June 30 - Jillian is on the Move!

Happy Friday everyone-fantastic news, Jillian is crawling now! Two Saturday's ago, while I was packing up for the swim meet, she did a short little crawl and fell. It was so fast I thought I imagined in. Sunday, she did the same thing and then Monday...BOOM! She was definitely crawling! Go little Jillian, go!

Last weekend, the FM came in town. For those of you who don't remember, the FM is a family member who wants to remain anonymous on the blog. I'm not sure why since the FM doesn't read the blog and questioned why I even update it. Well, the FM may not read it, but I love chronicling the kids life (this blog is way better than a baby book) and they love looking back at pictures and reading posts about what they were doing at different stages in their life. So, for those of you out there reading, I hope you enjoy it too!!

Last week we went to lunch the Rainforest Cafe and then went on a jungle cruise there. It was super cute! Afterwards, we went to the Moody Gardens Aquarium and had fun looking at the sea animals. My favorite was the penguins and sea lions, while Julia and Luke loved touching the jellyfish (they had a tank of non-stinging fish). They also got to touch stingrays, super fun!

The next day, we went to a delicious lunch at Star Pizza (pizza buffet mmmm) and then went to the Children's Museum. It was very crowded but 90% of the exhibits were new from the last time we were there, so it was great!

Love these kiddos!

June 15 - Go Luke Go!

Incredible news everyone. At our swim meet this past weekend, Luke was on fire and qualified for the championship reserve meet in backstroke. He has dropped almost 20 secs since the practice meet. Go Luke Go!! We are so proud of him and his hard work. 

In other news, Jillian is 9 months old. She had her check up last week and she is a healthy 18lbs 3oz (back up to the 50%, the doctor was thrilled). She still has 2 teeth (appears to be cutting the top 2 front teeth), sits up by herself and is a rolling machine. She gets on all fours but does not crawl-she sees what she wants and rolls to it. She does scoot herself backwards sometimes though. She is still the best baby ever, super happy and go with the flow. 

Jericho managed to rip out his stitches for the third time (no joke, this guy is intense) so he now has a cone taped to his head. So far, the tape has held for almost a week. The wound appears to be healing properly so fingers crossed we have no more issues. He is officially available for adoption now on the Lucky Labs LLC website (and facebook page) so we'll see what happens. I spoke to someone from the Boston area who is interested last night, although he's worried Jericho might be too wild for them (they have a 10 year old bulldog, 5 year old pit bull and their 11 year old lab just passed away 2 weeks ago). Fingers crossed it works out, if not, I'm sure he will find the right home eventually. 

The diving girls all saw Superwoman together over the weekend. They loved it!

Coach Natasha (head coach for the Orcas) loves Jillian snuggles

June 9 - Really Jericho, AGAIN?

No. I'm not allowed on the couch.

Well, he made it 24 hours. I was very careful with Jericho yesterday. He was leashed every time he went outside and I made sure there was no more hydroplaning around the yard. He was completely wild inside the house but I kept checking his incision site and everything looked good. Around 7pm, I put him in his crate for 5min while I was getting dinner ready and Luke screamed "Mommy! The cone is off and he's licking!" We immediately got him out of the crate and he had already ripped out all of his stitches except for one. Lovely, just lovely. I took him to the vet this morning and the good news is that there were 4 sutures and he only ripped out 1. He did rip out all of the stitches except for 1 but the vet was able to glue him. They gave me a new cone and told me if that didn't work, I would need to duct tape a cone to his head and drug him with Benadryl. 

Well folks...it's been an hour and he's already figured out how to lick around the new cone. Looks like duct tape is the next step.

 so handsome...so devious

June 8 - The Cone of Shame

Jericho, Jericho, Jericho....what are we going to do with you?! As you guys know, Jericho is our first "real" foster experience (not including Breck, Guinness and Karma). I really thought we would keep him after I saw his sweet face. However, after fostering him for the last 2 months, we are not the best fit for him. I am walking Jericho 4x per day, 5 to 7 miles per day, and it's not enough. He goes to dog daycare once a week and does fantastic, but we can't afford for him to go daily or multiple times per week. He needs a family with older children (he's still mouthy) with a young dog he can play with. Amelia is rapidly and cannot tolerate his repeated attempts to play with her. He is the sweetest dog in the world at 11pm when he's finally calmed down, but I must shout "Jericho, NO!" over 100x per day when he's eating/stealing stuffed animals, toys, anything he can get his paws on (anything made out of wood..anything). He is an extremely smart dog-he knows how to open the garbage can, toilet lid, toy box lid and open the fridge in the play kitchen. He spent 30min trying to get the door to the garage open but even using both paws, couldn't turn the knob. He saw me flush the toilet the other day and immediately started to try to do it himself. He has so much potential and he listens very well to JD, but he completely ignores me. Arg! 

So, Jericho was finally neutered last Friday. He currently goes to the Banfield Pet Hospital at PetSmart and we decided to have the procedure done at the Humane Society (huge cost savings, $70 v. $350). The procedure went great and he had 2 weeks of limited activity with dissolving stitches. He did well over the weekend and earlier this week. JD and I have been checking the incision area and it was healing well. Then yesterday morning happened. He decided to sprint around the yard at full speed for approx. 30min and then hydroplane into puddles (we've had a lot of rain). And....all the stitches came out. $450 later, he is stitched up AGAIN, wearing the cone of shame, and not allowed to go outside unless he is leashed. For a solid 2 weeks, ugh! 

He's so handsome

June 6 - I am a Toothbrush

This past weekend was our first official swim meet and the kids did fantastic. Luke won both of his events and swam crazy fast (6 seconds faster in free and 8 seconds faster in backstroke). He was so proud of himself!! Julia rocked it as well. She won all her events and officially qualified (the times from the practice meet didn't count) for the championship meet. She is also less than a second off our teams girls 8 and under backstroke record. She really wants to beat it this season...we'll see if she can do it! 

It was a hot, extremely humid day at the meet but the kids and Jillian did fantastic. Julia and her friends had fun playing Headbands...and Jillian tried to join in the fun! It was so cute lol!

On Sunday, Jillian and I took our first ever solo trip to Barnes and Noble. She loves pulling books off the shelf and playing. It was a great weekend. 

Book store fun