The best summer ever

Normally, the post I write at this time of year laments the passing summer and starts hyping up my new organizational techniques for the upcoming school year. However, I'm not teaching this school year, so instead, this post is going to be a reflection of my amazement at how much we did this summer.

To be honest, I feel like we have done Phineas and Ferb proud. If you count summer as starting Memorial Day weekend, here's the list:
2 vacations - Michigan and Florida
1 soccer class - once a week for three weeks
1 swim lesson class - four times a week for two weeks
2 trips to Santa's Village
3 weddings
2 berry-picking trips
3 birthday parties
2 trips to the zoo
Too many trips to the pool to count
At least 5 trips to the library
And countless miscellaneous meetups/playdates with lots of our friends and family!

This list doesn't include the 3 science experiments we did thanks to the emails from the Museum of Science and Industry, or the number of forts we built in the basement. It's hard to keep track of it all!

It's a little bit of a bummer that we are ending our summer with illness. Last week, Jack had some 24-hour stomach bug, and then on Friday/Saturday, Reid developed the Hand-Foot-Mouth virus. So we are spending our last week quarantining ourselves so we don't pass anything on to anyone else. In the grand scheme of things, 1 bummer week out of the 11 and a half we had of summer seems pretty excellent to me!

Jack starts back to school on Wednesday. I think he's pretty excited, although he doesn't talk about it too much. He enjoyed our back-to-school shopping trip last Friday. His favorite part was the shoe store. He is now the proud owner of Captain America gym shoes. We also had fun picking out folders and markers and other odds and ends to fulfill the school supply list. He actually had a nightmare the other night that we returned all of his school supplies. Poor guy! Don't worry, we still have them!

I couldn't abandon my annual organizational rehab completely. This end-of-summer, I'm focusing on activities for the boys. Our summer was easy. There was always a playdate or the pool. But now that the pool is closing and many of our friends are going back to school, I'd like to get some enrichment activities going on at home.

Plan number one: teach Reid sign language. Jack learned to sign a few things at this age at Bright Horizons. It definitely made things easier when we could communicate at least a little, and I'm hoping the same for Reid.

Plan number two: Since Reid and I will have weekday mornings just us, I'm going to look up developmental activities appropriate for his age. I already have a bunch of books, so this just means breaking them out and having a few new activities ready to go every couple of weeks.

Plan number three: I'm going to run. A bunch of us from the Moms and Tots Who Rock group have signed up for the Hot Chocolate 5K in November. After dropping Jack off at school, Reid and I are going to hit the path for a little 5K training.

Plan number four: Get Jack ready for kindergarten. I'm still missing the Little Wildcats program and the amazing things they do for kids. Steve and I agree, Jack was learning a ton there. Since our preschool here is only 2 and a half hours a day, I'd like to supplement to make sure he is challenged and ready to go for kindergarten next year. I've picked up a workbook to help with letters and numbers and writing. I also have a ton of materials and books to reference for ideas. And then there's my board on Pinterest and those awesome pins I find there. I plan to have a couple of activities for Jack to work on each week in the afternoons. We really need to work on his ability to be by himself, and I figure this might be a good way to work that in too.

And just to bask in the glory of summer once more in this post, here are some pictures. (They are in reverse chronological order, except for the last one, which I took today).



























And this last one is a nice commentary on life at the Barrett house

Reid is 9 months old

Isn't he just too darn cute?

Unfortunately, he's tenth month isn't starting out so hot. Our normally very happy, smiley, easy-going baby is very uncomfortable. He is battling the icky hand-foot-mouth virus. (I know it is technically called disease, but that just sounds too gross, and really, it's just a virus). Luckily, he doesn't have too bad of a case. I took these pictures today, and you probably can't even tell in the photos that he has it. Now, if you changed his diaper, there'd be no doubt.

But let's recap the ninth month. Reid has learned how to crawl. He is very good at army crawling. He can crawl on his knees, but he's not as coordinated that way, so he only takes a few "steps" and then decides it's much faster the other way.

He has also started to pull himself up onto objects. For instance, the other day Steve caught him pulling up onto the bottom shelf of one of the end tables in the living room. Today, I caught him trying to pull himself up the stairs. Luckily, he was not as successful with the stairs. One of his favorite games lately is to pull himself up onto my stomach while I'm laying on the floor. Then he crawls over me to the other side. He's quite the acrobat.

He still cannot get into the sitting position by himself yet. But if you help him get there, he can get down pretty easily by himself. This has made bath time much easier!

Reid loves to play ball. This is a pretty recent development in the last week or so. If you sit him up and then sit across from him, he'll try to throw you the ball and enjoys catching it when you roll it to him. I can occupy him for quite a while with this game. And Jack will even play with him like this for a minute or two every once in a while. It gets entertaining when Reid gets excited and accidentally throws the ball behind himself. He usually figures where the ball went after a minute or so.

He's babbling like crazy. He says "da da da" a ton. I also hear about that from Steve :). Reid will also say "ma ma ma" and "ba ba ba" a lot too. A few times, I thought he has repeated "hi" when I've said it to him, but I'm sure I'm just wishful hearing. Reid loves to "talk" with us though.

As for food, he has started eating finger foods. We started with the puffs, and he picked that up pretty quickly. At my nephew's christening late last month, he went to town on some watermelon. He also seems to like cantaloupe and strawberries. This morning, he tried a little banana pancake. The HFM has made eating a challenge though, so he hasn't eaten much in the past few days. His poor throat is just too sore.

As for sleeping, he's getting better. Of course, the illness has wreaked havoc on that, but when he was well, he was sleeping from about 7 p.m. until about 6 or 6:30 a.m. He also consistently takes two naps, although they are each only about an hour.

I don't have his height and weight yet because his 9-month checkup is scheduled for August 27. So I'll add that to this post once we go to that appointment. In the meantime, he is wearing 12-month clothes.

So here's the stuff you are really reading this post for... the monkey and other pictures. Enjoy! We had lots of fun with the new lens this month!

Slowly improving my focus

I've been having fun shooting with my new 50mm 1.4 lens. Last weekend, I took it to our friends' wedding. I brought it along on a visit to see Christopher and Susie. And today, I shot 132 pictures at Christopher's baptism. Out of the 132 shots, I got 22 pics I actually liked. Hopefully my success rate will continue to rise.

I find I am getting much more comfortable with the manual mode on the fly. I've been adjusting white balance as well as aperture and shutter speed settings pretty quickly. At the wedding, I had more time since Steve had to be there early. I was able to pick my seat and play with the settings for at least 15 minutes before the wedding started. Today, at the christening, I had about a minute before everything started, so I was adjusting as I went along.

The focusing is getting a little better. I think part of my problem is my eyesight. I've been wearing my contact lenses, which I think is better than my glasses. But I still second guess what I see in the viewfinder as focused. Or I will think it looks great, take the photo, and then in the preview I can see that it is definitely not in focus. Oh well, I just will have to practice more.

So here are a few of my favorite shots from the last few events. Feel free to critique and/or give me pointers to improve! I love constructive criticism. You can also tell me which ones you like best. These are all unedited, right from the camera.


 

Jack's old grandma; my new camera lens

Some kids have imaginary friends, our child has an imaginary grandma.

Steve and I are taking this new development as evidence of the wonderful relationships Jack has with his three grandmothers. It's also quite entertaining. The"old grandma" usually comes up in conversation, not actually in interaction with us. It goes a little something like this.

Jack: My old grandma gave me lots of money. She has a hundred dollars.
Me/Steve: Really? Where did she get her money?
Jack: She had jobs.
Me/Steve: What kind of job?

And so on until he can't come up with any more answers.

Jack's old grandma has an army, a best friend (who she married), and lots of knowledge. The old grandma teaches Jack lots of things. And she used to come to our house, before Steve and I lived here.

I love his active imagination. I'm hoping he keeps it going for a really long time.

In other news, the new camera lens my family bought me for my birthday arrived in the mail yesterday. It's a 50mm prime lens with an F-stop of 1.4-16 . It's awesome. I definitely need some practice with it though. The nice thing about the 1.4 is that I don't need to use a flash until it's pretty dark (and I don't like using a flash). The part I need to practice is focusing. The field of focus when using the 1.4 setting is pretty narrow. I'm having lots of fun learning though!

Here are some of the better shots so far.















This one shows the benefit of the out-of-focus shot - me early in the morning


I took this tonight - no flash, just the light from the computer screen hitting his face

I'm totally going to jinx this...

Reid fell asleep on his own tonight! We gave him a bath, got him in his jammies, and he nursed for a little bit. But he got really cranky in my arms, so I laid him down in bed while he was still awake, and he fell asleep without crying all on his own!

Let's all keep our fingers crossed that he stays asleep all night long.

Today was a fun day. We celebrated my and Vita's birthday with the immediate family. We had brunch and played all morning.





I broke out my Auntie Kay's recipe for French Toast Casserole, and although it was a little scary for a minute, it turned out awesome. There was a little spillover of butter/brown sugar mixture that caused some smoke. And the casserole seemed to be breathing as we pulled it from the oven since it had puffed up so much. But after a little cooling off, not a crumb was leftover.

My family was also very generous. They bought me the 50mm prime lens I have been eyeing for my camera. I'm so excited to start using it! I'm sure the blog will benefit from the pictures too.

And we took some pictures of all of the grandchildren together. It's becoming quite a brood. Amazingly, we got all six to sit nicely for about 3 minutes while we snapped away.







There are more, but you get the idea.

Alright, it's still before 9 p.m. I just might get a full night's sleep. Keep those fingers crossed!

Reid is 8 months old!

I know he turned 8 months on Thursday, but I finally got the pictures taken today, so hence the post.

The picture above is my favorite. I love the simpleness. He almost looks too serious! Of course, it wouldn't be a monthly photo shoot photo without the monkey, so here you go.







In that last one, he's watching Jack to see what he'll do next. Jack and Steve both helped out making Reid laugh during the 5 minutes we took pictures. That's about how long Reid can sit before he gets tired and starts to wobble over.

In the last month, Reid has perfected his rolling. He really only likes to roll one way, from his front to his back over his right arm then back to his front over his left arm. But he can get pretty much anywhere he wants to be using his technique of rolling and spinning. He has gotten out of his room and the down the hall to our room all by himself. He is also pushing up more, so I think crawling will be coming soon. He just has to figure out how to get his knees underneath him and support his weight on them. Overall, he does not like to be contained.

He loves to stand up if you hold him. I'll hold him under the arms, and he'll raise his arms and smile or laugh. Then we all say "Yeah" and he laughs some more. As you can see in the photos, he can sit by himself a little. He can't get into the sitting position by himself yet though, so I don't sit him up too much. I want him to learn how to get there by himself so he can also get down by himself. Right now, he's fallen over a few times and conked his head. He doesn't like that much even though he loves to sit.

He plays with his toys more actively now too. He'll roll across the room to get to his ball or the rings he likes to chew on. He also likes to get Jack's crocs or the remote, and he'll cry if we take those away. He's developing definite likes and dislikes, and he's not afraid to let us know what they are.

As for food, he is progressing through the baby foods. He seems to have mastered eating from a spoon, and we are in a good routine for breakfast, lunch and dinner. He also has had lots of fruits and vegetables now. He seems to really like bananas. But without going into too much detail, we are on a break from bananas and focusing on prunes right now, for which he is developing a taste.

Sleep is the other big thing we are working on now. I finally hit my point of extreme exhaustion, and after re-reading the chapter in "Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child," we are letting Reid cry it out at night. He was waking up 2 or 3 times at night, and sometimes he would stay awake just to interact with us. Last night was the first night we did the cry-it out system. Overall, Reid did pretty well. He never cried for more than 30 minutes straight, and he only had about 4 or 5 wakings. However, Jack woke up crying several times last night. It was very bizarre since Jack usually sleeps very well through the night. Steve did the brunt of the work, so he was tired this morning. I tried to help with Jack, but we both ended up in there with him several times.

We're hoping tonight goes better, and maybe by the end of this next week, we'll all be sleeping soundly and restfully. Then maybe I can get back to writing more often instead of stealing moments of sleep every chance I get!