The Parrillo Family

Thomas Francis - aka Frankie, aka The Topper turned six months old this month.  He's been in our lives for half of a year.  And he's grown so much.  He's now sitting up, spending some time in a high chair at meal time and enjoying lots of 'tummy time'.  He is adored by his big sisters and even Maisy has warmed up to having him around the house.   He is such a big boy and is growing incredibly fast.  He is easy-going and is *such* a Momma's boy! For comparison's sake, here's the post that shows Eloise at six months .  And here's photos of SD at six months old .  Look at all that hair?!?!

Eloise has been taking art classes for almost a year and now her first piece is on display at a gallery at a local coffee shop in Elmhurst.  She was so proud to show it off! She's come a long way from her first days as an artist.   Here's a post from two years ago where Ellie showed off her art .  And here's a painting from back in 2011 when she was just getting started.

Back when she was just shy of her one year birthday, Sadie was doing her 'first joke'.   You can read that post and watch that video on the blog here . Well...fast-forward a few years and she's still at it - being a jokester. Here's a video of Nat working with her on how to pull off a 'knock-knock' joke.  Not sure she *quite* gets the idea.  But...she sure does crack herself up! ( For those of you reading this in your email and can't see the video below, you can click here to watch the video . )

What, could, SD have possibly whispered to Frankie to prompt that reaction/look?!? It is sweet, small moments between the three of them like this that make me (and Nat) so happy. To: Ellie, Sadie, Frankie:    You are all amazing, special, wonderful kids.  We're so happy to see you grow up and grow closer as siblings.  Can't wait for even more of these moments.   Love you more , Momma and Dadoo

A few weeks back, we packed up all three kids and took them with us to cast their ballots in the local elections. This is Topper's 2nd time at the polls, but the girls are old-hands at this voting stuff already. Here's a post from last November when they all helped us vote . I snapped this photo of Nat and Frankie as she cast her ballot.  He was trying to turn around and check out who she was voting for! The election judges hand out dry-erase ballots for kids to fill out and Ellie made her selections on such important matters as who her favorite princess is and what is better....hotdogs or pizza! We've been to the polls quite a bit on this blog.  Check out some of the history below: Here's a picture of the girls from last March where we voted in the Primary . And... here's the girls back in 2012 voting for the President . When we had *just* Ellie, we took her to vote in 2010 . And here's the first time she voted with us when she was just ...

All three kids lent a hand at blowing out my 'breakfast candle' in the morning at our house... ...And...Ellie and SD gave me some help blowing out the candles on the cake Nat made at Barnaby's at night... Can't be better bookend birthday moments than those, right?!?

2015 was the first Easter season as a family of five for us Parrillos.  Topper was right in there with his sisters as you can see from the photo above with all three kids wearing their bunny ears.   Easter for us started about a week ago when we went to Ellie's school for an egg hunt.  Ellie and Sadie both got involved and we were able to spend some time with Ellie's teacher (Mrs. Estes - who Eloise just absolutely adores! and some of her classmates.  See the animated photo below for a peek at the girls and some of Ellie's classmates.   Then later in the week, the girls spent some time coloring their own eggs.  We blew some out and hard-boiled some and both the girls made their favorite color (For Ellie it was all pink all the time.  For SD, she went with mostly blues!) The Easter season culminated as it always does on Easter.  After opening our own baskets and going to Church in town, we went down to my sister's house (down...

Our little guy is getting so very big.  In fact, Topper/Frankie can fit into the bucket swing out on our swingset in back. This isn't the first time we've posted about this swing.   Here's a post showing the girls on their new 'standing swing' from last summer .  And going back even further, here's a 1.5 year old Ellie swinging on her own in a video from 2011 . But...back to Frankie and his first time on the swing milestone.  Did he like it?  I'll let you judge based on his face in the video below. If you're reading this in your email and can't see the video below, click here to watch the video on YouTube .