Jam-Packed July!

Thought I'd start off with my favorite picture of the month. I never intend for blog posts to be so far apart, but it seems like the days disappear without me realizing it! I guess two kids, a husband, a high-maintenance dog and a job are good excuses, right? I'm starting to understand that the calm weeks are the ones that should stand out, since "hectic" seems like our baseline these days.


It's been a great few weeks at the Rooney house. We officially now have only one child in diapers. Meredith's teacher at daycare told me on a Thursday that she thought we should just put her in big girl underwear over the weekend and go for it. We started out on a Friday morning and after two quick accidents, our girl got it! She hasn't looked back since. Well, she did poop on the bathroom floor at Mimi and Papa's once, but at least she made it into the bathroom!

Remember our little garden in the back yard? It has exploded with all sorts of veggies and flowers. This is a picture from Meredith's first harvest. She was so proud that she made us keep everything on the kitchen table for two days before we were allowed to eat anything.


Mere and Jack have gotten to go to the library on Wednesdays with Mimi, Sandy and Papa. Here's Mere returning her first library book.

Jack got his first big boy haircut last weekend. He did great with the clippers, but hated it when she got out the scissors. That prompted him to use one of his favorite phrases--no, no,no--complete with finger wag. Other common words these days include drink (definitely his favorite), down, door, that, dog and bite. He says "Dada" and Papa (comes out "BaPa") all the time, but seems to reserve "Mama" for when he's sad, hurt or tired. That pitiful "Mama" gets me every time!

Meredith's newest obsession is everything princess. We watch princess movies, we wear princess clothes, we play princess games. She suggested the other day that she should be a princess for Halloween and Jack should be a frog. The girl knows her accessories. She's often seen in her tutu, tiara, every necklace she can find and, of course, her purple princess shoes.

The "snoot face" is Meredith's signature look. Not to be outdone, Jack started his own look recently...

The "Jack face" involves squeezing your fists (bonus points if they're holding something squishy, like watermelon), grunting, and making this crazy face.

Not walking yet, but he's getting really close. I know this is one of those things that I can't wait for him to start doing so I can start regretting being anxious about it and start wishing he'd stop! He loves this thing (Meredith did too and it has a song that really gets stuck in your head), but his favorite thing to walk behind is our Cozy Coupe with Mere inside. It goes about as well as you'd think it would. Lots of screaming.

My favorite guys

Uncle Patrick, Aunt Vero and Ian got Jack a water table for his birthday. It's a huge hit with both kids. It seems like these water table pictures are a good example of most sibling interactions at our house these days.

Not pictured: the screaming, hitting, hair pulling and occasional biting followed 5 seconds later by the hugging, giggling and do-it-again look they give each other. Repeat this sequence every 15 minutes and you'd have a typical day at our house.

We did have a very scary, sad event last week. Clarence, our new greyhound, had been doing really well until last Monday. Our neighbor came over to let the dogs out while we were at work and found Mia in our dining room, bleeding. We think he was trying to play with her and forgot she's old and fragile. Thank God Sandy was there to take her to the vet. She ended up with emergency surgery to close all three wounds and had a drain until Saturday morning. The vet said we were very lucky. Had the largest bite been a few more millimeters to the right, we would've lost her. Clarence is now in a new home that's a better fit for him and we're working on getting Mia back to normal. Mere yelled from the living room yesterday, "Mommy, come quick. Mia is rubbing her bloody head on the cozy chair!" Guess she must be feeling better already!