Dr.?

This came in the mail yesterday.  I realize it's a little premature and he won't really be a Dr. for another 7 months, but it gave me chills nonetheless!!  DR. Joseph Dougherty already coming to our mailbox.  That's how close we are!!  Yikes.

Big Boy

Today I took Eli to his 9-month well child appointment.  The 9-monther is always a nice appointment because there are no shots this time around.  We did get some good stats though:

Height - 30 inches - 90%ile
Weight - 19 1/2 lb. - 25%ile

Head - 18 1/8 inches - 65%ile

(Looks like he got the Witt tall, skinny genes from my mom's side of the family.)

Crawling: check
Push to stand: check
Babbling: check
Eating solids: check
Drinking from sippy: yeah right
Sleeping through the night: Ehh...sometimes...
Into anything and everything: check, check, check!!

Well, Eli, you've got a clean bill of health.  Way to go!

Jake the Dragon

I found this dragon costume for Jake at Old Navy for $15 the other day.  And it even comes with the legs, too!  I know, I was really impressed with myself as well.  Ever since I brought it home, Jake has been obsessed with it.  He literally wears it around the house 24/7.  Actually, make that 22/7 because we do make him take it off for meals and baths.  But yeah, you get the picture.  And I thought he would only get to use it on Halloween!  Who am I kidding, I loved playing dress-up as a kid, too.  Ok, I still love it...

In other news, poor Eli has been sick lately.  It makes for a very boogery, fussy, whiny baby, but even then he is just about the cutest thing ever with his two-toothed grin.  Can you tell I'm a mom??

Family Photos

We finally got family pictures taken this past week by my good friend Kate.  I think she did a fantastic job!  I was so excited when I got them home that the first thing I did was scope out the house for places to put up pictures.

My one request was that we took pictures somewhere in a cornfield.  I wanted something that screamed "Iowa" since this is our last year here, and nothing says it quite like giant corn!    

So now for all of you who have been begging for family pictures (you know who you are) they will be coming your way soon!  Thanks again, kate elisabeth, the pictures turned out great!  

They built it, and we came!

With this being our last year in Iowa, we want to make sure that we do everything that we have said in years past that we should do but haven't yet gotten around to. This weekend we checked another item off our Iowa "to do" list (it isn't very long) when we went to the actual Field of Dreams. We hit up Dyersville to check out the iconic movie set, and it did not disappoint!

Just like you would expect, the baseball diamond and farmhouse were surrounded by cornfields in the Middle of Nowhere, IA.

We got out our baseballs, bats, and mitts and did what we do best: play!

Eli spent the majority of his time chewing on his baseball bat. He was as content as could be just chilling in the middle of the baseball diamond.

Hmmm... what's this?

I better taste it to make sure it's ok.

Yeah, this is some good stuff.

Of course, it wouldn't be a true trip to the Field of Dreams unless we took some time to disappear into the corn.

The Field of Dreams was a surprisingly peaceful place. The weather was perfect, the grass was the greenest I've ever seen, and I just let my boys run wild and be in their element. It was the perfect way to spend a beautiful autumn day in Iowa.

As they say in the movie,

"Is this heaven?"

"No, it's Iowa."

We miss them already

This past week we had the most wonderful visit from my sister Bethany, my sister-in-law Abby, and her two kids Isaac and Kate. They drove all the way from Ohio just to see us for a few days, and we had such a great time with them. I'm not sure who had more fun, the adults or the kids! Abby's two kids are almost the exact same age as my two kids, so they always have a blast when they're together, especially Jake and Isaac.

While they were here, we tried to make the most of our time together. We went to Joseph's softball game in which he claims to have hit a home-run on the very first pitch, which we obviously missed because we're always late with all these kids we have to get ready. The jury is still out on whether or not he actually did.

Softball games are always fun for us to go to because the kids always have a ball (get it?) just running around. It's even more fun when you have your cousin to throw dirt around with.

Did I mention Eli is a crawling maniac these days? He is getting so fast I can barely keep up with him! For the most part he was content just crawling around the tables. I shudder to think what he may have gotten a hold of on the ground underneath those tables, but he sure was happy!

Bath time became a necessity after some serious dirt throwing:

We also went apple picking while they were all in town! I love apple picking. We used to go often when I was a kid and it always bring back fun memories.

A tractor pulled us out to the orchards:

There was a plethora of apples to choose from:

The kids were so excited about the apples that they ran as fast as they could toward the trees:

They were fun to pick:

And even more fun to eat:

As usual, Eli enjoyed it all from his stroller. He's such a content little baby:

Then afterwards, Aunt Abby treated everyone to apple cider and warm donuts. YUM!!

There were also lots of games that were played, books that were read, parks that were run around in, and toys that were used. And now they're gone. *Sigh* We loved having them around and can't wait until Christmas when we'll all be together again. Have I mentioned that I love family visits??