saturday at the beach

last saturday we made our way to a new beach in delray with some friends of ours. it was a very hot day already at 10:30 when we got there. it was the perfect beach for the kids. you could walk out far into the water, there were hardly any waves and there was a sand bar so we didn't have to worry about bea getting swept out to sea.

  

 micah found this red sea sponge while he was snorkeling. he was pretty excited about it. we didn't know what it was until we got home and matt looked it up. that boy sure does love all things to do with the sea. he says he wants to be a marine biologist and i wouldn't be at all surprised if that is what he really does grow up to do. beatrix says she wants to be a pilot. 

as you can see from the picture below, penelope and i are pretty peach. but after staying at the beach for three hours and forgetting to apply our sun screen again, 

the whole family looked like lobsters by the time we got home. 

how i get...

...the laundry folded. 

i have to make a barrier so the lady doesn't fall off the bed. 

early mornings

 bea loves sitting on daddy's lap to watch him "pay the puter" 

she also has started wearing this green skirt over her pajamas. when i asked her why she said, "cuz its pitty". i said oh and she said "pitty bird, pitty bird!" 

micah loves necks....it's strange but he always has. for awhile when he was bea's age, he moved from feeling my neck to my arm pit...that was a long couple of months! now he loves to touch pips' neck. matt and i have asked him why and he always says, "cause it's so soft and warm". matt thinks he is going to make a triple chinned woman very happy some day. haha!

run and be free

 silly faces

 running and racing

 red cheeks from running

 first time sitting in the grass

she didn't like it.

traditions

father's day lunch sparked something in matt...a desire for sunday dinners. growing up i remember sundays as kind of my mom's day off from cooking. i remember having leftovers after church and then having popcorn or something easy for dinner. but matt's family always had huge sunday dinners. his dad's reward for preaching. *grin* 

the next saturday night i took a chicken out to thaw and peeled a bunch of potatoes. sunday morning i made his mom's recipe for rolls and right before we left for church i put them in the pan to raise so they would be ready when we got home from church. we headed off to church and after church was over i asked matt if there was anyone he would like to ask over to share lunch with us. he found a family and asked them if they would like to come over, they agreed and we prepared to head out. however, it started to rain buckets. by the time we got home we were all soaked and laughing. as we hurriedly moved around the house trying to pick up for our impromptu guests, my phone rang. it was them calling to cancel as they had gotten soaked too. so it was just our little family sitting around the table enjoying the family lunch. 

as the 5 of us were sitting around our little table, memories were popping in my mind like camera flashes and with them sounds as well. i could hear my sister-in-law's voice in my ear as she chose the perfect roll and placed it on her plate before her brothers got to the table. i could picture all of us sitting around matt's parents table before there were grandkids, or even spouses. i had my first sunday lunch with them 14 years ago. matt's sister had only been 15 when we had started dating and now here she was living in pennsylvania with her husband and two girls and another baby on the way. i got pretty quiet sitting around our table. in fact a tear or two might have slipped down my face. i could hear the laughter that had been around that table. i could see matt's dad at the head of the table enjoying the meal. i could hear him telling a joke and then looking at me in expectation of a laugh. i could hear matt and his brothers telling stories from their childhood that i had already heard a hundred times. laughing still at the hilarious situations they always found themselves in. i could visualize all of the girls remaining at the table talking, while the boys headed into the family room to watch whatever game was playing. i remembered it all like it was yesterday. 

right there in that moment, i missed them. terribly. 

in fact i texted them, just to tell them that very thing. 

to let them know that i was going to keep the tradition alive. the tradition of sunday dinners. 

moving out

daddy's shoes

best of friends

  

 beatrix has been wearing micah's pants lately, literally wearing his pants. she stopped wearing her swim suits for a week and instead prefered to wear micah's swim trunks. most of the time that is all she would wear, no shirt, no underware, just pirate swim trunks. she told me she wanted to dress like a boy. whatever, i said. you can wear whatever you want. 

         
  

her crib

last week we set up the crib again, one last time. penelope is getting more and more mobile. she has been army crawling for a couple of weeks now and has been rocking on all fours for a bit too. i was starting to get nervous that one of these days, after i had laid her in the co-sleeper for a nap, i wouldn't hear her wake up and she would try to crawl out of bed. i knew it was time to move her into something a little safer. we left the co-sleeper on the bed still for middle of the night feedings, but this is where she takes her naps now and where she starts her nights. the phrase above her bed is one of my favorite sarah mclachlan songs. i used to sing in to micah all of the time during his middle of the night feedings. for some reason it just came to me while i was setting up the crib for penelope and so i wrote it out for her too. pips looks like she is standing on her own in this picture and though she has pulled herself up since this picture was taken, matt had been holding on to her and let go just for a minute when i snapped it.

just a cute face

potatoes

two sundays ago i made mashed potatoes for dinner and decided to try some out on pips. 

most of them ended up on her cute little face. 

pretty leaves

holla

 i have been waiting for gwen stefani's line of baby clothes to go on clearance for months now. they finally did and last week i happened to find this adorable onsie for $4.00! i grabbed it and did what any normal mom would do. immediately put it on penelope and took some pictures. 

dear jeff

one night a few weeks ago, i went into micah's room right before i went to bed to check on him, make sure he was covered up and remove any books that had been left in his bed. i picked one of his "study" books up and this letter fell out. i think i am going to email it to mr. corwin. 

sunday swim and crash

an update on beatrix

a couple weeks ago i found myself with a couple of hours of quiet. penelope was taking an unusually long morning nap and so i sat down with beatrix at the computer to see if she could learn to play some games. i went to pbskids.com and i began to show her how to work the mouse. at first she was very timid and just watched me and then i asked her to try it. she cautiously moved the mouse around and got frustrated that she couldn't get it right away. but slowly she figured out how to work the mouse and that the arrow on the screen moved when she moved the mouse. it was awesome watching it click with her. before i knew it she was doing it all on her own. pretty soon she said, "bebe do it" and she motioned for me to leave the room. a couple of times she came to ask me for help, but the majority of her morning was spent playing the games on her own. i loved seeing the sense of accomplishment in her eyes and her smile...man her smile...it is incredible so see her smile and hear the excitement in her voice. 

beatrix has been talking like crazy this last month. she was supposed to do summer school, but matt and i made the decision to let her stay home for the summer. i am so thankful that we did. rhonda also agreed with our decision and at her last visit she told me that she could not believe the progress that beatrix has made. she said that the improvement is wonderful and that she fully expects that bea will be able to start kindergarten right on schedule. bea still has two years of speech therapy pre-school scheduled, but rhonda thinks that with the help of those two years she will be right where she should be. it is rhonda's opinion that bea is very motivated and determined to tell us exactly what she is thinking.  many of the words beatrix sayd to me are hard for me to decipher, but the amazing thing is that she is patient with me. she knows that i want to understand her and so she takes her time, saying the words over and over. sometimes i still don't know exactly what she is trying to tell me and so i ask her to show me or try to tell me in a different way. she always does. without a hint of frustration. she has never once gotten mad at me. she has abandoned what she has been trying to tell me a couple of times and when those times happen i get right down on her level, make her look me in the eyes, and i tell her "bebe, you know mama wants to understand you right? (she nods) then please don't give up and try to tell me again." she always does. every. single. time. and somehow, by the grace of God, i do eventually understand and the smile returns to her face.