Catching Up

Last week was our second OB appointment.  We heard a quick, strong heartbeat immediately.  And we left the first trimester behind - finally - in a cloud of disbelief and bewilderment and still-guarded gratefulness and relief.

My belly is anointed softly at least twice a day with big brother kisses.  Earlier this week, as I sat on the edge of Gideon's bed at bedtime, humming along to the instrumental "Hush, Little Baby" playing on the iPod at his bedside, I mentioned that we could sing this song to the baby at bedtime when it comes.  Gideon agreed, adding that we could also sing "Rock-a-bye Baby."  And then he asked me to rock back and forth and sing the song to the baby right then and there.  Afterward, we had to whisper so as not to wake the baby.

Last week, a couple of days after watching The Fox and the Hound, Gideon came downstairs one morning and told me he had a "good idea for a name for the baby"(something we've asked him a few times with little response) - "Copper."

The first half of June we traveled over a thousand miles via car and train through central and north and the panhandle of Texas and western Oklahoma.  We spent time with grandparents, brothers and sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, and second cousins.  We enjoyed one Papa's homemade ice cream and another Papa's fresh peaches.  We rode bikes, made mud dams in the garden, swam in a hotel swimming pool and the cousins' backyard wading pool, and we threw rocks in an Oklahoman "lake" at dusk.

Drive-in theater in Clarendon, Texas

Jeremy's Grandma Downey

My dad's project for Jeremy during our stay

Since our return home, we've caught up on sleep (and I've tried to catch up in the online classes I was unprepared for) and relished weekly rain and regular highs in the 80s.  We've been to the beach, the pool and bought fishing poles (to be used this holiday weekend).

Highlights of the weeks to come:  swim lessons for Gideon, gymnastics, more play-dates in the pool (jellyfish will curtail beach visits any day now), sweet corn, peaches, and tomatoes from the farm stand, and the River Concerts.

Summer is here.  Watermelon, popsicles, slip-n-slides, lightning bugs.  What are you relishing about the season of sun?  (Besides the A/C...)

The next best thing to the swimming pool