Friday, July 7, 2017

summer fun

Well, the summer keeps on trucking along. It's hot. It's humid. It's inexplicably raining and storming nearly EVERY day. But we're having a lot of fun! For example, thanks to the frequent storms (and fireworks...), Lola is getting a lot of opportunities to wear her ThunderShirt. Millie knows this, and knows that Lola gets scared of the storms, and this has resulted in two very funny things.

1. At the first sign (or sound) of a storm, Millie will frantically tell us "Lola needs her BOOM BLANKET!" ThunderShirt...Boom Blanket...I get it. Obviously now we call it the boom blanket all the time, because that's a way better name. If anyone is thinking about starting a company to make knockoff ThunderShirts, you are welcome to use this superior name for your product.

2. Several times when it's been storming at night, we've closed the door to Millie's room while we're putting her to bed and Lola will scratch at the door until we let her in. Therefore, for the past few days, at ALL times of the day, regardless of weather, Millie will stop, fold her hands, and pray for Lola: "Dear Jesus...we just thank you dat Lola NOT scwatch at my door. Pwease make Lola not scared and not scwatch my door. Thank you for her boom blanket. AMEN!"

Gimme all the storms if I get this kind of hilarious payoff. Also, Jesus, please help Lola not be scared and scratch on Millie's door, because apparently it really distresses Millie. ;)

And now, some random pictures and stories. 


We're heading to the beach next week (YAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!!!!) and needed to practice setting up (easy) and taking down (what the *@#!) our beach tent. In between those two events, Millie found it to be a good place to have some reading time. It should be noted that Millie has almost completed her second library summer reading program of the summer (you know, read 50 books and get prizes sorta thing). They are going to have to name a shelf of books after us or something by the time summer is through! LOTS of reading going on in our house!


The Big Girl Bed situation is going great!! She is sleeping well and only getting/falling out of bed occasionally in the wee hours...when that happens she tends to seem very confused and discombobulated and goes right back to sleep without a problem, so I am thankful for that! When she does wake up, though, we are treated to alien-ish sights like this as she helpfully goes over to turn off her sound machine.


We played dress-up one afternoon. She apparently thinks princesses have attitudes or something.


WATERCOLORS, guys!! I've finally found the Holy Grail of toddler entertainment. Hours (literally) of fun that ISN'T MESSY!! We all win. She will paint contentedly and independently for a super long time, and then we make "books" (by stapling pages together)...it's the best. For whatever reason, she manages to keep pretty clean with these paints (her other paints end up EVERYWHERE and have to be used basically naked outside) and like...I'm about to hit those back to school sales at Target and STOCK UP on watercolors, yo. 

We had some fun firsts this past week!


First fireworks! See also: first intentionally keeping her out and awake WAY past her bedtime. Luckily she did fine!


Well, I mean, until about 10 minutes into the actual fireworks part, when she managed to fall asleep. Hahaha. Poor baby. Luckily for us all, once we actually got home and put her in bed (10:00, so a good 1.5 hours past her normal bedtime), she went right to sleep and even slept in the next morning...so...fireworks every weekend, right?

We also went to the movie theater for the first time!! Well, first time EVER for Millie...first time since Millie was born for us, haha.


A local theater does a "kids movie" thing every Tuesday/Thursday morning during the summer...older movies, but $1.50 tickets, $1.50 popcorn, and $1.50 drinks, so THAT is a win. We enjoyed watching The Secret Life of Pets, which was pretty cute, and Millie was SUPER into the whole theater experience. Possibly my favorite part was watching her deal with the theater chair. Hahahaha. She didn't quite weigh enough to keep it from springing back up into the closed position if she sat towards the back, so she would balance way up at the tip of the chair, but every time she forgot and scooted back, it would try to close her up...haaaa! Free entertainment there. For me, anyway.


All the rain has resulted in LOTS of tomatoes this year! On Monday we picked some and then took some across the street to our elderly neighbors, a practice that Millie found VERY confusing. "Why we give dem our matoes??! Dey hungry? Dey no have matoes?" Later she informed me that she missed the 'matoes' that we gave to our neighbors. Apparently those 20 matoes were her favorites and now they are GONE. Crazy baby!

Well, that about brings us up to speed. Congrats if you made it this far. Also, if you happen to be reading this ON my blog (and not through Bloglovin or something), you might notice that I got a new design! Thanks to an astute blog reader, Jackie, who yesterday pointed out that most of my design images (the header, about me, section labels on the right hand side) had gone WAY wonky and the images were gone and replaced with some ransom thing from Photobucket (where they had been hosted)...it was super weird and unattractive, haha. I couldn't figure out how to easily fix it without tracking down the girl that created the design for me 3.5 years ago, so I decided to just make a new one myself. It was an unexpected turn of events, and I certainly had no plans to redesign a blog I barely ever use, hahaha, but...it had to happen! Anyway, I'm happy with how it turned out and it even encouraged me to actually BLOG so that other people might see it, too. :) 

Happy Friday! And happy almost-vacation to meeee!! Counting the minutes til I see my sweet girl running through that sand!

11 comments:

  1. Beach tents are the best! The new blog design is gorgeous... but not quite as gorgeous as Millie : )

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  2. Your blog looks very pretty! I love it! Millie looks like she is having the best summer ever. She's such a happy girl.

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  3. Love the updates! It is so wonderful to read about your sweet family. :) Millie is just the cutest, I hope someday I have a daughter and she has equally funny and sweet stories. The new blog is super cute too! Florals get me every time. Have fun at the beach!

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  4. Have an excellent vacation!!! And I love the new design. Do you want to do mine next??? I think ours in only about three years out of date so that's not bad, right?!?!

    Have you heard of ColorWonder? They are markers and paints that only show colour on the specific paper they come with and not anywhere else. We had them for our kids for car trips and other places we didn't want messes. They are well worth the price, which is not that bad.

    And I'm glad to hear the Big Girl Bed situation is going so swimmingly, despite the occasional meeting up with the floor :)

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  5. Our library does a 1000 books by kindergarten goal, sounds like yall need to get on that list and backtrack all your books! :)

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  6. We had to get a new monitor several months back and it's mounted on the twins' ceiling, so we don't get any of the close-up terrifying/amusing views of them like we used to- sad times! Glad the bed is going well and hope y'all have a great time on your trip!!

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  7. Haha picturing Millie in the movie theatre seat cracked me up.

    Also, love the blog design!!

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  8. I've already ordered watercolors from Amazon since you posted about them! We've been painting with water a lot, and she loves it (the Melissa and Doug paint with water books are awesome), and I think she will love these! And stapling them is brilliant! Clean entertainment is my favorite!

    And I really need to hit up the library for books. I'm sooooo bored with the ones we have.

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  9. Is your beach tent from Aldi's? It looks exactly like ours, and we grabbed ours at Aldi's...anyways, I agree- it is NOT easy to put together! I asked Stephen if it would be okay for me to shove it in a black lawn trash bag ( you know- the HUGE ones) after using it! LOL! Eventually, I figured out how to fold it up...but no guarantee that I will remember the next time we open it up! If you have any tricks- let me know!

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  10. Enjoy your holiday at the beach!
    Oh, yea the comment section is working again.
    Love the "Millie isms"

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  11. Millie is such a character, I love her! So my blog is wonky too, and the girl who created my blog has disappeared. I need a tutorial in how to fix it!!! HELP!

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