My favorite noise-making toy

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Originally uploaded by Sara's Pics

This Happy Stars piano has seen a lot of use since our oldest was a baby. You gotta love the dancing - and the music is pretty fun. I am normally not crazy about noise-making toys, but this one I actually like. I don't know if it's available any more.
http://snurl.com/happystars

A good pic to accompany the previous post

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Originally uploaded by Sara's Pics

Here's our little MsDetermined, ready to let go and start walking!

Will we have a walker soon?

My nearly-8-month-old, MsDetermined, is acting like she wants to be walking. She has been pulling herself up to stand for the last couple of weeks and stood by herself yesterday, a couple of times for a few seconds. It could still be a bit until she's taking steps by herself, but it seems a little soon!!!

Morning at the Hurds

So, the kids are so cute in their daddy's old t-shirts. I just thought I'd share some pics from this morning. The ugly flowered chair is ideal for reading together.

Blog redesign; come look!

I've redesigned the blog. Come look!

One other small change: I tried to make my kids more anonymous by replacing their names with pseudonyms. I've debated back and forth for a while, and finally decided that because my name is known and some of my other internet sites link to this one, I ought to take that one little precaution. The one thing I don't want to have happen is that some stranger can walk up to my daughter(s) and say, "Hi [firstname]. I'm a friend of your Mom's!" and engender some sort of trust. I'm sure it won't stop the very determined from finding out my kids' names, but at least they're a little more cloaked. It seems that the blogs where the parents' last names are not known may more safely use real names for their children. In an era of mommy-blogging and airing our dirty laundry online, it's really hard to say what we'll regret later, eh?

So... introducing LittleMum (because she acts like her little sisters' second mom, and also because she's a lot like me), NatureForce (I call her my little force of nature - she's my social daredevil), and MsDetermined (still getting to know the baby, but she definitely knows where she wants to go and exerts all effort to get there)!

I can't promise I'm going to be a more active blogger from now on, but I think part of my hesitancy before was because I hadn't yet decided about the privacy issue. I have, for now, and I think I'll be posting more frequently.

Some new silliness

MsDetermined is crawling all over the place, and very intrigued by the blanket hill on the floor. The hill contains her big sisters, of course.