My First Summer Off

I've been out on maternity leave for a little over 6 weeks now, which means I'm almost to my half way mark (I go back to work August 29). Since this is my first summer off since I was in high school (12 years ago), we're trying to spend as much time together as a family since I probably won't have the opportunity to do this again until I'm retired and by that time I could have grandchildren...So, what have we done so far? Mainly hang around the house and go for walks with the kids, but we've also gone to the beach a couple times too! We took them to Barnegat Lighthouse, Mike and Ella went paddlesurfing on the bay in Harvey Cedars, and we went to Island Beach State Park this past weekend! Ella really enjoys going to the beach which is a good thing since we'll be going down to Carolina Beach in a couple of weeks to spend time with the family! Then, as long as our trip to NC goes pretty well, we're going up to the area near Bar Harbor, Maine!

An update on Rhylan. He is getting bigger and bigger every day! He's 6 weeks old now and I had him at the doctor's last week where he weighed 12 pounds and was 23.5" (and the doctor was concerned about weight gain)! He's starting to stay awake a bit more during the day and he lets me get anywhere from 5-6 hours of sleep each night! Mike and I are very blessed to have had two wonderful children who let us get our sleep at night! He is more alert now to. He'll move his head to see where we go and smiles a lot too! Other than that, he doesn't do much else yet, but that will change in the months ahead! Oh - he does try to roll over too and tries crawling up my stomach!

An update on Ella. We moved her into her toddler bed on June 17! Her first night in the bed, she laid right down and fell fast asleep. Then about an hour and a half later, Mike and I were sitting in the living room and heard a thump. We turned on the video monitor and realized she fell out of bed. Mike went up to check on her and she was passed out on the floor. He picked her up, put her back to bed and she didn't even make a peep. She would sleep until she normally woke up (around 8) until this past weekend - she's been waking up around 6:30. Most of the time she runs to the door screaming, but the past couple of days, she's hung out in her bed and read some of her favorite books (Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See; The Very Hungry Caterpillar; Good Night New Jersey; and Good Night Beach). The only issue we've been running in to is with naptime. She is very tired, and once her head hits the bed, she's wide awake running to the door screaming. We tried the cry-it-out method the other day, which kind of worked. She cried for about 10 minutes, jumped in to bed, laid down and read her books for about 30 minutes, but never fell asleep. If anyone has any suggestions on how to get her down for her nap, please let me know!
Another first Ella had was her first haircut. We went to Snip-Its in Princeton on June 23rd. She really enjoyed the place, but when we put her in the chair, she didn't cry, but instead just kept saying "done"...I think we kept her happy with the animal crackers they gave her!

There's our update. I'll try to keep the blog updated - it's very difficult when you have a newborn and a toddler to take care of!