4th of July

I was determined to get our 4th of July pictures up before August!  :)  So happy, very late, 4th of July!

We spent our evening cooking out with some friends in our church gymnasium because of rain.  It was still a fun evening, even if we were indoors.  Then we all moved downtown to a local school playground.  It was in a great spot and we didn't have to maneuver through all the crowds of people.

Some of our friends brought sparklers for the kids to play with before the fireworks show began.  Jenna and Grant really liked playing with them and did a great job of being careful (can you tell this Momma was a little worried about that?!  Careful is not exactly their middle name....).

Fireworks are always so much fun to watch.  The "fizzle" ones are my favorite!

They're loving the show!

It started showering during the show...notice the umbrella in the bottom left-hand corner.  :)

This little guy was tuckered out and ended up falling asleep during the fireworks show!  Out cold!

And the beautiful finale!

Hannah - 5 months

Wow - am I behind?!  Hannah turned 5 months old...almost two weeks ago. 

She's such a SWEET little girl!  She smiles so easily and her whole face lights up when she does.  So precious!  She's started making some squealing noises as well when she's really happy.  This month she also started sucking her thumb.  It seems to be more of a coincidence than her actually purposefully putting her thumb in her mouth, but when she does get it in there she makes a sucking/slurping sound.  :)  It's so funny! 

Her next well-child visit isn't until she turns 6 months; however, I called and asked to come see the doctor because I'm still worried about her development.  I know every child is different and develops at different rates, but the problem I'm seeing is that she's NOT developing.  She's five months old and I haven't seen much, if any, progress in her gross and fine motor skills.  She still keeps her hands very tightly clenched; although she will open them at times, but the majority of the time they stay clenched.  She's not holding onto toys unless we pry her hands open and even then she just barely has a hold of them and doesn't seem to even realize she's holding anything.  She's not reaching for objects, she's not rolling either way, and when on her tummy, she can't really lift her head off the ground.  At her age, the doctor said she should hold her head at a 90 degree angle when on her stomach.  Also, her eyes tend to cross and just seem "off".  I don't even know how to describe them, but they just don't seem right. 

Sooo....I mentioned my concerns to our pediatrician and he was great.  He ordered a muscle enzyme test (a blood draw) to rule out muscular dystrophy (she already had that done and everything came back normal - yay!) and is referring her to a development specialist at the children's hospital.  At this point, she is scheduled to see the specialist on Monday, September 23rd at Dayton Children's Hospital; however, I've decided I'd rather take her to the Cincinnati Children's Hospital rather than Dayton Children's so now I'm waiting on a call from Cincinnati to get an appointment scheduled there.  Cincinnati is ranked #3 for children's hospitals in the US and Dayton's not even in the top 100....so I'd rather take her to the best.

Also, starting this week I've been taking her to our chiropractor and he's shown me ways to work with her at home.  He says it's really important that we stimulate her as much as possible by massaging the bottoms of her feet, rolling her wrists and opening/massaging her hands, rubbing her tummy and back, and then moving her alternate arms and legs up and down.  So I've been doing that whenever she's awake (and we're not out running to the grocery store, swim lessons, gymnastics, etc!).

Don't you just love that sweet little smile?!

We're praying that by working with her and massaging her that we'll start to see some improvements.  She's such a sweetheart!  :)  Oh, and since I took her to the doctor, they weighed and measured her.  So her five month stats are: 

Length: 24.3 inches (23%)

Weight: 13.31 lbs (20%)

Head Circumference: 15.7 in (8%)

I was encouraged to see that her head went up from 0.82% to 8%.  She's still my teeny-weeny, and I love it!  Maybe a softer and quieter demeanor will come with that smaller size...hmmm....  :)

Hannah's First Bite of Cereal

A few weeks ago we started Hannah on baby cereal.  She wasn't a huge fan of it and still seems confused by it.  In fact, lately I barely even get the tip of the spoon in her mouth and she jerks like she's gagging.  She's not crying, she just doesn't seem to quite know what to think of it yet.

Video of Hannah's first few bites...

June Misc.

Here are some pictures from June...

We took the kids to a local yogurt shop - Silver Spoon.  They LOVE picking out their yogurt and adding all the toppings...and I mean ALL.  :)  Apparently there's nothing like yogurt with gummy bears, Nerds candy, marshmallows, and M&Ms.  Mmmm!

My precious Hannah

Our church's Vacation Bible School theme this year was a Medieval Time and in the skit there was a "scary" dragon.  Jenna and Grant both loved the dragon, and Jenna even got to hug him.

I found Grant asleep like this one day.  So funny!

Jenna sporting her new swimsuit.

LOVE this picture of Drew and Hannah staring at each other!

I love being able to reuse things from when Jenna was a baby.  This was a quilt that was made and given to me by one of my fellow teachers.  So beautiful!

A video of Hannah cooing at me.  She's such a happy baby!  (By the way, if you're not able to view the video in the email, just click the link and view it on our blog.)

Jenna being silly and wearing Hannah's Bumbo seat as a hat.

I took Jenna on a Mommy/daughter date, so we decided to go back to Silver Spoon (I found a $5 gift certificate!).

Then we went to a playground to play - just the two of us.  Jenna surprised me when she went across the bars all by herself.  We've never seen her do that before!  (Video below)

We took Jenna and Grant to see Monsters University.  It was Grant's first time at a movie theater.

Ready for the  movie

He loved the popcorn and pop! 

Hannah all dressed up

I just had to include this video of Grant saying thank you to Aunt Cathy for his birthday gift.  In case you can't understand him, he said, "Hi, Aunt Cathy.  Thank you, Aunt Cathy."  I LOVE it!!

He hasn't quite figured out the point of the slip-n-SLIDE.  :)

Jenna also has a hard time actually sliding...it's more of a plop.

Of course, if you can't slide, you can always just crawl across it. 

A video of more slip-n-slide action:

Daddy with his kids

Pool time with their good friend, Paige from next door, who also goes to our church.

A video of the kids running and jumping into the pool:

Jenna said she wanted to learn how to ride her bike without training wheels, so Drew took them off.  And that lasted about a whole 2 minutes before she changed her mind.  No pressure.  We'll try again later.  :)

Hannah hating her tummy time.  Poor thing!

Grant loved helping Drew wash the car.

Snuggle time on Jenna's bed.

We bought her a new pair of goggles since she's learning to put her face in the water during swim lessons.  Now she likes wearing them in the bathtub too!

Bumbo time

Jenna Swim Lessons

This summer we decided to sign Jenna up for some swim lessons.  The classes are held at the Troy pool and are Monday - Thursday from 10:20-10:50 for two weeks in a row.  She had her first two weeks of lessons in the middle of June and will have another session starting next week.

They basically worked on kicking their feet, blowing bubbles in the water, jumping into the water, swimming on the tummies, and floating on their backs.  Jenna loved every.second.of.it!  I was a little worried that the water might be cold that early in the morning and she wouldn't want to do it, but it never bothered her.  She was always very excited for the class and soaked up everything the teachers told her. 

She is fearless with jumping in the water!  And since she can touch in that area of the pool, the teacher finally made her jump without being caught.  And speaking of being tall enough to stand in that area, she's also tall enough to go down those huge slides behind her!  I guess maybe we'll give it a try this summer.  We're not allowed to go down with her, so she'll have to do it on her own. 

After a few of the classes, they let the kids go down the little slide at the end of class.

Below are some videos of her swim lessons:

Cincinnati Mini-Trip

Drew had some hotel points that were expiring soon, so we decided to use them up and take a mini-vacation down to Cincinnati.  It was so much fun!  It's such a special treat for the kids to stay at a hotel since we obviously don't do that very often.  We were able to get a suite with a kitchenette, so we brought some food, along with our popcorn popper. 

View of the "living room" from the door.

Kitchen was to the left of the door.

View of the bathroom from the bedroom area.

Two queen beds - the first night the boys slept in one, while Jenna and Mommy slept in the other.  However, Saturday night the kids said they wanted to sleep in the same bed together, so we let them.  They did great and neither one fell off the bed.

Grant was watching "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" with me Saturday morning while I was nursing Hannah.  Boy have shows changed since then!  I remember watching that show with my Dad when I was a kid.

We brought our portable DVD player and some DVDs and hooked it up to the TV, so the kids could watch a movie in bed.  Of course if we're watching a movie, popcorn is always involved as well!

The boys

The girls (minus Hannah who was already asleep for the night)

We hit up the hotel pool quite a bit that weekend! 

Daddy's are so much fun!  Grant wanted me to do that to him and I could barely throw him up out of the water.  :)

Hannah  hanging out on the pool chair with Mommy.

She did get in the water and seemed to enjoy it some.  She's still a little small for the floatie, so we ended up just holding her instead.

Why, yes, we did bring her swing to the hotel with us.  I'm sure people thought we were moving in there.  We probably did look silly, but that swing is a LIFESAVER!

We went to a children's museum on Saturday.

There was a play area that looked like a big tree house.  Here Jenna's sliding down the slide.

There was this maze to climb through with the smallest of spaces.  Somehow Jenna magically squeezed herself through it all the way to the bottom.

Grant crawling through the netted tunnel.

Bangin' on some drums!  He kept squatting down with his legs spread apart while he banged on them.  It was hilarious!

Jenna and Grant cooked us up some food in their little cafe. 

Then we had to do some grocery shopping.

Jenna pretended to be a veterinarian and took care of some of the animals there.

There was a dance party, so Jenna joined in.

Completely worn out from our fun and busy day!

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Drew showed us this fun trick...and the kids loved it!

More swimming!

We went to a splash park on Sunday before heading home.  The kids actually enjoyed the playground more than the splash park.  Of course, the splash park was pretty UNDERwhelming.  We weren't too impressed, but the kids still had fun.

There was a creek there too, so we stopped to explore.