The Nation Family: August 2012

Thursday, August 30, 2012

Gymnastics!

When we started getting serious about potty training I knew we needed a big reward to work towards and what is a better reward for a little girl than gymnastics? Ok, so said little girl may not have even known what gymnastics was and it may have been more about her mommy but once it was mentioned she was excited.

I wasted no time in getting her signed up when the potty training finally clicked and it seriously just clicked. Sure we had the potty seat for a while and she sat on it occasionally, but we were never really serious potty trainers, I had heard from every mommy friend that I shouldn't push it and she'd do it when she was ready and I didn't want to risk regressing if we did it too early. We went from diapers and pull-ups full time one day to the next day just trying out panties and we never went back. We did still wear diapers at night for a few weeks but she was waking up dry every morning so we threw caution to the wind and ditched them at night too. I am happy to report that she's only had one night time accident in almost 8 weeks, she has woken up a couple times crying telling us that she needed to go potty. For some reason she thinks she can't get out of her bed until morning, I would much rather one of us go in to take her to the potty than have her climbing in our bed at night so we'll just let her continue with her thinking.

Anyway. She absolutely loves gymnastics, the first week she was the only student in the class because it was a brand new class but now she's got 'friends' and it's so adorable to watch.

The pictures aren't great becuase parents aren't allowed in the gym so we have to take our pictures through the wall of windows.

From August 24, 2012

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Family Pictures

We finally got around to actually paying someone to take family pictures. In the past we've always had to coerce a family member or two to take them for us and they always turned out fantastic but we figured it was time to give them a break.

Below are just a few, ok, ok - way more than a few of our favorites.

From Family Photos

Friday, August 24, 2012

Fourth of July

I am determined to catch up, so yes, I am posting about the Fourth of July nearly 2 months later.

We started out the day with the neighborhood bike parade, everyone who participated decorated their bicycles with red, white and blue streamers, garland, etc. and American flags and then 4 or 5 fire trucks came in to lead us in a big loop around the neighborhood. Even though it started at 9 a.m. it was still ridiculously hot, even too hot for Savannah and she was just riding in the covered bicycle trailer. Needless to say we didn't make it the entire loop, despite the heat it was still fun.

From 4th of July

Checking out the fire trucks, for some reason James was quite tickled by my patriotic attire.

From 4th of July

Right after we took this picture we figured out, with a little help from a fire fighter, how to turn on the siren. The fire chief was about 10 yards in front of the truck, he got quite the scare.

From 4th of July

From August 24, 2012

Later that morning we went over to ZZ's to swim, this series of photos shows why James is now Savannah's favored pool parent. I'm all about teaching her how to swim and he's all about having fun, fun always wins.

From August 24, 2012

We capped off our evening with Savannah's first live fireworks show, she was very thoroughly impressed!

From August 24, 2012

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Savannah's actual birthday fell on a Wednesday so I took the day off of work to hang out with her, James wanted to take the day off as well but unfortunately had some training at work so he couldn't.

I had planned to take Savannah to the beach but Mother Nature had different plans that went by the name Tropical Storm Debby. Fortunately we were lucky and just had a lot of rain for days, no power outages, damage or anything of that sort. Short on options for affordable, inside, age appropriate activities I decided we'd try story time at the main branch of the public library. Savannah likes for us to read to her but usually by the fourth page of a book she's more interested in turning the pages and getting to the end. I said all that to say, I wasn't sure if she'd like it but I figured we had nothing to lose except maybe my pride at having the only child to not like story time. Thankfully, she absolutely loved it. Major props to the staff at the library for putting together such a wonderful program. There were so many children there and I was afraid she was going to be shy, and she was at first, but she warmed up and even told the story time leader her name during the introduction.

The children sat in the middle of the floor and all the parents sat on benches around the perimter of the room, they sang songs and read 4 or 5 books and then they had some play time, we then moved to a different room for the craft portion which she loved equally as much. It's been about 6 weeks since we've been and she still brings it up at least once a week, needless to say we will be going back again soon!

After story time we went to Chick-Fil-A for some lunch and then to pick up a birthday cupcake for dessert that evening because you have to blow out candles on your birthday even if you've already had your party.

Listening to the story.