July

July, in pictures and video:

4th of July and Scott's birthday. Scott's family joined us for a visit and lunch earlier in the day and then Scott's Dad stayed overnight at our house, so he could catch a flight out of Orlando in the morning. He also came with us to see the fireworks show at lake Apopka.

Trillian stayed up wayyy past her bedtime, but was surprisingly calm and fascinated most of the evening by all the new sights and sounds.

Atom

Atom and Daddy

Trillian and Mommy

Dancing

At lunch with Greg, Tina and Gwyn. Atom gives his friend Gwyn a hug!

Atom relearned to swim again this month! He is now able to swim without the life jacket again, though he still needs a little help.

Kelly stops by for a visit. Trillian is very happy to see her!

We spent several Saturdays this month at the splash pad and farmers market in Downtown Winter Garden.

Trillian explores with Daddy

Sharing

Toward the end of the month we went to the beach. We only spent 2-3 hours there, but it was relatively fun. Expectations for going to the beach have to be reworked somewhat when you have a cranky 7 month old who just wants to eat sand and a 3 year old who just wants to be in the water, even when he's really cold and shivering. We also had some unexpected trouble with Scott's car battery on the way there and the way back and we ended up having to jump it each time.

Playing in the sand

Happy 

Trillian learned to crawl this month. Here she is crawling on the beach.

Trillian tries out the new stroller that I won in an art contest this month. We both like it!

Atom gets his hand stuck in a subwoofer.

Mommy trying to sneak computer time...

Bike ride

I thought all these pictures of them in the shopping cart were so cute and I couldn't choose which ones to include, so here are all of them.

Cute little Trillian

3 years old!! We went to my parent's house on Atom's birthday and he had a great day of swimming and playing and a yummy birthday dinner!

This was taken at his pre-birthday celebration at the T-Rex cafe in Downtown Disney with Papa, Pippa, Kelly and Travis. He had a great time there too! He's looking at his ice cream volcano cake desert!

This was taken on July 30th and it's Atom on his first day of preschool. He's going to West Orange Montessori School 5 days a week from 8:30am-12:00. He's been experiencing a little separation anxiety over these first few days since he started, but he seems to be doing well and having fun too. I'm feeling pretty good about it and I really think it's going to be a great experience for him.

He loves the playground at the school

Painting!

Trillian has started vocalizing a lot more, and she's particularly fond of screeching when she's uncomfortable or not getting what she wants. Here's a little sample of that...

And now, a more pleasant sound!

June

June was very rainy and buggy. The mosquitos seemed especially bad this month and made it very unpleasant to go outside almost any time of day. We also kept finding black and brown widow spiders everywhere outside. Also it was hot. We ended up staying inside a lot this month.

June was also the month that Trillian really began sleeping through the night! At her 6 month checkup, I talked with the doctor about how I'd been gradually switching her to formula and asked about stopping her final middle of the night nursing session, and she told me it should be fine to do that at this point. After giving myself permission to not get up when she cried in the middle of the night, it didn't take very long to break the night-waking habit, and ever since then she sleeps roughly from about 7pm-6am through the night, with one last dream feed of formula at 10pm. She still wakes up too early I think, sometimes it's more like 5-5:30, but in any case, sleep has finally gotten a whole lot better for all of us and it feels wonderful! :)

Sleeping like a baby, finally! 

Atom introduces Trillan to his DVD player

She seems to like it as much as he does

Atom reads a story to Trillian

Drawing

This was at a music store in Orlando. We went there with Scott's parents because Scott has been practicing guitar and they wanted to get him a new one as an early birthday present. Atom shows Daddy how it's done!