Summer time...and the livin' is...

Drew has been learning about Pokemon from some of his older friends at summer camp. It actually started last year as the kids in his class had older brothers. But now he gets to spend face to face time with said older brothers and is very enthralled with this new world. He then went to a birthday party that had a Pokemon theme and came home ready to spend his piggy bank money on Pokemon cards. The day we bought them, we heard about it the rest of the day except for when we were swimming in the pool. As we were getting close to the day's end, we had the boys tell Kate goodnight as always. Drew says "Goodnight Kate...I bet I do 50 damage against you tomorrow". Cracked us up! (Apparently each card can do so much 'damage' against the other in battle. We are learning all about something we didn't care about at all!)

Noah has 2 favorite things he likes to eat for breakfast..."hot dogs" (breakfast kolaches/pigs in a blanket) or "a PBJ sandwich" (bagel with PB and J). One morning Matthew had to wake Noah up, who is usually very groggy when this happens and doesn't talk, but more so grunts, for the first 5 minutes or so. Well, one morning, he rolled over and first thing out of his mouth: "do you smell...hot dogs?!" Laughingly Matthew had to say no, but we got a kick out of it!

The boys went to Houston with Grandpa and Nana for a week this month: "Camp Glienke"! They had a blast, no doubt about it. We enjoyed a much quieter house with just Kate. It happened that the Monday of the week was our 13th anniversary (as Kevin put it..."You're old!"). So we both took the day off, Kate went to daycare and we had a nice relaxing day together. I posted some pics of the day on FB and Nana showed them to the boys the next day. There was one of us eating ice cream and one with me kissing Matthew's cheek. Noah's response was "They never let US have ANY ice cream!" and "I don't like people kissing!" Silly Noah!

The boys had an AMAZING time with Grandpa and Nana in Houston! They were super busy every day and still had things left that they had planned to do! But the boys didn't even know the difference. There was a new adventure, or 2 or 3, every day! From Pump It Up, Children's Museum, 2 different public pools with awesome kid zones, Learning to ride bikes!, multiple train rides, Nature Center, outdoor play/theatre, Movie night, helping wash the cars, mow the grass, snow cones and learning to use different tools, you could say they all had a good time! There were no problems getting the boys to sleep at night, that's for sure!

Drew is using the word "Epic!" a lot lately. It just flat out cracks us up! No doubt he learned from an older friend at camp!

The boys get to play all sorts of silly games at camp. One day they played a jelly bean mountain game. There was a jelly bean on top of a mountain of powdered sugar for each kid. They were supposed to scoop the sugar away with a spoon until the jelly bean rolled down and then they could eat the jelly bean. Well, Noah just took the spoon and started to eat the powdered sugar! Hilarious! But really, pretty smart! :)

Every now and then Noah has a chance to take a bath by himself while Drew takes a shower. Lately when this happens, Noah just flat out swims around in the bath. He puts his head under water and wiggles and worms around in the water! It's so funny to watch, especially when he's in the big garden tub in the master bathroom! Such a funny kid! He's SO determined to swim without floaties! I guess he will practice any way he can!!!

Kate keeps smiling and giggling and lighting up our lives as always! She loves to smile and laugh and her giggles and laughing have really turned into a real, for real, laugh at times! It's so much fun! There was one night out at dinner with just Kate (the boys were in Houston) and Mommy and Kate laughed back and forth for so long! People started to stare and then started smiling themselves...she was just so funny laughing so much! Oh, she is so precious!

She is still a stinker at school and only takes 1 nap a day, and sometimes it's only about an hour. But otherwise she's been very happy at school and has adjusted to several changes in teachers, which is a big deal for her because she is slow to trust people usually. They say she does really well though. She is usually pretty clingy in the evenings after days at school, but we manage...and I'll take those snuggles!

We have enjoyed several opportunities to have neighbors and friends over to swim in the pool already this month. The boys have invited some friends over and several of our neighbors have babies close to Kate's age, so all the kids have some friends to play with. Kate absolutely LOVES the pool. She loves being outside, but will start shaking with excitement if she thinks we are walking out to the pool. She loves to sit and splash on the tanning ledge. She tolerates the baby float a little, but mostly wants to be out in the pool with everyone else like a big girl I guess!

The week the boys were in Houston, we took the opportunity to do all sorts of things! We went out to dinner almost every night just the 3 of us...no cooking, no cleaning up, no wrestling boys to stay in their seats and off the floors of the restaurant! It was great! We also used it as an opportunity to get Kate to stop waking up in the very early hours of the morning! When we've tried to let her soothe herself back to sleep at those times (AKA, cry herself back to sleep) she ends up waking up one or both of the boys. So Mommy has sacrificed herself for the cause and just goes to nurse her and everyone can stay asleep and Mommy and Kate can go back to sleep quickly. Well, with the boys gone, we didn't have to worry about that part anymore! So the first night she cried for about 45 minutes, but by the end of the 5 nights, she would wake up briefly with a slight whimper and be back asleep within minutes! Hooray!!! Oh, so glorious to not have to stumble out of bed sometime between 2-5 every morning!

New things Kate is starting to do this month: pulling up to stand, cruising, crawling/scooting, waving bye-bye and sometimes Hi, and she got her first 2 teeth, both on the bottom. She just LOVES to stand! Until late this month, I was a little curious if she'd skip crawling all together, she just wants to stand so much! She will pull up on anything and she especially likes to climb up on us if we are sitting on the floor. Then she'll move her feet, but just not go anywhere...it's so cute, it looks like she's dancing! She is doing well with lots new foods and in general loves table foods. She will mimic sounds and some movements, and has really started enjoying clapping her own hands, as well as making us clap ours together. She is making more sounds and has the sounds Nana, Dada and Mama in her repertoire, but pretty sure she doesn't know they mean anything yet.

She loves to open and close drawers, which means she's pinched her fingers a number of times. And she loves to play with her music shakers...she's so cute with them, just shaking back and forth and grinning the whole time. She is now taking her baths without any sitting support, which she loves because she gets to play in the water more!

We are a happy, tired, blessed family!