esch+erin+2: July 2013

I don't want to completely flood people's Facebook feeds with pictures of my kids (well, ok, I already do, but I'm trying to cut back a bit), but I figure if you are here looking at our little family blog that the reason is TO see pictures of the kids. You know I'm happy to oblige! I have been in family photo overdrive lately - it's so nice that it's finally officially summer. So many fun activities.

We have a few days a week that Daddy has after-work commitments (Summer internship with a firm in Harrisburg) and that can make for long afternoons and evenings. Last week, for example, he was only able to come home for dinner with us one night between volleyball league, happy hours, dinners, etc.

We are pretty spoiled during the school year when he can come home for lunch with us and is always home by 5:30. Dinner time is kind of a challenge lately with William, who is actually a very good eater, but a S-L-O-W one. Oh my goodness. He loves to talk (and talk and talk and talk) which means that the amount of toddler questions asked probably outnumbers the amount of bites of toddler food consumed by 20x. Gwennie is exhausted by this point in the day, and keeping them both happy during solo-parenting marathon of the night time routine is a little crazy. William's hour+ long dinners do not go over well with a restless baby sister.

One thing that they both love, and that immediately cures even the saddest little teething lady, or tired-because-he-didn't-nap grump, is bath time. So often, whether they've already had a bath that day or not, I'll plop them both in there with some bubbles and voila! Happy splashing and squealing.

Now that it's so nice out, we also sometimes break from our routine and make an after-dinner trek to the park. There are usually some little friends for William to run wild with, and Gwen watches, fascinated. On our most recent excursion, she was loving the baby swing.

Last weekend Esch & I were feeling brave and we all headed to a drive-in movie. It was a smashing success; we couldn't believe how good both of them were! They both usually go to bed at 7 p.m. and on the longest day of the year (Summer Solstice!) the sun didn't fully set until almost 9:00. The show began and both little ones were still wide awake.

Somehow William stayed awake for the entire movie. Gwennie slept on me while we sat in a lawn chair, and Daddy and William "camped out" in the open trunk of the SUV with blankets, pillows, and snacks. WW saw the end of the show and then promptly fell asleep (it was 11 p.m.!) in his carseat before we were even out of the parking lot.

Another recent outing was strawberry picking. William did not have much of an attention span that morning, and probably only picked a handful berries. I was wearing Gwen in a baby carrier and it was a good workout! Felt like manual labor at the time, but was fun overall and we did come home with 4 quarts of delicious, sweet berries. William was very into the fact that we had picked them ourselves and loved eating them.