Mason, Rylan, & Elli,
So I’m way late again this month, even though I got the pictures all together weeks ago; I got distracted apparently. Anyway, here we go. We were at home the whole month of July, which was nice. We did a lot of our traditional summer things this month, like the Stuarts Draft parade/carnival, the Waynesboro fireworks, free 7-11 slurpee day, and the monster truck show. (Well the monster trucks are not a tradition for any of us except the boys, but since Nonni and Poppy were gone most of the month, we went as a family to see the show this year.) We hosted life group at our house twice, which you really loved, Mason.
Mommy went through a process of making our play room all cozy upstairs. That ended up being super fun and satisfying for all of us; I’ve been sleeping up there on nights that Daddy works at night, and you boys love coming in in the middle of the night when I’m up there. (I’ll put some before/after pictures on here).
We had a full popcorn jar from good playing together, so we had a movie night where we watched Aladdin. Mason, you especially loved that, and for the next two weeks or so, all you wanted to do was listen to Aladdin music on Spotify or the burned cd with Disney music on it that I’d made in college. This was the original Aladdin, by the way, not the new one; we had to watch this one first, obviously.
We also had a fun afternoon of going to Coal Road and swimming/playing in the water like last year. We found crawdads and watched a dog swim while we were there too.
Mason, you were awesome in the pool this year. You weren’t scared at all after the first few days. You jumped off of the big diving board on your own over and over. You practiced diving some, and you did a great job. You were also pretty brave drinking different things like “Happy” and “Calm” drinks to get the bad bugs out of your belly, although some days you just refused. We had some good weeks with you in July, controlling your anger more and getting along with Rylan better for long stretches of time. I’m proud of you.
Ry, you were much more brave when we went to the dentist this time. I didn’t have to drag you down the hallway, so that was already a step in the right direction. You didn’t like the pool as much as Mason, but I think maybe next year you won’t be as scared. You’re getting bigger and acting more like a big boy in lots of ways.
Elli, you finished your Infant/Toddler at-home speech days this month, so it was sad to say goodbye to Mrs. Kari. You’re still using a lot of the signs she taught you close to a year ago. But you have a lot more words to say with your mouth now too. We had your pre-IEP meeting, and you’ll be starting speech at Stump in August. You like to do a lot of things by yourself (as you can see in some of the pictures). You are very loud and very cute. And you loved looking at Mommy’s phone while Nonni and Poppy were in Africa this month and saying, “Lilli????”
Here are some quotes from this month:
“That should be two bites”
”That’s your opinion. I’m Poppy. You’re Daddy.”
“Are you sure it’s not leprosy???”
“Wow, how could they build Olympic diving boards so high?? They would probably have to go to Harbor Freight to get all the things they need!!”
“I scared the kitty out of his whisks!!”
“You can only do that with permission or supervision.”
”Super vision?? Only Superman has super vision!”
I love you!!
