Week 46 and Fourth of July

Dear Hannah, 

You are quite the angelic baby. You are just so chill and happy and when you aren't it's so easy for me to tell that something is wrong. For example, the past 2 nights you have been waking up in the middle of the night, whimpering. It turns out that your upper right tooth was finally breaking through the gums. You didn't cry hysterically, inconsolably, multiple times (like Nathan did) and went back to sleep so easily after a few minutes of cuddling to let the advil kick in. 

You are getting quite interactive and you are working on clapping your hands. Your arms still just flap around a lot, but when they actually clap, I can tell that you get really excited.You know you just did something extraordinary. 

You are working on transitioning to one nap. In the morning, you are totally fine with taking a short cat nap on the road. This will sustain you until about 1:30 when you go down for a longer 2 hourish nap until 3:30 or 4. I like this too because I can get some stuff done while both of you are napping. You are still a super light sleeper as the slightest noise will wake you up, so I try my best to keep quiet when you are napping. 

I can tell that you've been watching us. You now know what to do with lots of objects. For example, in the picture above, you know to put the sunglasses near your face when I hand it to you. When you play with Nathan's cars, you make a really cute sound sometimes as you push the car back and forth. 

The festivities of the fourth didn't seem to bother you so much. You slept right through all of the hootin' and boomin'. Nathan, on the other hand, a different story. 

Our neighbors decided to practice their fireworks shooting skills up to 2 days before the actual holiday. These booming noises absolutely terrified Nathan. After a few hours of sitting with you and showing you a few videos of fireworks shows, you were able to be a bit more at ease. On July 3rd, the golf course by our neighborhood has a pretty good fireworks show that we could see right from our street. We let you stay up extra late that night and then you and Daddy walked over to the school to view the fireworks from the fields. Who wants to go watch fireworks?!

I do, I do!

 There were a few other families out there and one of them offered you a sparkler to hold. You were a bit afraid of the sparkler so you didn't accept. Daddy said that you seemed a bit indifferent while watching the fireworks show, but when you came home that night and the next few nights following, you were no longer afraid of the loud firework booms. Your favorite fireworks were the happy face design and blue fireworks.

The next morning, we all participated in our neighborhood 4th of July parade. We decorated and then joined our neighbors on a short walk, followed by snow cones afterwards.

 Nathan, you are such a show-off. As you whizzed down the street, you weaved in and out of the crowd, flying down on your scooter with one leg sticking out or behind you. Many of the other walkers would stop and comment on how adorable you are. You loved it!

If I were to walk outside right now without knowing the date, I would not know that it was July in Texas. We've had such a mild summer, with temperatures hovering around low 90's. A few years ago, we had 100+ days of 100 degrees! Anyways, the mild temperatures have brought us to play outside more. Your friend, baby Lucas let us borrow a water table over the summer and you two have really enjoyed playing outside with it. Nathan really likes to make water falls and scoop up things with different kitchen gadgets and Hannah likes to put whatever she can get in her mouth. Both of you like to splash. A lot. 

Nathan is still being funny by doing the opposite of what he is saying or saying things that are false and then shouting, "not true!" He knows when other people are joking, because he will say, "Hey, that's funny." 

This past weekend, I subbed in to teach sunday school crafts, so I got a chance to be with Nathan during Sunday school. During story time, the teacher was telling you guys about the story where King Solomon, who was so wise, figured out a way to solve the dispute between two women who claimed that a particular baby was indeed, theirs. You really became fixated on the fact that the king wanted to cut the baby in half and for the rest of the day, you would just randomly say, "The king wanted to cut the baby in half!" After trying multiple ways of explaining to you how the king wasn't really going to cut the baby (he was just kidding), and when the real mommy told him to "stop." He stopped and didn't cut the baby. He knew that the baby belonged to that lady and returned the baby back to his mommy. After you finally understood, you were repeating, "The king was just kidding. He not cut baby in half." 

Remember last week when you ripped the pages out of a library book because you wanted to color the pages? Well, this week we brought your piggy bank to the library, emptied out all of your coins ($1.50 worth) and paid for the book. While I was dumping the money on the counter, I could tell that you were sad, but you didn't throw a tantrum because you accepted that you were responsible to help pay for the library to get a new book. You walked up to the lady and said, "I not rip pages anymore. Sorry." I am so proud of your maturity. 

Well, today's Daddy's birthday. Someone is really excited to put the candles on the cake that we made this morning. Nathan's counted out the candles and we are just waiting for Daddy to come home and eat dinner. We may have pictures of this next week. 

Well, that's about it for now. 

Love, 

Mommy