One

Poor Miss A had a fever at her birthday party, so she wasn't terribly interested in the cake. We didn't realize it til later, which is kind of weak, considering how feverish she looks in these photos. Oops.

Fortunately, she had several willing helpers when it came time to blow out the candle!

Happy (belated) first birthday, my little monkey!

My streak would have continued if today was September 25

I realized that if I'm going to use the blog to track the kids' milestones, I'd better get to it. I know that pretty much everyone who reads this thing already knows about most of these, but this is for posterity, kids.

Ava is officially pulling herself up on anything and everything. She's also cruising. I hear that early walkers start around 8 months old, so she clearly won't hit that. But I wouldn't be surprised if she's walking before Jonah turns 3. She is also finally cutting her first tooth.

Jonah is potty trained!

After our disastrous attempt at potty training back in July, Matt started telling Jonah that he could have five (!) M&Ms if he peed in the potty. (Matt didn't consult with me before determining the quantity of M&Ms that a peepee was worth.) Jonah was still not interested—until we gave him an M&M to try! Once he knew what he was missing, he was pretty much potty trained in two days. It's been over a month now, and he's not even wearing a diaper for naps. He's also often dry overnight. I was terrified of potty training; I'm shocked and amazed at how easy it was.

Jonah has also started preschool, and he loves it. He's going to Pine Village Preschool, which is a Spanish-immersion preschool that just opened up a site in the South End. How we got to this particular school is a whole other story, but we're happy with it so far. And Jonah can already count to at least 20 in Spanish!

Ava and I attended Katie and Blythe's non-bachelorette party/non-bridal shower last weekend. We spent two nights on Block Island with them, Mom, Aunt Sally, and Blythe's mom, Adrienne. Ava had been a little sick, but she was a real trooper, and she was great the whole weekend. The adults had a lot of fun playing games and drinking wine after she went to bed.

Labor Day weekend, I flew down to Memphis for Tiffany's bachelorette party (and I held my own, even though I haven't done much partying lately!), and Matt drove ALL BY HIMSELF with both kids down to New Jersey for the weekend. I'm truly impressed that he did that. Personally, I find the idea of driving alone with two kids to New Jersey on a holiday weekend way more terrifying than the idea of taking care of them by myself for a few days.

We had a busy summer, and it's carrying on into fall. Hopefully I'll be able to keep up!

Happy Second Birthday!

Work stresses, child care stresses, and a disfunctional internet connection at home have all contributed to making it harder and harder to keep up with all that Monkey has been up to. Fortunately, the child care stress is more or less solved (although we miss our 'Bine, and it's only been one day since her last day!), the internet connection should be fixed on Monday (fingers crossed), and work stress should dissipate once I leave for our conference in Florida in 12 short days.

Here are some photos from Monkey's two birthday parties. We had one on the 17th, for his daycare friends, at the Pru.



We also had another one, on the 19th, at home, for other friends and family. They were both lots of fun!