Photos from the weekend

We had a great time with Bubby and Poppa and here are the photos to prove it!  We also had a simply lovely time at our friends' wedding, although we didn't get any pictures.  The kids behaved well and the ceremony was just perfect.  Congratulations, K and C!  We are so happy for you!

Here are the photos of our time with Bubby and Poppa:

Rosa's five month letter

Dear Rosa Jane,
Today, you are five months old!  It seems like you have grown a lot and learned even more this past month.  Here are a few things you've been up to:

First, you have maintained your generally sunny disposition and get many comments about what a happy baby you are.  And you are a happy baby!  You really only cry if you're hungry, tired, or need a new diaper.  However, we should add that when you are hungry, tired, or in need of a new diaper, you can really scream.  Wow.  You treated us to quite a show in the car this afternoon, when we were on the way home from Bubby and Poppa's and stopped midway for the wedding of some good friends.  After the wedding, during which you were peaceful and happy and passed around to several people, we put you in the car and you were inconsolable for what seemed like an eternity.  All this is to say that you know what you want and you definitely let us know when you're not getting it!

Things on the sleep front are going well, for the most part.  You have been having some trouble getting to sleep at night, especially now that you aren't in a swaddling blanket anymore.  However, once you get to sleep, you have been sleeping mostly through the night and waking up just once to nurse.  You usually start out in your little crib and then come in bed with us after you eat.  It's a very sweet pattern and we appreciate getting to cuddle you!  You sometimes even get cuddles from Mateo, when he comes in to snuggle in the early mornings. 

You still love your Mommy's milk and have that for 99% of your feedings.  You do get a bottle or two a day from me, which is nice for me, and you just started rice cereal yesterday!  We're excited to introduce you to all kinds of new foods now!  

You have learned a lot during this past month.  You can really grab things and you've also added bringing them to your mouth after grabbing them.   You've also gotten down the whole thumb sucking thing.  You love your thumb and have begun to learn to self-soothe by sucking it.  You've never been much of a pacifier baby, so the thumb-sucking is a nice thing for you to have learned to do.  You've also been doing a lot more tracking of people and things, and, especially, food!  You watch with rapt attention when we eat.  That's one of the reasons we decided to try some real food on you, because you seem so interested in ours.

And, for your grand finale, you learned to roll in both directions!  You demonstrated that you can do it with both hands tied behind your back, (nearly) literally, last night.  You are a rolling baby now.  You combine the rolling with a love for tummy time that neither of your siblings have, making us wonder if you will crawl early, or if you will be content to just observe the world from your tummy for awhile.  Either way's fine with us!

It may be too early for this, but you do seem to recognize your siblings and you love it when they play with you.  They will get down on the floor and help you roll or help feed you or help change your diaper and we can't help but think that you love it.

Rosa, we love you more than you could ever possibly know.  We're excited to see what the next month will bring us!

with all our love,
Mama and Mommy

Rosa's first food!

Rosa had her first real meal today!  We went with the traditional rice cereal and she LOVED it.  She got some from Mommy, some from her siblings, and the rest from me.  Yes, she finished the whole bowl.  She got to the point where she recognized the spoon and would lunge for it as she saw it coming.  It was awesome.  It was so much fun to feed her something that she was so obviously enjoying.  Coming at one day shy of five months, it was a great milestone for the whole family.

Rosa also had another first today:  she learned how to roll from back to front while swaddled.  She did it once during her nap and then again at bedtime.  It seems impossible, but she just hurls herself to the side and boom, she's on her tummy.  So, swaddling is done as of now.  She is having a heck of a time getting herself to sleep tonight, because she has no idea what to do with her arms flailing all over and then suddenly finding herself on her tummy and all that.  It's something she's going to have to learn, though, because we obviously want her to be safe while sleeping.

Rosa had a big day today and will have another tomorrow.  She'll turn five months old and attend her first wedding.  Pretty exciting stuff!  For today, let's just cross our fingers and hope we all get some sleep...

Happy camper

This week has marked a new milestone for Mateo:  his first drop-off summer day camp.  He's never been in a setting like this before, other than preschool, and sometimes takes awhile to warm up to new situations, so we worried a little about how it would go.  However, it turned out that there was absolutely nothing to worry about.  He has been having SO MUCH FUN that he can hardly believe it, and we are cheering him on.  He and his little group have been at a Parks and Rec nature camp, which mostly involves taking hikes around the local arboretum, digging up molehills, making homes in the trees for fairies, climbing trees, and generally getting Very Dirty.  Plus, they have to carry a backpack with a water bottle and their lunch for most of the camp, so the little guys (and they are all little boys, which is cool on one hand and totally unbalanced on the other) get pretty tired by the end of the day.  Yesterday, I picked up Mateo and he fell asleep in the car before could even pull out of the parking lot. 

Tomorrow is the last day of this camp and will be their longest hike.  We're going straight up to Bubby and Poppa's house after the end of camp (so that we can visit them and then attend some good friends' wedding on Saturday that's close to their house), and I think our van will be full of sleeping kids for most of the ride. 

I wanted to post about this camp because it's a first for him and because it's been such a rousing success.  I love the confidence and exuberance I see in him when he talks about his time at camp.  Sacha and I both think it has been great for him and are already looking forward to signing him up for next year, when he and Tali can do it together.  Fun stuff!  Add to that that summer has finally come to Portland and we've had days and days of gorgeous, warm weather, and you have one happy family.  Yay for summer camp and for adventurous son for taking it on with such infectious excitement!

In the middle

I'm sure being a middle child has its challenges, but we are working hard to minimize them for ours.  Here are a couple of photos of her from this morning.  She was having so much fun jumping on the bed.  We love our big girl Tali!

Jumping!

I think this is among the best photos I've ever taken of her...

Favorites

We have had a lovely weekend and are about to start our last week of summer vacation.  It seems like summer has just flown by, even though we've been consciously trying to appreciate every day.  The weather has finally warmed up and it really feels like summer.  Hopefully this will continue for awhile until fall starts :)

Sacha's going to be back at school tomorrow even though she doesn't officially report back until the 30th.  She needs to move rooms and get all her copies done and all sorts of other stuff.  She's hoping to get a lot done tomorrow and then not need to go back until the 30th.  Meanwhile, Mateo's going to be in a half-day nature camp for most of this week and we are really hoping that will be fun for him.

This is unrelated, but we've gotten some good family photos lately and I thought I'd post a few of them here.  Enjoy!

Berry picking and pull ups

Three exciting things happened yesterday! Very exciting if you ask me.

First - all three children slept through the night! Yes, you heard that right. I am jumping for joy. Rosa slept from 8pm till 5am. She did wake up, but was easily put back to bed with a pacifier insert and then slept through the rest of the night. And both of the older ones slept through the night in the basement on the bunk bed.

Second - both older kids kept their pull ups or diapers dry last night. Mateo actually finished 10 nights of keeping his diaper dry, and so he got to wear his McQueen pull ups for the first time last night! (He was very proud of himself, as were we.)

The deal is that if he keeps the pull up dry, he gets to wear one again the next night. If it is wet, he wears a cloth pull up the next night. Whenever he has a dry night, he gets to wear the McQueen pull ups again.

I can now see the day, at some point in the future, where the older ones will be completely out of diapers. How fabulous is that?

Third - Mateo picked 5 half baskets of blueberries yesterday, and Natalia picked 1 half basket. I made a deal with them that I would pay them each a quarter for every half basket they picked. This was highly motivating, and had them picking tons of blueberries the entire time we were out on Sauvie Island.

Previously, they would lose steam after 20 minutes of picking and want to be carried, entertained etc. With the quarter incentive, Mateo was so industrious the whole time. Natalia wasn't as impacted by the quarter, but she enjoyed earning her first one and then was content to eat berries on her blanket. All together, we picked 8 full baskets to save for winter time!

Birth order

I was at the library earlier and I picked up a book on impulse called The Birth Order Book.  It's all about what you might expect - the role birth order has upon people.  It also goes into how this can affect both personal and business relationships, and also how it can affect parenting.  The author breaks things down into four groups and between me, my two siblings, and Sacha, we have it all covered:  the firstborn, the middle child, the youngest child, and the only child. 

Of course, I have to admit that I spent most of my time (Sacha and I went out to a tea house for our date tonight and spent time just quietly reading, which was heavenly) reading about my own category (firstborn).  However, we both checked out the section on parenting middle children in particular, because one of our reservations about having a third child was that Tali would instantly become a middle child, and we certainly didn't want her to feel lost in the shuffle. 

One of the book's more interesting points was that parents tend to feel like they understand the child in the same birth position as they have, so that would mean that both Sacha and I, as oldest/only children, would see ourselves most reflected in Mateo.  I'm not sure that's true, but it's good to know about so that we can make sure we're not favoring anyone over anyone else. 

It also reminded us that it is really important to schedule special time with one parent or the other for all the kids periodically.  We've done this with Mateo but haven't been as intentional or successful in making it happen with Talia.  Reading this book makes me feel much more committed to doing that. 

One thing I do feel good about, though, is that we have defied the stereotype of taking successively less pictures and paying less attention to each successive kid.  It's really thanks to this blog that we have so many photos of each kid as a baby and on up.  It's a good motivator to keep the camera out and handy. 

I seem to be rambling here, but the book gave me some food for thought and I thought I'd share.  I'm sure this will always be the case, but we're just learning as we go and can use all the help and insight we can get!

Home alone

I remember the first time Alayna and I took Mateo and Natalia to a park (not the one we walk to) after she was born. I think it took us a good hour to get the diaper bag packed, everyone in the car and drive to the local park. We both thought, what have we gotten ourselves into?

I know I was thinking - how am I going to do this by myself?

And now, here we are with three. Today, Alayna was in a meeting all day (9-5). It actually turned out to be a great day. There were some moments when I didn't feel good enough as a mom, but I tried to let those thoughts leave me. Or at least not pay too much attention to them.

Rosa was a joy for the day. She had lots of tummy time, took two naps in her swing, enjoyed looking at the trees outside and got lots of sibling cuddles. I feel so peaceful when I nurse her and rub my hand over her smooth hair. I remember loving to do that with Natalia too! My mind is so often going a million miles a minute, and when I can just stop and enjoy the moment, it is so fabulous.

I think my favorite part of the day was when we were all outside on the grass talking about things we like. Mateo started by saying he loves looking at the roses, because they remind him of his sister Rosa. Then Natalia shared how she liked milk. I shared something and then the kids each pretended to be Rosa and talk for her. Too cute!

Here is some of what we did:

• Around 8ish, Alayna and I finished putting together a bunk bed in our basement. We had loaned it to another family for half of a year, and now that they are moving to France. So, they gave it back! The kids (older ones) love it! In fact they are sleeping in it as I write.

• At 9 am we made a plan for the day. It always helps me to have a plan, and the kids seem to like it too. When we make the plan, they get to choose the activities, though there are a few things I choose. I write the name and then make a little drawing.

• Sometime in the morning, Rosa went down for a nice nap and we all did some drawings. Actually, Mateo has really started to enjoy drawing. Alayna has been doing this math program with him called Funnix. (I do it sometimes, but I give the credit to Alayna who is so consistent and does such a great job with them!) Anyway, who knew that doing the math program would help with drawing. But, he now loves to draw.

If you haven't seen the Ed Emberley Make a World Book, you are missing out. Even I can draw using these books! And that is saying something.

Mateo drew a cactus, boat and palm tree today. At the end of the day he was very proud to show off his drawing to Mama. Natalia drew some line babies and a boat.

Anyway, the day flew by and Alayna was home before we knew it. Overall, it was a great day alone with the kids!

Mr. Nose-In-Book

Mateo found Trumpet of the Swan among our library books today and spent an entire hour reading it while I was working out.  He was transfixed.  We're still kind of mind-boggled at how well and how much he can read.

In other news, both older kids got new notebooks while school shopping with Mommy and they have sparked a drawing explosion!  Mateo, who had previously avoided writing or drawing pretty much at all costs, has now drawn people, babies, monsters, and all sorts of other things.  He's also learning to write his numbers with his new Funnix math program, which has given him a lot more confidence in his ability to write.  Tali, who has always had great fine motor control, loves to draw and can make lines from point to point and draw people with heads, arms, and legs. 

The two of them are at about the same place, drawing-wise, so they have a lot of fun playing together that way.  It's exciting to see how much Tali can do and also exciting to see Teo showing some interest in that arena.  Sacha has been drawing with them, too, and they love that more than anything.  She got some drawing books from the library and has been helping them make boats and, well, mostly different types of boats.  They seem to love boats, despite never having been on one!  Anyway, all of this is to say that we've been exploring some new ground developmentally and it has been fun.

Photos

Sacha's parents spent the weekend with us and we had a lovely time together.  We also got to use our basement as a real guest room for the first time.  Wahoo!  I took some photos this morning and thought I would share them here.  We also got to see Uncle Galen, who officially lives in Seattle with Megan now, but stopped in during a weekend trip down here.  It's great to have family so close by, even if the Washington crew is a few hours away.

County fair

We went to the county fair in Clark County yesterday, which is right across the river in Washington.  I had never been to a county fair before, but it had everything you might expect.  We all, including Sacha's parents, squeezed into the swagger wagon and got there in one piece!  We saw pigs and cows and a dog competition and a kids' circus and had funnel cake and Mateo rode his first roller coaster.   He loved it.  Here's a photo of him and Sacha right before it started (sorry it's sideways).  He is determined to let everyone know that his train was called the Wacky Worm, so here it is for posterity:

As in: gathering no moss

Our little one learned how to roll over yesterday, and we are ridiculously proud of her.  For some reason, Teo and Talia were both late to the rolling scene, so we were shocked yesterday when, after working on it for about a day, Rosie just rolled straight over from her back to her front!  She did it again later and then again this morning.  She was even trying to roll in her sleep last night.  Adding this to the fact that she loves tummy time and gets a lot of it, I think we might have a mover and a shaker on our hands!

Anyway, it's really fun to watch her learning new things.  Knowing that she'll be our last baby and also having enough experience not to sweat the small stuff, we can more consciously enjoy her babyhood than we were able to before.  It's also especially neat to see her interact with her siblings.  Here are some photos I took of the early morning crew this morning:  Mateo and Rosa.  Tali remains our late sleeper, if you can count 7 am as sleeping in!

Today

Today...

..Sacha and Apa went hang-gliding somewhere near the Oregon coast.  They're driving home as I write this, after having dinner and a beer with their instructor after the looooong instruction process, lots of small flights and a few crashes.  Sacha said that she accidentally ditched into a river at one point, pulling the guide in with her!  What can I say but that I married an adventurer!

...the kids and I had a long day together, which, honestly, didn't go very well.  It was full of lots of not-listening and timeouts and temper tantrums.  Rosa behaved beautifully, which was very welcome, while her older siblings practiced testing my boundaries all day long.  We did have some good moments, including berry picking with my grandma and her caregiver in her garden, going out for frozen yogurt in the afternoon, and having a nice bedtime when bedtime finally arrived! 

...the short sale that we gave up on came back to life.  Actually it happened yesterday:  the bank accepted our offer.  At least, that's what we heard from our realtor.  No paperwork has been forthcoming, so we shall see about that.  In any case, it sent us back into agonizing over whether we want this house or not.  It is everything we want in a house and in the neighborhood we want, with one big exception: it's in a cul-de-sac off a very busy street with two lanes in each direction.  On the other side of the very busy street is a wonderful neighborhood with a park that we all simply adore...but crossing the busy street isn't something our kids could do by themselves until....well, never, probably.  However, the weather only allows for bike riding and that kind of thing for a very short part of the year and we end up driving to the park or to other places even where we live now, which is the definition of a walkable neighborhood.  So, we're leaning towards being able to live with the busy street.  However, as I said, no paperwork has come our way yet, so we'll see if this actually happens or not.

....we visited the aforementioned house and that led to visiting my grandma, as the two are so very close together.  Another plus for the short sale.

...our basement dehumidifier died an unexpected death, which is a big deal now that we have our fabulous new basement.  Must go to Lowes tomorrow!

....Sacha's parents will be visiting, starting tonight.  We're so excited that we have a real guest room for them now.  We really hope they like it.  We are looking forward to spending the weekend with them, especially with the gorgeous weather we had today.  I hope it continues.

....I am savoring a few quiet hours all to myself in the house.  The kids are sleeping and Sacha and her parents are both driving towards here from opposite directions, but for now, it's quiet and peaceful and a nice cool breeze is wafting through the house.  I am an introvert, in that I recharge by being alone, so I am soaking this up.  I'm planning to do some reading and just relax.  Ahhhh!

First day!

Mateo and Natalia had their first day of preschool summer camp today, which was Tali's first day of school ever!  Mateo was beyond excited to see his friends again and pretty much went right to playing as soon as we got there.  Tali, who has done the preschool dropoff with me many times, seemed a little bewildered and lost when I left, but I figured I'd better make a quick exit instead of dragging it out.  When I picked them up, their teachers said that Mateo had been his usual talkative self and that Talia had been nearly mute until lunchtime, at which point she surprised the teacher at her table by answering a question in a sentence.  The staff all seemed to love her and commented that they had been looking for excuses to pick her up and carry her around, which she, of course, loved.  She's so tiny and portable like that!  They go back on Wednesday and Friday mornings and then they'll start two mornings a week come September.  Here are some photos of the day:

First, the two kids getting ready for school:

Then, here's one of the sisters snuggling after naptime:

And, finally, our littlest one in her cozy jammies.  I have to note that the summer weather is so changable that it was cold enough to put her in these in the morning and then the sun came out in the afternoon and suddenly she just needed a onesie!

Christened

So far, the new basement has been a smash hit with the kids.  They had spent time in a play corner down there in its previous incarnation, but we had always been too nervous about the steep, creaky stairs and all the stuff stored down there to let them go down by themselves.  Now that everything is shiny and new and the stairs are shored up and carpeted, we're feeling much more free about letting them go down to play on their own.  We've even left the gate off and the door open, so they can experiment as they will.  Tali did take one tumble down the stairs, but luckily wasn't hurt and has been much more careful since then. 

To that end, they fulfilled a dream last night by setting up our pup tent and camping out down there.  Mateo was the only one who actually slept in the tent, with Tali opting for her old pack and play at the last minute.  I slept on our guest bed near them and Sacha stayed upstairs with the baby.  Even though we weren't all down there, I still consider it a christening of sorts.  It's a whole new wing of our house and we are getting more and more excited about it.  Now that we know we'll be here for another year or so, we're thrilled to have more space and to have it be a great place for kids to play and run around is an added bonus.

The sleepover was so successful that it's being repeated tonight.  This time, Sacha's going to sleep down there and I'll stay up on the main floor with Rosa.  I don't know if it was the camping theme or just staying up too late playing after bedtime, but the kids slept until 7:15 am this morning.  That is a major sleep-in at our house!  Let's hope they give us the same gift tomorrow :)

More photos

We had lots of fun with Auntie Edlyn and Grammy last week, who were both in town following the reunion.  Here's the photographic proof!

Four month stats

Sacha took all the kids to Rosa's four month visit this morning while I was at an all-day meeting.  We've switched from a pediatrician to a family practice doctor and we are loving the change.  Sacha was able to ask a question about herself as well as having Rosa checked out, which was pretty handy.  Anyway, our pleasantly chubby baby weighed in at 13 pounds, 7 ounces, which is the 39th percentile, and at 24.25 inches, which is the 64th percentile.  We had to laugh at ourselves, because we had been thinking that Rosa was soooo much bigger than Tali was at this age...only to look it up on the blog and find that Tali weighed more and was almost exactly the same length at this age.  In any case, the baby is healthy and did fine with her shots and is now pleasantly snoozing in her co-sleeper. 

It was a beautiful day here, in the midst of a string of beautiful days, and I am SO HAPPY that summer is finally here.  I heard someone complaining about the heat in a cafe the other day and I wanted to smack them!  Seriously, we spend all winter waiting for this and now you're going to complain about it? 

Anyway, we're loving the weather, the fact that Sacha is still off work, our newly remodeled basement, and generally just being home.  We opted to pull out of the short sale we had been waiting on and have decided to wait until spring to look again.  We have so much going on on this side of town that it will be great to stay here for a little while longer.  Then, when we're closer to Teo starting kindergarten, we can move closer to his school.

So, on that note, Sacha and I are out the door to unpack our POD and bring our stuff back into the basement.  We're going to leave most things in boxes, but we'll get everything back into the basement and then figure out how to arrange things.  We have been loving the wide open carpeted space down there, so we want to keep things as simple and open as possible, while still having our stuff accessible.  I'm sure we'll figure it out! 

Reunion photos

Here are some cute photos from our reunion.  Hope you enjoy!

I took a ridiculously small number of photos and left out nearly every relative I have, so I shall work on that next year :)  We all had a great time playing and spending time with everyone and are already looking forward to the next one!