What a lovely summer it has been so far! Being able to stay at home during the day with my girls has been such an adventure, and it has kept me busier than I ever have been. Lilah has been crawling now since mid July and she is getting stronger and more capable of getting into trouble with each day that flies by. She makes a b-line for the cat food dishes now and is utterly fascinated with the toilet so I have been more wary about baby proofing. It's strange that in the short time since McKenna was a little baby until now how much I seem to have forgotten about what it's like to have an infant around. Being a mom of a newborn is like reading your favorite book over and over again and finding a wonderful secret hidden amongst the paragraphs that changes the whole story with each turn of the page....I can't seem to get enough.
McKenna is really starting to get the hang of using the potty chair now (T/G!) She has been a real trooper and fights us a lot less when we ask her to use it. We still have a long way to go before we can put her in big girl underpants, but at least we are on the right track now....seemed like we would never get to this point. <--We have learned a valuable lesson from potty training that I think will carry through to the time our girls are adults....when all else fails, use bribery! She has had enough gummy worm rewards to stretch the globe.
The front yard grass is growing in now, along with a wide variety of exotic weeds...most of which never grew on our previous layer of sod. What exactly is wrong with that picture? I am pretty sure our neighbors are sprinkling weed seed down while we sleep...that is the ONLY logical explanation. Other than the weeds the yard looks great and it finally looks as though there may be an end to the grueling front yard work in sight. Just in time for another one of our house projects. :)
Well, I suppose I should go for now. Hope all is well for all those who are reading this. Have a lovely rest of the summer!

Love,
Jaime

Lilah is just over 6 months old now, she is sitting upright by herself (and only falling over occasionally) and she is also crawling forward. She started crawling backward around 5 months. She has also started on some jar food and enjoys bananas, pears & carrots so far. We’ve tried Cheerios, but Lilah really doesn’t know what to think about them yet and pushes them back out of her mouth with her tongue every time, all the while glaring at you.

McKenna has been doing much better with her potty training. She now goes #1 almost every time in the toilet, she’s got a little more to work on with the #2 however. Thank goodness we haven’t transitioned into actual panties yet! We’re trying to bribe her with trips to the Pacific Science Center if she goes poop in the potty chair, so far it hasn’t worked. She has been playing almost every other day with her friend Andrea (5) from across the street. It usually go goes something like this…McKenna whines to play with Andrea, we ask Andrea to come over, she comes over, after about 2.2 minute of playing together they go off in different sections of the yard and play by themselves, after about an hour I tell them we to walk Andrea home because we have to eat, we walk Andrea home, we go inside to fix dinner, McKenna whines to play with Andrea some more. It seems like they have a lot of fun, and considering the age difference at their age (over 2 years), they seem to enjoy each other’s company. It certainly is nice to have a friend so near that McKenna likes, and vice versa. Andrea’s dad, Mike, sometimes comes over as well and it’s nice to hear some other views from somebody who has been through a lot of when we are going through,(He’s got 5 girls ages 5-17).

On other fronts we’ve finally got some grass growing in the front yard that we re-landscaped. It’s looking pretty good, certainly better than before, and when all of the grass comes in it should be stupendous. J It seems through the front yard project, we’ve met nearly everyone in the neighborhood on once occasion or another as they’ve stopped by to say hello and comment on the yard.

Work is going ok. Jaime was going in for a full day on Monday as well as the nights 5-9, but she had to stop the Mondays because of childcare issues. The lumber/house building market in general has really slowed down in this area, it doesn’t look good for bonuses this year. We are finally catching up to the rest of the nation in that regard I guess. Things always seem to slow down during an election year, but it’s been especially slow with all of the things happening in the mortgage & oil crisis(s), and the job market. Hopefully the housing market will get kick started again soon, and we’ll be back to full swing.

Well, until next time, we hope this finds you happy and healthy.