Similar Interests

When people hear how close in age Ethan and Emmaline are, they often comment about how much fun they'll have playing together and how nice it will be for me that they'll go through phases together. I am appreciating that more and more as Emmaline improves her crawling.
This morning, I left the kitchen for a minute and returned to find the kids sitting side by side in front of the hutch. Ethan was "explaining" to Emmaline all the joys of the drawer pulls on the front. She was cooing away attentively. They were both eating shards of a black olive they had discovered on the floor from last night's dinner. What a beautiful stage to be in together, where they can both be perfectly happy with drawer pulls and floor olives.

Just when you think you've got them figured out

I was reading two days ago and came across an article that said something along the lines of "You need to move your kid out of his crib into a bed by the time he is 35 inches." I thought to myself, "Hmm, I think Ethan is a little over 35 inches. It's so nice that he has shown absolutely no inclination to climb out of his crib. These parenting books... you have to take them with a grain of salt..."

So, of course, who did I find staring up at me from right next to the bedroom door this morning? "Wait a sec... that's not where I left you last night..." I tried to interview him about his little escape (I think of Dory on Finding Nemo every time I write that...es-ka-pay...) and didn't get very far.

"Did you climb out of bed this morning?"
Thinks for a minute...smiles... "Uh-huh!"
"Did you fall down?"
Looks a little worried, but no definite response. Not sure how to interpret that one.

I think we will be assembling the toddler bed this afternoon.

Travel Pack

Emmaline's favorite toy right now is a little pack of Kleenex, the kind you put in your purse (if you don't have a giant pack of baby wipes instead). No matter what toy she is holding, if she sees that precious Kleenex, she will go for it. She gazes at it lovingly and crunches the wrapper in her hand.

On a totally unrelated note, the men at camp have been building a bath house down in the "Outback" valley, to accommodate tent campers. I took the kids down to watch them work yesterday, and it was probably the best half hour of Ethan's week. Some of the older guys with masonry experience were laying cinder blocks, while the younger guys were running back and forth carrying bucket after bucket of concrete and cement. Ethan was a little scared of the cement mixer at first, and absolutely petrified when Levi started driving the bobcat ("No! Daddy, No!"). But he loved watching the men laying the bricks ("Mo' Mud!") and Levi shoveling pea gravel into the cement mixer. I think it was every little boy's dream.

Gross.

Samson can now open the toilet all by himself in order to drink out of it. Yeah. The dogs are totally running this house.
In other news, we are back home and back to our routine after having company and then being company at my parents'. It is nice to be making a dent in the laundry pile and the kitchen clutter after a few busy (but way more fun than housework) weeks.

Sauerkraut Baby

Emmaline has finally learned to crawl forward. She has mastered this skill about 2 weeks before Ethan did. When he crawled forward for the first time, it was across the camp entryway to Levi. Emma crawled across the living room to my plate of brat and sauerkraut. She wasn't exactly sure what to do with it when she got there, but it was a great motivator.

Now Ethan is off with Levi and a bunch of the camp guys helping them chase a bear away from the camp dumpsters. His first bear chase!

Cousins

Every summer, Raven and Austin (Levi's sister's kids), come out to Colorado to hang out with Levi's mom for a few weeks. This summer, they are taking turns coming up to camp for a week while they are here. So Austin came to cabin camp last week, and then had a glorious Friday evening playing all of Levi's video games while Ethan "helped."



Saturday, the five of us went up to Denver and met Raven, Kathy, Levi's aunt Christine, Jesse, Kara, and Aydin, and my parents, for an afternoon at Lakeside amusement park. The kids had so much fun! I did not remember my camera, so I do not have photographic proof of this. But we had a great time. Ethan looked a little terrified on all of the kiddie rides, but as soon as they were done, he asked for "more please."

After enjoying Lakeside, we came back home with Raven, who is going to go to camp this coming week. She is so good with the kids! They love having her here. She and Ethan made bead jewelry this morning.

Summertime and the Livin' is Easy...

It's been a long time since my last post, and I can't decide if it's because nothing important has happened or if it's because I've been so busy with unimportant things. Unimportant in a good way. Like playing outside and going to camp and the park and the farmer's market. These things do not really warrant a blog post (especially the farmer's market...nothing is ripe up here but onions and radishes), but they do distract me from updating my extensive readership on our goings on.
So here are the highlights of the summer so far:
*Levi has so far spent most of the summer about 40 feet up in the air working on our new 65-foot climbing tower at camp. It currently has a climbing wall on one side, and when it's finished, it will have 2 other high ropes elements and a zip line across the pond. He said that his most recent day of working on it (last Friday), was the scariest day of his life. He's also been playing on the church softball team, which has a winning record for the first summer in a long, long time.
*Ethan is talking like crazy! He is very into animals and the noises they make. He also has a (kind of annoying) push-a-button-and-strum-and-it-plays-songs guitar that he is wild about. For some mysterious reason, he only plays it while wearing hats.
*Emmaline is sitting up well, getting into all of Ethan's toys, laughing like crazy when he entertains her, and making it very difficult for me to eat dinner with her on my lap. She smiles pretty much constantly, and she is content to go anywhere and do anything as long as she is attached to me.
*Samson has destroyed my garden twice. The first time, I had just planted it, so I was able to replant with a lot of success. But Sunday, he celebrated the 4th of July by digging up almost all my plants while we were at church. I managed to save a few, but that evening, we had the biggest hailstorm I've ever seen here. That pretty much finished it off. I now have one pathetic lettuce, 2 spinach plants, and about 15 carrots. I can plant some new lettuce, and maybe some radishes, but our 3-month growing season is running out too quickly for much else. Better luck next year, I guess. We decided to keep Samson anyway (although I briefly considered turning him into a rug).
*I have been enjoying lazy days, not cooking lunch or dinner, going for lots of walks, and having a bunch of fantastic college summer staffers here (many of whom like to hold/play with babies for me so I can eat at mealtime). I'm planning on blowing up the kiddie pool tomorrow.

So that is summer so far at our house. 2 months summarize into one post quite well.