Moving along

It has been a busy week. I just realized I was supposed to RSVP 'no' to a party on Saturday and I haven't done it yet. Not like me at all. We are headed to a resort in the the mountains for Jake's company family retreat weekend. This is the first time that we are actually going as a family and we get a 2 BR condo all to ourselves which should be nice. They have activities planned and there are two pools so hopefully everyone will have a good time.

Last weekend I ended up taking Declan to Clemyjontri Park in McLean to meet up with a couple of friends and their daughters. The park was designed as a play place for children of all abilities, including those with handicaps. The play area is quite expansive and has a wide variety of equipment for all ages. Declan had a great time running around and wore me out chasing after him. I look forward to going back, perhaps at a less crowded time.

He is slowly building his vocabulary, very slowly, and is very stubborn about saying words when he wants to say them not when we prompt him too. Overall I would say he's a bit behind but we aren't too worried at this point. On Sunday while visiting my parents he repeatedly said "GO!" when we would say "ready, set" and send him down the playground slide. He will also say thank you, prompted and unprompted, which is nice. Most of his speech at this point though is still lots of babbles that to him probably mean everything but are unintelligible to us.

Things at the house are slowly coming along. I bought paint for the nursery as well as a rug and curtains. Jake removed the built-ins in that room that we decided not to keep. Now it just needs to be prepped and painted. I also plan on replacing the existing metal bi-fold closet doors with wooden ones and am hoping it is a standard size. Once we get back from Maine we are going to put a twin sized bed in Declan's room along side the crib, to get him used to the idea. I also want to swap out the front of the crib with the toddler bed rail that came with it. We are going to use the summer to get him used to the idea of sleeping in a "big boy bed" so that he hopefully won't feel displaced when the new baby eventually takes the crib over from him. It's a little earlier than I probably would have made the transition if we weren't expecting but he's always been a champion sleeper which I think will allow us to keep from having to buy a second crib.

Jake spend a good amount of time removing vast amounts of honeysuckle vines that were thriving on top of two large azalea bushes in our back yard. Once removed it was obvious the vines were slowly killing the bushes so I am glad he did that. He also cut back the one that had finished blooming as it was dwarfing some other things that had been planted there like daffodils and peonies. The bushes look a little sad and sparse as a result but I know next spring they will come back just lovely. For the time being the front and back landscaping is doing an okay job of managing itself which is good because we have lots of work to do inside the house. We have been getting some critter visitors of late including chipmunks, a fox and some deer (who are nibbling on my hostas). I think we are going to try the repellent spray for the deer because they are destructive and Dublin seems to want to eat their poop (gross!).

And overall, now that my illnesses have passed I have been feeling pretty good! Finally! Although I think there has been a bit of a fetal growth spurt because suddenly I feel very huge. Here's a 26-week shot. I'm trying not to think about how big I will be come August.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful week!