Summertime Fun

We are starting to wrap up our busy summer. Three weeks and Lia will be going back to school for her first year in early entrance Kindergarten. Time flies! We've had a lot of fun this summer. Lia has attended local preschool daycamp in the mornings with weekly themes of Circus, Cowboy/Cowgirls, Rainforest, Royalty, and Beaches. Next week is the final (6th) week of day camp. We'll miss the teachers and helpers - they have been awesome!

We've also done a LOT of doctor & therapy visits this summer. Speech therapy weekly, and now twice weekly since she is also doing a summer speech program thru her school for August. Catching her up on all her vaccines (which have been behind since China!) has required two separate visits for shots (8 total - yikes - and she took 'em like a champ!) On Wednesday we visited her ENT to check on her ears. Unfortunately, the hole in her left eardrum continues to grow, which explains a lot of her irritation around loud noise levels. The doctor gave us some ear plugs for now, but warned us that another surgery might be down the road to patch the hole.

Lia and I took a "parent-tot" swim class during the month of July. She was officially too old for the class since she is 4, but they were willing to waive her in based on her history. She was pretty wary at first, but really enjoyed swimming on her own with the foam noodle.

She never did get to the point where she'd put her face or head under water, but as the ENT pointed out, that is probably a good thing with the hole in her ear. He does, however, want her to learn to swim as much as we do, so he recommended trying it with ear plugs next time.

Lia also saw her first movies in the theater this summer! Monsters University was her very first movie and she loved it ("only a couple scary parts mama!") so we took her back to see "Despicable Me 2" and "Turbo"a few weeks later. That girl can chow down a bag of popcorn let me tell you!

Other than that, it's been a summer of rest and relaxation. Spending time in our backyard and the firepit at grandma & grandpa's house making s'mores.

In two weeks we will be headed to Colorado to visit Grandma Wall and Lia is really excited to go on an airplane again and visit all of Steve's family, many whom she hasn't gotten to meet yet.