August Catch Up

August has been a busy month! We had a roommate for half the month, our bird turned 9 months old, we've been visiting with lots of friends, family, and neighbors. Everything is new with Bonnie and it is so much fun to watch her explore. She's crawling all over the place and practicing putting more weight on her legs.

She absolutely loves the dishwasher. If she sees it open, she drops everything and comes flying over to "help" me do the dishes.

We've taken lots of rides on the golf cart and spent lots of time outside taking advantage of everything our neighborhood has to offer.

We've spent plenty of time at the beach.

Bonnie and I always do a walk or run early in the morning before it gets hot, but have started taking a couple walks with friends to a park in the morning.

We got to celebrate with Eleanor for her 7th birthday - we are so thankful for her! She is such an amazing cousin to Bonnie, always looking out for her. It's been so fun to watch her grow. 

We've been continuing to enjoy the outdoor church services and all the cousin time.

And of course we've done lots of playing at home as usual.

 

There's never a dull moment with this sweet girl in our lives and we are loving every minute of it. Hope everyone is enjoying the rest of the summer!

Bonnie is 9 months old!

 

 

This month started out with a very exciting milestone - sleeping through the night! It has been wonderful. She still takes two naps a day. Bonnie is most comfortably in 9-12 month clothing and size 3 diapers now. She won't have her doctor's appointment for another month but she seems to be somewhere in the 16-17 pound range. She is eating 3 solid meals a day and has milk about 3 times a day. 

Bonnie has started crawling so fast I have a hard time keeping up with everything she is getting into these days. We've done a little baby-proofing but still need to keep a close eye on her. She has started pulling up on things, mostly onto her knees but every once and a while onto her feet. Some of her favorite things in the house are doorstops and air vents. 

She also apparently loves cats and dogs. I recently visited a friend with a cat and I could not keep Bonnie off of this cat. She kept trying to "pet" her and grab her tail, and just chase her in general. And anytime we take walks in the morning and stop to talk to a neighbor with a dog, she gets a huge smile on her face and starts giggling. 

Bonnie loves to squeal and be vocal in our house, and we love talking to her. She isn't saying any actual words yet but sure likes to practice. She still has no teeth but we're thinking one of them will pop up soon. Within the last week she has started practicing waving, but at very random times. She doesn't actually wave when prompted. In general, she's just so much fun to be around. We are loving the stage she is in!

Roommate

Over the last two weeks we had a friend staying with us. Eric's buddy Caleb was in the middle of a big move and needed somewhere to land in between. This was the same roommate we had in San Diego so it was nice to be able to have him stay with us in Virginia too.

 

 He took to Bonnie very quickly. He loved trying to help teach her to walk.

 

It was nice for us to have an extra person to play games with.

Another friend they served with in Iraq was on his way down to North Carolina for another deployment and stopped by for a day.

These three hadn't all been together since our wedding, and before that not since Iraq so it's great to get them together when we can!

I think it was a little bit of a tougher goodbye when he took off last week. He is moving to Hawaii for a new job though so hopefully one day we can go crash his place!

New Door

Last week we had a lot of rain when tropical storm Isaisis blew through. Our back door already had some rotting wood on the threshold but with all the rain, even the bottom of the door started rusting out and falling apart.

We got a good recommendation for someone in our neighborhood that could help us install an new one. So we picked up a new door and on Monday, our neighbor came over to install it. He said these jobs can be anywhere from 1.5 to 8 hours - just depends.

 
Unfortunately, the more he started digging in, the more rot he found. He ended up having to tear out some of the flooring in the entryway to make sure he got all the rotting wood out.

 

Our poor neighbor, Gary, was slaving away in the 90 degree heat all day long. He worked from 9 am to 7:30 pm and still wasn't finished.

 

This morning he came over to finish getting the inside molding back on. All we have left is to pick some flooring for the entryway.

 

Sadly our current flooring isn't sold anymore and we aren't in a position to be re-flooring our entire kitchen so we are going to have an odd area of a third type of floor. We got a few samples shown in the picture above but we're having a hard time coming up with anything that will look decent. 

Aunt Janet and Grammy - I need you to weigh in! I already asked Mom and Katie for opinions too.