My brother and his wife had their baby earlier this month.  She is so sweet.  I forget how tiny they are when they're first born.  I always worry when holding other people's newborns that I'm going to hold them too tight or drop them.  I thought that feeling would go away after having kids of my own, but it doesn't.  Little H was pretty excited to see her new cousin, but she was disappointed that we had to give them back their dog when they came home from the hospital.  Apparently Atticus (the dog) is her "best friend that she ever had."  Poor puppy was probably so happy to get home.  Between Little H chasing him all around the house and his paralyzing fear of Dan, I think we completely wore him out.

             

The other day I caught Little H in front of the mirror admiring herself and making "snake food", which really just consists of filling the sink with bubbles.  When I asked what she was up to, she told me, "Mom, I'm the smartest girl in the whole world."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because, at church, I guessed that right now Jesus lives in heaven and I was right!  So that means I'm the smartest girl in the whole world."
We probably feed her ego way too much, but I really think she's amazing.  I guess everyone does that with their own kids.  Sometimes I really think she is a genius...and then there are other times when I catch her in the beginning stages of trying to fill up the laundry basket with water because she wants a swimming pool in the hall.

                                

And Buster is really getting around now.  He can stand up on his own, but he's still not sure about taking that first step without holding onto something.  He's nine months old today!  We took him to his doctor a couple weeks ago and he's finally withing the charts for height and weight (95 percentile), but his head is still not measuring in line with normal kids.  It's huge.  The doctor looked at the chart comparison and just sort of glossed over it when he saw how big it was.  I'm not too worried, though.  Little H always had a big head, too (literally and figuratively as evidenced by the above story).  They get it from their dad, who has never been able to comfortably wear baseball caps or find sunglasses that fit.  Buster has gotten three teeth and has been working hard on pushing through one more on the top for about three weeks now.  I don't think anyone in the house has slept well since the teething started.  In the meantime, we've come up with a new nickname for him — Cletus.  The resemblance is uncanny.