So far, its been an unusually uneventful summer for us, I'm sure largely due to having an infant. We celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary with a much-needed night out, thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Shierman, kid-free dinner and drinks.
Jonathan's birthday weekend in late June was spent in Bend with my dear friend Tracy and her family, the 4th out at my parent's place watching 10-15 smaller displays from their valley-view windows since we knew Adaya would not tolerate a late night out.
We did take our annual trip to Salinas for the Rodeo, though, a couple weeks back...driving down in the middle of the night again. Both girls fared pretty well, but we found we do need to do something to help with Chloe's neck falling forward, as she kept waking up from the soreness. Thank God no one was injured in the annual calf-dressing event, but unfortunately our two teams did not get an award either.
The rest of July has been sort of mundane and I find myself (and Chloe) in desperation for some excuse to get out of the house, or town, for that matter. We did manage to get in the local fair last weekend, which Chloe enjoyed petting all the farm animals and eating lots of carni food!
Hopefully August will pick up a bit with the coming of the annual Tualatin Crawfish Festival and with it Jon's hopes of recapturing his 1st place title. Perhaps I will even feel brave enough to take Adaya camping so we can use our new 2-room tent and sleeping mats.
We also look forward to harvest season. With the crazy cool weather we've had most of the summer, it seemed like our garden was very stunted for awhile, but we still managed to get a great crop of sugar snap and snow peas, a few radishes, an over0abundance of greens and even some nice sized beets. We planted quite a bit of corn, so I'm watching the aphids on them like a hawk and excited to see all the cucumbers, tomatoes, green beans and squash that should be ready for full-fledged harvest soon! And even our new artichoke has 3 budding globes on them - mmmmm!
The girls are growing even faster than our produce. Adaya, at 8 months now, got her first tooth in California, is eating solids very well, sitting up and getting ready to crawl any day now. She has a temper that can be madder than a hornet and screams that will blow anyone's eardrums! Whether its because she's hungry, tired, irritated, bored or just plain mad, she lets us know in the most ear-piercing ways!
Big sister Chloe is go-go-go all the time and rarely sleeps during her afternoon "nap" now and almost never before 9pm each night. Her rapid vocabulary and creative imagination surprises me each day with something new. She is as smart as a whip and I think would be very ready for preschool this fall. She is also getting smart in other ways as well, if you know what I mean...how do little girls learn to be so bossy? And are all two and a half year olds always this argumentative and disobedient? She tries my patience so much each day, I'm sure I talk more to God now than ever and I honestly cannot see how the teen years could be any worse than the toddler ones!
Adjusting to life with two kids certainly has been interesting. Between all the extra laundry, dishes and cleaning to do plus having very little "me time" I find that my fuse is a lot shorter these days. Add an incessantly screaming baby and an over-worked husband to that and sometimes I wonder why I am doing this. As a SAHM it's easy to feel like you have no help, everything is wrong and that the to-do list will never end, but in the moments where I just need a good cry (or scream), I find that taking a 5 minute "time-out" can really help me get my sanity back. Those 5 minutes are spent in many different ways...enjoying a much-needed cup of coffee, sending up a tearful prayer, opening my Bible, catching up on email or facebook or sometimes just sitting and staring blankly into space. And usually once those 5 minutes are interrupted by an infant's scream or a preschooler's question, I am renewed just enough to remember that God will not give me more than what He knows I can handle!
