Well, it’s been a pretty crazy month for us. We’ve been getting adjusted to our new family of five, plus dog. We have been blessed this month to have had Aunt Kelly and Grandparents helping us out with the kids and making the adjustment a bit smoother. We also took several trips to visit Grandpa and Grandma Powers in their new apartment and have enjoyed hanging out and spending time in their pool. We also celebrated Alicia’s 30th with lots of celebratory spirit. Unfortunately we all shared a round of pink eye and associated cold this month but we seem to be coming to the end of passing it around.
This month we’ve made some more connections, meeting more of our neighbors and church families. We’re hopeful and encouraged that we’re starting to make some connections that will hopefully develop into closer friendships. Unsurprisingly the connections were made through kid connections and we’re hoping the kids will be able to establish some new friends in our area.
Cordelia struggled adjusting to the new addition at the beginning of this month. With more focus and time going towards Lydia, we don’t have as much bandwidth to devote to her. Towards the end of the month she seems to have come through it and is being more helpful in her role as big sister. Corrie has really gotten into art this month. She’s doing lots of coloring and using her creativity to make things. This has been a nice activity since it requires little oversight and she can do it independently while the younger ones are napping or in the morning while Alicia is taking care of other things. We are happy that she’s in a good preschool program and has the opportunity to be artistic on a regular basis. In September Cordelia will be moving up to the next level at pre-school – officially in the pre-K class. While it is exciting that she’s doing so well to get quotpromotedquot it is also going to be a difficult transition since some of her friends will not be moving with her. We suspect that September will be a more challenging month for her at preschool as she transitions to her new class. Corrie also did a 4 week ice skating class this month. She had lots of fun and had a big smile almost the entire time. She enjoyed it so much we decided to sign her up for the next 4 week class that will be in Sept-Oct. Amazingly after just 4 lessons she passed the level 1 criteria and is now at level 2.
Anthony has been a good big brother and is gentle and attentive to Lydia. He mostly likes to play independently with his cars. He had a few days this month when Cordelia was out and he got to play by himself. It was fun watching him play and seeing his personality. Unfortunately towards the end of the month he’s been choosing to be more difficult and poorly behaved. We’ve been dealing with more rude behavior and negativity. He also has made very poor choices with his food and eating continues to be a big challenge. If he’s distracted he usually does a better job eating but it’s difficult to feel like meal time is quality family time. Tony is finally getting more teeth, second set of molars and his front side teeth on the bottom.
Lydia went from a mostly continuous sleeping newborn to a more alert infant this month. We spent the month trying to figure out her personality and what she likes when it comes to awake and sleep time. We’ve been following along with the baby book that we used for Corrie and Anthony, it seems to work for Lydia as well. She’s got a schedule that works pretty well for feedings and naps, and Lydia has been doing her part. Fortunately she has been eating really well, which has been very wonderful for Alicia. It also makes it easier for us to get out and Alicia frequently feeds Lydia while eating herself. Her night sleep has been good and on occasion has been sleeping from 9PM until around 3:30AM, and then from 4AM until her morning feed at 7AM. It’s not consistent and she’s had a couple periods where she goes back to waking up around 1AM and again at 4AM, adding another night feeding. Likely this is due to growth spurts seeing how she is now about 11 lb at the end of the month and super long looking. She’s already fitting comfortably into her 3 month old outfits. Lydia is a very snuggly baby and prefers to be held and cuddled. While she’s having alert awake time she does great on her playmate looking around and exploring. After struggling for about a week trying to get her to sleep in her crib for naps we discovered that she sleeps contently when being held. So Alicia has been doing a lot of baby wearing this month when the napping in the crib does not work out. At the end of the month she’s starting to do better about sleeping in her crib. We figured out she has a time when she gets drowsy during playtime and if we get her down in that window she naps well. If we miss the window and she goes into another awake cycle she will not nap well and ends up sleeping in the snugli. Overall she is a pretty easy and happy baby. We’ve even gotten some genuine smiles from her.
Alicia has been handling the challenges of a new baby pretty well. Alicia is handling being the stay at home mom with more self-confidence so far. Being the third time around, she has a bit more familiarity with what she’s doing. She found a good routine that allows her to take care of Lydia and still give attention to the dog on days when Cordelia and Anthony are in preschool. While Alicia has had lots of help from relatives this month, she has managed all three kids for several mornings and one full day alone with all three kids and the dog. While sleep deprivation is a given, Alicia has been doing pretty well getting things done during the day. Alicia enjoyed a great 30th birthday celebrating with our family on her birthday day and then a larger party with the Powers clan and our church’s music pastor and wife. In fact we were all having such a great time visiting together at the party we forgot to take pictures! Alicia continues to be a home for the whole month of September. She’s got several playdates planned with our new neighbor connections and a church mom. She’s making the most of her time at home before going back to work in October.
Tim is continuing to progress at work. This month has been fairly slow as his two programs are somewhat dormant for the summer — there has been a bit of a lull lately as funding gets shuffled internally at the company so he has been trying to keep busy. He was able to do some interesting simulation and data analysis for one of his projects, so there have been some interesting days. Tim has added walking Strider to his morning regiment before going to work. He takes Strider for about a 2 mi walk every morning and it has been beneficial for both of them and gives them a little quotbondingquot time. Additionally Tim has been doing some basic training with Strider in the evenings. On the home front Tim continued work in the backyard, making five raised beds on the side of the yard which will be used to grow fruits and vegetables. Right now only one bed is occupied with strawberries, the other beds still need some more soil fill before their complete. Tim also got back into the guitar rotation at church.
Overall it was a very active month and also very fruitful in progress on many fronts. We hope that going into September we will be able to establish friendships with the people we connected with. We also have plans to meet up with some of our old friends from our previous time in San Diego (before the move to San Jose). We also look forward to continuing to see Lydia grow and develop. We’re hoping to have a visit from Mimi and Papa too.
Thank you all for your prayers and support this month. It has been a blessing to be close to family and spend more time with them. We are also grateful that Lydia has been a pleasant addition to the family and that everyone has settled down and adjusted to her addition to the family.
