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...
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!
Well, I’ve procrastinated my way through half the month of
June before finally writing my review for May! Hopefully, I can remember some
of what happened…
Scott finished building his playset for Atom this month with
some help from his parents and Kelly and Travis who came to visit us a couple
times in May. It looks great and Atom loves playing in it!
I was able to pick a lot of blueberries this month at a new
local blueberry farm very close to my parents’ house. I ventured over there
several times and I now have many bags of frozen blueberries, enough for pies
and pancakes for the rest of the year! Thanks Mama and Papa for inviting me to
pick with you and for helping me watch Atom and Trillian so I could do that. I
still love picking fruit!
Crazy hours for Scott unfortunately have become more
frequent again these days. He has been working on Despicable Me and trying to
meet deadlines in the lead up to the grand opening. I hope things slow down
again and normalize soon.
Atom has been really into singing this month! I’ve been
exposing him to songs from some of the many musical soundtracks I have, like the Sound
of Music, Oliver, Mary Poppins, while Scott is thrilled to hear him randomly
singing lyrics from bands he loves, like They Might Be Giants. We also have a collection
of songs that my Mom wrote and sung for my siblings and me when we were little,
some of which I’m now singing to Atom.
Trillian and Mommy
Trillian is changing a lot! She started sitting up right
around her five-month birthday (just like Atom!) and she knows how to roll over
both ways now also. By the end of the month she has also finally settled into a schedule of 3 naps a day
and eating every 4 hours. I struggled with getting on a schedule this month mainly
because of breastfeeding, which has been getting more and more frustrating for
me. Trillian had become extremely fussy while nursing and would not stay on
more than 5 minutes at a time. I tried lengthening the time between
feedings, from 2 to 3 to 4 hours but it didn’t help and I just ended up with a fussier baby. Also, when we would try giving her a bottle instead of nursing,
she wouldn’t drink more than a couple oz at a time, which was concerning to me. So, we finally just gradually started shifting her over to more and more formula
until she was almost entirely being formula fed by the end of the month. We
were able to gradually up the number of oz she drinks at a time too and now she
often takes as much as 4-5 oz at once. This switch to formula seems to have
been very positive in terms of getting her on a better schedule. Her naps have
started to get longer; sometimes as much as 1 ½ -2 hrs! Her night sleeping has
started to improve also, but it’s still inconsistent and I never know if we’re
going to have a good night or a bad night. She is currently still nursing once
in the middle of the night, but I’m trying to stop that soon too. In addition to
the formula, I started introducing solid foods around 5 months. She has tried
several different fruits, veggies and baby cereals now and she seems much more
into pureed food than Atom was at this age! Another change that happened over the course of this month was Trillian’s
switch from sucking on pacifiers to sucking on her fingers. This was a result
of sleep training I think, but she just started doing it all on her own, and
doesn’t seem very interested in the pacifiers any more. I think this has helped a lot with her ability to soothe herself to sleep. She is very good about going right to sleep most of the time when we put her in her crib.
Scott and Atom measure and cut wood for the playhouse
Finished playhouse! Just needs paint.
Ira and Kelly help paint during a visit this month
Chilling with Grandpa
Atom helps paint the steps
Such a fun place to play!
As Trillian starts to sit up and become more interested in toys, Atom has been great about sharing and playing with her and she loves watching and being around him!
Snuggling with my big brother!
They look really similar in this photo!
Trillian tries some pureed peas and pears
Atom feeds the goats at a visit to the Sanford zoo.
I'm too tired this month to write much... So here are some photos with slightly longer than normal captions:
On April 1st, Scott's parents came to visit and spent a long time outside in the hot sun helping us clean off our very overgrown and dirty patio.
After they left, the patio was clean, but still very uneven, so I felt inspired to go ahead and take up most of the pavers and redo them to make the whole thing even and also extend it touch to edge of the house so there wouldn't be a weedy overgrown area there. This is a photo of it in progress. It is complete now, but I haven't taken a photo yet.
Early this month, I took Atom and Trillian to see their pediatric hematologist for a yearly checkup. He said they both looked great! Trillian didn't need any bloodwork done since she had it taken pretty recently, but Atom had to have some blood drawn. This was the first time he's been old enough to understand what was going to happen, and he did great! He stayed very still and didn't even cry. Afterwards we went to the downstairs kids area of Arnold Palmer hospital and he had a lollipop and looked at all the Disney characters.
My new stroller! I've had fun taking walks with them both around the neighborhood and on the bike trail to the playground. I've also started taking it with me when I go to playdates and it's very handy for that. They both fell asleep during this walk!
Trillian in the red swing. She looks so big here! She has begun reaching and grabbing at everything these days and it's no longer safe to try to drink a cup of coffee while holding her...
Atom in the blue swing. Scott has been steadily adding on to this swing set. It is now much more than just a swing set! More pictures to come next month.
Cuddles! Atom is getting more and more interested in Trillian as she gets older and he's still very sweet to her. He tells me to "make her feel better" when she cries and he brings her toys and her pacifier sometimes.
Now I have two guys to mow the lawn for me!
This is (I think) a Cardamon ginger plant we have in the front of the house, which flowered for the first time this month!
The Winter Garden splash pad is open again! Trillian tests the water.
There has been a lot going on in downtown Winter Garden this month. It seems like every weekend there's another festival going on, as well as the very busy farmer's market we go to on Saturdays. I forget which one of those festivals this was taken at, but they had a bird of prey exhibit that Atom enjoyed seeing.
This was earlier in the month before we set up Trillian's crib. Atom and Trillian, both napping in Mommy and Daddy's bed.
Sometime mid-month we set up the crib for Trillian in what used to be our office. I've been slowly working on training her to sleep there instead of next to me or on me. I also started supplementing a little bit with formula this month both in hopes of getting her to sleep a little better and because she has still been hungry after nursing sometimes. Sleep still isn't very good though and most of the time I'm still only getting 2-3 hours at a time (and that's on a good night!), but hopefully things will start to get better soon.
In other garden related news, I got my best miracle fruit harvest ever this month! Unfortunately I don't really have the time right now to figure out how to sell them, as I'd like to, so they are now all in the freezer. Maybe I can have a miracle fruit tasting party now!
I didn't take the time to count them, but there were a LOT!
Some things that happened this month in no particular order:
Jenny, Brett, Ella, and Maya flew down for a visit for the
first week of March. We had a great time visiting with them and took a lot of
nice pictures!
We had a couple more nice visits with Greg, Tina, and Gwyn.
Scott finally got a new smartphone to replace his old
blackberry. He’s very happy with it!
Scott built a swingset in our backyard from scratch! Atom
loves it. He’s now working on adding a platform and a slide to it.
I decided to find a new primary care doctor in Clermont so
it would be easier for my parents to watch the kids if I ever need to go to the
doctor. I had one appointment there already and I like it so far.
Scott has been very busy working on the Despicable Me ride
for Universal and he’s working some crazy and erratic hours again.
Trillian laughed for the first (and so far only) time this
month. She has also started reaching for objects.
Atom mastered basic potty training this month! He has
overcome his fear of pooping in the potty (lots of treats helped) and now
he doesn’t wear diapers at all during the day. I’ve actually started taken him
out without diapers too and he tells me when he has to go. We’re so proud of
him! We tried not having a diaper on him at night also, but after a couple
accidents we decided to wait a little longer before we work on that part.
I broke down and bought a pretty expensive double stroller
this month. I’ve wanted one for a while now, but I had a very hard time
rationalizing that kind of purchase. Here's how I did it. First I sold two
other strollers of mine on craiglist and made about $100, then I found a way to
get the one I wanted (the City Mini Double GT) for 10% off, and finally for
good measure I applied for the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, which has a $500
cash back promotion right now for new members. Thank you excellent credit! So,
now I can take walks again! Which brings me to my next point:
Trillian has been pretty difficult this month. It seemed to
get worse as the month progressed. First of all, she hates the car seat. It
doesn’t seem to matter if she’s sleepy or awake or even already asleep. When I
put her in there and start driving, she wakes up and starts crying. This has
really made it hard for me to want to go anywhere. Her naps are also terrible. She
doesn’t want to fall asleep unless I’m holding her or wearing her in a carrier.
Last month she would fall asleep when laid down on her stomach, or snuggled
next to me on her side, but now she’s having none of that and will just start
crying if I lie her down, even if I’m lying right beside her trying to soothe
her. This has gotten more and more frustrating, to the point where I’m having
feelings of intense frustration culminating in bouts of screaming into pillows, which is a new and troubling
experience for me. The first few times I used the new stroller, I was elated
because she was happy and even fell asleep in it, but then the last couple of
times I’ve used it she’s started crying and I’ve ended up carrying her.
I can only hope that this needing to be held phase changes quickly as most of
these things do. It’s really stressful and rough on me right now.
Family picture
Atom playing on the trampoline
Atom drawing with his friend Gwyn
Atom still likes cuddling with Trillian
Scott works on the building the next part of the playground where the slide will go. I'm always impressed by how he can fix or build anything!
