Joel is 8 months!

Time is flying, and Joel is most definitely a character! He has the funniest laugh - see video below. The good thing about it is that when I hear it, I know it's my baby!

He's pulling himself up onto anything and everything, and he's just starting to cruise around. Joel LOVES to eat puffs, and attacks them as soon as they hit the table. And, he'll eat anything as long as there's a puff sitting on top of it. We always say he just wants to be a big boy - drink out of a regular cup, eat food with texture, do anything that Nicole is doing. He adores her, and she can always get him to laugh. He's also pretty good at picking on her, taking her things, climbing on her, pulling her hair, waking her up too early in the morning, etc!

Drive just to enjoy the drive

Another one of my 30 before 30's was to take a drive just to enjoy the drive. I never do that. It seems like I only go somewhere because I have to. Having a baby will do that to me. But one day we just hopped in the car and drove. We didn't go far, but we drove farther on a road than we've ever gone on it before. And we found a really nice park to play and have a picnic. All in all, a success.

Gymnastics Class

We signed Nicole up for a gymnastics class at the YMCA. It's a pretty neat facility, with all of the competitive equipment and gymnastics teams practicing while she's there. She gets a bit distracted by it all, but I'm glad that she gets to see it all. She loves to swing up on the bars, and giggles in delight every time she does.

Mommy School

To keep things lively this summer, Nicole and I have been doing "Mommy school" during Joel's morning nap. She'll be starting preschool in the fall, but I wanted to have something fun for us to do together. We've been learning the ABC's, and I got all of my curriculum from Confessions of a Homeschooler. She has done some awesome things!

I snapped a few pictures when we were doing the letter M. Nicole loved this theme!

Summer visit from Nana & Grandpa

My parents came to town for a few days after a conference in DC. It happened to be the 3 days that were the hottest of the summer - 110 degree heat index. It was hot. But, we just kept going and did some fun things. We went into the city and visited the Philadelphia Library. My mom, dad, and Nicole got to go on a rare books tour that sounded really cool. We went over to the Museum of Art, and rode the trolley around town.

We also went out to the John Audubon House. It was pretty small but there was a ton of art packed in that little house. Nicole got to draw some birds with Grandpa, while Joel hung out with Nana.




To be crazy, we went out to Cape May, NJ on a Saturday. Most of our day was spent in the car in a traffic jam, but once we got to Cape May we ate at the Mad Batter for lunch, and Nicole and Alex played on the beach while the rest of us shopped. We had lots of fun in this crazy hot weather!

F U N

Mani-Pedi's

I started a 30 before 30 list at the beginning of July. Basically I had 30 days to do 30 things before I turned 30. Yeah, right.

Well, one of those things was to get a mani-pedi, and another was to do something special with Nicole. So we combined the two and had a blast!