Friday, July 27, 2012

Cicle of Love

Daddy loves Aurelia.


Aurelia loves Dashiell.


And Dashiell loves...trolleys.


May the circle be unbroken.  Or something.

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Randomness

I couldn't think of a good theme for this post, but I do have pictures from the last week to share so I'm posting anyway!

We had a fun 4th of July!  Dashiell and I made red, white and blue strawberries for the annual 4th of July/cousin Nicholas's birthday party at Auntie Sue's house.  They were not only fun to make but tasty too!  Dashiell was clearly excited about them!


He did a great job with the dipping!


After the party Aurelia and I headed home while D stayed to watch the fireworks with his grandparents, followed by a sleepover at their house!  Fun for all!  And can I just mention how much easier it was to get ready for work the next morning with only one kid to take care of?  How quickly you forget!

A couple of days later Dash and Aurelia spent the day with Nana and Grandpa while I worked, and they clearly wore D out!


He fell asleep in the car on the way home, so I carried him into the kitchen.  He woke up for about 3 seconds, long enough to say "no thank you" when I asked him to come upstairs and get ready for bed.  Then he passed out on the kitchen floor.  And thankfully he did, since it took about an hour to convince Aurelia to go to sleep.  I was able to carry him upstairs without waking him, which was good though worrisome since he hadn't gone to the bathroom since about 3 pm that afternoon.  But my camel - I mean son - was fine until about 4 am when he woke up, did his business, and went promptly back to sleep.  Amazing!

The next day was Ms. Aurelia's 6 month birthday (covered in my previous post).  Here's our cute little half-year-old!


Look at that!  Almost sitting up all on her own! 

Yesterday was Dashiell's last day of swim lessons - they were only for 3 weeks, but man did those 3 weeks fly by!  He had a great time and while he still has work to do on some of his skills, he's much more confident in the water and definitely wants to swim more!  Last year he wanted little to do with swimming, so this is a big step for him. 


The pool we went to was really cool - outdoors, with slides and a mushroom fountain (which wasn't in operation during the lessons, but would start up as as soon as his lesson was over). 


Apologies to the others in the pictures with him - it was impossible to get a photo of just him in the pool.

And lastly, we've been introducing Aurelia to the world of eating solid food!  So far she's been completely uninterested in rice cereal (and who can blame her?), but loves oatmeal and is even pretty excited about multigrain cereal.  Next we're moving on to veggies and fruits!  Fun!  She's also been working on her sippy cup skills, and considering that she's only used it a handful of times is doing pretty well!  Dashiell decided to give her a hand this morning to make sure she was getting enough water.


Such a helpful brother!

Friday, July 6, 2012

Letter to a 6-month-old

To my lovely little Aurelia -

You turn 6 months old tomorrow!  Happy half-birthday!  I can't believe I've known you for just 6 months - it seems like you've been in my life forever.  Yet somehow those 6 months have been too short.  Time is weird that way.

You are a true delight.  I love how your face lights up when you see me, and how I can stop your tears just by holding you.  I love your little crooked smile.  I love that your hair is suddenly all curly (I swear it was stick straight just a week ago!).  I love when you test out your voice and spend a half-hour squealing at nothing.  I love that your ribs are ticklish, and I love how we can make you laugh making funny faces and noises (I especially love that you find your brother HILARIOUS nearly all the time - he can be sitting quietly at the table and you'll look at him and bust out laughing.  So cute!).



You can be the most patient person ever, content to hang out in your crib or play with your toys and while the rest of us are flipping out over one thing or another, you'll be happy as can be.  But the moment you get mad, watch out!  Your intensity level goes from 0 - 100 in a nanosecond!  When you were just born you had the saddest sad face I'd ever seen - that little lower lip would curve downward in such an exaggerated fashion that if you weren't a baby I would have thought you were faking it.  But now - now there's no time for the sad face, it's all about the scream!  Wowsa!  But at least we always know where we stand with you.

For the past few months you've been a bit leery with anyone who isn't me (daddy is okay most of the time, thankfully).  And by "a bit leery" I mean there was a time that you refused to be held by anyone else.  Cried like there was no tomorrow if I gave others a chance to hold you!  You're warming up to most people now, but you're definitely not one to smile all willy-nilly at strangers.  You take your time assessing their worthiness first.  That's okay.  You might be a bit shy, or you might just be from New England.  We'll see how that trait works itself out later.



As for your milestones, honestly I haven't been obsessing over them like I did with your brother.  I'd say you are right on track - you rolled over at an appropriate time, you just started eating solids, you're sleeping through the night, you're just about to figure out how to sit up on your own, and you love standing on my lap or just about anywhere (we still have to hold you up, of course).  You're healthy and growing, and that's all that matters. 




Thank you so much for being such an amazing little person.  You are a joy and a blessing, and your daddy, Dashiell and I love you very much!  Happy 6 month birthday!


Thursday, July 5, 2012

Finally Photos!

I'm a month late posting these, but we had so many photos from our Minnesota trip last month that I decided it would be best just to share the shutterfly book I created instead of trying to post each picture individually.  Of course, that meant that I had to actually finish the photo book!  So, TA-DA! It's finally finished!


Shutterfly baby photo books are the perfect way to preserve your baby's precious moments.




This represents not even half of the photos we took.  At one point in our trip my mom said "Poor Dashiell is going to feel so left out - he's hardly in any of the photos!"  Which, as you can see, was a total lie.  In fact, it seems like Aurelia is the one who was left out of so many of the photos!  Yes there are some pictures of her but the majority seem to be of Dashiell.  Sorry 'Reels!  We'll try to be more even-handed next time.

Enjoy!