Main Street Days!

We attended Main Street Days as a family this year. Last year, Luke was bummed he missed out on all the fun because he had to work. At 2 years old, Lyla was kind of hysterical last year "riding the rides."
A year ago:

This year:

This year, she was so excited and unsurprisingly adventurous. She wanted to ride every ride we passed, but unfortunately she wasn't big enough to ride very many without an adult. After getting the Merry-Go-Round out of the way, she hopped (literally) over to the Tilt-a-Whirl with Aunt Shannon and Faryn. I was anxious for her at first, this being an entirely different caliber of ride. Silly me. "The pink ride" quickly became her favorite. Flint and I watched her goofy grin and listened to her delightful squeals from the side as she spun around again and again.

>I accompanied her down the giant slide, which went much slower than last year due to increased levels of friction on the new sittin' sacks (at least I hope that's why...). Too slow for Lyla, I guess, because she never asked to go again. Luke took her on the ferris wheel, which despite my fascination with it and certainty that it meets all carni safety standards, is not one for me.

She also really, really, really enjoyed the Scrambler, which she rode repeatedly for probably 20 minutes.

We took an unexpectedly long break to have some pizza at Napoli's, which may have been the longest and most stressful meal we've had with the bambinos. Hunger + crowds + tired baby + hungry baby + demanding toddler + looooong wait for food + NOISE! = disaster. Positive: indoor restroom with plumbing!

After dinner, it was back to the rides! All the way until 9:00pm, when Lyla's ride-pass expired!

As we made our way to the gates, Lyla found some good ol' fashion country music and lights on the sidewalk to dance on. She jammed with some buddies for a little bit, then we slugged our way to the car...

Needless to say, we were pooped. Good times.

Mother's Day x 2!

We celebrated Mother's Day in a relaxed manner. I was given options on how to spend the day and opted for the least stressful of all of them. My dear husband made a delicious pancake breakfast while I went back to bed for a little while after Flint's first feeding. And he got me a spa certificate, minus the certificate because the spa was out of them, so I took that opportunity to reassign the massage money toward my new lens fund. We visited Gia later that afternoon and Pap made a yummy dinner for all of us. We even ventured into the pool, though briefly. Lyla cannot wait for it to warm up enough to stay in. All. Day. It was a great day!

It felt nice to be recognized and extra appreciated on Mother's Day, but this year it felt particularly nice to be Mom x2! I'm so glad Flint is here to complete our family (until we decide he needs a baby brother or sister in a few years... although I know one uterus (and one husband) that currently disagrees with this plan!) and couldn't be more proud of my baby girl! It's hard to imagine my life without my babies. Happy Mother's Day to my two favorite mother-makers, and to all the other mothers and kids in our lives!

A week later, we visited Luke's grandparents after he had a postponed 1:1 Mother's Day outting with his mom. Lyla enjoyed bossing Great-Grandma around and attempting to trap her in the office with their modest vintage toy collection. Lyla also helped Great-Grandma water her flowers in the backyard, they threw a ball around together, and discussed apple skins. Great Grandma and Grandpa have got to be the sweetest, lovingest people ever - we can only hope Lyla and Flint inherited even just a small portion of their longevity and kindness. Unfortunately, there aren't many pictures to show for this lovely day, as Luke was placed in charge of Documentation. Ha!

We love you, Mommies, Grand-Mommies, Aunts, Great-Aunts, & Friend-Mommies!

Lake Spontaneous

Okay, so we didn't go to a lake called Spontaneous. But we were spontaneous at the lake!

One day after school, Lyla, Flint and I had no where to be and no one to see, so we made an impromptu stop at Grapevine Lake. Thanks be to Maya, we had a large blanket in the trunk (Maya being the dog and the blanket being there for when she rides with us), so we laid it out on the pebbles by the very still water and just chilled. Spontaneity is great, however, sun burns aren't. So we stayed only briefly with plans to return the following day, SPF-ready and with Daddy!

And return, we did! We spread out and enjoyed the sunshine and breeze - perfect lounging weather, but not quite perfect swimming weather. That did not stop the Lima Bean, however, who begged Mommy and Daddy to go "way far out there" with her. She was dismissed over and over again... and when her teeth began chattering from the chill, perhaps she realized why. We left the shore only once to go swing for a while, then returned for "just five more minute" which slowly turned into another hour or so...

It was a very pleasant day!

6 Months Old!

On April 20th, Flint hit the half-year mark!

Eight days later, he cut his first tooth, and yesterday, he officially started crawling (the real kind of crawling - no more inch-worming or army-crawlin'!)... Look out! He still stops every couple of feet to take a small break and lay on his tummy, but we can tell he improves his "technique" with each attempt. He looks like a little monkey.

Flint continues to impress us with his size, weighing in at roughly 21 lbs and measuring 28 inches. He is in the 89th and 91st percentiles respectively. Dr. Dickey said, "His body just wants to be this size and it's fine." He's the size of an average 9 1/2 month-old and completely proportionate for his height/weight. Given that some of his clothes are size 12 months and even some 18-months, I was a little surprised his stats weren't higher. But also relieved.

Our boy sticks to caring most about a small selection of items and activities. Among them, nursing, sucking on his two fingers, ice and/or ice-pops, baths, dancing (ha!), being outside, supported standing and walking, and most of all, Mommy. He is a Mama's Boy for sure. It's actually been kind of difficult for Flint to share his love with other people, particularly if Mommy is around because Mommy totally trumps everyone else. Most of the time even Daddy. And even Grandma, which is a big deal... cause she's the main spoiler!

Flint hasn't been too interested in solids, and his disinterest causes us to forget to encourage them a lot of the time. We're going to try to do better at offering them and I am going to start offering them before nursing instead of after, so he has more room in his tummy. He was a fan of sweet potatoes and green beans for a while, until he found out about bananas and other sweet fruits. He has never really been a fan of rice cereal, but we understand that's no big deal since it's just empty carbs anyhow. He gets vocally grumpy when he is denied actual solid foods that the rest of the family is eating, such as breakfast cereal, pizza, sandwiches, popsicles... anything, really.

The other day, I listened to giggles from the backseat of my car as Lyla and Flint exchanged raspberries back and forth. I caught a few glimpses from the driver's seat and found it to be one of the more adorable (and a little gross) things I've seen. Lyla would stick her tongue out and spray an over-abundance of spit as she raspberried towards Flint. Flint would smirk and then poke his tongue just barely between his lips and attempt the same. His raspberry sound was meak and extremely moist, but the fact that they were conversing playfully was just heart-melting. When I went to get them out of the car, both kids had very wet chins. Hee hee. I love that he's starting to mimick! Time to start signing a lot more!

We've had a lot of success adopting the "Baby Wise" sleeping patterns. Flint has been so much easier to get down than Lyla ever was. It may have something to do with the fact the he hasn't once slept in our bed with us (Lyla still crawls in bed with us in the middle of the night almost every night). Right now, Flint has a consistent feeding and sleeping schedule and it has helped him learn to go to sleep on his own (mostly) and sleep through the night. He typically goes down around 9pm and gets up some time between 6:30 and 7:30am. A lot of the time, I can just lay him in his crib and he'll go to sleep independently, sometimes after a little bit of cooing and babbling. Sometimes I sway and snuggle him a little bit and help him get close to sleep. I am toying with the idea of dropping his 8:45 feeding and seeing if that would help him go to bed earlier. Here's hoping that it doesn't cause him to wake up in the middle of the night again.

I always thought people were crazy to say that #2 is much easier. I know what they mean, now, though. It's not that it's easier having two kids. That is definitely not easier. But the second child is a lot less stressful than the first just because of the advantage on the learning curve. The amount of worry is significantly decreased. He spit up? Burp cloth -go. He's crying? He's tired. Put him in his crib. What's that horrendous squealing noise? Ah. Remove Lyla from the scene. Hopefully, Flint will continue to be an easy-going kind of guy because of it.

No, but really, Flint adores his sister. She is his #1 source of comedy relief. All his great giggles stem from something dumb she is doing. Bouncing around, shaking her hair from side to side, fake-sneezing, making raspberries, spraying Maya with the hose. We can dance around like maniacal idiots and baby-talk at ridiculous volumes til the cows come home and he'll appease us with a meager smirk. But send in the three-year-old clown and he'll belt out the belly laughs. The best is the noise he makes when he inhales after laughing. It's that raspy kind of sound you'd expect to hear from an old man after he's chuckled so hard he lost his breath. Adorable.

Well, it's Mother's Day and I have been "off duty" all morning. What have I done with my time? Blogged about my children. And Luke has just come in to inform me that he went to get Flint out of his crib and the boy had both hands on the frame and was trying to pull up. I guess we have another milestone to await just around the corner!

Watch Flint grow Here!