Singing

Hello,

Josh put Willow to sleep tonight, so here I am updating the blog at 9 PM! How exciting. Also exciting: Josh, man of many talents, has fixed our laptop so it is way, way faster! It used to take about a half hour to upload a video, now it takes about 5 minutes. Thanks to uncle Mike for the technical advice. It has improved our quality of life immensely (only a slight exaggeration)!

To celebrate, here are two videos of Willow. We did catch her singing on video, finally:




We've signed Willow up for a Music Together class this fall. It's a 10-week class for kids birth to five years. I can't wait. I think she'll really like it.

And here's one of her practicing her martial arts moves on the beach last weekend:



Grandma and Grandpa Schaefer babysat Willow yesterday and night while Josh and I went to Copper Harbor for our 5th wedding anniversary (it's the 20th). We had a wonderful, relaxing time. We were going to go biking when we got up there, but decided it was way too hot and humid, and that we'd do that in the morning instead. We went down to the Keweenaw Mountain Lodge to check out the new disc golf course. It has been since last summer that either of us played - it used to be one of our favorite pasttimes pre-baby. We did OK, expecially for an unknown course. We also had a lot of fun, which is the point of disc golfing!

















Then we went back to our cabin. It was one of a group of cabins and there was a little private cove:















As you may know, Lake Superior is WARM this year - the warmest I can ever remember. Even Josh (who, having grown up swimming in inland lakes in Minnesota, is normally a big wuss about the big Lake) went swimming and stayed in the water for a long time. It was so refreshing on such a hot day.















We had an amazing dinner at the Harbor House. They're always good, but this was seriously like the best meal we have had in years. They had a sushi appetizer on special and it was at least in the top 3 sushi experiences we have ever had (I think all of our sushi-eating has been together). The meals were awesome and we had a chocolate souffle that was to die for. Sorry to go on and on about food, but it was that good, and I swear they aren't paying me to say that. During dinner a cool front moved in and it started to rain. Our cabin had a screened in porch, so we sat there and watched a movie on our laptop. Here's a pic of us before dinner in front of our cabin. It wasn't luxurious or anytihng, but clean and comfortable and it overlooked the lake.















This morning it was raining up there so we couldn't go biking. :( We had breakfast and came home. Willow had just gone down for a nap on Grandma's chest, so we went biking in Hancock - it hadn't rained as much down there. It was a great anniversary weekend.

Here's the news on Willow. Playing outdoors and especially the beach has become a lot more enjoyable for anyone watching Willow - she has mostly passed the putting-everything-in-her-mouth stage. It makes it much more relaxing when you don't have to stand over her like a hawk to prevent her from eating rocks and dirt.

We've been experimenting with her sleeping schedule to try to make it easier to put her down at night. We've been waking her up before we leave for work and asked Linda to limit her naps to 2 hours during the day. It hasn't seemed to work that well yet...but maybe tonight was the turning point where it finally caught up with her - she was tired this evening and went down fairly quickly. We had to try something - it was getting crazy where it could take up to an hour or sometimes more to get her down. She still wakes up at night too, though I've started to limit her night nursing to (usually) just once a night. I wear a shirt and turn away from her. It works sometimes, but other times I'm so out of it I end up letting her anyway.

Here are some photos of Willow. I just realized it's getting late, and I've got to get to bed myself!


Doesn't she look lilke a big girl here?















On the swing at McClain's park:















Lots of people have a special drawer or cupboard for their toddler in the kitchen. We don't really have one for Willow, but she does have her own two shelves. We put toys and snacks on them:





On Thursday Willow will turn 1 1/2 years old!