First Day of Preschool!

June started preschool at the most darling in-home preschool! I had heard amazing things from a friend of mine, so I signed the girls up for a summer day camp there two summers ago. They LOVED it, and I just really loved Miss Amberley. So way back at the end of summer 2016 I had her add June on her list for Fall 2017. That's how soon she fills up. Then, just to be sure, I called on January 1, 2017 and said, "I want June in your preschool!!!" I'm so so so glad she is in there. It is such a fun and loving place. In fact, I have a little regret because last fall, Miss Amberley called and said she'd had a sudden cancellation and would June want to come for the 3-4 year old preschool too. Well... that was right when we moved in the house and so I chose to send her to the Rec center because it was super cheap. I feel like I was being prudent, but I also wish I would have sent her to Miss Amberley.

Elementary school started quite early, but preschool didn't start until after Labor Day, so June and I had some good times. Carrie came to visit so we went swimming with her at The Trump.

She treated us to a poolside lunch because she's the best.

Finally! First Day of Preschool! Miss Amberley had this adorable little set-up at drop-off. She's such an amazing teacher!

This Chicka Boom Boom Tree is one of the many darling little crafts they have done.

Besides having an amazing teacher, this year ended up being a class of just GIRLS! Imagine eight sweet little girls! Miss Amberley says that they come in and show each other their clothes and say, "Oh, that's cute." "Oh, that's pretty." She also says that they get along well and are mainly all very kind. If any little girl comes and complains that she doesn't have anyone to play with, Miss Amberley will say, "June* needs someone to play with, who can she play with?" And all the little girls will volunteer. I'm so happy to finally have some sweet girls more on our side of town to be friends with.

June has made special friends with one particular little girl named Ava. Her brother has a lot of special needs, so two out of three mornings we pick Ava up for preschool. It's pretty simple and easy because we pass her house as we drive from Willa's school to the preschool, but it helps her mom out a lot.

We took a little field trip to Gilcrease Orchard. Here are some of the girls playing.

 June and Ava

 And by far my most favorite photo. Ava's mom told me that at home she talks non-stop about June and refers to her as "My June" all the hearts and feels!

First Day of First Grade

 Hooray for me for posting these photos before Christmas. Willa was ready for first grade! She has an amazing teacher, Mrs. Murphy. We ordered new school uniforms that have sleeves (no need for white shirt underneath), pockets, and no buttons or snaps! It felt like we won the lottery when we found them.

Here is Willa at Meet the Teacher. It was blurry, but it's also kind of crazy in there.

First Day! There are only four students from her kindergarten class in this new class. However, they are cute kiddos and I was so happy to get this photo of them as the kids lined up on the blacktop. I think my favorite thing about first grade is all the cute Jack-o-lantern smiles!

If you notice, Ryden's arm is on Willa's shoulder and they are "touching" hands. He's quite the Casanova and is regularly asking girls to marry him/be his girlfriend/wear his ring. He keeps everyone laughing and I'm glad they are in the same class again. His mom is the Room Mother and I asked if I could be in charge of decorating the doors for each holiday. I've really enjoyed it and it has been a brilliant way of getting my volunteer hours in! Since it's a charter school, they require about 30 volunteer hours per family. Up to 15 hours can be "bought" by buying supplies or giving money to the school at $5= 1 volunteer hour. But, even if you do all that, you still have 15 hours. It's tricky for me because you can't bring other children in when you volunteer. But by decorating the doors, I can count the time I spend gathering and prepping supplies outside the home, and then I go in after school hours to put the door up and since it's after school I can bring June and Lars with me. Plus, it's a fun and creative goal for me each month and I've been really enjoying it even though I rank my creativity down somewhere between "trace levels" and "non-existent". Thank you Pinterest!

First grade so far as been great! I've been surprised at what a jump it is from kindergarten to the reading and math they are suddenly expected to do. I didn't realize what a big leap it is. But I love her school, it's arts-integrated, so everything relates back to the arts. Or rather, all the art and creativity relates back to math and science. I think it's just such a fun and loving environment. This year they started a school garden. They go out during science and a gardener talks to them and they get to plant seeds and harvest produce (and then they've been selling the produce in a little pop-up Farmer's Market after school). They also have violin class once a week and everyone in the school learns (or attempts to learn) violin in addition to their regular music, dance, and other special classes.

It's also been really fun to be somewhere for a second year because we are getting to know different families and parents. It feels more connected for me. Willa walks out with a few friends to the pick-up each day and we all text each other if one of the kids won't be walking or is sick. I've felt a nice sense of community. We are excited for next year. Willa's kindergarten teacher has already called dibs on June and told me how I can request that we have her again.

Lars 3, 4, 5, 6 months!

Well, I haven't been as good at documenting Lars, which is to be expected. I HAVE been good at enjoying my baby snuggles, kissing his soft skin, and breathing in his good smell, though! He's so sweet! Just the most precious baby!

Since so much time has passed, I can't really remember what different benchmarks he had at each age, but for all his appointments he has been pleasantly plump. He's usually in the 70-80th percentile for weight and 10-20th for height. At his six month exam, he was around 19 lbs and 24 inches, which translated to 75th percentile for weight and 25th for height. So he may be slowly evening out - or it might just be a blip.

Lars does not care to roll over. He didn't roll over until about ten days before he turned six months old, and then it was only in his crib when I was letting him cry and he got so angry. You can imagine that accidentally flipping onto his stomach and getting unexpected tummy time did not help to abate his anger either. He's still only flipped two or three times outside of his crib, but to be fair it might be because he's such a strong sitter now. I rarely lay him down because he can sit so well. My favorite position is sitting him in the corner of the couch with a pile of toys where I can see him while I do housework. He still cannot flip tummy to back consistently. He has done it two, maybe three times in his crib, but I only know that because I've seen him on the monitor on his tummy, and the next time I look he is on his back. I don't think he's aware how this has happened either because he still gets plenty frustrated after accidentally flipping to his tummy during naptime.

Lars is not the great sleeper that Willa was, but he is a little better than June - it just depends. In fairness, our schedule is rarely regular so it's not really his fault. A lot of it is that I'm just enjoying my baby. I like rocking him to sleep and holding him. Normally, once he is swaddled and rocked, he will fall asleep in just a minute or two as a learned response. He's not so great at falling asleep alone in the crib without these cues. I actually kind of like it this way. The girls were so sleep-trained that it was almost impossible for them to fall asleep in my arms. They simply could not do it, they wanted to be left alone in their cribs. But with Lars, he's comfortable falling asleep like that. It makes it SO much easier at church or other activities. I know that if I just wrap a little muslin blanket around him and hold him he will fall asleep instead of just being fussy.

Everyone comments on how smiley Lars is. He is such a smiley, contented baby. You really had to earn Willa's smiles. She was very cautious. June was quite smiley, but I was stressed a lot of the time. With Lars, I can just enjoy it and him. I'll say it again, I'm just enjoying my baby so much more this time around! All those little things (sleeping through the night, nap schedules, etc) those will all come. I've been around now enough that I can see that annoying phases are just phases. Nothing lasts forever, so instead of stressing about it I can just hold on until the next phase. I'm trying to enjoy my little baby phase as long as I can.

As you can see, my photo taking has not been quite as prompt this time around. And of course, he's so cute in all of them that I had to post multiple shots. Other readers can scroll through, these are just for me.

3.5 Months

4.5 Months (sorry about the rotation, I'm just patting myself on the back for posting at all)

 And sometimes I will intersperse monthly progress photos with cute baby wearing a onesie that has sharks eating pizzas on it!

5 Months

 My happy, happy boy!!

Ryan's coworker got him this Under Armour shirt. It's actually a onesie and snaps on the bottom. I forgot to pull it out until it just barely fit. That worked perfectly because now he looks like every other high school or college coach wearing an Under Armour shirt that is tucked in around a fat belly.

We had a park playdate with a preschool friend for June and they had a baby sister who is just one month older than Lars and has matching hair. Twins!

6 Months!

A few more photos from summer

Lars is getting so big. It's good to look back of these squishy baby photos of him! He's still plenty squishy, but just getting so much bigger.

 I took him swimming in the pool two or three times. He was just too young to have much tolerance for anything more than a few minutes, even if the water was quite warm. It was much funner just to leave him napping in his bed and to swim the girls alone. Perks of having our own pool; I love it so much!

 One day, we organized a hike up at Mt. Charleston and invited anyone in the ward who wanted to come. There was a really good turnout! Mt. Charleston is about a 30-40 minute drive from our house (depending on which part of the mountain you park). It's so refreshing up there. To give you an idea, when we pulled of the highway it was 105 degrees and when we parked it was 80ish. It was so invigorating to get out of the heat and do a nice outdoor activity with friends. We all promised that we would come back and do it again soon - but then everyone's schedules got busy and we never got around to another big group trip. This hike up to the waterfall was just right for kids. At one point we were surrounded by so many butterflies! They even landed on us! June had a ball trying to keep up with the bigger kids on the hike. Willa complained to me "What's that smell?!" It was the pine trees. Our poor city girl, ha ha!

 Lars was a trooper the whole time!

 I found this photo from our Utah trip. June is a huge Doc McStuffins fan. My mom got her this doc coat and medicine bag while we were there. She looked so adorable giving everyone check-ups and coming up with a diagnosis.

 I thought this photo was of the girls and their cute Red and Blue nail polish for the 4th, you can see the nails, but clearly this is a photo of them making rice krispie treats with my mom.

 We got haircuts in Utah. I'm fine with getting cuts in Vegas, but it's so much easier in Utah because I have my parents to help. Each girl got a trim and a blowout! They looked so pretty, I really wish I was better at doing their hair.

I came across these one year photos of June and Willa. Obviously, I'm just taking a photo of a photo or a screenshot, but I thought it was still fun to compare them with Lars. I can't tell who he looks like. Willa and June definitely looked different to me. Lars just looks like a mix, which makes them all look the same to me now.

June one year

Willa one year

Willa one year

Lars 4-5 months, looking adorable in Burberry

And who doesn't love a baby dressed up as a little man? This cute outfit came with a bow-tie, but I didn't have the heart to force it around his neck. The entire thing was a little tight.

 June loves experimenting with make-up. Her application skills are improving and she continues to push boundaries with her color choices! She's absolutely fabulous.

My Texas friend Maura came out to Vegas to see Britney Spears for her birthday! It was so great to see her and Robbie, her husband. They rented a cabana at The Wynn for the day and invited us. We left the kids with Ryan's parents and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. It was so beautiful inside there and peaceful and calm. It was like a time warp. We thought we'd been there about 45 minutes but two hours had passed by. I think the novel "Magic Mountain" by Thomas Mann could have taken place here.

CABIN 2017

We had so much fun at the cabin this summer. My sister Carrie and her family were able to come up at the same time so there were more adults to do all the work and more kids to play with my kids. Win win win! There was something just so relaxing having Darcy there to just jump in the car and put the boat or the wave runners in the water. Plus, Carrie's kids are just a little bit older. They are really responsible and really fun and were so good to play with my kids. It was the most relaxing time I've had up there since I've been a mom.

Willa and Presley by the dock

My mom got stuff to tie-dye shirts. We wished we had done a onesie for Lars, but other than that the cousins looked great and had fun all deciding their special design. The one tragedy was that dye got on Carrie's 50th Anniversary Neil Diamond Tour hoodie, sniff RIP.

Marshmallows

The whole crew

This is a still photo of a video, but poor Lars in those baby life jackets. I hate those things! Luckily, there were enough adults that he hardly had to ride in the boat at all.

 June got to drive and she got to go for quite a while and even steer the boat. It was thrilling for her.

 

These little kid kayaks were perfect for Willa. She had a lot of fun hanging out around the dock learning to paddle. One day my dad and I took the big two person kayaks with Willa and June and floated down Big Springs. It's kind of a long trip, but it's super calm and easy. Perfect for kids. You could see fish in the clear water and we saw two different moose at different times standing in the water just 20 feet away from us! Poor Lars, the week earlier he had taken his first bottle of formula just fine. But when my mom stayed home with him and tried to give him a second bottle this time around he was not having it. Eeek. What a difference a week can make! Luckily, he didn't have to wait that long until we got back, but I felt bad for both of them. And for the record, can we agree that formula is disgusting and their spit-ups and everything else is just so much worse than with breast milk?

Willa swimming with Golden Retriever pup Maggie. The girls kept calling her "Raggie" and it cracked me up.

My uncle brought in some sand and dumped it near our dock one year. The HOA was pretty mad about it all, but it is a perfect place for kids to play as people go on and off the boat!

Swimming! Another great cabin adventure! We can't wait for next year and are hoping for an even longer visit.