July

So admittedly, there isn't a ton to write about July. I worked. A lot. Which meant Steve was a full-time Dad and awesome at teaching Ellie more science and watching Mckayla learn new things. We really were pretty boring in July. And it really is my fault. In three and four day work weeks I was working 38 to 46 hours. Which meant that weekends were spent trying to have family time, catch up on housework, and catch up on rest! Poor Steve sometimes had the girls to himself from before they woke up till after bedtime except when he brought Ellie to see me and take swim lessons at the pool.

Ellie progressed a lot in her swim lessons in July from struggling to listen and put her face in to doing everything the teachers asked and putting her face in a lot! I was so happy to see her do well and she loved swimming lessons. She still talks about Teacher Kale, Teacher Ellise, Teacher Jen, and Teacher Eric. Which I think also speaks to the quality of the program I got to supervise this summer.

Some fun things did happen in July though. First of all, I did enjoy work for the most part, and even helped build our new water slide one day for our outdoor pool that opened this summer. I did happen to split my suit the same day -luckily in front of a female guard who was nice enough to let me know before anyone else came by. Less embarrassing and more exciting for our family, Steve lost his boot at the end of the month. Yay! And he only had a limp for a few days, which he said was more mental than physical in nature. We also went and watched fireworks at one of Steve's co-workers houses for the Fourth of July and the girls had a lot of fun. We learned Ellie hates fireworks when it's noise and daylight so she can't see them, but is ok when it's dark and she can be distracted by the light. Mckayla also took a whip of a dog tail to the face, which explains her nice little tough-girl eye in the next picture. She didn't even notice when it happened since she's so laid back...

Also, Mckayla grew so much! The very beginning of the month saw her just starting to back against the couch and get up on her knees and rock some.


But, on the 25th of July I got an exciting and sad text and video while I was at work. Mckayla was crawling! I was so proud of her and excited for the fun to come, but definitely a little sad that I missed it being at work. Once again, I learned a lot of empathy for Steve and his hard work coming home to his girls each day while I worked full time.

We also got her 9 month stats. She's huge. We know. She was 29.5 inches long, 25.1 lbs, and 47+ cm in her head circumference. She was 96 percentile in height, and literally off the charts in her other measurements. It's always fun to get the entertaining comments from our pediatrician about our giant children. Here Mckayla was playing at the mall one day in some legwarmers I had made her - which she quickly outgrew.


Other fun things - Mckayla's first time on a swing. She loved it. Mckayla further demonstrates she is our dare devil whereas Ellie is our overly cautious child who STILL hates swings or anything fast moving.


And, we were full on cloth diapering and line drying our diapers in July. Mckayla seemed to have a lot of diaper rash and sensitivity issues to being in wet or dirty diapers though, so we eventually decided in August that she is too sensitive to keep with cloth for now because it wasn't worth some of the terrible diaper rashes she kept getting. To be fair, we have to use diaper cream on her even in disposables quite frequently, but she is much happier and so are we now that she's back in disposables. We'll see how another child does in them down the road before we totally give up on our cloth diapers though.


Beyond swimming lessons, Ellie also had excitement in July with her first haircut on July 2nd. She SCREAMED having to lay on their little table while they washed her hair, and then surprisingly was fine with the actual cut. We took her to a local place that does kids hair called Monkey Dooz, and Ellie enjoyed choosing a pink car to sit in and watching Tangled while they cut her hair.

We really didn't cut it very short, just to her shortest length of hair. It made a huge difference though as we went from braids partway down her back and french-braided pigtails to not being able to do much with braids anymore. I loved the difference of how it cleaned her hair up and got it more out of her food... However, I was not prepared for how much older it made her look at first! Ellie loved it though because they made her hair pretty and then put sparkles in her hair after. She still will randomly talk about Monkey Dooz and ask if she has sparkles in her hair. Her memory...


Also, just a random fun picture of our goofy girl. She loves the PBS show Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood and kept dumping toys out of this basket so she could wear it as a backpack. I always thought she looked like a turtle when she did this.



The last thing that happened at the end of July is that we had family pictures taken. We figured we were past due since we hadn't had family pictures taken since before Ellie was walking... It was time to have pictures that showed Mckayla exists. Here are some of my favorites from our session.











I have to say, I love these next two pictures, and love them even more next to each other.






So, that was our July - or the main parts.  And sorry about the weird formatting - I'm done fighting blogger on it right now.