Checking In

This is the busiest time of the year for me at work (which really stinks because so many people I know are on their summer break). I’m in the middle of buying books for the fall (AKA the fourth quarter, the money maker) and we’ve got our storewide inventory on Sunday, which is keeping me extra busy this year since our longtime tech guy left this year and I’m having to run the whole shebang.

All that by way of excuses for why I’ve been ignoring the blog. And, really, I’ve got nothing for you right now either except a copy of an email I sent my grandmother a week ago. She liked it so much I thought I could make it a quick blog post (at least enough to assuage the grandmas).

Here goes:

Oliver is doing great. He is really into hugs and kisses lately (he tackled a little boy to the ground at the bookstore the other day trying to hug him). He won't really give hugs if you ask him to but every once in awhile he'll sneak up on you and throw his arms around you. It's the sweetest thing and looks a bit like this:

Chris was staying with us last week and Oliver spent lots of time giving Chris hugs.

Of course, he also likes to hug his big brother, Miles. Which ends up looking a lot like this:

Miles LOVES Oliver. He will let the kiddo cuddle with him all day.

When he's not showering everyone with affection he's running wild around the house. His favorite time of the day is "Naked Time." After his evening bath we give him a good ten minutes to run around without a diaper or clothes on to dry off (we've done this for months and amazingly we've only had one accident... it happened tonight). Naked Time ends up looking a lot like this:

and this:

So much fun! He adores that tractor push toy that his Grandpa gave him at Thanksgiving. He pushes and drags that thing all over the house now. 

That’s it from us for now. I promise more next week once inventory is over. 

But here’s a teaser

TANTRUMS. 

Which looks a little like this:

Summer Saturday

It’s summer! That doesn’t mean as much to me as it used to since I don’t get the summer off but there is still something about the change of season that gets me excited. Today we had an amazing summer day.

We woke up early (which is not odd since Oliver gets up between 6 and 6:30 every day) and went to breakfast at Dan’s. We’ve gone to Dan’s every Saturday we’ve been in town since Oliver was born and he has garnered quite the fan club there. They cheer him at every milestone and were super psyched the first time they all saw him walk a few weeks ago. 

After breakfast and Oliver’s morning nap, we met our friends, Alison and Joel, and their son, Lucas, at the Austin Zoo. Cousin Chris was staying with us this week, too, so we were a happy group of seven. Alison and Joel are members of the zoo and invited us to tag along with them so we could check it out. We had such an amazing time. I didn’t realize that Austin had a zoo with so many animals in it. There were (forgive me, in advance)... lions and tigers and bears. And monkeys and goats and peacocks (the lesser known first draft of that song). Most of the animals are rescue animals and there’s not much of a crowd so you can take your time at each exhibit and you can get really close to the animals. It was hot but both Lucas (who is 2 1/2) and Oliver handled the heat like champs. Oliver was completely in awe of Lucas. He tried to do everything that Lucas did. 

After the zoo we headed to lunch at Chick-fil-A. Oliver and Lucas terrorized the play area and both were pretty zonked out by the end of the meal. Oliver took his afternoon nap in the car on the way home.

This evening we headed to the pool and spent a good hour in the water. Oliver LOVES the pool. He’s got a great float for the bigger pool but his favorite thing is to waddle around the wading pool. He falls down and goes under every so often but seems to shake it off pretty quickly (only once today did he truly freak out and that was because he got a ton of water up his nose when he fell and no ones like that feeling). We met a few cool babies, had a nice snack by the side of the pool and got home just in time for dinner. Oliver INHALED everything we put in front of him and was super eager to get in the bath and into bed. We did story time, I took him into his room, nursed him and sang to him and put him into his crib. He was wide awake when I put him in his crib but was sound asleep by the time I reached the door of his nursery. Completely happy and tuckered out. Good day.