Let's recap the summer so far. If by chance you don't live here in Texas and don't watch the weather channel, you may not know that it has been record-breaking hot for like a month now. Well maybe not quite that long, but it seems like it's been hot for as long as we can remember :). At the beginning of the summer, we broke out the Nemo slip-n-slide that we got late last season. The kids had a really good time with it - this was when it was only like 90 instead of 106 degrees.
Then it got hotter and hotter and we decided it was time to upgrade to something with a little more cooling-off potential :)
Kinsey absolutely loves the waterslide, sometimes she calls it the water park, and Tag is still on the fence. The first day, he splashed quite a bit and had fun. Since then, he's taken more to observing from the sidelines.
But he still looks awesome doing it - here he is in his cool swim duds :) 
We've had lots of friends over to play on the waterslide and have really enjoyed watching them splash and play. The first day we got it, we called the McBrides and had them come over to help us break it in. 
Here's Kinsey's friend Averie making a big splash. 
And here are Kinsey and Averie testing out walking up the slide instead of taking it downhill. 
The Kedroski kids also came over and had a blast. 
With the purchase of the waterslide, we also got Kinsey a big girl swing because it was getting a little ridiculous to try to get her in and out of the baby swing :) 
What melts on a hot summer day? A snack bowl of chocolate chips...
We have found a few other ways to stay cool. Nana got Kinsey this awesome ocean puzzle and with some help, she's pretty good at it. And it's huge so it takes a while to put together and is a great way to pass some time while Tag takes a nap and the sun bakes the ground. 
She's also really into coloring these days. I guess it's a pretty normal activity for toddlers, but I find it very relaxing to sit down with colors and do it with her. Tag even occasionally will pick up a crayon and try to mimic us. 
We've started "school" time - usually while Tag is asleep because he wants to be part of everything his big sister is doing. For a long time we've been working on spelling and reading, and Kinsey has gotten really great at sounding out words, some up to 6 letters long. She's learning sounds that combined letters make like "sh", "ch", "ck", etc, and she's really into it. So now she is ready to start working on writing letters. I think figuring out how to show her to hold the pencil has been the hardest part!!! She is actually pretty patient at working on the letters and we just practice for a few minutes a couple of days a week. I let her initiate it because I really want to keep it fun for her. 
Sometimes for "school" we practice sorting. She loves to play with money and is working on recognizing the different coins. 
Here's Kinsey pretending to be "Princess Presto" from Super Why. Great show on PBS. She loves to spell the words by tracing the letters in the air with her wand. She gets very serious about it. Hilarious!
Sonic gave away free root beer floats last month which kick-started a serious love for the treat in Kinsey. She thought Daddy was the coolest for bringing them home and sharing them with her.
We decided that it would be fun to celebrate Father's Day with another round of floats after a yummy lunch at Moonie's burgers.
For Kinsey's float, Daddy decided to get down a special cup that we got on a cruise years ago and told her that this was her new special cup. The next morning, guess what she wanted her Clifford cereal in???
In weird medical news, the Friday before Father's Day, Kinsey complained that something was biting her inside her shoe. When I took off her croc, there was an ant in there and an inflamed spot between her big toe and second toe. It was really bugging her the rest of the day and during the night, so we kept lotion and benadryl cream on it to stop the itch. The next day, Saturday, her foot was red and swelling a little and hot to the touch so I assumed she was having an allergic reaction and gave her some liquid Benadryl. Here is the bloated foot.
At church the next morning, the redness was moving up to her ankle so I asked a good friend of mine who is a pediatric nurse what she thought and she recommended drawing a line at the top of the redness and then after nap, if it had spread, we should take her to the doctor. Otherwise we could wait until Monday morning and go to our regular pediatrician. So we got home and during lunch I showed Douglas that it had moved up from just her foot (he'd been doing church stuff since before daylight so we hadn't had a chance to connect). Bear in mind, it's Father's Day. Douglas was headed to Colorado the next day for a week-long Worship Conference and really needed to pack and rest up. Instead of waiting until after nap, he immediately took her to the Urgent Care down the road to have her foot looked at. I am so thankful that when I worry about being too much of a paranoid, over-reactive Mom, my husband steps in and just takes action. He knew that if we waited until the morning, I'd be at the pediatrician with Kinsey and Tag, which is nuts, and that there was a chance her foot would be worse. So for 3 1/2 hours on Sunday afternoon, when he usually goes into his coma to rest up from the crazy morning, he sat in the waiting room and exam room with her. I was really thankful for his iPhone because he was able to send me photo and text updates constantly. Here she is waiting - note the really cool purple line I drew at the top of the inflammation. 
Here she is at the beginning of the wait. After the nurse came in and left again, Kinsey was on a short-term high thinking that there was no shot coming since it hadn't been given right away. 
Shortly after, it became clear that she was in fact going to get a shot and the happiness zapped out of the room. 
But Daddy quickly turned it around and helped her hang in through the looooooooong wait and the shot and the wait after the shot in case she had a reaction. 
Afterwards, Daddy took her to Sonic for a cherry slush, which she told me fixed the ouch from the shot right away. The doctor said it had likely been a spider bite which got infected because "spiders are dirty and feet are dirty". Don't you love the medical lingo there? By the time they got home, the foot was cooling off. By the next morning, it was like 1000 times better and for days she would randomly yell "My bite is all better!" or "the shot made my bite go away!" Now she just likes to say "I got a shot in my butt the other day and it made my foot better." Nice.Other cool things this summer - Kinsey got a great haircut. It was getting a bit scraggly so I asked Melissa to help us out. Of course she came through with an awesome 'do. Here's the before:
She was a little unsure at first, but Melissa is awesome and pretty soon she was loving it. 
During the haircut, Tag chilled in a chair with some goldfish. 
The latest fun fad in our circle of girls here (thanks to Melissa and Tiffany) is to add these colorful, temporary, hair extensions. Kinsey got to have some purple in her hair, which she thought was really really cool. 
Everyone has agreed that the haircut is a big hit. She still loves it and loves to check it out in the mirror. 
I don't know if you're familiar with "The Jump-A-Rounds", but they are a singing/dancing group that does short songs on Nick and Noggin during commercials for Diego and Dora and such. These are those upbeat pop songs that get stuck in your head FOREVER! There's one called "Loco Legs" and Kinsey loves to dance to it. Her version of dancing is mostly walk/running around in circles with occasional kicks and bounces. 
My awesome super-Mom friend Dionne has organized a calendar of events for us and our kids this summer. She plans a couple of outings a month and it's been so fun! We took a big group to the Austin Nature & Science Center before it got oppressively hot. There's an indoor section where the kids played on rocks and got to walk through a little cave and then went to a room to touch fossils and artifacts. 
Jacob McBride is such a great friend to my kids - he's sort of the resident big "cool" kid that hangs out on our outings and I really appreciate how he looks out for Tag.
Here she is coming out of the cave with her buddy Owen (in the orange shirt)...
And here are Owen and Kinsey in the outdoor Dino Dig - very cool with lots of sand and "bones" for the kids to get filthy. I'm noticing that Owen and Kinsey are together quite a bit in this blog. Hmmmm.
And then we headed over to a little creekbed and the kids got to cool off and wade in the water.
Tag was crazy hot - I had put him in jean overalls so he wouldn't tear up his knees crawling around but those were serious sweat generators. He was filthy from the dino dig and so very sleepy. And just like his mommy, he gets crazy red-faced when he's hot. That was a great nap day for the kids :)
Our next group outing was a tour of the HEB Plus store near us. For those of you non-Central Texan's, HEB is our grocery store here and it pretty much rocks. The HEB Plus has all kinds of great things (and usually a billion people there to enjoy them so we don't go often) and so Dionne got us a tour for the kiddos. Peg was our tour guide and she immediately had the kids buddy-up. Kinsey's first preference was her hero Emma but Emma was already paired with her neighbor Emily, so Kinsey and Owen Kedroski became buddies. Owen is Kinsey's friend who is 5. He is a total sweetheart, son of our newly acquired buds Chris and Susan Kedroski. They also have a little boy Ryan who I think is just over 2 and Lucy, who is around 1/2 a year at this point. Anyhow, apparently Kinsey was ok with this pairing because very soon she was snuggling with Owen in a way that I can't wait to embarrass them with when they are teenagers!!!
p.s. I verifed with her - yes, she was trying to kiss him in that picture.
Here is Peg showing the kids what a serving size of fruit and veggies looks like
and here they are lined up at the magic hot-tortilla-making-machine...
Tag enjoyed the tortillas as well...
Ugh - and that tortilla was a gummy bunch of nastiness about 2 minutes after this pic was taken. Note Darin with the pink hair - more about that later :). Here are me and Susan with our littles. Yes, we are both sporting the Round Rock slings as all the cool Moms here do :)
The kids got to meet a lobster...
...and then tour around the rest of the store learning about protein and dairy and all the cool food groups. It was really cool, and Owen was a great buddy, but by the end, Kinsey was ready for some Emma-love. Here is the set-up for the group picture. 
And here's the group after I got Kinsey unwound :)
It was a great idea - if any of you are in the Central Texas area and haven't done it, I highly recommend the tour. Afterwards, we went to McDonald's. Kinsey was ready to get on the playscape with Emma pretty quickly. Now listen, I adore my kid and I know that God has given her abilities and talents for the ways in which He wants her to fulfill His purpose for her life. But let me be real here and say that fearlessness, calmness in freaky situations, and getting herself out of said freaky situations are not currently included in those gifts. She actually gets 3 out of 3 of those non-gifts from me so I am not judging her at all, just being honest :-). Anyhow, she is much braver at climbing and doing these things than she was even 6 months ago. I am so proud of her for that! But let's get back to the day in question. She heaves her way up the vertical obstacle course to the top of this playscape, maybe 15 feet in the air (Dionne, check my measurements here), and has an absolute meltdown freakout of epic toddler proportions. She is like paralyzed at the screen, screaming at me, not listening to how to get down. Tag is beyond exhausted and everytime I step away from the table, he has a 1 year old meltdown, which is just this side of shriekier and more irritating than the panicky meltdown of a toddler. This is when the power of true friendship kicked in and Kinsey's 2nd Mom Dionne raced to her rescue. With her spidey senses in full-throttle, she scaled the playscape in record time and saved the day! Nothing says love like a friend saving your kid from a freak-out! 
and here they are at the bottom of the slide...
after which Kinsey came over giggling saying "I want to do it again Mommy!" I said, "with Emma this time?" and she said "No Mommy, Mrs. Dionne is much better at it with me!" Ah kids! For Father's Day I wanted to take some cute pics to send to the great men in our life and of course for the best Dad in the world. As always, it was an interesting photo shoot. I finally had to hand Douglas' iphone to Tag to keep him on the couch. He's ALWAYS trying to get the iphone so this was a really big deal for him. Here are the best shots:
Other Tag stuff:-He really likes Tuna - I mean like really likes it. He eats it straight from the can.
-He also really loves pancakes. Daddy makes the best pancakes (according to Kinsey) and apparently Tag agrees. I love the sweetness of this picture.
-He still isn't walking but he is standing nearly constantly, always leaning on something. He loves the fridge and the magnets and musical magnets. And yes, he still loves his fingers! 
-Though his hair has been cut, it still leans toward the crazy. And here are the fingers again. 
-He is climbing on everything now, figuring out how to pull himself up onto the couch using a pillow or toy for a boost. He thinks it's really funny when he gets up there and often cracks himself up.-Have I mentioned previously that he's into everything???? Seriously he is fast. I thought he was in the living room - I saw him in the living room - I heard him speaking German in the living room. So I opened the dishwasher and loaded it. I pushed in the bottom tray and turned back to the sink to turn off the water. I turned back around and the little bugger was...
-He loves his big sister and he wants to do just about anything she does. I've been trying to get him to sign "please" for a few weeks now and he shows no interest whatsoever. But last week I was trying to get him to do it and Kinsey just goes "Tag, say please" and rubbed her chest, doing the sign, and he immediately did it!!! Wow! We had a babysitter last week and she went on and on to me about how great they get along - of course we still have moments of brother/sister antagonizing, but the vast majority of the time, they are great together, which is such a blessing. Our car dvd players broke and so Kinsey has turned into a stand-up comic in the backseat. He loves when she pretends to sneeze and he laughs so hard I can't help but join in. Here they are a few weeks ago on the horse outside of Babies 'R Us. 
-We watch him on the video monitor all the time. He is so cute in his sleep. By the time he's a parent, there will probably be one-way see-through walls or something, but right now this video monitor technology is really impressive. 
-He is absolutely IN LOVE with Daddy these days. He hears him come in and starts yelling at the top of his lungs "Da-da Da-da!!" It's so cute - I've got to get a video. He never gets that excited except when Daddy comes home! Here they are reading, another thing he's really starting to enjoy. He likes to turn the pages and point to the characters and talk. This is an Elmo book - I don't know how those Sesame Street people do it, but the kid is obsessed with Elmo and he's seen him on TV a grand total of 2 times. He can spot a tiny picture of Elmo from across the room and shouts "Muh-Mo!!!" 
And here they are showing off their beautiful blue eyes...
-He's just so stinking cute sometimes I can't stand it! 
Darin Random stuff:-I have crazy hair!! If you had asked me a year ago if I'd ever think my hair would have 3 colors of highlights AND some other bizarre colored extensions, I would've said you were nuts. But Melissa (previously seen cutting Kinsey's and Tag's hair on this blog) seems to be on a one-woman mission to make me cool so I can fit in here in Austin. Last time I had pink, for about 7 weeks, and it was really fun. This time, in honor of a Children's Ministry campaign we're working on, I went with orange. I'm loving it. It's totally not the "me" I'm used to seeing in the mirror, but I'm starting to dig this new edgy girl :-)
-I've taken to making as much homemade stuff as I can lately. Our latest find is an awesome recipe for pizza dough that's made with 1/2 whole wheat and 1/2 all purpose flour. If you'd like the recipe, email me - it's easy, it freezes really well, and it tastes awesome! Am also using a new recipe for homemade spaghetti sauce that's great with meatballs and pasta but also very good on the pizza. Here's a look at our first homemade pizza - mmmm good. My side is the right side with tomatoes, mushrooms, bell peppers, red onions, and basil. Douglas' side had artichoke hearts, bell pepper, red onions, and basil. So good! 
-It's hot. Last week we got some rain - it was beautiful and it cooled us off significantly for about 48 hours. But now it's back in the 100's. At any rate, this much heat can make a person crazy. My husband has already shared this with the Facebook world, so I'll share it here as well. Last week while sweating like crazy from the short walk from the air-conditioned greatness that is WalMart to my car and loading both sweaty kids into hot carseats, cranking the car to start the lukewarm air flowing from the vents and feeling the resultant heat of the running car burning onto my croc sandaled feet while I loaded melting ice cream into the back of the van, I actually thought to myself "When is someone going to DO something about this insane heat???" Yes, clearly I'm losing it. But despite all of the mocking from my husband, it was only like a day later that the sky opened up and sweet cool water fell down so there!- My husband is the greatest date ever - he was craving Pappasito's fajitas a couple of Wednesdays ago so we headed down I35 and saw a beautiful sign out front...
advertising 1/2 price fajitas for two on Wednesdays!!! Their fajitas are awfully pricey but soooo good. So with the money we saved, we decided to get tableside guacamole made 
...I highly recommend both!-I am really valuing deep, honest, real, messy Mom relationships these days. I think for a long time I had a vision of myself as a stay-at-home Mom with a neat house, dinner ready when hubby gets home, kids clean and playing quietly with one toy since we just cleaned up the rest, all of my scrapbooks up-to-date, time to read some good books, and of course, myself looking fresh and inviting to greet my husband when he came home. Ok maybe not all of that, but I certainly had a vision in my mind that is quite far from the reality that is my day-to-day life. I am beyond grateful for a husband who fully supports me as a SAHM, and I wouldn't trade my job for anything. But some days when I eat lunch at 3pm (naptime), haven't had a shower, can't start dinner until he gets home because the kids have gone insane, and am on my 3rd day of laundry without getting any of it put away, it's easy to feel like a failure. There's a book that Susan is reading called "I Was A Great Mom Until I Had Kids" - I'm next in line to read it when she finishes. She and I have been talking a lot lately about the unrealistic expecations we set up for ourselves and how we need to change that perspective and be real about the challenges we face. My parents gave me Dr. Laura's book "In Praise of Stay At Home Moms" for Mother's Day and I'm in the middle of that one right now. It has GREAT encouragement for exactly how I'm feeling right now. I love opening up this dialogue with other SAHM friends and I hope to keep doing it and find ways to support and encourage each other.
-We had a really fun series at church in June called "Retro" where we went back and studied the original church in Acts. To make it fun we dressed in retro clothes, sang some great old songs, and for Father's Day, had a contest for best dressed Retro Dad. Check out these great outfits!!!
Keith decided to go with a "Retro Pastor" style...
And we found this awesome shirt for Douglas at Goodwill...
Our buddy Kurt came as a guy you might recognize from sporting events in the 80s...
Ok, this puts a big dent in the blogging. Still more to come, hopefully soon!
