At the beginning of the summer, I shared our aspirational summer bucket list. A bit later, I shared our update from the first half of the summer. Today, I'm happy to share that we made more progress on our list without accomplishing everything.
JUMP AT THE TRAMPOLINE PARK: Just last week, I was finally able to take Madeleine for another morning at our local trampoline park ($5 for an hour and a half of toddler-exhausting jumping is a steal in my book). It was nice to spend an hour and a bit with my girl, bouncing and smiling, laughing and making memories.
"1, 2..."
HELP MADELEINE WITH COUNTING: Counting and ABCs are frequently heard around our house these days. Her counting is coming along but still not perfect; it usually goes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 11. I'm a bit confused about this development as she used to insert 8 as every other number. She can fill in the alphabet when we sing together and is really close to being able to do it all herself, though pronunciation for L, M, N, O, P will probably remain comical for a while. I feel a little guilty about it, but I haven't exactly drilled Madeleine on any of her academic concepts (numbers, alphabet, colors). Rather, they seem to be coming together organically by talking about them in everyday life.
HAVE A BABY: Check him out!
FINISH THE NURSERY: Fun fact: according to my blog history, I finished Madeleine's nursery one day earlier than Elliott's nursery. Given that Madeleine was born on her due date and Elliott one day after his, their nurseries were completed the same number of days in advance of their respective arrivals.
STOCK OUR FREEZER WITH FOOD: Even though I saved it for later than I should have done, I am happy to say that we have a chest freezer full of meals. Most of them were made during the two or three nights of marathon cooking that George and I tackled together. Hopefully they'll be handy as we adjust to the reality of our new normal (ie life after George's parental leave ends).
TAKE MADELEINE DOWNTOWN ON A BUS: I wrote a whole post about Madeleine's bus adventure. Apparently the experience made quite an impression because she requests a repeat pretty much every time we see a bus, which is pretty often.
HAVE A WEEKEND WITHOUT PLANS: It probably defeats the purpose when you have to actually schedule a free weekend, but we did manage to have a weekend without plans before Elliott's arrival. Come to think of it, I think there was only one weekend without plans in the six months or so before he joined us. No wonder we're a little lost now that our schedule is so wide open.
VISIT AT LEAST THREE DIFFERENT FARMERS MARKETS: We made it to three different farmers markets but that was it. I admit that my Saturday morning prenatal yoga commitment precluded a lot of visits we could have made, but I wouldn't trade that time for anything. The markets we visited were fun and full of delicious produce and treats, and one of them was held during a festival celebrating basset hounds. The Basset Bash is another experience Madeleine routinely requests to repeat. Our most recent farmers market included the newest member of our family, who was a trooper until about 3 minutes before we were going to leave.
On top of these anticipated experiences, we also visited the aquarium, had a visit from Grandma Janie, and had a big girl bed transition. Between all of this fun, the second hottest Seattle summer on record, and Elliott's arrival, we won't soon be forgetting the summer of 2014.
In the spirit of the new season, here is a "foxy" picture of our kiddos all ready for fall:
1 comment:
Great update. Love that last photo. Baby Elliott is not very happy with the sisterly hug ;-)
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