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.
Although I still felt awfully tired this month, I do feel like better sleep is just around the corner. I feel determined this time around to get this sleep under control as soon as possible for my own sanity. One thing that helped me feel more confident in this goal was reading the book “Bringing Up Bébé” this month. I found a lot of the parenting techniques in that book very inspiring and helpful and I’ll definitely try to implement some of them. Thank you again Mama and Papa for getting that book for me!
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.
