Yeah, I know. It’s been a while since we’ve had an Abby Jo update. So, for your baby coveting pleasure, here she is!

Abby Jo is now seven months old, and is perfectly perfect in every way. She is the most gorgeous, sweet, and full of personality baby you could wish for. She is crawling now, and making a baby gate very necessary. She is eating lots of new foods lately…basically anything soft and not likely to choke her, or whatever the other kids drop on the floor. She had her six month checkup last week, and she weighed sixteen pounds and was twenty-seven inches long. That put her in the 75th percentile for height and 25th percentile for weight.  Her favorite food is applesauce, she hates wearing socks or shoes, she loves Elijah, and she likes to stick her tongue out.

Abby has had lots of firsts over the last few months.

Her first trip to the beach.

Her first trip to the ER. She had the flu.

Her first pair of blue jeans. (I was more excited than she was.)

Her first experience with swinging.

Her first Fall!

In case you can’t tell, I’m head over heels for this girl!

August 28, 2009 was a big day for Chris. He graduated from Chaplain Basic Officer Leadership Course, which finished up his chaplain training, at the Chaplain School at Fort Jackson, SC. The kids and I were so proud of him. Here are some photos and videos from our day. (I was having trouble with my camera, and I didn’t get videos of the last two platoons, including Chris’, singing their division songs, nor a photo of Chris walking across the stage.)

Christopher before the ceremony.

This is me with Mrs. Diann Hart, a chaplain’s wife that I got to know a little bit during my time at the Spouses’ Seminar. She, along with her two daughters, babysat all four of our children during the banquet.

This is me with Mrs. Teresa Boone, the wife of the Commandant. I enjoyed getting to know her at the seminar.

The whole family.

This is us with Chris’ mom, Velvet.

Me and Christopher

Daddy and his boys.

Daddy and his girls.

Daddy and all of his young’uns.

I love you, Christopher, and I’m very proud of you. I’m so glad you’re home!

This is what happened when I left Elijah to feed Abby Jo her cereal.

Abby Jo may be my fourth baby, but she is just as much of a joy as my first was. To be quite honest, I’ve enjoyed her the most of all my babies. I think it’s cause she’s the baby. Like…the baby. I don’t worry about much with her. I’ve done it all before…a few times. She eats, she sleeps, she poops, she plays, she laughs. That’s just about it. I don’t freak out about the many variations of each of those activities.

Abby is delightful. She wakes me up every morning smiling and laughing at me. I am not a morning person, and, on the mornings that I have a hard time keepiung my eyes open, she tugs at my sleeve, talking to me, till I open my eyes enough to see her grinning her 100 watt smile at me. Everyone loves her. You can’t help it. On top of having the world’s best personality, she likes everyone, AND she’s beautiful.

While Abby has been pretty small all along, I haven’t freaked out about it like we did over Owen being small. I did realize, though, that she was pretty underweight, even though she was completely healthy and happy, so I started giving her baby food a little earlier than the other kids, when she was three and a half months old.

At her four month checkup, Abby Jo had gained about a pound. She was still pretty underweight, weighing in at eleven pounds two ounces. She’s tiny, but she’s awesome.

She can roll over both ways, and is reaching for people and things. She scoots around the floor now, and it won’t be long till she’s getting into trouble. She loves to watch her brothers and sister play. She loves to watch whatever is going on around her, and is a very happy baby. She is talking to anyone who will listen lately. Have I mentioned that she’s totally awesome?

I’ll leave you with a few photos I took yesterday. Besides being unbelievably adorable, you can really see the difference in her since we added the baby food calories to her diet. Her face has really filled out a lot.

Here’s a link to my Facebook album.

Since Chris has been gone to Fort Jackson since early July, the kids and I made the trip to South Carolina to see him this weekend. The drive wasn’t too bad. The kids were mostly good, and Abby never really cried…only fussed till her big sister put her paci in. I was making good time until Elijah needed an unplanned bathroom stop, and then all the kids had to go. Then, not longer after that stop, Kyra said, “Owen has something yucky on his shirt and pants.” I turned to look, and saw that Owen had thrown up on himself. I was on the phone with Chris at the time, and said, “Great! Owen threw up.” When he heard me say this, Owen immediately started crying. It was quite a ways to the next exit, and Owen fell asleep while I was driving. This prompted a phone discussion with Amy on whether or not it made me a bad mom if I kept on driving while Owen was covered in puke, since he went to sleep and it didn’t smell that bad. I drove a while, but then I started smelling it so I stopped and cleaned him up. (This retelling reminded me that his pukey clothes are still in the van tied up in a little, scented, blue, plastic bag. I think I’ll be tossing that!)

Besides that and a homicidal truck driver who tried to run me off the road, it was an uneventful trip. We made it to Fort Jackson, and got to see Daddy. He was out in the parking lot of the hotel waiting on us. The kids were ecstatic to see him, and I think he felt the same about seeing us. We really miss him when he’s not home!

We went to Outback right away, and then came back to the hotel. Chris had to stay up late working on homework for CHBOLC. He didn’t get in bed till after midnight, and then had to get up at four for PT.

On Friday, we hung around the hotel until he got off, and then went to Applebees and to Walmart to buy swim stuff for the kids since I didn’t bring theirs. Chris went to sleep pretty early since he only got four hours sleep. On Saturday, we went to the zoo here in Columbia which was pretty fun. I’ll have to add pictures of that later, since they’re all on Chris’ computer. We ate at Maurice’s BBQ, which was kind of interesting but good, and then came back to the hotel. Chris took the three big kids swimming, and Abby Jo and I took a long nap. That was about it for Saturday. Today, we went to IHOP for breakfast, and then went to the Sesquintennial State Park and then to see G-Force at the movies. After the movie, we went to Rita’s Frozen Custard, and enjoyed some Italian ices and frozen custard. It was absolutely delicious! Today is the only day I took photos on my iPhone, so I can add the pics from today. Enjoy!

Waiting for IHOP is not much fun…but worth it!

This is at the park, where it was crazy hot…like around 98, I think. This isn’t the best photo, but I added it because I love Abby Jo’s expression. She looks like, “You call this fun?!?”

Elijah at the park.

Hot, little Abby Jo after having her diaper changed on a picnic table. She was still smiling, even though she was sooo over the whole thing.

Kyra sitting pretty in the shade.

Chris at the park, with Elijah in the background.

At Rita’s, they promised me happiness. I love the sign in the upper right that tells you where to order happiness. They came through. We were happy!

Kyra got some sort of strawberry flavor of Italian ice.

Owen and I had passion fruit.

After everyone ate their individual treats, Daddy went and ordered us all a large chocolate vanilla twist custard to share. We were very excited!

Ready? Set? Go!!!