4th of July at the Beach

 We spent most of the 4th week at the beach with Mason's parents.  It was our first family vacation since Ethan was born, and it was a bit of an education.  A beach vacation just doesn't seem quite as much like a vacation with 3 kids under the age of 5.  Thankfully, Mason's parents are super helpful with the boys, and they made it manageable at least.  

The boys did surprisingly well on the four hour drive there, so that was encouraging.  That night, however, started out with a literal bang as Kaeden slipped while squirming on his chair during dinner and hit the bottom of his chin on the glass dining table pretty hard.  It split it open and he ended up at urgent care to get it glued back together.  He was incredibly brave the whole time, and I was just so thankful that he didn't need stitches.
 

The next morning, I tried the beach with all three boys while Mason had a conference call for work.  It was sort of a disaster.  Ethan was tired and hungry and wouldn't go to sleep.  He face planted in the sand, and even after eating, he just cried until I took him back to the condo.   He didn't visit the beach any more after that.  For his first boat ride, he lasted all of 30 seconds at the dock until we put his life jacket on and then he just screamed until Bunny took him back to the condo.  He clearly is not a beach kid... at least not at 6 1/2 months old. So, for the rest of the trip, we traded off staying home with Ethan while the others kept busy swimming in the pool, going for boat rides, etc.  Everybody was much happier that way :)

Mastering sitting up

 

Hooray for extra Daddy time!

Bonding with Grandaddy

Ryan had the best time of all.  I never got my camera to the pool, but he was like a little fish.  One day, he went to the pool four times!  He took swim lessons for 4 weeks leading up to the trip, and he was excited to show off and practice.  He's getting quite comfortable in the water, for better or worse!

On the 4th, we went to a parade nearby, complete with fire truck and people throwing candy at the children watching.... Kaeden was pretty thrilled, to say the least.  Then we let Ryan stay up late to watch the fireworks.  Thankfully, we can see two pretty good shows from the decks on the condo, so we could have him ready for bed ahead of time and just pop him in bed once they were over.  I wasn't sure if he'd be impressed or not, but he LOVED it.  He's been talking about fireworks ever since!

Anxiously waiting for the show to begin

There was plenty of time hanging out for everybody.  Of course, what vacation would be complete without some extra iPad time?

B had a little baby pool for Ethan to play in, which worked out great since he didn't want to go anywhere else.  Of course, Kaeden had to get in on the action too.  They had a blast!

 

Somebody likes to splash!

 

The older boys enjoyed helping B. prepare the meals:

And Ryan even got to fly his first kite!

 Kaeden loved the boat, but it had the unfortunate side effect of putting him to sleep!

 

Many thanks to B & Grandaddy for a fun-in-the-sun filled week!

Hot summer silliness

 What happens when we have too many hot summer afternoons in the house...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

kindergarten

 

    
Yesterday was Ryan's first day of kindergarten.  I ran the gamut of emotions leading up to it -  complete denial, fear of this new & potentially scary phase of our lives, excitement, sadness that my firstborn is growing up so fast and that I'll have less time with him, relief that I'll have a break from his recent whiny, sometimes obnoxious behavior.... -  so I wasn't quite sure how I'd react when the day finally came.  But Ryan was SO excited that I couldn't help but let excitement be my overwhelming emotion too. 

 

Ryan's only concern about kindergarten seemed to be Kaeden.  I'm sure he had other nerves, etc. about starting a new school, but he never really voiced any of them.  On the day before he started, though, these were all interactions that we had:

Me: "Ryan, what are you most excited about doing in kindergarten?"
Ryan: "I can't wait to learn to read so that I can read books to Kaeden during rest time."

Ryan, to Kaeden, at bedtime: "Good night, Kaeden.  See you in the morning!  But Kaeden, there's something kind of sad.  I'm starting kindergarten, so I won't be here all morning, but we'll get to play in the afternoon."

And sweetest of all...
Me, before bed: "What do you want to pray about tonight?"
Ryan: "That Kaeden will still love me when I'm at kindergarten."

I'm so thankful for the special bond that these two have!  I'm sure that it will take a lot more than kindergarten to stop it.  And I'm looking forward to seeing a lot more of this in our future:


Anyway, on to the big day.  We had to get the traditional first-day-of-school photos, which was a little challenging, since we needed to leave the house at 7:25 am!  We got it done, though.



The whole family drove him to school and walked him to class.  We had an open house last week, so at least he was somewhat familiar with his classroom and teacher.  His teacher greeted us at the door, showed him where to put his backpack and lunch, and then we said goodbye.  He hugged me a little longer than he normally does, but he had no trouble separating and went to sit down at his seat.  I got a little teary walking down the hallway away from him, but he did so great and I was so excited for him that it really wasn't too bad.

 

The littles and I had a great morning at home, but around 1:15, I started counting down the minutes until we would leave to go pick him up.  He hopped right in the car and immediately started talking about how great his day was... how much fun he had, how he got to visit ALL 5 of the specials ("specials" are the classes that they do one day a week... music, art, PE, library, and spanish), how he made a new friend (though he couldn't remember his name!), etc.  When we got home, he said, "I had such a fun day.  I'm a super excited kindergartener!"

A little while later, I asked him to bring me his backpack so that we could unpack it and he said, "OH!  I have something for you!"  And then he brought me this:
 
 And I almost cried again.  But I held it together :)  And then Ryan and I both laughed because he had just been telling me about another book they read at school about kids going to kindergarten and the parents cried - he told me this in a "can you believe how silly that is!?!?!" kind of way.  :-)


 I am so proud of my big boy!

7 months

   Happy 7 months to my sweet Ethan!

 

It's been yet another busy month for you.  I guess every month is busy when you're a quickly growing, changing baby!

Most of this month's excitement has been covered in other posts (your baptism, blueberry picking, and your first trip to the beach - coming soon!) so I don't have a lot of events to talk about or random photos of you to throw in. 

You have finally mastered sitting up.  You can stay upright pretty much as long as you want to.  You still haven't figured out how to get down very gracefully, though, so when you do go for a toy that is out of reach, sometimes you plop a little harder than you'd like.  Good thing all of your play areas are carpeted :) 

You are also on the move.  It's still a drag-yourself-across-the-floor army crawl type thing, but you are definitely mobile and already causing trouble.  You figured out how to open the fireplace doors yesterday, and I had to move you away from them about 10 times today (until Kaeden made a pillow fort around you - why didn't I think of that!?!?!)

 

You seem to be teething, because for the last week or so, you've been much fussier than normal and you are constantly chewing on your hands.  You actually really like frozen teethers (neither of your brothers did), so that is hugely helpful.  They almost always calm you down/distract you when you're especially miserable.

 You are eating really well!  So far, you've had barley cereal, prunes, peaches, peas, sweet potatoes, avocado, and zucchini.  Your favorite by far is your cereal/prunes combo that you get every morning.  Next is definitely avocado, and your least favorite so far has been peaches.  You've only had them once, so you might change your mind, but I find it very strange.

 

We are struggling to figure out a good daily routine.  You are currently in between needing 2 & 3 naps and in between needing to nurse 4 & 5 times a day.  This is how things have been going lately:

Wake up between 5:30-6:30 and nurse (let's say 5:30 for the sake of the rest of the day)

Eat cereal/prunes at 7

Nap from about 7:15-9

Play, etc. and then nurse again around 10 and play some more

Nap from about 11:30/12-1/1:30 and then nurse again

Play all afternoon (or maybe take another nap if one or both of the previous ones was short)

Nurse around 4-4:30

Fuss nonstop because you're so tired

Eat a veggie for dinner around 6

Nurse again at 6:45

Go to bed around 7:30

The good thing is that you almost never make a fuss about going to sleep anymore.  I always love it when that phase ends. 

You have become very social, and most of your favorite things to do involve interacting with another member of our family :)  You do have some random stranger anxiety, and the separation anxiety is starting to set in as well.  You are definitely a mama's boy, as you should be at 7 months old ;-)

Having a mobile, teething baby does not generally lend itself well to photographs, so I decided to give up on any nice backgrounds or anything and just set you on the floor in my bedroom.  It worked out pretty well!