Sibling love

Impromptu hand-holding is always fun to witness!

Naomi's artwork

We haven't posted in awhile. What to tell you...how about Naomi's latest art projects?

Crayon on fabric (cleanup pictured)...and crayon on whatever material is used for oven doors (not pictured). As she would say, "Naughty naughty!".

Tact

Matt's view on men and tactfulness:

"Guys have tact. Girls just don't think that guys have tact."

Yummmmmmy BBQing

BBQ season is definitely here for us! Matt got a grill for Father's Day, and we've done some yummy stuff on it so far. We also have lots more plans for great food on the grill. This picture is from last week when we grilled:

steaks (thanks, parents!)
corn on the cob (very good on the grill)
pineapple (can't get enough of that!!)

Tucson Children's Museum

Tucson Children's Museum is expensive. Or I'm a cheapskate. But I'm not willing to pay $7.50 per adult so we can follow Naomi around and sit while she plays. Luckily, during the summer the museum puts on Monsoon Mondays and allows everyone in for the evening for the rock bottom price of $1.00 per person. Now THAT's worth it!

Here are some pictures from a couple weeks ago. Naomi likes to drive the fire truck, play on the crazy musical instruments, watch the huge dinosaurs as their heads move, play with trains, brush the gigantic set of teeth with an equally gigantic toothbrush, play in the farmer's market, stack blocks in the jungle room, and much more!

Swinging at the park

Here is little man Gabriel. He's swinging outside! I took Naomi to play in the water at the splash park, and Gabe watched us from the swing just a few feet away the entire time. BRILLIANT idea a friend passed along...in fact, I gave away our old swing and got this portable one just so I could do things like this!

Cow Appreciation Day

Cow Appreciation Day at Chik-Fil-A. Dress up like a cow and get free food! I always laugh when I see cows painting "Eat Mor Chikin" signs, so I am happy to support this franchise. And it was lots of fun to make our own cow shirts this morning and watch Naomi dance and jump with an oversized cow!

Outtakes from Sunday's picture session

To get a few decent pictures of kids, you have to take a LOT of pictures. Here are a few outtakes from our picture session.

Naomi smelling Gabe's armpit (really she's diving in for a kiss, but opted to kiss his arm)

Sunday dress clothes!

Here are the Merrell children, sporting their Sunday best!

4th of July

We only took one picture on the 4th of July this year. And here it is! In the evening we bbqed with some friends, played in the pool, and watched fireworks. Naomi and I played with some other friends for two hours in the pool in the morning, so we definitely logged a lot of water time on the 4th! Naomi is on my lap in the picture, and you can see Gabe lying on the blanket.

Gabe rolls over!

This video is from a couple weeks ago. Today he did a couple barrel rolls (from back to tummy, hang out a bit, then continued the roll over to his back again). Sorry to all the non-parents; you probably think we're crazy for getting so excited about a little roll. After looking at our sweet little slug for 2 1/2 months, though, it's exciting to see some action!

Tolkien fans

Our parental influence is already taking effect at Gabe's young age of three months. I caught him checking out our Tolkien books a couple weeks ago...

July is Ice Cream Month!

From the International Dairy Foods Association website:

In 1984, President Ronald Reagan designated July as National Ice Cream Month and the third Sunday of the month as National Ice Cream Day. He recognized ice cream as a fun and nutritious food that is enjoyed by a full 90% of the nation's population. In the proclamation, President Reagan called for all people of the United States to observe these events with "appropriate ceremonies and activities."

EXCELLENT! Root beer day was fun, but as ice cream is my one true love (besides Matthew and my little rugrats), this is DEFINITELY worth a celebration! In case you are also interested in celebrating, here are some specific options:

1 Creative Ice Cream Flavor Day
7 Strawberry Sundae Day
8 Ice Cream Sundae Day
17 Peach Ice Cream Day
20 Ice Cream Day
23 Ice Cream Cone Day
Vanilla Ice Cream Day
25 Hot Fudge Sundae Day
26 Coffee Milkshake Day
28 Milk Chocolate Shake Day

Spitting up

Naomi has seen Gabe spit up for the last couple months. For some reason, today she decided she should also "spit up". So she started taking drinks of milk from her cup and spitting them out on the kitchen floor. Luckily, she's still in the stage where she's completely honest about what's happening. She proudly announced to me exactly what she was doing, so it got cleaned up before the kitchen became a milk pond. We had a little chat about not doing that anymore.

Then she went in the bathroom and "spit up" some more.

Patience. Breathe in, breathe out...

Reading time at the Merrell's

Matt and I absolutely love to read, and I'm hoping to instill that in our kids. We read lots of books with Naomi and Gabriel. The stories hold Naomi's attention, and Gabe is riveted by the pictures. Occasionally I'll tell Naomi we are going to read a story with Gabe, and she says, "Gabe, sit by me!". So he sits by her (as pictured above) and we read a story! This picture specifically is from FHE...or from a day I was feeling remorseful about our lack of FHE's.


Here is a picture of Naomi looking rather like a duck. She's actually diving in to kiss Gabriel on the cheek.

SMILES, SMILES, SMILES!!!

Gabriel is one dang good-lookin' kid, especially when he smiles! I LOVE when he smiles. It's this big goofy expression on his face, and you can see the smile in his eyes, too. Unfortunately, he specializes in retracting his smile as soon as the camera appears, so this is the best we have done so far in capturing the smiles.

Root beer fun

Last Tuesday was National Root Beer. So we had a party! I took a picture of the preparation beforehand. We put out sample cups with different kinds of root beer to see how many people could differentiate between 6 brands. Schuyler and Ryan Whitaker blew everyone else away by both getting 3 correct. I, sadly, only got one.

We ended the night with root beer floats. Thanks for coming, everyone!

Dollhouse

Grandpa Jones made this dollhouse bookcase for Naomi, and she loves it! Thanks, Dad! It even has windows and doors on the sides.

AC went out...

1. Our AC was not working for a few days.
2. And yes, we live in Arizona.

The combination of those two facts made life quite uncomfortable for awhile! Luckily we were able to hang out at the houses of some friends so we didn't sweat into little puddles on the ground. While we were at home, we stayed directly in front of the fan. You can get pretty creative with a deck of cards and a bit of unused tubing from a portable AC unit when you're sitting in front of a fan...

Stomach gurgles

Naomi caught a case of the stomach gurgles. It's no fun being sick, but it's distressing to see your child sick and not being able to explain why it's happening or what's going on. Or that there's no medicine to help.

Naomi appeared in our bedroom Monday morning around 2:00 am and spent the majority of Monday throwing up and having other unpleasant symptoms. She threw up 10 times between 2 AM and 10 AM, so we were worried about her being dehydrated. She was able to start eating popsicles and Gatorade mid-day, and it was all uphill from there. We have our chipper little girl back this morning! Unfortunately, she was hopping around at 5 AM, and I wasn't ready for such exuberance at that hour...

Two items of note:

1. While in the waiting room at the doctor's office, in one shot Naomi threw up all over me, the check in counter, my wallet, cell phone, and straight into the opening of the diaper bag. Everything I pulled out of the bag afterwards was covered in goo.

2. I understood what my parents felt like being literally covered in my throw up. However, despite their knowledge of my extreme motion sickness issues, they continued to stick me in a car and drive to places like Iowa and California. So they at least knew to expect it.

(Picture above is a random one, not one while Naomi was sick. We were too busy wiping the vomit from everything to take pictures!)