Are all the long hours in the car worth it? For us it is. The ride does get long, make our backs hurt, and it is boring for the driver when everyone else has something to do. But, it is also family time. It is time to see different parts of America. We get to talk to the girls about a million different things. We talked about how big the sky is. We talk about how many stars there are in the sky while we are seeing the Milky Way. We get to count rainbows. We were disappointed with only three, but one was a double rainbow. We talked about the wind turbines as we passed miles of them. At night the turbines have flashing red lights which are fun to watch when you are 4. We tried to spot at many trains as we could. The first person to see one would point it out as we continued to play games of counting engines and talking about what each one was hauling. The girls enjoyed hours of book reading, coloring, playing with toys, the occasional nap, cheering with each state we crossed, counting the mosquitoes that traveled with us in our car after stopping at a rest stop, playing running games at rest stops, and asking lots of questions.

We were delighted with an amazing drive in and out of the valley Albuquerque is found in. We did the drive at night and the lights of the the city were beautiful. It was by chance that we turned around and looked as we drove out. If the night lights would have photographed well we would have tried. This memory will have to be one that stays in our head. Another unexpected driving surprise was the bear that ran across the highway as we drove out of Colorado. We didn’t expect to see a bear and this one was moving fast. He was gone before the girls even looked up. What a treat.

The wind turbines are really cool to see, but we settled with a moving photo of them.

Julia had her 2-1/2 year check up. We didn’t make it until she was 2 years and 9 months, but oh well. She seems to be great. The doctor listened for her heart murmur and couldn’t hear it. He wants us to go back to the specialist for her 3 year checkup as the the specialist requested. We discussed briefly her speech. For weight and height she is also doing well. Her weight is slowing increasing in percentile and is right around the 25 percentile and her height places her at the 50 percentile. She weighed in at 27 lb 6 oz (an increase of 3 lb 7 oz in 9 months) and measured 36-1/2 inches (an increase of 2-3/4 inches in 9 months). Julia will go back for her checkup at her third birthday.

The morning of Julia’s check-up Emily complained of an earache. The doctor checked it out for us and determined that she has swimmers ear. Not a huge shock given how much swimming we did in the last two weeks. She was also measured for the visit. She weighted in at 37 lb 10 oz (an increase of 2 lbs 10 oz in 7 months) and measured 43-1/4 inches (an increase of 1-3/4 inches in 7 months)

Some things just seem so ordinary in life, but too quickly the ordinary changes to something different and what is ordinary is forgotten. These are just a few things and thoughts about our current age of 4 years and 5 months.

Emily is my social kid. She is shy in new situations, but also very likely to pick up a new friend and talk his or her ear off. She learned introductions a while ago and most of the time she introduces herself as “my name is Emily and I am four years old”. She gets a variety of responses from people. Most of the time it breaks the ice and the kids play with her or the adult talks to her.

Emily likes to hear stories. She will ask us to tell her about when she was born, about when we were married, when we lost our power, or when Mommy lost her keys down a storm drain. Remembering events through story telling is fun, at least the first few times we tell the story. She is more reluctant to tell us stories in return, but with coaxing she will sometimes tell us about Cinderella.

The funniest thing she has said lately was at a baseball game we attended with her grandparents. Grammy told Emily that the Tennessee Smokeys were playing the Mississippi Braves. She replied with “why is Miss Sippy playing with the boys”. It took a few seconds for us to figure that one out and then we had a good chuckle as we explained about the state of Mississippi.

Emily is planning her next birthday party. Mama’s favorite part of the party so far is that she wants it to be a surprise party at the bounce house with her friends. I guess she doesn’t grasp the concept of a “surprise party” yet. If you talk with her for a while and she relates her age, she will then tell you of her party, and most likely invite you to it. If she does this, please don’t be offended when you don’t actually get an invitation. She is not keeping a good record of the people she invites to her party.

Emily is learning to plan things out. She informed me this week that she wants Julia to have surgery again. When I asked her why, she informed me of her plan. She wants to go to Elena’s house by herself and play with Ashley, Chris, Elena, and Maeve. I told Emily that if she wants to play with her friends, I would prefer working it out without her sister needing surgery.

Emily’s artistry is improving a lot these days. Whether she turns into an artist or not isn’t important to me. I just love being able to look at the picture and know what it is that she has drawn. She is intentional with the colors she chooses when drawing or coloring. Her favorite canvases right now are greeting cards. Maybe you will get an original piece of art in the mail one day.

Most important to her father and I is the person she is becoming. Lately, she has been talking about Jesus and his life. Yesterday, she told me she wanted her “heart to be good”. While our conversation was brief concerning this topic, what a joy it was to share with her that her heart could be good with Jesus’s help.

Sometimes when my girls are doing things I wonder if their behavior is just random or a sign of a developmental change. God has granted me my own scientific experiment on this in Emily’s friend Elena. Often, Ashley and I will be sharing stories of our kids’ current antics and find out that the other one is exhibiting the same behavior.

One recent sweet thing they are both doing, independent of each other, is pretending to be babies after their baths. After we give Emily her towel from her bath, she stands wrapped up in it and asks if she can be carried back to the bedroom like a baby. She delights in the baby-like behavior and acting it out. I guess it is hard to grow up and she sometimes wants to be treated like a baby. Sometimes, I miss my Emily baby and am glad to pretend every once in a while to have her back.

Just a few individual things that are happening around here or what we are hearing these days -

• Emily told me that her gas was “singing a little song”
• Emily’s current favorite game to play is Librarian. She brings us a small stack of books that we have checked out. She also spends a lot of time “organizing” her books into piles.
• Emily has taken to caring for Robby. She will have him lay on the couch, tells him to take a nap, and then rubs on his head. He thinks this is the best game ever.
• Emily absolutely loves to play dress up and would live in her Cinderella dress if we let her.
• Emily’s other accessory of choice is a toy crown that she got out of a kids meal. It is even worn to bed if we let her.
• Emily favors her father. She will call out to him in the middle of the night for comfort. She likes Mommy, but Daddy is best.
• Emily is learning how to tell time on a clock face. She knows when it is 8 pm and that it is bedtime. She has also started adopting time-lingo into her description of time. She will tell us that it is “15 till” or “12:30″. She occasionally gets it right, but at this point it is just blind luck. My favorite is when she tells her doll that it is 17:30.
• Emily hasn’t mastered the terms and concepts for yesterday, tomorrow, last week, next week, last month, next month, last year, and next year. Everything is described in years. She will tell us that next year we are going someplace meaning tomorrow. She has told Robby what she did the day before and described it as last year.
• Emily has a placemat map that we use to show her places she has gone and where other people live. To help her find Tennessee quickly we taught her to find the drawing of Elvis, who is placed over Memphis, and then we are on the other side of the state. She now describes where we live as being “at Elvis”
• Emily asks us everyday what we are doing that day or the next day. She is used to going and doing things.
• Emily knows the Tennessee and US flags and when she finds them she likes to point them out.
• Julia is having a few more words pop out of her mouth. She will repeat a lot of things for us, but they don’t sound quite right. She has made these clear enough to understand: no, movie, E (Emily), more, please, cheese, cak-er (cracker), and lunch.
• Julia favorite toy right now is a new slide that we have in the living room. She will sit on top of it and watch TV. She also slides all of the time.
• Julia is interested in helping us do things now. She helped pack Robby’s lunch, has gone to fetch things for Robby that she perceives that he needs, and loves to go and fetch Mommy’s shoes when we are leaving.
• Julia has a pink tutu she loves and wears anytime she can. Mommy made her a new one and so far she has been unwilling to even try it on because of how much she loves the pink one.
• Julia will not leave anything in her hair. She asks for bows to be put in her hair and then removes them while we are out. Unfortunately, this leads to a lot of lost bows.
• Julia is still highly attached to Mommy. For her Mommy is best.
• Julia doesn’t mind taking her afternoon nap and sometimes asks for it. Most of the time when she is asked if she is ready and answers yes (with a nod) and then collects her things and meets us at the pack n play where she sleeps at nap time.
• The girls have play picnics. This involves putting toy kitchen food it in baskets or bags and then carrying it around the house. After they have picked a spot they will spread a blanket, sit down, and get the food out for the picnic. A variation of this is when Emily fills a small metal lunchbox and takes it to pretend school. I’m pretty impressed with the lunch she packs for herself.

Emily has been very captivated with the idea that she is a princess. Lately, she has taken to being Cinderella. The other night, while playing dress up with her princess dress and her ‘glass’ slippers, she asked me to dance. After we danced in a circle for a bit, she informed me that it was midnight. Then, she ran off removed one of her shoes, and told me, “Prince, you have to find my glass slipper and put it on me.” She was delighted when I picked up her shoe and first tried putting it on Mommy’s foot and then on Julia’s foot, while declaring that it was too small for Mommy and too big for her sister. Then, I asked her if I could try it on her foot. Her joy was complete when I put her slipper on her foot, and announced it a perfect fit. Needless to say, we played this game several times that evening.