Learning to hold her bottle!!! Woo Hoo! This gives us a free hand to do something else! She isn't great yet and it moves all over the place, but it is a start. She is growing up so fast! She was doing it much better, but I couldn't get the picture snapped fast enough. 
She also "sees" her bottle coming and starts panting and opening her mouth. We would never tease her though....
Our little fairy princess is growing up. At our 4 month appointment she was 16 1/2 pounds and a little over 26 1/2 inches long. Let's just say she is big!!! She is greater than 97% on both stats - at least she is proportional. (Sorry non-math people for that big word!) She is really a good girlie, but is still not the happiest camper in the evening. We wear her out easily. With 2 older siblings we are on the move a lot - especially when Daddy is home to play at night!
She sleeps WONDERFULLY and should knock on wood since I just wrote that. She awakes bright and early between 6:30 - 7:30 to enjoy a frosty cold bottle since she is not willing to wait to warm it up. She takes at least 2 good naps that are about 1 1/2-2 hours long and several cat naps in the late afternoon/evening.
She loves to giggle and smile at her brother. She is finally okay with being held by Daddy - vacation really helped. Daddy won a couple of crying battles!!!
We aren't ready to feed her cereal since once you start you can't stop! So we will wait. She sits in her high chair for short amounts of time while we are working in the kitchen.
Here she is enjoying some toys! 
A more serious note - obviously agitated that brother keeps getting in the pictures of her and ruining them!
The kids have been obsessed with having a camp out in their room. Ally has been pretending "camp." Since she returned from EIBC. They knew we had a tent, but it has been in storage for awhile. I finally broke and got it out. I thought it would be COOL to play with it outdoors, but one fly flew in and that was the end of that. So up to their rooms it went. 
On Friday night we let them sleep in the tent. They insisted on closing the door. I was positive not much sleeping would get done. When we went to bed, Ally was half awake and sweating. She ended up climbing into her cool bed. Drew awoke at 5:30 wondering where his sister was. He climbed into his bed since he didn't want to sleep alone. Tana never complained that she had to sleep in her crib.
So I guess we aren't ready for the backyard and that is fine with me! I don't enjoy sleeping on the ground with all the fun noises.
When else do you get to put pi (3.14....) on a cake unless it is a baby shower for TWO math teachers! I hope Baby Hock comes out soon!
I get really cranky during supper time. Mom and Dad ALWAYS try and put me to sleep but that is NOT what I want. I want to be apart of the action right here on Daddy's knee. Soon I will starting eating whatever they are, but right now I am content to grab his plate and throw his spoon on the floor. I like my spot here since I get to sit next to Drew and see all the silly stuff he does. Mom is in plain view too!
I hope these two are good friends someday. Right now Ally seems to torture Tana by trying to carry her. Up down up down....Tana has some great faces. And to throw Daddy off, she sticks out her tongue.
She is our third child. We are more flexible about what happens with her. We have let her lick (or suck) on our ice cream. As you would all guess - she likes it. Last night while I was eating a drumstick, I put some in her mouth. When I took it out, she grabbed my hand and cone and brought it back to her mouth. she also likes to suck on the kids' icys.
I don't think that there was a day that got into the 90s in July so the water has been cold. We did get a swim pass for a month to go to the city pool. It was frustrating since it was so chilly so I didn't use it as much as I would have liked.
Ally took the swimming test and passed. Our little Allycat is growing up. She braved the board and does some great pencils and cannonballs and spinny thingys into the water. I think that our neighbor Chase was trying to talk her into the high dive which would have given me a heart attack. She is growing up and we are learning to let her do things on her own - which is HARD!
Before we headed to the reunion we stopped to see Jared and Allison's new house. It was a joy to see Makenna. She is just about 5 and a half months older than Tana. I am sure they will be trouble - I mean good friends someday. They are already trying to edge each other out for front stage.
I probably won't be allowed to babysit again for this little guy which will be so sad. He was so good especially with Ally & Drew wrestling beside him on the floor while he slept. Tana thought he was cool too.
This Kampman is going to play for the right team. I am pretty sure the next time my kids are with Abbie she will continue the Hawkeye influence. Cyclone is not in his mommy's vocabulary.
We headed to Ames a few weeks ago to my FAT FISH reunion. It was fun but a long drive to get to Ames. On the way, the kids were watching a movie. Drew claimed that he was awake, but you can obviously see differently.
My kids LOVE Ms. Kate! That might be an understatement. She does lots of fun stuff with them when they visit her like make dipped pretzels, play wii, make masks, braid hair, etc. They went to visit Ms. Kate while I ran a couple errands. Several days before the visit Ally planned on making her a special treat - easy bake cake. I know you would be thrilled to receive such a cake from Ally! We decided to make 2 since Mr. Jim would want one also.
Tana sat on the counter and watched while we make s'mores for them. She was thrilled to be apart of the action.
Thank you Ms. Kate for playing with us. Maybe if it gets warm we can go swimming too!
We haven't braved a STL baseball game yet with the kids yet. Mercy had a day at the park for the Kernals. We decided to take advantage of the cheap tickets to see how the kids would do. They were so excited. Three seconds after we sat down, Drew asked if we could get a snack.
Ally asked questions the WHOLE game and Jason answered them patiently as a daddy shared one of his most precious pasttimes. Nine years ago we wouldn't have watched a single game. Now we wouldn't miss one - even on vacation we checked the score occasionally on Jason's phone.
Now for the many faces of Tana - isn't she precious?
What do you think she is saying/thinking here?
And for snacks...Drew got a bag of peanuts and Ally got popcorn. Jason and I shared a pretzel. At the end of the game we decided to share a funnel cake. It was Ally & Drew's first one. We were hoping that they wouldn't like it. I am not sure what we were thinking - they liked it. NUTS!
Now I hate this picture. I don't know why I was making that face, but I put this picture in for the little girl trying to steal the funnel cake. Notice her hand? We start them young.
Enjoyable evening. Glad it wasn't too hot, but wish that we could have wore shorts.
It has not been a warm summer. I say that now and we will get pounded with HEAT for several weeks. I wish the kids could swim more, but I don't welcome the 95+ heat. Mid to upper 80s would be nice.
One Friday Jason and the kids got in. It wasn't extremely warm, but better than the previous days. I HAD to hold Tana so I couldn't get in. I did get some great videos of them jumping in.
Drew
I am not going to give my mom's age away, but she turned 50 the year Ally was born. (Ally is six.)
We enjoyed grilling with them and Linda's family before watching the Coralville fireworks. Tana slept through it all and did great! They were some of the best fireworks that I had seen in a long time.
One of my facebook friends said, "If you don't grill on the fourth of July, you must be deported." Oh how I love to grill - an American tradition.
On Friday night we gathered the troops to head to the park for a picnic - of McDonalds. What we didn't realize was that about a couple thousand other people had the same idea. Coralville was having a Fourth of July celebration and free concert in the park. Some guy that used to sing with STIXS was singing.
So we ate, played on the crazy catapillar and 
swung on the swings.
Ally had fun at camp. She won't tell all the stuff they did except this silly movie they made as a cabin. Here is a picture of her and her counselor Kara.
She is either going to love this in the future or hate it.
Today we got out the walker. It is quite dirty so it needs a good scrubbing but we couldn't resist letting Tana play. She is stronger than the other two. She is in this slightly before the others and doesn't need any blankets to keep her steady..JPG)
All of the kids loved the toys on this thing. Typically they stare down the fish and eat the butterfly. I wouldn't let her touch the butterfly yet because it looks as if we didn't wash it before we put it away from Drew..JPG)
Drew is ready to give her a ride. She was content and let him push her all over the kitchen.
Now you can't tell me that she looks like either of the other two kids. They are all within a week of 3 months at this picture in the same toy. All of them are unique and special and so CUTE!
