Summer colds

Sorry for the lack of updates, but there hasn't been a whole lot going on around here in the past week and a half or so thanks to the nasty summer colds that we all managed to catch. The never-ending summer colds - it's been over 10 days and we're still on the mend. Lily got an ear infection, Charlie got an ugly cough, I lost my voice for days and Joe suffered terrible nasal issues. But after going through boxes and boxes of tissues and using the bulb syringe on Charlie and Lily so much that Lily actually started requesting it, we seem to be reaching the end of the snot. We mostly laid low last week - the colds coupled with the extreme heat we were having here in NJ didn't give us much choice! Thankfully yesterday we were all feeling much better, so we celebrated with a day at Sesame Place. Nothing lifts the spirits like a hug from Bert, or "Burp" as Lily calls him ;)

We still managed to have fun at home though, while fighting the colds. Charlie and Lily worked on their balance. This kept them busy for a loooong time ;)
And then there as this....
And this! You never know when the papparrazi may pop up, so it pays to eat all your meals incognito, just in case!
And now I need to brag a little bit, because hey, it's my blog and I'm allowed to do that ;) Charlie and Lily have been learning SO much lately. Charlie can identify every letter of the alphabet, and Lily can sing her ABCs up to the letter E. They can both count to 3, and fill in the numbers when we count to 10 with them. They know all their colors and their shapes too. They love to sing - we've been taking them to Music Together classes since the spring and they LOVE them. Charlie constantly asks us to put on "mu-ZIK" for him and sometimes we'll just hear one of them start singing a song to themselves. It's so cute. And the talking! They are talking SO much. They repeat everything, but also say plenty on their own. Lily will say phrases like, "I see you!" and Charlie utters, "Come on!" all the time, lol. The other day I sneezed and Lily said, "Bless you, Mama." Every day they're saying something new and it's so fun!

In other news, I recently started working again. Not full time - it's important to me and Joe that I stay home with Charlie and Lily during the day, so I started waiting tables in the evenings at our local Cracker Barrel. Serving is exhausting, but luckily my role as a mom to two toddlers has me more than used to taking orders, fulfilling odd requests and cleaning up from messy people, so I'm doing okay! And Joe is doing awesome holding down the fort at dinner time and bedtime. He's even become and expert with bath time - not an easy feat!