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So, a lot has happened in the little world of Jackson in the recent weeks.
Katie's cast came off!! Here is a picture of her heading in to get it taken off! Last Thursday , but she is still terrified of using her arm. The thing that was the most surprising about this whole experience? The skin cracking and peeling the day after the cast came off! I never really thought about the fact that we lose layers of skin every day, and she had the pleasure of losing those layers all at one time. Hoorah for us! The first day Katie refused to take off her sling, the second day Orwin asked to see her "pin holes" and she amazingly decided to take off the cast and have me unwrap her bandage. I was very impressed! We have not had the sling back on since. She has been in the "hot tub" which, of course does not have the heat turned on - who needs to be any hotter in Mississippi in the summer?!?!?!? Today we were able to go to her "boyfriend" Jacob's house to swim.

She is much better at using her arm in the pool. I don't know if it is totally the bouyancy of the water, or just that she has so much fun that she forgets to be so scared, but I do know that I don't care what it is as long as she gets more comfortable moving that arm around. We also have had a rash of sleepovers! Tuesday they tried to sleep over at Mia's Dad's house, but I got the call around 9pm that Katie was homesick. The next night they DID sleep over at Mia's Mom's house. Thursday night they slept over here. Friday we told them they needed a break from each other. Saturday they were asking again to spend the night, but we told them not yet. SO, guess what?!?!?! Yup, they are having a sleepover tonight. Our house won out, I think mainly because they were going to sleep in Katie's tent ... but Mia ended up sleeping in the bed, mainly because Katie would not stop talking.



Connor has made super huge leaps in baby development!! On Saturday the 21st he pulled himself to standing for the first time!! He is still too wobbly to trust on his own, but he is the master of pulling up now! Sunday the 22nd he did his first honest crawl! He has been commando crawling for a while, but he got up on his knees and crawled to Orwin. He also decided to make his first foray into "cruising" the couch! Definitely getting better with his fine motor skills. Today, while Katie was swimming Connor had a little swim, too. He LOVES the water! I just had him dangling his feet in at forst and he was kicking around happily, but when I let him get his arms in ... OH, HE WAS ECSTATIC! Splashing around, if I was not afraid of drowning he might have swam. We have definitely passed that point where babies instinctively hold their breath, so it is just going to have to wait. And we found a pacifier that he likes that can actually be purchased! I was afraid that I was going to have to tear the house apart to look for more of Katie's old pacifiers!



Chip cleaned out the garage! We can actually get to AND USE the exercise equipment that has been buried in there. I did get out and ride the bike for 6.5 miles tonight. I even hooked up some power rods and did some exercises on the BowFlex. There were some pics of me taken today at the pool, and even without being in my bathing suit I am sufficently disgusted enough to work out. Connor is eight and a half months old, it is time to stop using the "I just had a baby" excuse and lose this candy-coating.