The Taylor Spot

Tonight Tori made her way from a sitting position to a classic crawling position: palms on floor, knees on floor, feet pointing straight out behind. It was the first time I’ve seen her get to that point. She was focused on a toy I had put close in front of her and wasn’t thinking about what she was doing. But she didn’t quite crawl. Her knees just slipped backward and soon she was on her belly squealing with frustration as usual.

A few minutes later as I coaxed her to repeat that trick, she got unbalanced during the transition and fell forward onto her forehead. Since we were on the hardwood floor to give her some good traction, the fall gave her a smart rap and she wailed pitifully. But within a minute she was trying again. It’s fun to see her so motivated. Surely it won’t be long now before she gets mobile somehow!

I can hardly believe Drew is turning 8 years old. We had an early birthday party for him on Monday night while Grannie and Grandad were still in town. Uncle Victor, Stephen, and Jeremy came down to be with us, too.

Tori really took to Stephen.

Grandad bought Drew’s birthday candles, and he chose the gag kind that relight themselves. Drew is a big practical joker, and he took it in good spirits. You can see from the picture that Alex is quite concerned about the matter after Drew spent over 30 seconds puffing and blowing without being able to kill the candles.

My parents visited this weekend. We had them over for dinner at our new house!

Their camper was in our yard for the first of many times, we hope.

It’s October again. Happens every year, ready or not–Bethany’s annual meeting! Don’t read me wrong, it’s great to have a meeting, but how did it get to be October? Did we skip a month? Time is flying by. The meeting starts Friday night at 7:30. No dinner on Friday night because we have this local custom of staging a giant automobile exhibit every evening on I-285 around dinner time. This static display of idling vehicles is inappropriately named “rush hour,” and it pretty much kills the chances of mustering a crowd to eat.

We’re looking forward to having my parents with us through the weekend, starting tomorrow. So of course tonight Melissa is shopping at Publix until they kick her out. She got a late start, since Matt had an obstinate non-potty kind of evening that required two baths.

I cleaned up the kitchen and read The Hobbit to Drew and Alex. Bilbo just fought off the giant spiders, and the boys laid down jabbering about how many giant spiders they could have killed if they’d been there. Fun! Now I’m paying bills. Really.

Today Melissa taught school to Drew, Ben, and Alex. They are both using the same history curriculum, and were studying the same chapter on early French history. Hence the royal blue capes and fleur de lis! They weren’t fond of the wigs, but that was King Clovis’ style apparently.

After a late night, early morning, and long day, these were three tired boys. But they had a great time.

Drew and Alex got a pleasant surprise at church this morning: Ben was there! We had planned to have him come home with us tonight, but hadn’t told our boys yet. They’ve had a grand time, and are currently laying in bed and not going to sleep. Melissa will try to conduct school for the three of them tomorrow, Tori and Matt permitting. Ben’s house in Atlanta has now been sold, and movers are packing him away for good to Cincinnati. But just for today, it seemed like old times. Visits will be infrequent, but I think these guys will stay in touch.

On Saturday I took the three boys to an air show near us. It was a beautiful fall day. The air was dry and there was a stiff breeze to keep us cool despite the 80-degree temperature. Drew and Alex learned the difference between prop planes and jets. They prefer jets, except that Alex gets very anxious over the loud noise.

They were able to climb up and look into a few of the older planes with military histories. One had an open bomb-bay loaded with bomb shells, very impressive.

The highlight for them was winning an inflatable jet from Delta Airlines. They got it by spinning a prize wheel. The woman attending the wheel made sure everyone who spun it got his heart’s desire.

It was a fun time. We went home before the Blue Angels finale, but with inflatable jets in hand there were no complaints.

The house is dry now. It only rained once during framing, very early on. Now the shingles are on, just ahead of a rainy forecast! Everyone is getting excited now.

Uncle Matt was in town on business, and he took time out to come and see us. We had a wonderful time! Tori, who has just started being a “mama’s girl” actually took to Uncle Matt right away. At first, she was stingy with her smiles, but she ended up letting him hold her almost the whole time that we were at the new house, and she let him feed her.

The boys had so much fun playing their favorite board games and “The fght Game” (their favorite video game) with Uncle Matt.

It’s really a house now. We are trying to be sure the walls and doorways are as we like them before the framing crew wraps up and leaves. The boys are very excited, and so are we!