Ethan's 1st Somersault

Sorry for the blurry video - came from our phone . . . but here is Ethan's first somersault! He skids on his head at the beginning.

Crawling and Standing and Swimming, oh my!

This is how my little MacGyver turns on light switches. These tongs are quite useful to him. He uses them to eat pop-tarts and turn on lights so far.Emeree started crawling a week and a half ago . . . she started by going up on her toes and then putting one knee in front of the other, but now she just crawls normal. Then yesterday, I came into the room to find her standing up against Ethan's Tonka Dump Truck. Luckily he was down for his nap, otherwise I don't think he would have taken too kindly to her using it. This was the first time she pulled up to standing. She's been pulling up to her knees for about a week. As you can see, she likes to stand on her toes - with them folded in. LOVE that dimple!We got a little plastic swimming pool - Ethan loves it. He stands and scoops water out with a cop or funnel. But Emeree hated it. She screamed bloody murder when we dipped her toes in it. She has no problem with baths, but this water was a little colder. I do love her swimming suit, but since she won't touch the water, I don't think she'll get to wear it again.

Neither of my kids have a solid belly laugh (Max has a great laugh - I'm so jealous of that). Emeree just lets out a heavy breath since she holds in her laughs, but now she has switched to a funny sound that sounds like she has a small air leak.

4th of July Weekend

We had a busy weekend. We spent Saturday/Sunday morning at Ocean Shores with my family. Most of the time was spent at the park for Ethan and then at the beach. In the morning, Michael, Ethan, and I went out on the canoe in the canal that is in my parent's back yard. I thought Ethan would cry the whole time, but he just held onto my leg and was watching everything intently. It was fun.

I don't have many pictures of Emeree . . . she was mostly bundled up since it was chilly at the beach. She kept making the "stink face" the whole time. I think the wind was hitting her face and she didn't like that, so she responded with a sour "stink face" the whole night. But here is a picture of her cute outfit that I made her. I made it out of a men's t-shirt. It goes down past her knees, but you can't really tell from the picture - and there are 3 stars on the side.

At the North Bay Park, they had entertainment for kids. We got Ethan a balloon sword. He mostly chased me and Michael with the sword.

But then he found some other kids playing with swords too and he joined in. The kids were really good sports at playing with a 2 year old they didn't know for a minute or 2.

They also had a train ride. I went with Ethan on this one and he screamed when we first got on board, but then he calmed down. He didn't smile or react much. He just sat very still and was very serious.


Here is one of the few pictures we took of Emeree when she wasn't bundled up - and as she did the whole day, she made a weird face.

Here is Michael and Ethan at the water.
Nathan decided to skip along the water for about a minute, so Michael took several shots of the action - here's a very manly looking one.

After he was done playing in the sand, he got cold, so we wrapped him up and put him on a chair by the fire. He sat like this for a couple hours - and ate grapes out of his hat.


And then we drove home Sunday afternoon and ended the day at Michael's parent's house to have dinner and light off some fireworks.

Debbie found some giant marshmallows . . . Ethan is a sucker for marshmallows.

And of course Michael was trying to get some amazing shots of fireworks like we did 2 years ago. Here's one of the cool ones from last night.Ethan didn't really like the fireworks, but he was okay as long as he was sitting on my lap. Emeree cried for the first couple loud bangs, but then she fell asleep while Debbie was holding her. So I didn't get to light any off this year since I was holding Ethan, but Michael and Rick lit off all of them - including the sparklers because Ethan wanted nothing to do with them. And boy do I wish I had the camera for the sparkler finale. Michael and his Dad pranced and skipped around the yard with a sparkler in each hand. It was hilarious!

So even though it was super busy and we were all over the place, we had a great time and still felt like we got to relax and enjoy it all.