The McGuire Family: July Update

Sorry- it's been quite a while since we've had an update. To be honest, things have been a little quieter than normal for the McGuire family during these dog days of summer. In late June Amy's mom came down and stayed with us for a very fun 19 days, 13 hours, 53 minutes and 12 seconds. After that, most of our "spare time" has been devoted entirely to getting the nursery set up and Jack's room finished before Nathan arrives. As of this writing, Amy is already 33 weeks pregnant and pretty convinced this kid will be arriving early! So we've really been feeling the pressure to get things all wrapped up before we are truly out of time. Unfortunately, both rooms have revealed some major challenges that were quite unexpected... everything from bad foundations to bad walls. Nothing that Dad can't fix, though! So here are a few pictures to catch us back up:

4th of July

The night before the 4th we tried a practice run with the sparklers so Jack could get used to the idea. Glad we did because he was definitely NOT having any fun for the first few tries!

Even when I stepped in for some assistance he wasn't convinced things were okay.

We gave up on the sparklers and decided to slow things down a bit with some "pop-its" that snap loudly when you throw them on the ground. Jack was way more into those!

Things went much better on the night of the 4th and Jack had way more fun with the sparklers!

Swim Lessons

We signed Jack up for swim lessons through the city at a public pool. It did not go well. The instructor insisted on squirting him in the face with a toy over and over to "get him used to getting his face wet". She didn't back off even when he got upset and the whole thing backfired big time. He started off looking forward to the lessons, but by the second round of bad experiences we packed up and went home!

We've had much better success (and a LOT more fun!) at home. This suit has foam inserts that help keep him buoyant but don't restrict his movement. He's getting pretty good at swimming and is very independent in the pool so I am going to start cutting out the foam pieces one by one until he's doing it all by himself... hopefully by the end of the summer!

Sometimes when we're up a little late, we go night swimming! Jack likes to "jump" off the end of the slide which is great because he's learning to hold his breath when he goes under water.

So much fun!

Wine Tasting

The last weekend of Jean's visit, her good friend, Evelyn, flew down for a few days too. I was in Kentucky, so Amy and Jack took them over to Paso Robles on the coast for the Lavender Festival and some wine tasting at local wineries.