6 months

Again I'm late with the birthday post. Just life right now, I suppose.

6 months old! She is quite "talkative" now, getting so loud sometimes that we have to yell to be heard over her. It annoys Dillon greatly that she has competiton for the talking time now :) She's rolling over quite well, though still likes to roll to her belly then fuss about being there. She is getting better about rolling herself places as well as lifting herself higher up on her arms. She's nowhere near crawling- or really sitting for that matter. When put in a sitting position she lasts for 0.5 seconds before falling to one side.

Still dislikes the car seat but is kind enough to give me about 20 minutes before expressing this full force. Dillon being beside her in the back seat helps, though once Corryn starts crying, Dillon covers both ears and is no help whatsoever. I'll even go so far as to say she makes it worse since she continues to ask questions in spite of the fact she can't hear the answers.

I feel like a whole new world has opened up for me since she's finally old enough to go in the backpack. This makes dinner prep a great deal safer since she was really grabbing at things on the stove. As for solids- she's had a few samples of things here and there but nothing consistent. Mostly she looks at me like I've put poop in her mouth :) She does love to drink water out of a sippy cup- or any other cup for that matter.

Anyway, though I'd post this picture since it's her normal state when she's awake- one or both fingers in her mouth. Doesn't seem to be teething- just has tasty fingers apparently :)

A matter of weeks

3 to be exact. 21 days. That all Dave has left of his residency. It can't come soon enough. Even though there is still a one year fellowship to follow, it'll be different. Better. There will be months with much better hours and the ability to moonlight. We'll be job searching and preparing to move (though the moving part is definitely bittersweet for me).

After 11 years at this, these last days are dragging by. It would probably go faster if it wasn't such a huge event that we are so focused on, but it has been the focus of our lives for so long. I don't know that we could ignore the end looming near if we wanted to. But really, who wants to- we've worked so incredibly hard for this- it deserves to be anticipated!

A day off!

2 nights ago, I had gotten Corryn to sleep and Dillon had gotten "Baby Jo" (one of her dolls) asleep. Dillon came in the living room where I was and declared:

"Mom, you got Corryn to sleep and I got Baby Jo to sleep so that means that the moms get a day off!"

We'll just nevermind the fact that it was 8pm and the day was pretty much over. She gave me the day off anyway.

:)

Dillon's new love

Meet Pipsqueak. We've been doing a riding class for young kids in lieu of gymnastics this summer. It operates far more on exposure to riding and caring for horses than actual correctness of technique. There's 2 kids in the class, so they each get to work on groming Pip, then leading him to the riding arena, then making a couple of loops around the arena. Needless to say, Dillon loves it. We usually end up spending extra time at the barn saying hello to all the horses. This program only runs through the fall, so we'll go back to gymanstics in the fall, but are enjoying this in the meantime.

A memory from my childhood

Growing up, we had several wild blackberry bushes growing around the pond on our property. We would go pick enough to make a cobbler, plus enough to snack on as we fought off the stickers (and ticks and mosquitos...).

While on a walk this week, we discovered this bush with red and black berries. Dillon quickly gobbled up all the black ones, stopping only long enough to let me take this picture. It brought me back to my own childhood, eating wild berries freshly picked, outside in the sunshine. As it turns out, these are actually black raspberries rather than blackberries, but no matter.

It's long been my goal to give my children that element of my childhood- the simplicity of spending hours outside, learning and appreciating the gifts the earth. Dillon loves it- she takes a great deal of pride in identifying and eating the wild sorrel in our yard. We found a wild strawberry a couple of days ago that she quickly gobbled up. Since we found this bush, she asks every few hours throught the day if I think there are any more berries that are ripe and can we go check.

The Magic of Bubbles

This morning I took some store bought bubble solution, improved upon it a bit with some detergent, corn syrup and water, then we headed outside for some bubble blowing. It's amazing, the magic of bubbles. Dillon started jumping around to catch them, laughing. Corryn started laughing those great baby belly laughs at Dillon jumping around laughing. So, of course I was laughing at the two of them, which made them each laugh more. It was so simple, blowing bubbles, and such a great reminder of the joy of children.

Chocolate popcorn

Movie time is 4:00 at our house. This is one of our favorite movie time snacks as of late- chocolate popcorn. I pop the popcorn in a big pot on the stove, then pour the chocolate sauce over the top. We eat it with big spoons since it pretty sticky. Corryn almost managed to make it her first food a couple of days ago when she rather adeptly reached out, grabbed a handful and had it to her mouth faster than I could intervene. She knew she needed to get it to her mouth, but wasn't sure what to do from there, giving me time to act before it made actually into her mouth. :)

Anyway, chocolate popcorn:
1/2 -2/3 cup unpopped popcorn

Sauce:
Approx 1/3 c Blackstrap molassess
Some margarine (no butter due to the Corryn's dairy issues)
Cocoa powder

Heat together- I do it in the microwave for speed.

It's really good without being overly sweet plus has iron, calcium and potassium from the molassess, which alleviates some of the guilt :)