hello?

it's been awhile and i won't even attempt to say that i'm back to blogging but i have missed keeping a record of our family's life.  so i'm going to attempt to do just that every once in awhile.  poor ellie has had rather sad documentation of her life compared to avery and while i know she's loved every bit as much i would like to actually have a place to look back on her growing up because i know i sure won't remember it all!  so, here's what's been going on in the past year: 

... ellie is 18 months.  crazy town.  i love this age so much.  she's a running, climbing, following her sister around all day, talking up a storm, crazy toddler.  charlie and i die over how cute she is daily.  she's imitating everything that her 'cool' big sis is doing these days including her newest phrase "knock knock, who's there? pee" that she definitely picked up from avery.  she's also stubborn, brave, and still very much attached to her mama these days.  she knows what she wants and how she wants it and she will let you know exactly what that is.  and (knock on wood) she is finally, finally sleeping in her crib all through the night.  it only took us a year and a half to figure that one out.  she wakes up at the crack of dawn but i can deal with a 5:30 wake up time as long as she's not in my bed thrashing around like a fool for hours each night.  

...  avery is three and a half and growing by the minute.  she is pretty opinionated about things these days too and like most three year olds has zero patience for things like waiting for things she wants, sharing toys with her sister, and picking up after her own giant messes.  she seems so old to me these days and she'll start preschool in the fall.  i'm both excited for her and so sad because how in the world is she old enough to go out into the world without me.  she's a pretty great sister most of the time and over the past 6 months they have started to play with each other a lot more.  i find it pretty adorable and usually waste all the time that they're happily playing sneakily watching them from the other room instead of getting anything done.  

...  we recently put dunkin to sleep, which was the hardest decision i've ever made and thing i've had to do.  charlie and i miss him like crazy.  he was the best and the house seems so empty without him following me around everywhere.  

... i'm so excited that it's finally summer, my very favorite season.  we're busy enjoying things like flip flops, dresses, open windows, fires, grilling, the water table, running around without clothes on (the kids, not me), and growing our first garden.  we don't have a lot of plans this summer and i'm trying to really enjoy the last bit of completely unscheduled time that we have before after starts school.  i know after that we'll "only" have summer's off and i'm really going to miss the freedom of these before-school days.  

...  we took our annual trip back to maryland in june to visit family.  it was really great to see everyone and we even squeezed in some beach time one day but ellie not the chillest traveler during our second leg of the journey and we were all happy to get back home just to get back to our normal routine.  i'm usually complaining about how short those trips are and this one was only a week, compared to the last two years when we've stayed for two weeks, but with ellie being so difficult i was basically counting the days until we got back home.  hopefully she'll be a little more laid back next year.         

lately ...

... i love summer.  seriously i cannot say that enough.  i think i could happily move somewhere where it never got below 50 degrees.  it's actually been hot here (for my standards anyway) and we've actually had the ac running.  we usually keep it off if it's below 90 but we've been in the mid-upper 90s these days.  we've been playing in the water table a lot.  both avery and ellie are big fans.  ellie can't really hold her self up yet for long periods of time but she loves splashing away and avery usually does a pretty decent job of sharing with her sister.  she only dumped a bucket of water on her head once! 

...  blueberries were on sale the last time we went grocery shopping.  i feel like this never happens so i bought a bunch and we made blueberry pie.  and then we ate it for breakfast for the next few days.



... sleep.  oh infant sleep.  this is just about the only part of parenting in the first year that i don't like.  sleep is so amazing when it's good and so awful when it's bad.  i'm trying to transition ellie to her crib after 8 months of cosleeping and i'm not sure if it's harder on me than on her.  i physically miss her when she's not in our bed although i do love not sleeping in one position all night long and waking up with my arm asleep.  there's been a bit of crying involved in this transition and i hate listening to her cry.  i just feel awful.  and guilty.  but, i think she'll sleep better on her own and honestly she's waking up after every sleep cycle if i'm not physically next to her so i know she needs to learn to put herself back to sleep.  this is just a hard topic for me and i'm hoping she makes the transition okay.





...  i gave the kids their first dual bath the other night and it was amazing.  i don't know why i didn't do this months ago.  they both really enjoyed it.  well, avery didn't enjoy when i washed her hair but she never does.  i'm hoping this will make bath nights a little easier on all of us, especially when charlie's gone.  the non-slip mat made a huge difference for ellie in the tub since i didn't have to worry about her falling all over the place.





...  avery wanted to try on halloween costumes the other day.  ellie's going to be a bear this year since we have the costume from avery's first year and i'm not about to buy another one since i'll be lucky if she wears it for 10 minutes.  she hated it but we're hoping she'll warm up to it come october.  in her defense it was about 85 degrees and that costume is pretty hot!  avery loved her leopard costume from last year and has been asking to wear it again but she keeps telling me that she wants to be a purple butterfly this year.  i'll have to try and come up with something since she's been pretty consistent.  we've been reading halloween books since june so she's pretty psyched for the holiday already.  she also was insisting that i get out henry's costume, too, but i managed to talk her out of that one.  i can only torture him one day a year.  



...  we've been doing a few things around the house this summer, too!  after not doing anything for a solid four months after ellie was born we've had the outside painted (something it needed very badly), our deck restained, replaced our storm door, replaced a few lights (4 and and more to come!), rearranged some furniture, and hung some lights on our deck.  i need to do another house updated post just to keep track of the things we've done.







...  we took the kids to heritage square last weekend.  charlie was excited because avery actually wanted to ride the rides this year, unlike last year when she would only get on the merry-go-round.  but it was really hot and we got way too many tickets so we decided to play put-put since it required a bunch of tickets.  we did this last year, too, and avery basically just ran around the whole time while charlie and i played the course.  but this year ellie was over it by the time we went to play golf so i left avery and charlie to play on their own while i went to go feed ellie.  apparently avery was hot so she only wanted to play the holes that were in the shade, which was sort of a problem since there were other people who were actually trying to play.  she came back and told me that "daddy said we have to go home because i didn't listen".  funny, only because apparently he never told her that at all.  i think basically she just wanted to eat ice cream and then head back to the air conditioned car at this point.  after lunch we headed out and both kids slept for over an hour in the car while we drove home and packed their pool stuff, stopped at target for a few things, and then headed to the pool.  

it is finally summmmmmmmer!

it's really no secret that i love summer.  in fact the amazing summer's out here are what get me through the long and cold 'springs'.  sorry colorado i don't really think you can call it spring when you're still dumping snow all over the ground.  anyway, it's felt like summer since our last snow on mothers day (horrible present by the way) and we have been enjoying every last bit of our warm weather.  

ellie has finally gotten over her hatred of the stroller and will now ride for a while (and usually falls asleep, which is an extra bonus) so we've been back to taking our usual walks that i missed oh so much.  and it only took me about 5 months to feel like the double stroller purchase was worthwhile but now i am so happy that we have it and i really love it.  we've even walked to the pool with both kids in it and loaded it down with all of our pool gear and it did great.  it's a little tricky to get into the back of the car.  our jeep juuuuust barely fits the stroller in the back and it's not the easiest thing to move around but it can be done.  unless we're going somewhere like the zoo or to boulder to walk along the creek and playground hop we usually just use our umbrella stroller for avery and the ergo for ellie.  anyway, henry always comes with us on our walks too and i promise avery that we'll stop at the playground at the end of our walk, which helps keep her complaining to a minimum.  sometimes she even falls asleep too and then i get a few minutes of quiet.  :)

i made avery her first ice cream cone the other day and she definitely approved.  she insisted that i keep reapplying sprinkles throughout the entire process.  we also finally have organic strawberries and blueberries at the store and have been eating a lot of fruit.  we even made strawberry pancakes for the first time and they turned out pretty good.  they were really sweet so i think the syrup is optional on these guys.  and we've also used our popsicle molds a few times and avery is definitely a fan.  i just froze juice for these but i know there's a bunch of different recipes for popsicles all over the internet.  the only downside to the popsicles is how messy they are.  they definitely require a bath or a dip in the water table right afterwards.

we've been hiking a few times and avery even did her first 'solo hike' where she climbed the whole way up to red rocks by herself.  she did great and was so cute when she had to stop and find a rock to sit on for a water break and a snack.  ellie's also done really well.  i've just kept her in the ergo and she'll usually sleep for at least part of the hike.  i've tried to move her to my back in the ergo but she wasn't having it so she's still facing forward.  there's still a few hikes that i'd like to do by the end of the summer but we'll see how ambitious we get.  right now i think the longest that we've done with the kids is around 3.5 miles.

we've also just spent a lot of time hanging out in our yard.  avery loves throwing the ball to dunkin and playing in the water table, although it's not as exciting for her as it was last year i think.  her favorite game to play outside is to take off all of her clothes and sit in the water table and dump water all over herself.  and when she gets chilly she requests a towel to wrap herself up in (she calls it a paper towel) and warms up in the sun.

  

our 'family' (ellie, too!).  please note that i am apparently the laziest walker of our group.

we also managed to make it back to the museum of nature and science the other week.  and this time the discovery zone was actually open and avery had a blast playing in it.  i'm definitely thinking this will be a great place to take her in the winter when we need to get out of the house.  it doesn't hurt that it's very dino focused and avery is really into dinos these days.  she 'dug for bones', played in an awesome water table, built things with blocks, showed ellie a thing or two, and we watched a dino show that she was really into before we checked out two other exhibits and left.  there were a lot of other things there that were geared more towards older kids so it's kind of nice that there's lots of room to grow there.  also, they have older kids as volunteers and they did a great job getting the little kids involved in the activities and showing them what to do.  

we've also managed to take a few naps, head to the pool (although it's been mostly a little chilly for the pool in my opinion), and grill some meals.  i love grilling because it means we always eat really healthy and also charlie does most of the work.  :)

thanks for being so awesome, summer.  i'm hoping to stretch the rest of you out as long as possible and i'm in no hurry for fall even if avery is already asking for 'trick-or-treat books'.