Lux and Nick's Online Journal

Summertime and the Living is Easy

The blog has really been falling by the wayside lately as life gets more and more hectic for us.

Bringing things up to speed, our schedules have changed for the summer. We have stopped music class and Parenting Playgroup to accomodate travel, but now spend Tuesday mornings playing on the playground of Lux’s new preschool so that she grows accustomed to it before school begins in September. Lux loves it there and is making friends and playing better with other children. We think she will really be ready for school in the fall. In fact, she has been disappointed that we don’t go into the school and only stay on the playground. Nick enjoys playing in the sandbox there and we suspect he will be a bit jealous that Lux gets to go to school and he doesn’t.

It was hard to stop music class and parenting playgroup, since the children were really enjoying them, but with summer travel it is hard to attend the classes regularly. Come fall we will start up both of them again with Nick alone, while Lux is at preschool. We are really looking forward to that and hope he still enjoys the classes as much as he had been. Music class in particular was his favorite and his singing and dancing along invariably made all the other parents laugh. Lux was outgrowing the music class somewhat - she preferred running in circles to more active involvement. Her preschool has a similar activity weekly, however, so we hope she won’t miss it too much.

We have also been spending lots of our summer days at our new pool club, which we all love. It has three pools, one just for the kids which is nicely shaded. There is also tennis, a large playground, bbq grills and a large pond stocked with fish for fishing. As the kids get older there will be lots of great activities for them, like swim team, camp outs and movie nights. Some days a firetruck comes to visit and on others they have free snow cones or bubbles or pony rides or a moonbounce.

We were able to take a nice trip to San Diego that felt like a real vacation. We stayed for a week and got to see Uncle Mike, Aunt Devi, Hera and baby Pia as well. And towards the end, AK came to town too. Lux, who had seen a Sea World commercial, was excited to see Shamu and we were excited to take her until we saw how high the admission price was. Then we realized that children 3 and under were free and we were thrilled to be able to take her there a couple weeks before her birthday. Admission for kids over 3 was $44!

We weren’t sure how the kids would manage at the theme park, but they LOVED it. Nick was brave and touched starfish and rays and would have loved to jump into the shark tank. Lux loved watching us feed the rays and dolphins. They were tireless in looking at the different fish and even sat patiently for a long while in the heat while waiting for the Shamu show, which was enjoyed by all.

I think the kids favorite part, however, was waiting with Nana Jane to watch Mom and Dad rode a Wild Rapids ride and got soaked to the bone. They also really enjoyed playing in the kids play area that Susan remembered from her own childhood. We spent the whole day there and both kids fell deeply asleep almost the moment their car seats were buckled.

We also enjoyed going to the beach and just plain visiting with family, including Grandpa George and Norma.

The trip was really wonderful and Nick and Lux were really excellent travelers. They behaved themselves very well on the plane and both slept well at Nana’s house, Nick in a crib and Lux in a little bed by herself. Lux even had a little slumber party with Hera one night in the living room. Lux and Hera really played nicely together and it was nice to see the cousins getting along so well.

At the end of our stay, however, we could tell that both kids were looking forward to getting home. And in fact, Nick seemed to be catching a cold. By the time we were settled into First Class (thanks to Paul's frequent filer miles) we realized that both Lux and Nick were feverish and they slept almost the entire flight. Lux did wake up to enjoy her ice cream sundae, however.

The kids bounced back from their colds fairly quickly, and it was a good thing too, since Grandma Paula and Grandpa John came to visit a few days after we returned and we still had a whole birthday party to plan for Lux.

Lux wanted a mermaid party, so we made plans to turn the back yard into an under-the-sea fun zone and hoped for good weather. We had a treasure chest of necklaces, mermaid body glitter, fish and sea creature cut outs, netting and blue and green metallic wave streamers strung between the trees. The sand box was stocked with dolphin and whales and seashells and we borrowed an inflatable moon bounce from our friends which the kids loved. Nick was fearless in the moon bounce and didn’t mind getting knocked around by the older kids.

Lux had two cakes this year - a bundt cake in the shape of a sand castle thanks to an elaborate cake pan from Williams Sonoma and, because in her mind it isn’t really cake without icing, we made her a chocolate cake with blue icing and seashells to hold the candles. The kids ate goldfish crackers and blue jello and gummi fish served from a fishbowl and the adults had sushi and crabcakes.

The weather cooperated and the party was a great success. Lux really seemed to enjoy herself and is becoming a more confident little hostess, which pleases us. And Nick was so happy with the moon bounce and Grandma and Grandpa that we didn’t have to spend every moment carrying him around.

And he still needs carrying, because at 16 months he still hadn’t shown any real inclination to take a step or even stand without holding on the edge of some furniture. Since his language development has been skyrocketing and his motor skills seem excellent, we weren’t too worried, but carrying him around has been taking its toll on us and Susan now has tendonitis in her “Nick carrying” arm. We mentioned our concerns to his pediatrician, who agreed that Nick should be walking by now, and we began looking into a county program that provides occupational therapy. Other than the walking issue, however, he was given a clean bill of health. He is still tall, over 33 inches which puts him in the 95th percentile, but lean at 25 pounds (50th percentile).

Paul spent a week in New Mexico, which was his first long business trip in a while. We weren’t sure how the kids would handle his absence, but they did pretty well. Lux asked often about him, but didn’t really break down and she liked talking to him on the phone, and Nick liked to hear the sound of his voice.

While he was gone we started working on potty training in earnest, though Lux isn’t very interested. She will sit on the potty now, albeit briefly, which is something, we suppose. And a few times she let a few drops of pee go, but she is pretty determined not to do anything more than that. We are trying to not pressure her too much, but to simply continue having her sit on the potty. One of the hard things is that she is very adverse to praise in general so we have to be careful about how we react to her progress.

Susan also met with the social worker regarding Nick’s occupational therapist, and true to what the pediatrician had predicted, the very next day Nick took a few steps. We have been working with him and now he tolerates walking while holding on to someones hand and we have been trying to walk a lot more. It can be hard, since he is slow and Lux needs attention too, but he is improving every day. Today at the club he walked all the way from the entrance to the pool holding Susan’s hand then took perhaps 10 steps on his own once there. He also stood for several minutes while eating a snow cone. We still have our appointment with the occupational therapists coming up, but we now suspect his skills will have grown enough by then that he won’t qualify for the program.

Nick can say two word sentences now (Look Mama! and ‘Rella book!). He loves reading books and playing with trucks and cars. He climbs well and can open doors. He laughs a lot and is a bit of a ham. He and Lux play more frequently together, but often their play ends in screaming and tears. Lux gets frustrated with Nick and also very jealous of whatever toy he is playing with. She also want to manhandle him more than he likes. Nick has his own frustrations with his limitations and his bossy sister and has a tendency to scream and throw things when things aren’t going his way. We hope this is just a phase with both of them and they will be able to get along better once Nick has matured a bit more (and Lux learns better interpersonal skills).

posted by Susan @ 8:04 PM