July iphone dump

Some of our silly, magical, mundane moments of the summer captured on my phone.

Dancing in the living room - 

One of my happy places, Amy's ice cream.  Though there's one in Houston, we consistently hit the shop when we're in Austin, this time in June for Leah's wedding.  It was Maya's first time with a shake, and she downed at least half of Cas' cookies and cream dessert!  Luckily, Cas is better at sharing ice cream than I am!

Collin had the step stool out in the kitchen to help me cook, and Maya started to climb on it over the tile.  So I moved it to the living room rug, surrounded her by couch cushions, and let her climb to her heart's content. 

If you look really closely, you can see Maya's first pedicure.  I was painting my toes and she was in the way.  When she didn't squirm as I applied clear polish on a toe, I sat her in my lap and painted her toes hot pink.  Then she immediately grabbed them (to get a delightful closer look, I'm sure) and smeared all the polish with her fingers.  So there's some room for improvement, but her little pink toes make me smile every time I see them!

Maya will walk to the high chair and say "up" the moment she feels hungry, so she often starts dinner before we get the rest of the meal and family to the table.  And she quickly shovels food in her mouth and wants down, then back up on my lap a few minutes later to try and play with the food on my plate.  It makes for the opposite of a relaxing dinner as we're trying to cajole Collin into eating, trying to eat ourselves, and trying to entertain Maya.   The other night we sat her back in the seat and handed her a bowl of yogurt and spoon.

Though it took a little extra scrubbing, this bought us a precious 10 minutes of calm at dinner time, and I felt it was well worth the yogurt facial she gave herself and her high chair tray -

Trying to keep her entertained, she'll play peek-a-boo for as long as someone has the energy to say, "Aaaaah, peek-a-boo!"

A favorite moment - Maya bringing me a book and plopping in my lap, with Collin curled up next to me -

Way back to the beginning of June, Collin completed his last gymnastics class.  He grew in confidence in the class, and picked up a few new skills as well.  Here's his Monday morning class - 

I hope to pick up one more season of gymnastics in the fall.  When Maya hits the 18-month mark, there's a parent child and 4-year-old class at the same time at a nearby gym.  Our proud boy with his medal -  

One video of his "skills" - very basic here, but he started gymnastics in January afraid to walk across the beam by himself, and 6 months later, he was hustling down the beam and doing huge jumps onto the mat.  He loved swinging on the bars and jumping on their inflatable air track.