Sorry for the delay...

What can I say?  Life is busy :)  It's been a while since I posted, so here is an update for March!

Ella continues to get so big.  Since she can hold her head up so well now, I decided to get out the exersaucer.  I use a few blankets to keep her propped up in it and she absolutely loves it.

Ella in the exersaucer

She still likes to play on her play mat too.  She is spending a lot of time now working on her fine motor skills.  You can really see her work hard to move her hands slowly toward the toys and she can actually grasp and bring the toys toward her mouth which she is thrilled about!

Ella on her play mat

Ella's sleep actually got worse in March (and I didn't really think that was possible).  She is still not napping longer than 20-40 minutes at a time and waking often after she goes to sleep for the evening.  She is still sleeping with us out of necessity (yes, we've now created a monster -- more on that in a later post!).  But, there are a lot of things I love about sleeping with her, not the least of which is this adorable smile I get to wake up to each morning.  This smile ALMOST makes up for the kinks in my back/neck and also for the fact that I have not had more than 2 hours sleep without waking since she was born!

Ella in my bed

The boys are doing well also.  Jake is learning to write his name.  He comes home with papers almost every day and is improving a lot from day to day.  He's also in Soccer again at school.  He plays every Wednesday.  He really likes it - Wednesdays seem to be his favorite day.  Jake continues to be infatuated with his sister.  He wants to hug and kiss her all the time and show her everything he's playing with.  He also thinks he always knows the reason why she is crying.  He will say "I think she's hungry", or "She's sad because I have to go to school."

Jake Loves Ella

Trent finished his second season of basketball in March.  It was amazing to see the progress of his team from one year to the next.  This year, watching the games was so much different.  It actually felt like a real basketball game with the guys engaged for most of the game and actually playing good defense and offense.  He started to be a lot more aggressive with the ball this year and plays really good defense.  We were really proud of how much progress he has made.  We also learned this month that Trent is a natural at skiing.  He took one lesson, and is very comfortable on the mountain.  John said he would be skiing blue runs after just a few more trips!

Not the best pic, but one we actually managed to snap!