J's birthday party - June 27th

Over a week ago we had a joint birthday party for J and a buddy, Judah. The boys' birthdays are only a week apart (even though they are 2 years apart in age), we both wanted to have a pool party at the Tigners, and we planned to invite a lot of the same people. To save everyone's time and ourselves a bit of money, a joint party was the way to go! I tell ya, pool parties are the best. Very little planning (especially when you avoid a meal time) and it's great when you have a wide age range to entertain. J came home with quite a bounty and lots of fun memories. It was a great way to kick off celebrating his arrival into our lives.

And just like that...

Skittles and "freedom"

Two things that now inspire a certain little man to start telling me he needs to potty during rest time...amazing that it all of the sudden clicked today since neither of these things are new tricks to help us master using the potty.

I think he's been at least 5-6 times in the last hour, but I don't want to ignore him because he has actually gone each time!

Rest time is not so much rest time for me today...but I am proud and hope he's finally turned this corner.

My fishies

I've never spent so much time in the water! The kids are such little fishes - tan little fishes. Even with 50 SPF on every day and often reapplied, they are sporting nice tans. Clay and I caught J in action jumping into the pool the other afternoon. These aren't all from the same jump, but they flow together nicely to give you a little play-by-play. He gets some serious air for a flat-footed jump. And then there's E who had to her picture taken too although she spent most of this day getting in and out making footprints on the deck!

Our "schedule" has been so unique these last few weeks that it's thrown J into a bit of a frenzy with his sleep. He's napping again, but then staying up until 10:30 or 11:00 p.m. some nights. (Fortunately for us, he plays quietly in his room regardless what time we put him to bed!) There are nights he only sleeps 7 hours and others he will sleep almost 12. We are really noticing his need for above normal sensory stimulation - which is a challenge for this pregnant mama.

This is how I found him late this afternoon. Poor baby is just worn out!

Miss E's first mani/pedi

I've been a blog fanatic lately. Guess I'm getting a little sentimental as we approach J's 4th birthday and the arrival of little M. Bear with me!

After countless times of me trying, Clay was finally able to convince Miss E to get her fingernails and toenails painted. She's always adamantly refused, but today she got on board. Auntie Claire would be so proud (thus the number of pictures I'm posting)!!! She was quite enthralled in the whole process, but kept asking for me to clean it off after we were done (she watched me remove my old polish before we began). She's already in need of another spa day as a lot of the "paint" is already MIA.

(Pardon her attire - it was a focused potty training day at our house...and you'll notice that Miss E has her daddy's olive skin... even with slathering sunscreen on her whenever we go play outside, she's still darker than me!)

Time at the Y

I finally remembered to take my camera to the water park at the YMCA (again, thanks to the generosity of friends who gave us a summer family membership)! Clay got to join us today, and it was a ball of fun for all.

J loves the frog slide...the first 3 photos show him going down and then cheering for himself! E was a bit more tentative today...just hanging out on the side of the pool and even moping because she didn't want to get wet. She finally decided that jumping to Daddy sounded fun, and she was unstoppable after that. Clay didn't much of a break from our two little fish...


They couldn't wait to get back out so they could jump back in!

Gettin' some major air!


With about 10 minutes left to play, E decided she needed to play in the sprinklers. She removed her life jacket, asked me to take her ponytail down, and headed for the fun. First she gets her hair wet, then she runs through, runs to me and says, "I get wet!", then repeats.

New inhabitants

We had been wondering...and last night it was confirmed -



We knew the mama bunny had been a bit too brazen and hanging too close to the house not to be keeping watch. Little did we know she had 4 little children under her care - in our jasmine right outside our front door! The little ones were brave last night venturing out into the great unknown. It was fun to watch the kids and we got to see babies nurse! The first picture is a little blurry, but is the best one of them nursing. Mama Bunny didn't take her eyes off us, but she finally hopped away so I got a good shot of the 4 little ones trying to figure out how to get back in the jasmine. Something tells me this will not help our grass growing problem!

Swimming at home

Splurged on a $10 pool at Wal-Mart yesterday for those days I just don't want to pack us up to play at the YMCA water park. I added the sprinkler thing we got from some friends last summer and the kids had a blast - E has become quite the little fish since Aunt Claire convinced her the pool was a great place to be. I took a few pictures of our fun before I got wet myself! (I played with a few settings on the camera too as you can tell.)