They love the water. (I'm not sure I can understate that, particularly in Max' case.) And, with high temperatures in Pasadena, California, typically well over 90 degrees Fahrenheit in the summertime, it made sense to get Charlotte and Max a kiddie pool, of which they made frequent use to keep cool ...
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| 4 July 2012 |
... and look cool.
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| 4 July 2012 |
Speaking of looking cool ...
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| 4 August 2012 |
I know I'm a bit biased, but I firmly believe that my daughter has the coolest bedhead ever!
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| 2 August 2012 |
We spent a couple of days at the beach at our friends' house up in Oxnard, California. Livi is showing Max and Charlotte that the ocean is pretty cool and not to be feared. Though the surf was pretty rough that day, and Charlotte was justifiably nervous about the ocean, they enjoyed it more than they did on their last visit to the ocean. (On their next visit to the ocean (early August), we would actually have a hard time getting them out of the water!)
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| 8 July 2012 |
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| 8 July 2012 |
Before heading back to Pasadena we went back up to the Santa Barbara Zoo, where we got to feed the giraffes!
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| 9 July 2012 |
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| 9 July 2012 |
Check out the long, black tongue on that giraffe!!!
We had a visit from Grandma Cheryl who came from northern Virginia to see us. And Aunt Lauren traveled down from northern California (mid-California for some of our esteemed readers with an Australian perspective on American geography)! That was a lot of fun for all of us.
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| 19 August 2012 |
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| 19 August 2012 |
In late August Max and Charlotte got some new tricycles and tried them out on the lane. I patterned my teaching style after that of Gordon in the Sesame Street skit "Abby Learns to Ride a Trike". (They've become quite the Elmo fans!)
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| 25 August 2012 |
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| 25 August 2012 |
But they didn't quite get the gist of it. Still, we're excited to teach them and time is on our side.
They're doing a lot now that they weren't doing at the beginning of the summer. When I returned from a ten-day trip to Europe in late June, I immediately noticed that their capacity to repeat sounds they'd heard had increased dramatically! Now they can string together multiple words to form two- or three-word sentences. Recently Max was coming dangerously close to climbing out of his crib! So, to avert a broken neck, we installed toddler rails on their cribs. As a result, Max and Charlotte can get in and out of their beds at will. This has several consequences, not all of which are favorable to Jenn and me; it's a game changer. However, they have learned how to sleep in a bed despite their new freedom and now get a full night's sleep with a minimum of coercion from Mommy and Daddy. They've been watching Sesame Street, too. Their new favorite episode is "Elmo's Potty Time"! And, perhaps not coincidentally, Max has even started using the potty!
So, yeah, we've been pretty busy ...
--- Shawn (for Jenn and Charlotte and Max and Lucy and Rufus)
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