June/July

These pictures are totally out of order, and I don't even care. I'm not even going to try to fix it, because I thought, "I'll do a post really fast while Grant's taking a nap." Well, an hour and a half later, and 3 cartoons for Meili, and I'm still working on it. So here is the mess of pictures from the last month. (Many of which I stole from others-thank you Facebook.)

Last weekend, the 11th and 12th of July, my family had the annual Doyle Lewis Family Reunion in my uncle's backyard in Wellsville. After the weekend, Meili might be willing to move in there. He has miniature horses, go karts, a little sleigh for the horses to pull, a little pool, other animals-pretty much everything it takes to keep Meili happy.

 It's funny, because my aunt took several pictures that look pretty much exactly like this-Meili just hovering, waiting for her chance to get to the horses.

 Totally random... I loved what the sidewalk chalk did to Meili's pants.

 They also had a sidewalk sale in Logan. I decided to take Meili on her bike, and Grant in the stroller. Then we stopped for snowcones. Yummy!

 I'm trying to remember to at least document that Grant exists in our lives. It's pretty hard to forget to take pictures of Meili at this point, but Grant isn't quite as vocal.

 Sadly, as far as quality goes, it's getting harder and harder to tell which pictures Meili takes and which ones I take.

 See. Out of order. A couple more pictures from the family reunion.

 My sister-in-law, Sara, and I took advantage of the free day at the Treehouse Museum.

 This is when Meili was refusing to leave, and said "This is my home!" She's holding a stuffed animal horse. I seriously couldn't believe how many exhibits she was able to find horses.

 See, this is me insisting on documenting, and Grant saying, "But I don't want to be documented!"

 We're trying our best to maintain some kind of control of our weed-infested garden. And, we're just about done with all the peas. The tomatoes and beans have started. 

 My biggest incentive for growing a garden was to get Meili more excited about eating vegetables, and so far it has totally worked. She loved picking and eating the peas.

These pictures are of Independence Day.

Josh tried for years to get me excited about the celebrations in Honeyville, and now he has me totally converted (although I do still require a "real" parade at some point during the month of July), and this year, he screwed it all up. (Well not all...) The weekend before the 4th, he informed me that his work had put together a softball team for the Perry City Independence Day celebration which meant playing several games that week: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and who knows how many games on the 4th. The tournament was held on the 4th and it was a single game elimination. He promised me that his team wasn't going to be very good, so the most games they would play in was one that day. I was frustrated because I wanted to go to the fireworks at Romney Stadium on Thursday, but he would be playing, and I didn't want to be left with both kids all day on the 4th. 

Moral of the story: everything worked out just fine and it wasn't the usual celebration that I'm used to, but we had a lot of fun throughout the week.

I ran the 5k the morning of the 4th, and just have to mention that I (ahem) took first in my age group. Ha Ha! There were 3 (yes 3) people in my age group, and even then, my time was 28 minutes. I love it because that's actually one of my slower times, I haven't been running lately, and my only goal was to run the whole thing. But, hey, a first place is a first place! And my reward? Honey! Just what we needed!

Josh's family also decided to have a float in the Honeyville parade. They do this regularly, but this year they actually put effort and some forethought into the float.

It was the honey business that sponsored the float, so there were a couple bees, a couple beekeepers, some hives, and LOTS of candy!

 Meili got fireworks painted on her face.

 ...and always loves the 4th of July festivities.

 Last year, she loved the live fish pond, and had no fear, but this year, some of her mother set in, and as soon as one of the fish touched her leg, she was done. No matter how much Daddy tried to force the issue.

 These pictures are from the 3rd when we went to Josh's softball game in Perry. Also, as follow-up, remember how Josh's team wasn't very good, and they would play, at most, one game on the 4th. Yeah, they played 3 and lost in the championship. They didn't win, but I was super impressed, and Josh missed some of the 4th celebration, but he was there for the most important stuff.

 I told Meili we were going to do her hair like fireworks. That's exactly what it looks like right?

 Meili found some friends to run around with, Grant slept, and I just relaxed and took it all in.

 ...And a couple more random pictures from the 4th. This is my niece Andrea, holding my nephew Brayden, who is 2 weeks younger than Grant. They're in a race to see who can grow the biggest the fastest.

The cute baby lounging in the car is, sadly, not mine. 

As far as Grant, he is getting cuter and cuter everyday. He laughs, and flirts, and tries to suck on any face that gets near him. I won't be able to call him sweet forever, but that is the best word I can think of right now. We have yet to feed him anything that he won't eat. We're still working on sleeping through the night, but he did figure out rolling in the last couple of weeks, and already looks like he's pretty determined to crawl (not soon, but sooner than I thought he would.)

At his 6-month appointment, he weighed 20 lbs 10 oz. (Mind you, Meili was 20 pounds at 18 months.) which is the 92nd percentile, he's 28 inches long-92% and his head is 95%. At least he is well proportioned.

And I AM DONE.

Month 5

This month I've started saying that Meili is legitimately helpful with Grant. Up until this point, I was just happy that she didn't smother him as much as I thought she would. But there have been a few times this month that I have thought to myself, "Thank goodness for Meili!" because she's actually able to entertain him for a few minutes. And I think he's starting to like her-whereas before he's always just tolerated her. But now he smiles and laughs at her.

 However, having an older sister does have its embarrassments.

Meili drew this picture of Josh and I thought it was pretty awesome. You can see that her drawing is developing.

 While we cleaned out our garage, Meili kept herself occupied.

 This outfit was Josh's when he was a baby-although I think he was an older baby when he wore it. And we solved the mystery... I am told daily how much Grant looks like Josh, so we finally got out one of Josh's baby pictures. Nope, Grant doesn't look like Josh as a baby. He may look like him now, but he actually looks more like my baby pictures-or maybe even my mom's.

 All day Meili tries to give Grant hugs, and all day he tries to eat her face.

 And, yes, it finally happened... Meili cut her own hair. I've never worried about Meili having access to scissors, but she has started testing limits more and more. I don't know if it's an age thing, or it's a having a new baby in the house thing, but in the last month, she has gotten in trouble with markers (which were never a problem before), cut her own hair, locked me out of the car, and today she purposely touched our crepe maker and burned her finger. Yeesh! Someday, I hope I will have my sweet, innocent little girl back. Otherwise, maybe she'll just learn from some of these natural consequences.

It's not the best picture, but she had a french braid in her hair, and just cut it off right below the elastic. When I asked her about it, she showed me the layers in my hair, and said that she wanted her's to look the same. So I went from being very angry, to still being angry, but thinking she was kind of sweet at the same time.

We headed off to Cookie Cutters...

Ta Da!

It took a couple of days getting used to, but now I think it's pretty cute.

And these are Grant's 4 Month pictures...

In other news...
-Last post I complained about our 4 doctor's appointments in one month. Well, little did I know, we weren't finished yet. We had to sneak one more in on the 31st-just in the knick of time. Grant finished his round of amoxicillin and a couple days later, all of his symptoms came right back. I took him to Instacare and the doctor said that his ear infection was resistant to the amoxicillin, so we got to start all over again. Luckily, I took him back in last week just to make sure everything was cleared up, and they said he looks great! I'm praying that we don't see another doctor until next month, for his well-child check.
-So far, I haven't found anything that Grant won't eat. Yea! He's had sweet potatoes, carrots, squash, bananas, apple sauce, peaches, yogurt, mandarin oranges, and more things I can't remember. But most important... Ice cream! And he is a fan!
-Josh and I were asked to be group leaders at Youth Conference, which meant half the day Friday, and all day Saturday we were up on the USU campus... with Grant. I was super nervous about it. I'm not gonna lie, it was a lot of work keeping an infant quiet, happy, fed, entertained all day. But we survived, and it was actually really fun. It was uplifting, a change in the regular routine. I liked spending more time with Josh, and Grant took quite a few naps in the stroller which has been life-changing, because now I can actually get him to sleep when we're not home. I've been able to attend all three meetings of church!
-And I've come to grips with the fact that Grant is probably not going to figure out how to sleep through the night on his own anytime soon. So... we're resorting to letting him cry it out. I hate that we are to this point, but I need sleep, and we need to get him out of our room sometime this year-so this is where we are. Thursday night was not bad at all. Friday was no fun :( But last night he made some progress for, I would say, the first time in his life. So I'm hopeful. I'll keep you posted.