Summer's a comin'

This past Saturday was a great weather day here. We took advantage of it to get Mia outside for a nice long stretch. We walked around the park (Mia slept through that, Piper nearly passed out...she's a little out of shape these days) and had our first family cookout of the year on the deck. The ladies even made smores... although I think they were underwhelming on the gas grill. Mia was a little fussy through parts of the weekend (more on that below), but it was a nice weekend nonetheless.

A quick update on "the routine"... It's been close to two weeks now of the nightly routine, and it is still working just as well as it was at the beginning. The start time has moved up as we have experimented with timing her last meal before bed, and she falls asleep so quickly after eating that I never get around to turning on the music. Besides those tweaks, the rest has remained the same. It worked so well that we've tried instituting something similar for daytime naps, but with far less success. Mia's daytime napping patterns are all over the place right now. There are days when she won't nap at all unless you hold her the whole time, and there have been days when she has slept in her pack and play for an hour by herself. I think we still have some work to do on this front, but hopefully we'll make some progress. One thing that seems to work without fail is riding in the car or her stroller, but that doesn't seem very practical as a nap routine (don't get me wrong, we'll still keep those in our back pocket for the rough patches)

One of the best developments in the past few weeks has been her increased smiling, and even the occasional laugh...at least it sounds like a little laugh. When she smiles, her whole face lights up and it just feels amazing to see. It's one of those things that momentarily makes you forget about every stress that you may have amd simply revel in her happiness. I hope for many moments like that.

It's a short post tonight, sorry about that... but look for more pictures later tonight on flickr, there are some really good ones.

One more thing, for those that don't know, Monday is Ashlei's birthday, so if you see her or talk her please wish her a great one...she deserves it.