'Tis Summer...finally!!!

Howdy all and welcome back. As the post title says, summer has finally made an appearance here in the lovely Pacific Northwest. What looked like a beautiful early spring in March turned dismal, drab and cold for April, May and most of June. But (as is typical of the area) summer made it's appearance with the 4th of July and boy has it been nice. However, those of you back home would laugh at what we consider summer here...while your enjoying 90 degree heat, massive humidity and violent thunderstorms (all the hallmarks of a lovely Michigan summer...). Here we're enjoying beautiful blue skies, lovely views of the Cascades and Olympics (and occasional appearances of Mt. Baker and Mt. Rainier) and average temperatures in the high 60's to the mid 70's (I think we've had 3 days at 80 or higher...) These beautiful summer months are the reason that we can put up with 6+ months of near constant rain a year...it's just perfect.

On to familial type things...which is the only thing anybody really wants to read anyway. I just put the rest of it in there to frustrate you...



What can I say...the kids are doing just great. They're both so smart and so active that Dad just can't keep up with them. So we called in reinforcements. Grandma works for a school district back in Michigan and gets the summer months off, so she's out here for a while to help keep the peace...not that she isn't having a blast herself or anything.

So in a fit of moderate creative inspiration (yes, my head almost exploded) I've decided to do a kinda, sorta, somewhat two part post for this one...the first post will feature pictures exclusively from Grandma's camera while a follow up post will come in the next week or so with pictures and video from my camera. Soooo...here we go.



Eilish is turning into a little lady. Here speaking skills are still rapidly developing, much less gibberish and much more comprehensive language. She's still struggles with complex consonant sounds like "ch", "th" and "sh" but for the most part she is clear and understandable. You just got to watch her though, one of her nannies was from Peru and was teaching her Spanish...so sometimes she lapses into using English and Spanish in the same sentence causing her poor Daddy (who took German in high school) to just stare at her stupidly. And her courtesy skills are just off the charts..."please" and "thank you" is almost automatic. She usually asks nicely for everything and isn't pushy and demanding. Usually being the key word...she may be an amazing kid, but she is still just 3, so the occasionally possessive, demanding moment is inevitable...I mean I do call her "Bratlish" for a reason.

She has her ABC's pretty much down, at least reciting them. We're working on her actually recognizing the letter shapes now...she can probably do 10 or so pretty consistently...same thing with numbers, she can count to 10 without thinking so now we're working on recognition. Mostly (like any 3 year old) it's a concentration thing. If you can keep her focused, she does really well...but keeping her focused is the trick.

She finally seems to be growing some too...up to 27.5 lbs on Daddy's completely unscientific home scale (from 26ish in February) and up about 1 inch on Daddy's completely unscientific "Let's mark your height on the wall" system. Considering she only grew about 4 inches and 5 lbs from the time she turned 1 to the time she turned 3 that's real progress!!! Just to further reinforce the point...she's just now growing out of some of her larger cut (Gymboree...) 18-24 month clothes...and 2T's are fitting her really well...3T's are still pretty big for the most part.









The Mooser is growing too...and growing...and growing. I didn't get him in for his 6 month appointment until last week (8 months old) due to some issues between his doctor and my insurance company. But here are his current measurables: 27.5in, 19lbs 4.5oz (Eilish was 31 inches and 21lbs at 1...he's got 4 months to catch her). The kid is a horse! He has his two bottom front teeth already (you may recall that he got those back in March), but I guess decided that getting two at a time was a little too slow for him, so he's now cutting all 6 of his other front teeth at the same time!!! Poor kid is miserable, but for the most part just soldiers on. The only time he really lets you know is if he accidentally chews on one of his hard toys.

The kid still develops new skills faster than I can possibly comprehend. The freaky part is you only have to show him something once and shortly after that, he'll be off to the races. So...his new and improved skills:

1) He can't crawl...we'll he can for short bursts...but he does this thing where he looks like an inch worm moving across the floor. Thing is he can go so fast doing it, that he might as well be crawling...the boy is across a room in a flash.
2) About a week after he started learning to do the inch worm thing, he figured out how to sit himself up out of a crawling position...and boy did that freak his pediatrician out when I told her.
3) After being shown once...he's been trying to pull himself up on anything and everything he can get his hands on. Just today he managed to pull himself into a standing position holding on to his piano. Yes, he is only 8 months old.
4) He's eating like a big boy! We got him a high chair and so far his palette consists of bananas, peaches, pears and sweet potatoes...although the sweet potatoes are still a negotiation in progress.











As for me...more of the same. Life sucks, I'm so lonely it hurts, and if I didn't have my kids I wouldn't know what to do with myself. They are the best and brightest part of my day. On the positive side, I've weaned myself off of my addiction to coke (the pop...stop thinking like that!) and am drinking copious amounts of water instead. I feel much better and have finally started to lose a little weight. I won't tell you how much I actually weigh...nobody believes me when I tell them anyway...but I've lost about 18 lbs from what I weighed when Cavan was born.