pet project (literally, since it actually has seven of our pets in it - the fish!)

He finally finished getting it redone yesterday, except for adding some plants to it, so we have been spending a lot of time out in the backyard this week. It's also been such beautiful weather!

This afternoon, we were out sitting in the swing, waiting for Lane to get home from work, and I got some sweet shots of the kids. Most of them are of Sydni, since she was right beside me, but I did get Dane to take a break from playing and got a couple good ones of him, too.