The picture above was taken at the Tagalong where we rented the Pontoon boat. We took a similar picture last year in the same spot. I can’t believe how much has changed in one year! I can only imagine what next year will be like..
Wow, what a whirlwind month! I think we can pick up from the last post with the SURPRISE PARTY I threw Jason for his 30th Birthday! What a relief it was to get that done - planning was incredibly frustrating, but I think I managed to pull off a fun night at Elsie’s. Thanks to everyone who was able to show up!
Speaking of birthdays, we also had a big birthday celebration at my parent’s house for a bunch of may/june birthdays (my cousin’s daughters turned 21, my Dad celebrated a birthday, my Aunty Pat, and Jason). It was a gorgeous day weather-wise and we all had a fun time out on the patio! There are TONS of pics in the linked album, but here’s a few of my favorites:
Then, the end of June rolled around. We traveled out to Lake Mills, WI to visit some of my Mom’s cousins, and to go to a memorial service for Great Aunt Gloria, who passed away in December. She was an incredible woman, and left behind an amazing family. While we were out that way, Jason’s Dad drove in to see us and he and Jason spent some quality time together going to some historic sites in the area (Indian burial grounds, and stuff about a pyramid in the middle of Rock Lake out there). Our friends Jeremy and Cara (and JJ!) also drove all the way out from Milwaukee to see us! It was so nice to see them again, and meet their little boy. We live far enough apart that we don’t get to see each other often enough, and now they are moving to Vermont next month so we won’t get to see them again for quite some time. Cara was 9 months pregnant at the time, and has since given birth to a beautiful little girl!
We started off July with a bang as Jason and I (along with Greg, Dave, Shawn, and Andy) went to the TOOL concert at Xcel Energy Center. That was a great night, and amazingly I stayed awake through the next day at work, which was also my last day before our 1-week CABIN VACATION! Always the highlight of my summer! We had a blast going swimming at the beach club, swinging on the swing Grandpa hung up off the deck, renting a pontoon boat, and playing a million card games each night after the girls went to sleep. Lily, Claire, and Abby got to sleep in the same room (on the same air mattress!) together this year, which was certainly interesting! They actually did pretty well at night time - the twins especially would conk out pretty quickly and we would hear Lily over the monitor, talking and singing to herself. We did overhear some amusing things when she would pretend to talk to her cousins even though they were asleep! “You’re Claire, and You’re Claire! Except one of you is Abby…” Lily and Claire especially like to do their own rendition of “Under the Sea” from the little mermaid, which is adorable beyond words. We did learn, however, that nap times would just NOT happen if they shared a room so we had to split them up during the day, which worked out pretty well.
That brings us to this weekend, which has been much more laid-back than our previous few weekends. We had the Beaverson’s over for dinner on Friday night, which was fun! Other than that we’ve just been relaxing and getting things done around the house, and trying to deal with a crabby 2-year-old who is FINALLY breaking through her 2-year molars.
Sorry about the lateness of this post, but it took me 4 days to write this AS IS! There are TONS and TONS and TONS of pics and every one of the (FOUR!) albums I posted, so please feel free to browse through those! Hope everyone is enjoying their summer, and can we please make time slow down a little bit now?!?
First of all, thanks Shannon and Alix for the anniversary wishes! We didn’t do anything too exciting. We worked, then picked up Lily and went to a parent meet-up for her daycare, to meet the other parents and kids. Then we ate at Wendy’s with a co-worker and her son before they went to kung fu. Guess the romance is truly gone! (Just Kidding!)
We had a FABULOUS vacation at the cabin! The cabin belongs to my Aunt, and is near Birchwood, WI. It was Jason, Lily, and I, plus Grandma and Grandpa (my parents), Uncle Greggy, Auntie Lisa and Uncle Ryan, Cousins Claire and Abby, and of course my Aunt Pat for just over a week. It was a little tough planning things around the napping schedules and whatnot for three one-and-a-half year olds, but we managed to have plenty of fun!
We left on Friday, July 3rd, and Lily was REALLY good and napped for almost the entire 2.5 hour drive (slightly longer than that because of bad traffic). We arrived at the same time as Lisa and Ryan, and just a few minutes after Grandpa and Greg (Grandma and Aunt Pat came up the day before), so that was about perfect. As soon as we got our things unpacked and settled a bit, we all went out to eat at a nearby restaurant (Bluegill?). The food was good, but they didn’t take reservations or call-ahead seating, and it took them FOREVER to seat us, even though they had the space. Oh well, we were on vacation - who cares about the time, right? Anyway, the dinner did take quite a long time but all three kids did pretty well. A little bit of fussiness, but it had been a long day for them so they did really well.
Ok, after that, my timeline is going to get a little messed up. I was on vacation, and it was hard to keep the days straight, so I don’t remember exactly what we did and when, but I’ll try to hit the highlights for you. We set up a little plastic swimming pool on the deck, and had the girls do some finger painting (which they weren’t interested in because the draw of the pool was too strong), and then some “swimming”. The twins didn’t seem to care too much about the little pool, but Lily thought it was fun. She really liked it the MOST, though, the rest of the week when it was empty and she could crawl in and out of it and pull the pool all around the deck. Who knows? It kept her busy!
There is a beach club near the cabin, with a pool (and a lake), and a little park-type area. They had a play structure in the park area, but it was mostly intended for slightly older kids. The kids did go on the swings a couple of times, and I thought it was hilarious watching Lily on the slide. The slide is fairly tall, and much faster than the ones she’s used to. She would slide down and hit the sand at the bottom, and have so much momentum that she’d fly forward onto her hands and knees. For the most part, she’d just brush off the sand and do it again! But look at these next two pictures to see her face as she was going down the slide -
- isn’t that funny? Anyway, I believe it was Monday or Tuesday before we took the girls down to the beach club to use the pool, because it was just too crowded before then. They seemed to have a pretty good time! Claire especially seemed to love being held as far away from your body as you could reach and kicking around, to feel as if she were swimming by herself. Lily kept “forgetting” that she was in water, and wanting us to put her down so she could play on her own, but that was not happening! They also all spent some time in these inflatable boat things with their legs dangling in the water. I bet by next year they’ll be begging us to go to the pool and we won’t be able to get them out!
On Wednesday, I had kind of a rough day. Fairly early in the morning, I went to close our bedroom door, not knowing that Abby had snuck behind me. She had her hand near the hinge of the door and was grabbing on to it, and when I tried to close the door, I ended up pinching her fingers pretty good. She cried out and I scooped her up and kept apologizing, then let her Mommy cuddle the pain away. I’ll tell you, I know it was an accident but I felt SO BAD that I cried more than she did. Lisa put some ice on the fingers, and they did look much better just an hour or so later - and almost completely normal the next day. However, I STILL feel bad! That same day, Lily was sitting on my lap and went to jump down (forwards, with no hands or anything) and I grabbed her arm to keep her from falling. It ended up knocking her a little off-balance and she bumped her cheek on the wood part on the front of the chair and she got a bruise on her cheek. She didn’t even want to go to Mommy for comfort - she went to Auntie Lisa! Needless to say, I was feeling pretty guilty that day, but I know they were both accidents and everyone is just fine.
This is out of order, but two different nights “Uncle Ryan” had us gather on the deck and lit some sparklers and set off some fireworks he bought. So, we had our own personal fireworks show. The girls did pretty good with them, except for the loud noises they weren’t too fond of. Otherwise, they liked the lights and were clapping right along with the adults (and Lily chanting “fireworks! fireworks!”).
On Thursday, we rented a pontoon boat for the morning and took it out on the lake. It was nice to have access to such a large boat that we could all go on at the same time! The babies were tired, and got a little fussy about an hour into the ride, but it ended up working out ok. We brought a pack-and-play onto the boat, and Claire even took a nap on-board! Grandpa even let one of the twins help drive (I want to guess this is Abby, but I can’t tell for sure in this picture - Lisa??) and you can tell how exciting that is by the looks on their faces!
Lily had a pretty good time, but I think she was starting to get pretty bored about mid-way through the ride. She ended up eating almost her entire body weight in crackers (slight exaggeration) and getting into just about everything she could reach. She even grabbed the sunglasses off my head and tried to throw them overboard! Luckily they landed on the boat and I was able to retrieve them.
Those are pretty much the highlights of the trip. It was a LOT of fun, and I didn’t want to come back home. The only other funny thing I can think of was our last night up there we ended up going out to eat again and took the recommendation of the guy doing construction on the cabin and went to “Sportsmans Lodge”. If you guessed that’s just a BAR, you’d be correct! We weren’t quite expecting what we walked into, and I completely forgot that smoking isn’t banned in WI as much as it is in MN. The place was smokey, and pretty seedy. They had one highchair, no booster seats, no milk, no kids menus, no covers for their cups, and they brought us “bar straws” when we asked for a straw for Lily. It was quite an experience, but needless to say, I don’t think we’ll be eating there again!
Finally, before we left I was able to capture Lily on video, helping me read “The Cat in the Hat” by Dr. Seuss. She’s been doing this with so many of her books lately - she’ll pick it up and flip to a certain page and say some word or some phrase that’s on that page. I don’t know how the heck she can memorize which PAGE the words belong to, but it just blows me away! So, about a month ago I noticed her flipping through this book, saying certain words, and she was getting them on the right pages. So the next time I read it to her, I started pausing at the end of a sentence instead of finishing it, and she would finish the sentence. She completely blew me away with how MUCH of the book she knew. She wasn’t completely cooperative in this particular instance, but it’s the only thing I’ve been able to get on video so far! She can normally keep going and finish the ENTIRE book - it’s completely amazing to me!
We’re back! Our trip to Virginia was fantastic, and Lily was very, very good. Well, I did say I wouldn’t be surprised if Lily made a major development or two while we were gone, didn’t I? It’s not exactly the development I was expecting, but while we were in VA, Lily learned how to drive (pictured above)! We figured what better time for starting drivers ed than in a rental car in a totally different state? Ok, obviously I’m just kidding! I did expect that she might start to crawl, but she hasn’t done that yet. Instead, she did ALL of the following IN THE LAST WEEK (holy cow):
1. learn to feed herself her own bottle - including lifting it up when she starts to “suck air”
2. learn to sit herself up (going from laying down to sitting up without help)
3. PULL TO A STAND - her new favorite thing to do and she does it CONSTANTLY
4. After standing, hold onto the side of something (crib rail, etc) and WALK alongside it.
5. I honestly think she’s started trying to say some words (more on this later in the post)
Ok, WOW. Seriously if she doesn’t slow down I really WILL be updating talking about driver’s ed! It seems almost as if she has LESS interest in crawling then ever before. She can get on her hands and knees and rock back and forth (and scoot backwards) but she whines about it the whole time. She really just wants to stand up and take steps.. I really wonder if she might not skip the crawling stage entirely. As for saying words - she’s been able to say “mama” and “dada” for a few months, but it always SEEMED like just kind of babbling - like she didn’t know it was referring to Jason or I. The other day we noticed when Gibson walked in front of her that she said something that kind of sounds like “goo-gee”, but (how to explain this) the “tone” or pattern (?) of the word really sounded like “kitty”. Jason and I laughed and said “oh, look - she said kitty!” just totally kidding around of course. The weird thing is that I’ve now heard her make that EXACT same sound at least 2 more times when Gibson catches her eye, and I really wonder if she IS saying “kitty”? Maybe she can say “mama” and “dada” and mean it, too - but how do you know if she understands it? BABIES ARE SO UNCLEAR! heh
Ok, now about the trip! The flight went REALLY well - Lily hardly cried, slept quite a bit of the time, and managed to charm everyone in the seats around us. We just loved seeing Auntie Chandra, Uncle Aaron, and Cousins Akasha and Aria! The girls have grown so much and they’ve got such adorable personalities! They were both Lily’s little helpers all week long. We did far too much to post details about every day, so I’ll just pretty much summarize the highlights. One day we took the metro into DC and went to the International Spy Museum and out to dinner. Two times we went swimming in this cool pool at the aquatic center near Chandra and Aaron’s house. Another day, Jason, Lily, and I took the metro into DC again and visited the washington monument, the reflecting pool, and the lincoln memorial (we walked all up and down “the mall”). Lily sat out on their patio and “painted” with yogurt, which she liked, and we drove on “Skyline Drive” and had a picnic lunch in the Appalachian Mountains. Over all, we just had a GREAT time seeing everybody again and just visiting until late into the night.
Immediately when we got back into town we lowered Lily’s crib mattress to it’s lowest setting. We are planning on spending some time this week buying stuff to help baby-proof the house and will hopefully set it all up this weekend. I keep telling Jason that Lily is not going to wait for us to get our act together - she could start really moving ANY day and I think it’s going to go VERY quickly. We have more excitement this week as Uncle Shawn, Aunt Shannon, and Cousins Arian, Tali, and Eanna (I believe) are all going to be in town W-F because Shannon has a conference to go to for work. Thursday is also Grandma’s birthday, and Saturday is MY birthday. NEXT Saturday (the 23rd) is Auntie Lisa’s BIG 3-0 birthday, too! She’s looking for suggestions on how to celebrate (or mourn), so head over to Lambertville if you have any suggestions for her!
Finally, I’ll leave you with this cute Lily-video! This was just before we lowered her crib, and it’s not a great video because it doesn’t really show you what she can do - but she did it ALL herself. She pulled herself up to standing and is holding onto the crib rail and “walking” (side-stepping) up and down the crib a little bit, trying to get to the kitty. As you can tell, Gibson is THRILLED that she’s getting more mobile and wants to “pet” him! Enjoy!
P.S. I keep forgetting to mention that she also started CLAPPING a few weeks ago - it’s really cute! I have to try and get it on video.
Once again, I have been slacking on the blog posts - sorry! I’m not going to promise that it won’t happen again because it probably will. Last weekend my great-aunt Gloria and some of her kids and grandkids drove up from Illinois to visit. We try to see them about once a summer, but unfortunately they’ve been doing all the traveling the last number of years because my Grandma just can’t make the trip anymore. It’s always so good to see them! My Aunt Gloria started taking painting lessons 3 years ago at the ripe old age of 78.. and she’s really GOOD! She brought a painting to hang in my Grandma’s house and it’s just beautiful (I should have taken a picture - oops). We had a lovely picnic at my Grandma and Aunt’s house, and took a big family picture (below). Lily charmed everyone, of course, and they all fell completely in love with her. Also, we were talking about how Lily seems to want to walk way more than she wants to crawl, and my Aunt told me that learning to crawl is apparently very important for cognitive development related to reading - who knew?!? So, I GUESS it’s ok if Lily learns to crawl (like I have a say in it) - she’s already getting very, very close.
Well, internet, I feel like I should have so many more things to tell you, but my mind is blank right now. We spent a lot of time at Grandma and Grandpa’s this past week, and they keep threatening to kidnap Lily so I don’t take her away to Virginia for a week! Jason and have both been crazy-busy at work trying to get things wrapped up for us to be gone next week, then come back immediately into CRUNCH TIME! Mid-August to late September is the absolute WORST time of year for us, and I’m not looking forward to it - but at least we have a vacation first! I’ve also been running a bunch of errands and doing laundry and starting to pack, but tomorrow is “pack like crazy” day. My brother is picking us up at 4:30 AM (YUCK!!!!) on Sunday to bring us to the airport, so we have to get everything done before we go to bed tomorrow night. I plan on posting an update (with pics) once we return, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Lily had made some big developments while we’re gone - stay tuned! Either way, once we come back is major baby-proofing time.
I hope you all have a great week, and we’ll meet back here when we get back!
EDITED TO ADD: I forgot to mention one of Lily’s FAVORITE new activities! She did this for a good hour on our bed yesterday - she starts out sitting, then THROWS herself forward onto all fours, rocks back and forth a bit (optional), then plops on her tummy and rolls to her back and tries to sit up to do the whole process again. It’s really pretty cute, but not when she tries to practice this IN THE BATHTUB and in her crib when she’s supposed to be sleeping! Today for nap time she got herself on her tummy and scooted around the crib and ended up with her legs sticking through the slats and hitting the wall. Then, I think she felt stuck and got scared so started crying. I’m already starting to miss the days I could just sit her on the floor and let her play and she’s not even fully mobile yet! Every day she seems more like a little kid and less like a baby and I don’t know how it happened so stinkin’ FAST!
Lily informed us today that bridges go over the places where water cars (boats) live. "Lily-isms" on twitter2010/06/24
Lily came to visit me at work today! I told her to be quiet because people are working. She replies, but they can leave and I can be loud! "Lily-isms" on twitter2010/06/11
Guess the romance is truly gone! (Just Kidding!)
That same day, Lily was sitting on my lap and went to jump down (forwards, with no hands or anything) and I grabbed her arm to keep her from falling. It ended up knocking her a little off-balance and she bumped her cheek on the wood part on the front of the chair and she got a bruise on her cheek. She didn’t even want to go to Mommy for comfort - she went to Auntie Lisa! Needless to say, I was feeling pretty guilty that day, but I know they were both accidents and everyone is just fine.
