Loving life

This summer has been so great and we have all been enjoying life. Lyla is my little social butterfly and she loves playing with friends. We have to get together almost daily with her sweet friend Allie because these two love spending time together. They love to dress up and dance together.

 We've had lots of water fun in the last few months and we've tried to take advantage of every beautiful day. Lyla loved filling up her princess buckets with water and then sitting down in them.

 Lyla loves dancing with another friend, Chandler. They are so funny together- they just laugh and laugh at each other the whole time they are playing.

Trevor gets SO excited when Paul comes home from work every day and tries to just jump into his arms. One night Trevor was hanging out with Dad on the couch, watching him working away on his phone.

 The second Paul took his eye off his phone, Trevor went in for the kill

The kids love helping me fold the laundry. Lyla will "pack" all of the clothes which means to fold them, I guess like I do when I'm packing for a trip? Trevor loves to pull all of the clothes out, especially after I've folded them. One day Lyla found Paul's awesome orange soccer socks and she fell in love. She decided they would go perfectly with her dance leotard and she wore them around talking about her pretty tights. Silly girl.

We've entered the mess-making stage! Definitely couldn't get mad at that adorable face though. He loves pulling everything out of the cupboard, pulling all of the DVDs out, unrolling the toilet paper, playing in the toilet, diving into the bathtub, shutting his fingers in drawers, throwing everything he can grab behind the couch, and very deliberately throwing food on the floor. I really hope I'm ready for a toddler boy!!

So excited for her first day of dance! For some reason after the first class, she's been a little more hesitant and keeps getting scared of a red dragon that she says keeps chasing her during class. Love her imagination!

Trevor finally moved from his army crawl to a normal crawl, and now cruises around the whole house. He loves pulling himself up onto anything he can, and loves walking when we hold his hands and help him.

Trevor's all-time favorite toy is a tube of oragel. He loves to hold it and suck on it and seriously is entertained forever with it. Anytime he sees it, he fusses and whines until he can get to it and is happy as can be once he does.

Although Lyla has improved a lot in being nice to Trevor, most of the interactions between them look a lot like this. She loves to bug him with little things all day until he's so tired of it. I'm pretty sure that soon he'll stand up to her.

 At playgroup last week, Lyla and Lia were in her room getting a few toys to take outside to play with, and she came out all dressed up like this. She has quite the sense of style!

Today we spent the afternoon at the zoo and it was so fun to wander around at Lyla's pace, stopping to sit on every bench like she loves to do and watching Trevor's excitement as he watched each animal. Some advice that I really liked from a talk I heard recently was to cherish the time each night that we spend putting our children to bed. I usually am in a rush to get on with my to-do list after the kids are down so I'm impatient with every distraction that prolongs the tucking-in process. Lately though I've been trying extra hard to enjoy the time to rock & sing to Trevor, and to rub Lyla's back while I sing to her. Nothing I have to do is more important than my relationship with those two darling kids and I'm so grateful for the chance to be their mother.