July at Home, Part III -- Out to Dinner and Ice Cream

One night, we went out to dinner and ice cream with Dendi and Bapa. Keira had a particularly enjoyable time with Dendi. I love her expression in the first picture. She's hysterical when you really get her laughing. And, as you can see, even though Keira's still not a fan of food in general, she has no problem with ice cream!

July at Home, Part II -- Time at Dendi and Bapa's

We spent a lot of time at Dendi and Bapa's house in July. Between trying to buy a house in their subdivision and Scott building shelves and using Bapa's tools we needed to be in Senoia a lot. Fortunately, Dendi and Bapa were gracious hosts and hopefully we weren't too annoying. Here are some of my favorite pictures from their house in July...

Keira smiling and showing off her troll face that Scott says she inherits from me.


She helped herself to Wheat Thins out of the pantry and within seconds had a happy pile.


Nothing better than nudie babies in the pool. It's been HOT!



Keira getting some Dendi love and showing off her first Giants shirt, courtesy of Dendi, of course.



Keira and Eli playing with Keira's toys in the Family Room.


She got into the markers, can you tell?


Bapa indulged Keira with a Cozy Coupe ride all around the yard and back into the house.



Eli playing Tee Ball for the first time -- in his Giants shirt, of course.

July at Home, Part I -- Blue Smoke Park (and Keira talks)

We spent many July days just like this...

We'd wake up, have breakfast and try to get out of the house before the heat of the day hit. We realized after a few tries that we needed to get out of the house and play hard at a park to ensure a smooth remainder of the day. Eli thinks he wants to stay home all day long: doing puzzles, crafts and having an "at home day." But, his behavior says otherwise. We discovered after trying a few parks, that in the summertime, there were only two parks that were bearable, even in the morning -- Blue Smoke and the Dendi's New Park in Downtown Senoia. Eli usually chose Blue Smoke. Keira loves going to the park, too. Park is one of her new words.

Speaking of Keira's new words, I'm going to digress a little and jot down some of her words -- she is talking a lot. She starting talking early, and then seemed to plateau a bit, even seemingly losing some of her first words. Now, her vocabulary has exploded once again. Many of her words represent entire categories. She says "bow wow" which does mean dog, but frequently means other animals, too. She says "ba-bu" or "va-vu" for vaccuum, which does mean the vaccuum, which neither she nor her brother are fans of. But, babu also means motorcycle, blender, garbage disposal, lawn mower, leaf blower, blender, coffee grinder or any other noise making device. She says "apple" VERY clearly (I think it's her clearest word), it means apple and most other food, too, which by the way she still isn't eating a whole lot of... She says "eye" which means eye as well as other body parts, buttons or small round things. She says "bottle" which sounds a bit like "bah-woo" it means bottle, water, container, cup, glass or mug. She says "guitar" which sounds like tar, which means guitar mostly, but she pointed at Dendi's piano the other day and said it, too.

She also says words that mean just one thing and have a predictable and understood meaning. For the family she says "Momma" or "Mommy", "Dadda" or "Daddy", "E-I" "Kee-Cat" (Kitty Cat) or "Kodi", Babo and Bapa (which refers to the grandfathers or grandmothers). She also says "ball", "baa-oo" for balloon, "hot", "booo" for book, "ow" which she says when she hurts herself or hits someone -- something we're struggling with... She says "boom" when she falls or when she bumps into something, usually gleefully. She says "car" which sounds a little like tar -- she loves her little red Cozy Coupe car which she can open, climb in and push backward. She says "bike" which sounds a little like buy -- another ride on toy she's getting fairly adept with. She says "spoon" which sounds a little like poo. She says "bath" which sounds a bit like bah and remains one of her very favorite things. I know I've missed some, but you get the idea.

And now, back to Blue Smoke Park, one of her beloved "park"s or parr...

Here are the pictures. First, Keira standing on and playing in the wood chips.





A few pictures of Eli on the slides



Now for my favorite of the bunch, the swings -- I love Keira's expression while Eli pushes her, it's worth the blurriness.





And, finally, one of me and my girl -- she's definitely still a Mama's girl.


After the park we'd often go to Starbucks or Senoia Coffee Company. The boys would work on puzzles while I walked around with Keira. Sometimes she'd doze in the sling and sometimes I'd follow her around. Then, we'd go home for lunch and nap. In the afternoon we'd go to Kedron Fieldhouse Pool to practice Eli's swimming and veg by the pool. What a charmed life we lead!!!

Fourth of July at the Lake House, Part III -- Day Trips

We went on a few day trips from the lake house. Next summer, we plan on taking even more. We're thinking about taking the kids tubing on the Chattahoochee near Helen, on a few hikes and into Clayton. This time our most successful day trip was into Clayton. Clayton has one of our favorite book stores with an awesome, cozy kids section. We went to the bookstore, hung out at a peaceful public garden and found our new favorite haunt -- a great coffee shop. The coffee shop has a train table that kept Eli and Keira happy while Scott and I relaxed and had a chance to chat. Here's a picture of me and the kids at the tranquil public garden.


Besides Clayton, we took a few other drives this trip. We took one drive to our favorite river spot on the South Carolina border. Another day we took a drive around looking for some poorly marked waterfall hikes and ended up having dinner and delicious fudge in Helen instead. Finally Scott, Keira and I drove to Clarkesville one day. We went to Clarkesville for a few groceries and stopped to let Keira play at the local playground for a few minutes.

Fourth of July at the Lake House, Part II -- In and Around the House

Yesterday, I got the message that our contract has been approved. Yay! We're under contract and we are officially set to close in the middle of December. Very exciting. :)

***

I wrote the prior sentences on August 3rd, now it's a week later... They cleared the lot last week. Today, on my insistence, they are going back in and clearing ten more feet into the trees to make a bigger back yard for us. I'm realizing that building a house is a very exciting, yet time consuming task. I think I'm going to have a part-time job making sure everything is done correctly until December.

Now back to playing catch up...

The four of us spent most of our time in and around the Lake House. First, for indoor fun... Keira was in love with walking and enjoyed cruising around and exploring all the new space. She plays quite nicely by herself for long stretches of time and has a habit of walking around with whatever's in her hands when she stops playing. Then, she finds interesting places to put her rogue toy. At home, we find things in all the hampers, in the shoe basket and in cupboards. The Lake House was no different. Up there, she tended to stick to cupboards -- especially one in the kitchen and one in the bathroom. When walking around she seemed to always have at least one thing in her hand.



Another trend that extended to the lake house was Eli and Keira's blossoming playtime relationship. They are spending time and playing together more and more. Their dynamic is one of my favorite things to watch.


Their favorite game to play together up at the Lake House was elevator. After Grammie and Babo headed home early in the week, Eli and Keira loved to play in their empty closet. Eli pretended to be the elevator man, opening the door, "pressing buttons" for the appropriate floors and then announcing the floor and letting Keira out once again. They both loved the game and played for hours.



Besides playing in the house and on the screen porch, the most exciting attraction is of course the water. Keira enjoyed playing in the sand, pulling out the wind mill decorations and swimming a little in the water. This trip she was thankfully less adventurous in the water and easier to hold on to. I think she'd had enough mouthfuls of water to realize that she can't swim solo yet. Truthfully, Keira's favorite water attraction was the hose. After spending time at the waterfront, we hose our feet off so that we don't track sand into the house. For Keira, it was better than the sink.





Eli also spent some time at the waterfront. Although, he was not impressed with the big waves from all the motor boats zooming around. His happiest time in the water was one afternoon with Daddy. Scott and Eli spent time talking and playing with a neighbor.

Fourth of July at the Lake House, Part I -- Family Fun

I know that it's been a very long time since my last post. We've spent the last 3+ weeks busily looking into houses. We've spent many hours and full days at Dendi and Bapa's house talking to the sales consultant, looking at lots, looking at houses and we were even under contract for a while. The first house fell through, and now we are waiting to find out if our contract for a second house to be built for us will be accepted by the corporate office. We are very excited and hoping this one will be meant to be. I'll try to update the blog as we get the news about the new house. Keep your fingers crossed. For now, I'd like to try to start catching up on July...

We spent a sun, fun and family filled week up at the Lake House over the Fourth of July. Eli was over the moon spending time with so many of his favorite people. For Keira's part, she warmed up and even let some of the relatives hold her and play with her -- a huge improvement from Memorial Day.

As always, we ate well, maybe too well on our vacation. Brian set up a Google spreadsheet for all of us to fill in the food we intended to bring. That way we could avoid ten loaves of bread and no butter. It helped a lot and I'm sure as we continue to work out the kinks it'll become an integral part of our future trips. As I said, we all ate extremely well throughout the trip with home cooked meals and baked goods shared by all. I think this trip was the most baked good intense trip we've ever had, with Scott baking chocolate chip cookies, Seana making peanut butter fudge and carrot cake and Brian baking his cranberry scones. Yum! Eli got in on the fun and helped Seana bake her carrot cake. He got to engage in two of his favorite activities at once -- spending time with family and helping in the kitchen.


Eli spent many, many hours working on all of his puzzles. His favorite request was "adult puzzles" -- puzzles with 500+ pieces. Here Babo gets in on the fun.


Besides helping out in the kitchen and working on puzzles, Eli loved rough housing with all the relatives. A new discovery is that Eli loves being held upside down. It used to be a favorite, but then once after a particularly lively upside down session he threw up. For a few years, it was a no go. But now his stomach seems to have gotten stronger, and it's now a favorite once again. In fact, Eli started telling us who he'd want to marry yesterday. Once he figured out that he wasn't allowed to marry someone in his family, he paused, thought about it and declared that he could marry Ms. Kathryn because she carried him around upside down. Sorry Uncle Brian! Here Mr. Josh got in on the upside down fun.


While it wasn't surprising that Eli loved hanging out with his family, Keira spent some time with them as well -- which was a nice surprise. It was a welcome change from the Memorial Day visit where she spent most of her time glued to me. I think she's slowly growing out of her stranger danger phase. One of Keira and Eli's favorite play destinations this trip was the blow up mattress on the screen porch. We had a full house this trip, so Eli and Scott spent most of their nights sleeping out on the screen porch. Truth be told, Eli prefers sleeping on the screen porch anyway -- he loved the sleeping arrangements. As I said earlier, the mattress served two functions: sleep destination at night and play destination during the day.

One afternoon, Keira and Ms. Kathryn played with Kathryn's sunglasses -- Keira practiced putting them on herself and Kathryn while they lounged together on the air mattress. It was a sweet, close encounter. While the girls played together, Eli romped around with Uncle Brian. After the playtime simmered down I got them all to pose for a picture on the air mattress.


Not only did Keira play with Ms. Kathryn, she also got some quality time in with Grammie. "Patty Cake" and "How Big is Keira?" are still favorites.

Playmates

As I mentioned a bit in my last post, we've been struggling a little with Eli's behavior. I think it's a combination of things -- he seems to be outgrowing his nap (sigh) and is consequently overtired, he's used to being at home all the time with just me, we had him a little overscheduled and probably most importantly he was getting sick. As he's slowly working his way through this cold, his behavior seems to be improving, too (fingers crossed).

Yet, the amazing thing is, no matter how he treats us, he's always wonderful with Keira. He shares with her, always wants to spend time with her, and now even plays with her. Honestly, we couldn't have asked for a kinder, gentler, more patient big brother. Keira is so lucky.

Now Keira and Eli are moving into an exciting new stage of their relationship -- they're finally becoming playmates. It's adorable. I noticed it especially at Dendi's house over the weekend. They played together for a long time in Eli's Bob Tent, they played next to each other in the kitchen, and several times she "chased" him up the stairs while he yelled, "Where's Eli?" She was giggling, laughing and nearly falling all over herself trying to scramble up the stairs. She smiles and laughs for him like she does for no one else. And, he was the first person she said "hi" to. I love watching their relationship blossom.