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I am always taking pictures that I intend to post with a comment or two, but i’ve gotten way behind on my blogging, so here are some pictures starting on July 20th:

Movie night is always on Friday night.  Before wondering where to buy adjustable beds, we used to make beds on the playroom floor and let the children watch movies tll they fell asleep, but they started taking longer and longer to fall asleep so now we give them one movie after bedtime in the living room and we usually provide popcorn or some other snack:

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I’m still trying to figure out the best way to grocery shop.  I don’t want to go after bedtime because I have so many other things to do then (it’s my first time all day that I can do whatever I couldn’t get to while the kids were awake).  So I go during the day which means during the summer I have 5 kids to take with me.  Usually I put 3 kids in one cart and have two kids walk.  On this particular day I tried two carts.  I had Isaac push the second cart.  Only it didn’t work out as well as I had hoped.  Isaac could barely see over the top of the cart and he was terrible at pushing it through the store.  He would make wide turns at the end of isles and I had to grab his cart to stop him from running into other shoppers many times.  I soon felt silly and embarrassed about the spectacle of me with my two shopping carts and 5 children.  So now I’m back to one cart and looking forward to having a few less bodies on it when school starts back up.

On Tuesday we went to Kelsey Creek Park in Bellevue with a friend.  I think we arrived at the park around 1:00 and didn’t leave until almost 5:00—we had such a great time. 

The park is awesome for little kids.  Everything was small enough for Ila and the bathroom was right next to the playground (it’s the white building behind the second picture):

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Name:  Thomas Deane Cochran

Age: 6 months, 4 days

Weight: 16 lbs.     25th percentile

Length:   24 1/4 inches       5th percentile

Head Circumference:   18 inches     95th percentile

Last well check (4 month) comparison:

Age = + almost 2 months, weight = +2 lb 9 oz, length = +2 inches, head = +1/8 inch

I can’t remember why were were talking about it, but I told Charlotte about a time when I was a member of a secret club that did nice things for people (I think it was called the Merry Men and Women or some such and my older sister Barb was a founder, but I don’t really know how it was founded exactly and by who). 

Charlotte decided that she wanted to start a club called “The nice club” and do nice things for people.  She asked me for ideas for what their club could do.  I recommended picking up trash around the neighborhood, but I couldn’t come up with any other ideas that would actually be helpful to my neighbors and require no work from me.  The kids decided to give little gifts to people and gave away some of Thomas’s toys which I had to ask them to retrieve.  Then they decided to give away some of their own old and broken toys which, as you can imagine, were not cherished as they had hoped.

But I like the idea of them thinking of other people and doing nice things.  So I ended up committing to bake something for them to give away.  I gave them some paper, stickers and pens and had them make little cards that said “from the nice club” to attach to a treat:So the next day I made them the simplest, cheapest thing I could think of—little chocolate cupcakes with no frosting.  They were from a box mix and were not very tasty, but I didn’t have the time or energy to make them something better.  Here they are getting ready to deliver some treats:Do you have any fun ideas for The Nice Club which would require little work from their mother?

Now that I’m not sharing all my pictures on flickr, I am trying to share a few more here.  Here are some recent pictures:

I was having one of those days when Thomas wouldn’t let me put him down, so I had Zach hold him, only Thomas was only happy if he could see me. Zach’s solution was to lay on the couch and prop Thomas up so that he could see me over the top of the couch while I made dinner.  Every time he lowered Thomas down where he couldn’t see me, Thomas would cry:

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A gal in our ward is a member of a gleaning group where she gets free bread and sometimes when there’s too much bread, she lets the ward know that it’s up for grabs.  Here is the collection of bread we got one day:She happened to have the sweet dark bread that I like, so I got several loves of it.  Nicole was amused by the matching breads and pretended that they were family members (try to ignore the powdered donut on her face):

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Tomorrow my baby will be 6 months old.  A friend said to me not long ago that the days are long but the years are short.  I can’t believe he’s already halfway to his first birthday!The big news is that he is finally sleeping through the night. . .mostly.  I rearranged things a little and put his bed in Isaac’s room then we let Isaac sleep in our room so that Thomas didn’t wake him in the night.  I heard Thomas cry once at around 11:00 for about 15 min. and then I didn’t hear him the rest of the night–it was an amazing first night, although I did check to make sure he was still alive a few times.  The first time I made Isaac cry himself back to sleep, Isaac cried for two straight hours and it was pure torture.  (my doctor had said his record was 3 hrs. and to let him know if Isaac cried longer than that). I also started Thomas on solids which he loves.  Currently his favorite food seems to be green beans with rice cereal mixed in.  He is eating way more than Ila did which is probably a really good sign.  Today he ate 4 full jars with rice cereal mixed into each one an he nursed several times.  He also had one incredible diaper this morning before church. His sitting skills have improved since my last post.  Now he doesn’t fall over as often and he’s happier sitting up playing with toys for longer.  I’ve seen him start to fall and then regain his balance and I’ve seen him use his little stomach muscles to slow his fall. He’s such a happy sweet boy.  He loves to smile at everyone, even strangers.  He’s also still very cuddly and loving to his mommy.  Here is what happened when he found a paper on the counter near him:He has found his feet and has to take a taste of his toes every time I change him:He has outgrown the Bumbo, because he keeps doing this:So I have moved him to a booster seat:

I took Nicole in for a well-check on Wednesday.  I haven’t been really vigilant about well-checks for my older children since they’re yearly and they usually don’t gets shots with them anymore.  In a way I’m kind of glad I didn’t take her earlier, because our concern for her has been building and we wanted to talk to the doctor about getting a recommendation for a child psychologist who might be able to do some testing. 

Name:  Nicole Kate Cochran

Age:  4 years, 2 months, 3 weeks, and 5 days

Weight: 31.8 lbs          15th percentile

Length:   37 1/4 inches       5th percentile

Since Last year’s well check :  +3.9 lbs, + 3 inches

After detailing my concerns, the doctor took some blood to test for hormone levels (like Thyroid) and chromosomal disorders.  The main thing she said she was looking for on the chromosomal level is Turner’s syndrome.  We decided to wait for the results before determining if we want to try to get in with a child psychologist.Nicole was very mad during the blood draw.  She screamed and fought and had to be held down.  After filling 3 vials, she had a few minutes to calm down before getting three shots in her thighs (immunizations).  After I buckled her in the car to go home, she said “I had a fun time at the Doctor’s office.”  She was sad a few days later when those purple band aids fell off.

Gene Coulon Memorial Beach Park is one of our favorite local parks.  It has a large playground area with several play structures, a sandy beach area, and lots of picnic tables.  Here are some pictures from a recent trip there:

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On Tuesdays IKEA offers free kid’s meals, so we have lunch at IKEA every Tuesday.  I’ve considered abandoning the tradition a few times, but my kids really love it and it’s less than 3 miles away!

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Here are some pictures from Petrovitsky Park.  It’s the closest park to my house (that I know of).  We’ve been there a few times recently. 

Ila and Thomas:

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So, here’s another catch-up post.  We were able to have all of Zach’s siblings and his parents here for Isaac’s baptism.  Here are some of the pictures from their visit:

After a long day of traveling, Laresa and Thomas:Nicole wearing something ridiculous and sitting with Heidi:Nicole sharing part of her ridiculous outfit with her Grandma:Bethani and Ila (they became good friends a few days earlier at a BBQ on July 3rd):Story time with Grandma:Charlotte enjoyed making cookies with Dan:She also shared her Kindergarten memory book with him and apparently showed him some tricks at the little neighborhood park:Thomas drooled on his Grandma:I love these three pictures of Thomas with his Great-Grandma.  She adores him and made a bee-line for him when she came in:Thomas with his Grandpa:Those are all the pictures I got, other than the baptism ones and the family portrait that I already shared.  It was a short visit and a very busy weekend, but we were so happy that they all came to be with us for Isaac’s special day!

We picked up some lunch and took the kids to a park.Thomas seemed to like the swings:The park we went to had a splash pad.  It was a little cold, but the kids didn’t seem to mind:

We spent the day with some of our friends from our old Utah ward.  We started off the day with a trip to go pick blueberries, only we got there before they opened, so we went on a walk.

On our walk we saw a mother duck and her three little ducklings:  We also met some fishermen who showed us a catfish in a bag.  Ila kept going back to the stroller and climbing up the side of it to check on Thomas—I love how much she loves him:Each of the kids got a bucket to collect blueberries:Isaac decided that each layer of blueberries equaled a level.  I think he ended up at “level 4.”Nicole’s hair got caught on a branch:Nicole had a hard time with the concept of only picking the blue ones, even after she tasted a green one and didn’t like it:

At first Ila didn’t think she liked them, but amazingly she tried them again and decided they were great. She soon gave up collecting them in a bucket and just walked around looking for baby blueberries to eat:All our little blueberry pickers:The weather was perfectly cool and overcast.  It was so nice, that we spent a few hours there.

Having 5 kids who are 8 and under is rough and I’m not keeping up. 

Thomas is sweet and adorable and I love him to pieces.  Sometimes I think that he’s such a perfectly wonderful baby that I will be sad if I never get to experience all the wonderful things about having a baby again.  He lets me hug and cuddle him just about anytime I want.  He loves when I sing or talk to him.  There’s something about the way that he looks at me that just makes me melt.  He smiles all the time and hardly ever cries, but he has me wrapped around his little finger. 

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Ok Moms (or really anyone, you don’t have to be a mom), I need some advice.  There’s still a little more than a month of summer and the neighbor boys are driving me a little bit crazy.  Here’s the whole story including my concerns.

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Thomas loves the song “Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree” and he starts blinking even before we get to the part where the popcorn pops.  (The camera work is by Charlotte, you can hear her giggling all through it):

We were asked to have one family member volunteer during camp for at least one full day (9:00 AM-4:00 PM).  At first I told them that there was no way that I could do it since I have a nursing baby and Zach couldn’t take a day off for camp.  I felt a little guilty each time an email was sent out that said they were still short volunteers.

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I love hearing Ila pronounce everyone’s names: