Thankful Thursday

1. It was wonderful to have all five grandparents here on Sunday for Oliver's birthday party.

2. We had a great time at Knoebels on Monday, and it was wonderful to have my parents with us for two of the hours we were there.

3. Although the weather hasn't been ideal for swimming (I've changed the minimum air temperature to 75 or we wouldn't have been swimming at all over the past three weeks), it's been really perfect for walking to the playground and such. In addition to cooler temps, most days we have had almost no humidity.

4. Nadia really enjoyed Theatre Camp last week, and I am glad Paul's parents and Paul could come up and join us for her performance on Friday afternoon.

5. Paul's contract arrived in the mail today. It feels great to have it be official now!

 6. I love, love, love my new Kindle. I've been downloading free books for myself as well as books to read aloud to the kids, such as Dr. Doolittle that we were in the middle of reading before I got the Kindle. Now I feel silly that I waited so long to get one. Better late than never!

7. Over the past almost 6 weeks I lost 9 pounds! My goal was to lose 12 pounds before our photo shoot on the 10th, but I am happy that I achieved 75% of that goal. I am now one pound lighter than I was right before Oliver, but I need to lose 7 more pounds to get down to what I was before Nadia.

8. Oliver's morning wake up time has been shifting later. I have to say I much prefer getting up between 5:55-6:15 each morning rather than 5:25, especially as I've been staying up a little bit later at night lately. It used to be very rare for me to be up past 9:30, but I've stayed up as late as 10:30pm quite a few times reeently even though I definitely function better with 8-9 hours of sleep, and I've been averaging 7 hours of sleep a night this summer.

9. The kids had fun at the National Night Out event in Lewisburg on Tuesday night. I didn't think we'd be able to go because of t-ball, but the coach called on Monday to say class was cancelled for this week. There were many, many fun things to do. If I had more energy, we could have stayed for the 9pm fireworks, but I had a splitting headache when we left around 8pm. The highlight for Nadia was the zip line. I am glad she loved it because we waited in line for 90 minutes for that. Ian had a harness on, but half-way up the ladder he chickened out. She wanted to do it again right after she got off. She's a brave little girl!

10. Ian and Oliver had a lot of fun at the Treasure Castle Playland last Monday, Thursday, and Friday. I was thrilled with all the progress Ian made with climbing.

11. Cheri watched Nadia and Ian this morning while I took Oliver to his 12 month doctor appointment. I've come a long way over the past year in taking the three kids places by myself, including doctor's appointments, but it's still much easier to only take one child! I'm thankful that other than well baby visits we haven't had any doctor's appointments this year aside from Ian's trip to the ER for his chin. The doctor said he doesn't think Oliver's hernia is going to improve any more, and he suggested we ask the urologist if they could repair his hernia while he's under anesthesia for the hypospadias repair. That sounds like a great plan to me. I hope the urologist at CHOP agrees.

12. I had planned to take the kids to a special event at a Children's Museum yesterday morning, but it was raining (and was an outdoor event) so we went to our local library instead. The theme was pirates so I dressed the kids up in two of Ian's pirate costumes. The librarians loved it. The kids had fun listening to pirate stories and walking the plank both forward and backward.

13. The professor who is Paul's mentor seems to be really helpful. He's going to be teaching a 3 hour general chemistry lab on Tuesday evenings (until 8:20pm), a lab in the afternoon on Wednesdays followed by a 3 hour lecture with 130 students (EEK!) until 9:00pm, and a lab on Thursday afternoon. We might be able to have dinner together five days a week, breakfast together seven days a week, and lunch together, six days a week. WOW! He's working for his dad one more week (next week) and then will have one week to get ready for the fall semester as he'll start teaching on August 27th!

14. I've added a second school to the list of places to submit applications next month, and it's for a physical chemistry position at Albright College in Reading, PA, which is a very reasonable distance from Paul's family!

15. One of my lenses fell out of my camera bag at Knoebels on Monday. I was devastated because it was my favorite lens (50mm prime lens that I use the most). I was elated to find it in the Lost and Found a few hours later!

16. Yesterday all three kids took a nice long afternoon nap. Oliver only slept for 20 minutes in his crib (the norm), but then after that he slept 2 1/2 hours in my arms. Ian slept about 40 minutes in his bed, and then came down and fell back asleep on the couch beside me for 2 more hours. I'd prefer it if they took their entire nap in their beds, but it was still REALLY nice to get that long of a break especially since I had my laptop and Kindle on the couch. Nadia stayed in her room the whole time. She's definitely my best sleeper! I used to think Oliver was going to win that award, but the trip to Florida changed him from my best to my worst sleeper. This evening we put up the room darkening shades that we used to use in Ian's room on Oliver's window to see if that might possibly help him take longer naps, and I put him down to bed awake to help him work on his self-soothing skills. I can't recall the last time he took a nap longer than 30 minutes in his crib. Hopefully one or both of these things will help him out!

17. I bought three custom wood frames for the kids, which I love. Each one has an engraving under one of the 19 openings for a photo. Two of the openings are for a 5x7 photo. Under the first 5x7 it has their birth date, and under the second one it has their first and middle name. In between there are 17 openings for wallet size photos and it says a year under each (one, two, three, etc.). I could have gotten one that had the grade levels instead, but I opted to get the one with ages. I LOVE them and plan on having them on display until I pass away, which is a good thing because they weren't cheap! Six of the nineteen spots are already filled on Nadia's frame. Sob. Speaking of photos, I am SOO excited about our professional outdoor photo shoot on Saturday morning!!!

18. Of all the foods I fed Oliver yesterday, you'll never guess which was his favorite. The answer is (drum roll, please) green beans! At dinner I put small pieces of a beef noodle casserole, garlic bread, and green beans. He gobbled up those green beans. I had to keep putting more and more and more on his tray. Be still my soul. Hopefully this will continue to be true in the future (unlike Nadia). He also had cream of wheat, yogurt, a butterscotch cookie (after dinner), a made from scratch brownie (after lunch), and some dried cereal over the course of the day. He had a peanut and butter jelly sandwich for lunch today and some cottage cheese at dinner.

19. I took the kids to the library in Lewisburg today because the Hampstead Stage Company from NH was doing a performance of the Secret Garden. Before that they had several activities for the kids including worm races (with real worms), eating dirt pudding, and making mud monsters. The play was excellent even though there was only one actor and one actress. The man played six different roles, while the woman just played one (the lead role). At one point they did pick three volunteers from the audience to have a small part as either a rabbit, crow, or fox. There were about 80 people in attendance, and Nadia was picked to be the rabbit! She did a great job and loved ever second that she was hopping around the stage wearing bunny ears. I wished I had my camera with me! It was a bit challenging to keep Ian and Oliver quiet for about one hour, but we made it. The Secret Garden was one of my favorite books when I was a child. I plan to read it to Nadia some day! Today we finished the first Dr. Dolittle book.