Summertime activities, gymnastics, and a Skittle update!

I start meetings this coming week and Miriam and I have been busy enjoying lots of activities and outside time!  We both go a bit stir crazy sitting at home for extended periods of time, so we keep busy with lots of activities.  We've been taking lots of walks - to the park, to the donut shop, to the library.  Miriam loves being outside and playing at the park, although she is a bit nervous on playgrounds and climbing up heights.  She often asks for help when going up the steps, but gradually gains confidence the longer we are at a playground and will start to play by herself.  She also loves being outside at our house, jumping around in her pool, squirting her water pointer, and spraying the hose around the yard and on the flowers/bushes.

We recently started walking to our local library, which is about .5 miles away.  They have a good sized children's book area, complete with small tables, benches, chairs and even some blocks and stuffed animals.  I told Miriam she's allowed to check out 5 books, and she quickly picks out the first 5 books she sees that look good.  But then we spend some time looking through the bookshelves and pick out other books that appeal to her, and she gets to exchange them for some of the original books she picked.  I have fond memories of family trips to the library when I was a child, and I hope we can start and continue that type of tradition with Miriam and Skittle.

Anytime we walk to the library (or the donut shop, which is right next to the library), we pass the fire station, which Miriam loves.  She especially loves the times we pass the station and the garage doors are open, usually with a fire truck or an ambulance pulled out front.  Whenever we pass the fire station and the doors are closed, she says "OH NO!  Doors closed!".  Whenever we pass the fire station and the doors are open, she gets VERY excited and starts squealing about fire engines, ambulances, etc.  A couple times we've walked up close to the fire trucks and the firefighters have invited her to look around; they usually walk around with us and point out the different parts of the fire engine, etc.  Once a firefighter asked if she wanted to push the button to lower the cab of the fire truck (it was up for inspection).  She said no, but then the whole way home kept saying "I want push button!", so we'll see how she responds if she ever gets that offer again.  :)

We recently signed Miriam up for the YMCA, where they offer a daily open gym in their (large) gymnastics gym as well as lots of sports for kids.  We've signed Miriam up for gymnastics classes for these next two months, and then depending on how well she likes those classes, we'll either continue gymnastics or consider signing up for swimming classes.  We are planning on taking her to the pool for some open swimming times, to see how she likes it.  When we toured the YMCA and saw the pool, she said "I go swimming", so we have high hopes that she'll actually want to go swimming when we take her there for that purpose.  :)

Miriam is such a joy to be around these days.  She's picked up some cute little habits lately.  She loves music, especially the ABC song and "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and will sing along if we play those songs in the car.  She also walks around the house singing those songs now, and knows most of the words of many other songs, which she requests by name during her bedtime routine.  Miriam also has started to get out of bed (when she wakes up from naps) and then bring toys and books into bed with her.  One time, I went into her room and she'd emptied her entire sock drawer and her shoe basket, and lined all of her socks up (in a neat row) on her footstool, and all of her shoes up, by pairs, in a neat row on her bed.  It makes me happy to see she's got an organized little mind! :)

And now, for a Skittle update.  I'm 30 weeks now (10 more weeks to go!) and gosh, has the time been flying.  We've started to get some boy and girl outfits out and ready, and have rearranged Miriam's closet as well as our bedroom to make space for baby things, the bassinet, baby swing, etc.  I've been feeling pretty good lately - some headaches, heartburn and difficulty moving quickly, but most of that is to be expected.  It takes me a while to get up after playing on the floor with Miriam, but she's always willing to "help" me get up by pushing and pulling using the most of her small muscles.  We'll see how I feel after going back to work this week, but I have high hopes that I continue to feel mostly pretty good until the baby gets much closer to arriving.

I don't have any recent pictures right now, but I'll try to take some in the next couple weeks so I've got a few new pictures to accompany my next blog post.

Ocean Shores vacation

We went out of town this past weekend to Ocean Shores for a 3 day mini vacation.  We spent a lot of time on the beach and playing games, and as always, I repeated to Mario....WA is the only place where I've ever bundled up MORE to go to the beach! It was COLD while we were there, and mostly foggy at the beach, but we had some sunshine and warm weather the last day we were there.

When we got there on Friday, we went straight to the beach.  The nice thing about the Ocean Shores beaches is that you can drive your car straight out onto the beach and find a place to park.  Since we have AWD, we don't worry much about driving in deep or soft sand. :)  We drove to a place away from other cars and got out all of our beach equipment - kites, chairs and sand buckets/shovels.  Miriam disliked the sand at first and didn't want to put her feet into it.  However, after we got out her buckets and shovels, she and Mario sat right down in the sand and started digging.  She loved digging in the sand but even better, she loved stomping on and destroying the sand castles that Mario built.

Last year when we were in Ocean Shores, we bought Miriam a little kite that she wasn't very interested in flying.  This year, she really liked her kite and would run around the beach trying to get the kite to fly and stay up in the air.  The wind wasn't very strong this year (we weren't able to fly our big kite at all) so it was hard for her to keep her kite up in the air.  However, we did put her up on Mario's shoulders at various times and she flew her kite from his shoulders - it was much easier for her to keep her kite in the air, both because of the height and because he ran around so the kite flew behind them.

Another thing that Miriam really loved at the beach was chasing the birds.  There were seagulls all over the place, and she either sat in Mario's arms or sat on his shoulders and chased after the birds.  After a while she didn't want to run very far to chase the birds, and when we'd point out a bird to her, she'd say "No, too far away."

We were a bit surprised that Miriam seemed interested in wading in the cold Pacific Ocean water, even after she dipped her feet in the water and felt how cold it was!  I took her out to the water and we waded in up to our ankles.  At that point, I was freezing and ready to turn around, but Miriam kept on wading out deeper!  At one point, she was in up to her mid-shins when she got a bit disoriented by a wave that came up on shore.  She started teetering back and forth, and Mario and I both thought she was going to topple over and go face first into the water.  Luckily, she caught her balance and didn't fall over, because I'm not sure Mario or I would have been able to catch her!

It was a great little vacation, and we realized it was the last vacation we'll have before the baby arrives and we are officially a family of 4.  We are so excited to meet the new addition to our family (and especially excited to find out whether Skittle is a boy or a girl!), but we are still a bit in disbelief about how quickly this pregnancy has gone and how soon the baby will be here.

Here are some pictures of our time at the ocean.

Miri insisted on wearing a hat so she was just like her Daddy. So cute! 

Big girl flying her kite! 

Miriam and her Daddy digging in the sand. 

Mario's sand castle city...

Sand castle city in danger! 

Stomp, stomp, stomp!  Mirizilla on the loose! 

We're jumping in the sand/water. 

"I chasing Mama!"

"I running, I running!"

Chasing the birds. 

Miri building a sand castle of her own. 

Settling back in - preschool, splash parks and house projects

We've been home a little over a week now and are finally settling in and getting back to our routine.  Miriam is sleeping in her big girl bed here at home and doing very well.  Now that she isn't sleeping in the same room as me, she seems to have a bit of a mental block about getting out of bed on her own, so when she wakes up she lays in bed and talks to herself, or calls for us.  We aren't going to encourage her to get out of bed on her own, so we'll see how long she stays in there!

Mario has been working really hard on our house projects and I'm happy to say that our bathroom is almost complete!  Our shower works, our toilet works, our sink works, and we have 1 (out of 2) new medicine cabinets installed.  The organizer in me is excited to get all of our bathroom supplies and organize them in all of the new storage space!  I'll post some pictures once it is finally complete, hopefully in the next couple weeks! :)

Last week, we got a letter from Miriam's preschool in the mail.  It had a letter from the head of school (her preschool is attached to a K-12 private school), a letter of intro from her teacher, a form for us to fill out about Miriam, and a SCHOOL SUPPLY LIST!  I can't believe my baby girl is old enough to have a school supply list!  It isn't a normal list, for sure....it is definitely geared towards a preschool classroom (baby wipes, play-doh, gluesticks), but still....she's got an official school supply list!  Emotional pregnant mama that I am, it brought tears to my eyes, thinking about how fast she's growing up!  Unfortunately, her school orientation is on the same day as my first day of school, so I won't be able to attend with her.  Mario is going to take her to orientation and then to her first day of school, so I'll ask him to write a blog post about how that goes.  I know it will be an emotional day for him (as it will be for me, even if I can't be there!) but we are so proud of Miriam and we think she'll do great at preschool.

This past weekend, we went to a new park nearby as a family.  It is just down the hill from our house, has a large playground area and a large splash park.  I'd visited it with Miriam last week, and she wasn't at all interested in visiting or playing in the water part of the park.  This past weekend when we went to the park, she and Mario went off to the water part of the park.  A bit later, I went to go check on them and bring Miriam her shoes, which she's left behind.  I saw her in Mario's arms, absolutely DRENCHED with water, with a very emotional expression on her face.  Her laughing/crying/screaming faces all sort of look the same, so I thought maybe they'd gotten caught in some spray unexpectedly and she was crying that she was wet.  But when I got over there, she was laughing and giggling and exclaiming "I'm all wet!".  We spent another 30 minutes playing in the water park, and Miriam was giggling and laughing and running through the water, and by the time they were done she and Mario were both soaking wet.

We are headed out of town to the ocean this coming weekend, so I'm sure we'll have lots of fun stories and pictures about that when we return!

Some pictures of our splash park adventures and Miriam's other fun around the house:

Splash park fun! 

Breakfast with Mama in the morning! 

"Miri in a box!" 

She used herself as a canvas earlier today when she was drawing....first time she's ever done that!