The Rest of Summer (now with more Clara)

This year, winter simply did not want to give way to spring and so spring did not want to give way to summer. And since I spent so much of the early summer indoors being hugely pregnant, once Clara arrived, it was like  we stepped right into the middle of summer without seeing it coming.

We only had one month left of summer, really, but I think we made it count. Thankfully, not only was Clara’s labor relatively easy, I’ve felt fantastic afterward and she’s a very healthy kid. She’s also a huge kid – she’s in the 99% for weight right about now, and currently wearing size 6-9 month clothes (at 7 weeks).

On the flip side, I’ve lost a bunch of the pregnancy weight and am working out with El again to loose the rest. The result is, the family all felt healthy, happy, and wanted to get out of the house. So here’s what we’ve been up to the rest of the summer. Incoming picture spam of very cute kids – you’ve been warned.

As soon as we could, we took a long overdue visit to see Elliott’s grandparents. Eleanor loved playing with her Great-grandma Betty and Great-grandpa John, but especially their two Chihuahuas. Clara napped and ate, mostly.

We spent many an afternoon or Saturday morning at a place Eleanor dubbed “Raspberry Beach.”

She and daddy would play in the water and sand while mom and Clara chilled out in the shade. Sometimes, we all rested together before playing some more.

Eleanor loves the water. So does Clara, for that matter, who enjoys baths a lot.

But it was Eleanor who got to play in the water several times – both going to the river with Grandpa Forrest when visiting him in town, and at Aunt Kerri and Uncle Tyler’s, where the cousins had an absolutely epic slip-n-slide set up on the hill next to the house.

Eleanor (and, to a lesser degree, Clara) also got to play with the cousins quite a bit.

Here, Eleanor is playing with her cousin, Adelyn, and below, Mya, Eleanor, and Adelyn (in training pants and tiara), play with plastic-bag kites that Mya made.

We hung out with all the Cousins for Great-Uncle Gary’s birthday.

At which time Aunt Mandee made sure Eleanor spent some time in Grandma Sue and Grandpa Kim’s garden eating strawberries and getting summertime-dirty. It’s an important part of being a toddler to get that dirty, I think.

We also got to visit with Patricia, our exchange-sister, who stayed with Kim and Sue a year ago as an exchange student from Germany.

With Clara here at last, we were no longer tied to Colville. Elliott resumed working in town every couple of weeks with the company he is currently consulting with. Clara, Eleanor and I came along as well.

We spent time hanging out with Grandma Joy and also Grandpa Forrest. Both Grandma and Grandpa tend to play with the girls so much it tires everyone out.

I also took the girls on a few excursions around town. The most recent involved taking the public bus downtown. It’s amazing how different my hometown can look from the point of view of the city busses. Eleanor adored it. Clara dozed in the front pack.

Now that school has started for many members of our extended family, we’re more back to a routine, barring the erratic sleep schedule. Eleanor is an early bird of the first order. While we can sometimes get her to sleep in past 6:30am, she’s wide awake first thing in the morning. Clara, by contrast, takes much persuasion to get her to sleep before 10pm and in the morning, she wakes to eat, then dozes off and on until nearly 8am. In between, mom and dad simply try to piece together something of a sleep schedule.

When she’s up, however, Clara is more active and alert every day. She’s quite the talker (what a surprise!), babbling and cooing to any face she sees. She is not happy when left alone, however, so unless she is fully sacked out, she wants to be held or spoken to. Basically, she wants in on the action, and will holler very loudly to let her preferences be known.

Eleanor constantly wants to hold, kiss, and talk to Clara, especially when Clara is sleeping or otherwise ignoring her. My hope is that as Clara gets older, she and Eleanor will be able to play and talk together. No doubt they will, but at present, they both want to play and talk to mom at the same time.

One of the biggest challenges at present, is that Clara is nursing and Eleanor is potty-training. Both breastfeeding and toilet training require sudden attention at unpredictable times and for an unpredictable duration. I often find myself setting Clara down on the floor to scream while I dash off to help Eleanor, only to find a mess waiting for me. I often wonder if Clara’s insistence on not being put down is due to this phenomenon. Sadly, Clara can always nurse a little later, while messes are made in a second.

However, I remind myself that this maniac pace is  life. This is what it’s all about: diapers and potty training and snuggling and trips to the beach and dirt under the fingernails from playing in grandma’s garden and naps taken after being tired out when playing with grandpa or the cousins and baking peach cobbler with mom. And tiring as it is, it’s wonderful.