This past weekend we took a trip to Ocean Isle with some college friends for a couple days. There were 4 kids that were ~4 years old and 4 kids under 1 year old. If you asked me 5 years ago if I would go on a trip like that I would have told you "heck no!" but we all had a blast.
First up some pictures of our kids.
Snacktime on the beach is the best snacks.
Carter also did some laying out and working on his tan.
There was a pool at this beach house that was incredibly useful in both tiring out toddlers and not having to haul a bunch of stuff to the beach everyday. Avery seeing some of the other kids swimming without their puddle jumpers, got a lot more confident in her swimming. Here she is jumping in without a puddle jumper (Daddy watching closely). There is no way she would have been doing that at the beginning of the summer even with the swim lessons.
Check out this video of her swimming the length of the pool without her puddle jumper.
A flashback picture from September 2012...
And then this year...
This is Avery taking her first wipeout surfing. She didn't want to get back on after this...and I don't blame her, but love her for trying.
One of the parents brought face paint sunscreen, so all the kids got things drawn on them and it was a great way to keep them under the tent for a few minutes as it was applied.
This little guy also had a blast.
Hopefully he ends up loving the water as much as his big sister. He seemed to have a good time especially in his baby float.
We have been watching a lot of Octonauts lately with Avery, so if you are familiar with that show it is hard not to hum the song in your head when you read the post title... Anyways.... What we did this weekend:
On Saturday, I went to play golf and Laura took the kids to the mall. Carter slept the whole time and Avery asked a million why questions. Here she is riding the escalator by herself as after Disney it may be her favorite ride in the world.
Once he got home, Carter was happy to see his daddy!
After that we pretty much just went to the pool each afternoon.
Carter, while not smiling, did enjoy the pool.
Family picture!
Avery has overcome her fear of getting her head wet and now jumps in constantly.
On Sunday it started to rain at the pool, but that didn't slow Avery down.
Carter turned 3 months old a week or so ago, but as we were celebrating with the Gibsons we didn't get around to doing his pictures. He has gotten up to 12lbs 5oz when he went to the doctor last week for a little cough. He isn't sleeping through the night, although he has blessed Mommy a couple of times by sleeping from 8pm to 5am. He smiles pretty much on command and loves to talk back to you as if you were having a conversation. He loves to see his sister everyday and she loves to talk to him. He is close to rolling over, but just needs some more practice. Anyways...on to the pictures...
This is his little smirk. It is sometimes hard to capture his smiles because he is always fascinated when the camera comes out.
He has some pretty blue eyes that he got from his mother.
Luckily the first week back to work and Carter's first week of school was a short one. We then had the Gibson family reunion over July 4th weekend, where Carter got to meet all his Gibsons.
Avery was ready to hit the lake first thing Saturday morning.
Avery's cousin Harper is only a few days younger than her so she had a built in buddy for the entire weekend.
Of course she also had her daddy, who can be fun at some times.
Carter was such a good baby the entire time and shared his smiles with the whole family.
4 generations of Gibsons.
Avery also had a lot of fun with her Papa!
And once again tons of fun with her cousin Harper.
So this post is obviously a week late, but anyways... Carter had his first week of school last week. Overall the experience went ok. He only had to go 3.5 days because of the holiday week, but I think Laura would say it was 3.5 days too many. He didn't get a lot of sleep the first few days as he got adjusted to sleeping around other crying babies. We thought we had done a good job conditioning him to sleep with noise in our time off, but did not pump in baby crying as a noise. So as soon as he got in the car on the way home, he would pass out and get a good hour nap in before waking up for dinner.
The drop off. Carter is very curious about where he was. Avery was very protective of her big brother. On the second day she came in asking all kinds of questions about the situation. "Where do they change him? Where do they keep the bottles? Do they feed him? Where is his crib? What is that other baby doing?" I think she worried about her little brother after the first day where he didn't sleep much.
Hanging out with his teacher.
However, later in the week as he got adjusted he was back to his regular happy baby self.
Enjoying quality laughs with mommy after work/school.
