Last weekend we took the girls camping. It is wise to do things for the first time (with Julia) with friends, so we went in a rather large group. Emily slept on the air mattress with us and Julia was in the travel bassinet next to us. I found out how small our air mattress and tent have gotten with the growth of our family. Despite how cozy we were, both girls slept well.

Julia and Emily played in the pool with Elena on Saturday afternoon. It was a great way to cool off. The pool had music playing and the girls enjoyed dancing to the music. There was a good amount of splashing and even a few moments of sticking faces in the water. This was Julia’s first trip to a pool and she loved it. She loved being held by Mommy, being able to kick her feet, and slap the water with her hands.

Julia is not very smiley. She is reserved with other people and away from the house. But when in the mood she sure can giggle, grin, and laugh if she wants to. Don’t take my word, we have proof!

Robby is spending quality time with the girls and a book.

Life changes so quickly! Julia is now mobile. One week she mastered rolling over twice in a row, the next she figures out that she can use that trick to get around the room. She isn’t efficient, but she has moved to a toy box and to the toy shelf on her own now by rolling over and over and over until she gets where she is going. You can spot some pretty big smiles while she is going too. Robby pointed out tonight that we need to get her used to playing in a pack-n-play before she knows better.

Julia has discovered the joy of tapping things. She will do it for quite a while. She just smiles and watches what she is doing. Emily announces that ‘Sister Tap’ and is doing a pretty good job of not taking away the toy from Julia. The best solution is to give Emily her own kitchen utensil and sing tapping songs with her.

Here’s another photo of Julia post-meal. Prior to this photo we scrubbed her face, hands, arms, legs, feet, seat, and table. It was on my way back to her that I decided we need another photo of her. Obviously, we had been eating peas. The bib is so applicable, ‘Let’s do lunch. Its on me”. I’m allowing Julia to get a lot more messy than I allowed Emily to get at this stage.

This was the first meal that we had a moment of recognition that ‘there is a spoon with food on it and I want it in my mouth’ occurred. It was brief and then she returned to the games of not opening her mouth, being distracted by everything in the room, and where’s sister.

Every morning Julia and I go in to get Emily up. Each time Emily asks that Julia play in her bed with her. This particular morning I dressed the girls in matching Big/Little Sister shirts and Emily was very curious about the similar word on the shirts. Then she got really sad that Julia had her shirt on. It took a little while, but eventually she was OK with the fact that Julia and she had similar shirts with the word sister on it. I think the confusion came from the fact that Emily calls Julia ‘sister’.

Julia has moved into her big girl bed. We are at night number three in the big girl bed and sharing a room with Emily. Emily is so excited that Julia is in the room with her. She is even willing to be somewhat quiet. Our nightly routine is that Emily goes to bed and then about an hour later we put Julia down asleep. Julia has been going down awake, but I’m not willing to risk that one yet. Tonight when I put Julia down Emily was awake. She was so excited to see me bring Julia in and stayed quiet. My girls are growing up!