Precious sweet 7 month old Archer.

Milestones: Nonstop rolling over, eating loads of foods, two new toothies on the bottom, getting up on all fours and then promptly freaking out, transitioning into his own bed for nighttime (no more swing!)

Loves: his hands (neverending fascination), Nickels, his brother, his daddy, the jumperoo

Hates: the carseat (off and on) until he hears his favorite music

The past couple of months have been endlessly delightful to me as the relationship between Jude and Archer has blossomed. A couple of weeks ago Simon was out of town and I was exhausted. I woke up at 8am (which is late for Archer) and promptly panicked. And then I could hear him in the living room with Jude. WHAT?! As it turned out, Jude had heard the baby wake up, gotten him out of his crib upstairs, carried him downstairs, played with him on the couch, made him a bottle, and once he got super fussy decided it was time to come get me as he had run out of tricks to keep Archer happy. I couldn’t believe it. He’d done everything but change his diaper. I was seriously so proud of him.

I love these pictures of my boys in the last few glorious days of summer here.  Remember when Nickels adopted a baby bunny? That tiny rabbit has continued to hang around in the backyard and is now a fullgrown cottontail bunny. As we were sitting out this particular night in the backyard, here comes the rabbit again, as he tends to do at this particular time of day, and Nickels spotted him and took off like a shot across the yard. MY BUNNYYYYYY COME HERE I WANT TO HUG YOU/EAT YOU. Naturally the rabbit freaked (um, did you know rabbits scream?) and the chihuahua then chased that rabbit all over the yard and into the high grass where he then proceeded to hunt it, Steve Irwin style.

I mean, at this point the rabbit absolutely has outgrown Nickels. He’s probably twice the size of him, and I don’t know what the silly dog thinks is going to happen if he actually catches him. But then! After some solid minutes snorting and huffing and rooting around in the bushes,  the rabbit leaped out of the grass straight at the baby who is watching it all in glee and we all screamed bloody murder because it really looked like the rabbit was going to hop right over us, with Nickels on his heels. Archer laughed and the rabbit barely got away through the gate by the skin of his teeth.

And so here we are in the golden hour of the day, in the busiest season of our lives and probably the happiest too. Full of love, babies, Harry Potter books, second grade homework, a pesky Chihuahua, and a runaway rabbit.