Fantastic news from Julia’s 3-year heart check-up – All the areas of concern from her first visit have healed with her growth and are no longer there!

The visit involved an echo of her heart along with the visit with the doctor. Julia was a good sport and enjoyed hanging with Mama and Daddy by herself. The ultrasound went smoothly because they showed Cat and the Hat during the procedure.

We rewarded her good behavior with a strawberry milkshake after the exam. For Mama and Daddy it was a celebration of the good news, too. Emily enjoyed the whole exam at a friends house, to her own delight.

We went to a local heated pool to have her party. We started off with some running around a gym, followed by decorating princess shoes with gems (Aiden got a frog to decorate), then lunch of pizza and cupcakes, and lastly all the swimming the little ones could handle. Emily had a lot of fun at her party. She is already planning her next one.

The birthday girl – she was having a good time despite the serious face.

A little pre-party game of tag. They do not understand the game and just had fun running away from Ms. Rachelle.

Craft time

Emily was serious about her shoe decorating. She had been planning for days which shoe she wanted to decorate.

Julia took her gluing seriously. She spread it all over her shoe like she was icing a cake.

The frog turned out pretty cute!

Our table of goodies

Emily enjoyed a lot of freedom in the pool because she was willing to kick herself around on the kickboard. She seemed to have the hang of the kickboard more this day than she has before.

Julia was pretty busy in the pool. Every time the camera came out she seemed to be turning her back to it. She had a great time just playing.

Aiden and his Mama – what a great photo. They both have great grins.

Elena floating on her own

Maeve’s eyes seem to always have such a sparkle

The little girls floating and having a great time together. It is nice to have friends.

Emily’s birthday fell on a Sunday this year which made one of the activities for the day going to church. Afterwards we went to lunch with Grammy, Granddaddy, and Mr. Joseph. Emily picked Chinese to eat so we went to PF Chang’s for dinner. She was a bit excited and had trouble focusing much on her dinner. Not to worry, we took home the leftovers which she demolished the next day for lunch. After dinner we went home and ate cake and opened gifts. The rest of the day was spent playing with the different new toys.

On Thursday when we went to Thursday school, Ashley brought cupcakes for both girls to share with their class. Everyone seemed to enjoy their little cupcakes. I love Emily’s cheesy grin!

Emily has been looking forward to this birthday a lot! She asked for a Snow Princess themed party and has a blue snow princess dress for the occasion. She asked to go swimming for her party too, but as long as she gets to play with her friends she will be happy with any activity.

Emily is our fun loving, active, princess-crazed, prone to emotional outbursts daughter. She is starting to make wonderfully fun comments about the world around her and it is enjoyable to interact with those comments. She also doesn’t miss much of what is going on and secrets are tough, but still possible.

Julia is her favorite playmate in the world. They will play Rapunzel and take turns playing different characters. The new bunk beds make for a wonderful tower in this play. The girls also still love to run the circle of our house; although, Emily is quite certain she wants to win and makes them into races. They also pretend to play that one is the Mama and the other the baby and then take care of each other. Emily loves her sister and enjoys introducing her and finishing her sentences.

Emily is pretty content to play by herself too. Emily loves to take the doll dress-up clothes and dress all of her favorite stuffed animals in the different clothes whether or not the size is quite right. She will drag all of her bedding around the house setting up new places for house. She has taken to building campfires from the building blocks and inviting her stuffed friends to come for camp-outs.

Some of the fun or funny things she is often found to talk about are: her surprise (not-so surprise) birthday party that we are going to throw for her, her future plans for running a hotel and all the detail that are going into its design and management, fascination with different ballet stories and the different variations of the stories.

Some of her other favorites are:

• favorite color – blue
• favorite princess – Cinderella
• favorite food – peanut butter sandwich & sweet and sour chicken (not together)
• favorite place to go out to eat – Chinese
• favorite activity – dressing up like a princess
• favorite clothes to wear – dresses
• favorite blanket – her "baby mouse" blanket that she has had since birth. Thank goodness Mama’s aunt made it big and she can still fit under it although it is starting to get thin now.
• favorite thing to draw – princess’s dresses
• favorite craft activities – coloring and scissor practice
• favorite playmate – Julia (although she would tell you it was Elena)
• favorite person to pester – Julia
• favorite music to sleep to – Baby Einstein – Lullaby Classics
• favorite music to dance around the house to – the Nutcracker
• favorite new discovery – that there is a place called Disney World near Aunt Jolie’s house where Cinderella’s castle is. She is advocating starting a savings fund, so we can go and visit the park.

We planned a family trip to visit the Aquarium in Gatlinburg while Daddy had some time off. As life does not always go to plan, he was sick and unable to join us girls on the trip. We went on and made the most of our day without Daddy. The girls took naps in the car on the way. After they woke up, we ventured inside to see all the fish.

Emily was very intent on getting down to an interactive area and hardly looked at the fish exhibits on the way. Julia seemed interested in looking at most things for a few minutes each. Once we got to the lower level, the girls chose to ride through the sea tunnel and watch the fish. The moving floor was a huge hit with the girls. Both girls seemed to really watch the different fish and sharks around us.

Then the girls played in the interactive area for quite a while. They were very busy and just turned knobs, flipped switches, slid windows, and ducked in and out of a dark room to their hearts content. In the past we have visited and attended a preschool program, and Emily was curious why we weren’t seeing Jessica and doing a craft.

When we were finally done in the play area, we ventured into a new part of the exhibit about sharks. And then caught a ray feeding while we had a snack. After the excitement of the play area, the girls were most looking forward to seeing the penguin habitat. They have several tunnels to crawl thru and observe the penguins. The girls were a bit disappointed to find the penguins not active and hanging out in the warmer room of the habitat. The idea that it was near the penguin’s bedtime was too hard for them to grasp.

The last treat of the aquarium was Mama allowing the girls stay in the gift shop for a long time checking out all the fun trinkets and books. Normally the stay in the shop is brief, but for a treat we stayed a bit longer.

We went out for dinner on the way home and enjoyed warm bread with dipping oil and pasta. The only thing that could have made the day more perfect was to have Daddy with us. We decided that in about a month we might try the day visit again taking him with us.

Chris the scuba-diver and fish feeder. When he ran out of food to feed the fish he did a few tricks to entertain us. We caught two of his feedings, one with the Rays and the other in the Reef tank.

Emily checking out the penguin habitat. They loved climbing thru the tunnel.

The girls checking out a shark overhead. They found a lot of sharks to watch in this tank.

Julia peeking up at the penguin habitat. I think she was as excited to be able to look back and see Mama as to see the penguins.

Julia is our transportation girl. If there is a train or plane near us, she is pointing it out to us. On our last day at Dollywood, she found a helicopter in the sky over the park. After pointing it out to Mama, Mama thought it would be a good idea to let her practice saying the word. I said it slowly, in my own southern accent, and broken into syllables “say He-lo-cop-ter”. Did she repeat the word? No, she turned and looked back up at it and waved. She had heard me tell her to “say hello (to the) copter”.

Emily took her nap on the way to the park, but Julia was stubborn and stayed awake. Well, she only made it so long and then fell asleep in the stroller. When we said goodbye to the sun she got wrapped up in a blanket.

We stayed until after dark so that Emily could see all of the lights and see the lights show. She loved it! I’m so glad we got to go so many times this year and enjoyed being together.

We didn’t get many photos of them awake together, but once one goes to sleep it get a bit easier. We are bundled up to stay warm!

Julia got so excited while driving! She was thrilled to get a pink car to drive.

One sacrifice of the park being so busy is that the girls had to share a seat with each other and sharing the rides with other kids. Sometimes they loved it and sometimes it was a bit frustrating for them. They seemed to connect with these girls and they loved the ride.

Our girls like to play games on our phones. They think it is normal to get to see their grandparents when they talk to them across many miles. Their world view also has music on iPods, pausing TV, and TV and movies recorded on digital media. They will never know a world with rotary telephones, typewriters, and not being able to call someone from anywhere. I can’t imagine what else will change in their lifetime.

Ms. Patty with Julia – Julia loves to take her stuffed chicken finger puppet named Bawck Bawck with her

Julia has been going to therapy since April and has shown a lot of improvement. She loves her therapist Ms. Patty. Our weekly sessions are early morning and despite being a little on the groggy side, Julia has kept her excitement and joy of going. Their sessions involve speech games and exercises intermixed with good ‘ole play. When she arrives for her hour session she gets to pick a toy from the toy cabinet. She doesn’t pick the same toy each time, but they tend to be playhouses with fun people and characters.

From not making a two syllable sound and not talking in conversation, Julia now is working on harder sounds of h and blended s sounds. She is willing to perk up and make statements that involve two or more words in conversation. I’m sure we have had improvement because of developmental stages, but the increase in speech has been magnified by her hard work with Ms. Patty.

When Julia turned three she was old enough for the local school system to assist with her speech development. Julia is able to meet with a speech therapist at the local preschool on a weekly basis. Because of going to a private speech therapist and having the ongoing performance tracking and assessments, enrolling Julia in the additional school program was really easy.

Julia has loved meeting with Ms. Trish for her thirty minute weekly session. We can see such an improvement in Julia’s speech with the addition of this second session over the last few weeks. It has been a joy to take Julia to her appointments. Emily hangs out with Mama during the preschool therapy sessions and we work on pre-kindergarten activities.

When we enrolled Julia in her preschool therapy we talked about the long term therapy requirements for Julia. Ms. Trish said that by the time Julia starts Kindergarten she would no longer require speech. She thought in a year we would see her speaking equal to her peers. What great news for Julia!

Julia loves being a big girl and going into the Preschool and she and Emily love to run up and down the stairs in front of the building.

Ms. Trish with Julia – once again Bawck Bawck makes the photo.

Happy Girl! We were packing up gifts to mail and Julia moved into this box. She put all her favorite bed things in it with her. Then she kept opening and closing the box lid playing different peek-a-boo games. Don’t worry, we didn’t mail her to her grandparents. While she was napping we packed up the real gifts.

The girls loved putting up the tree with Mama and Daddy. They noticed little things that changed about the tree as the season progressed. They were very specific about how their stockings were hung and which one each person should have. We don’t have specific stockings at this point.

They have jammies that they call their “Christmas jammies”. They have been waiting for a whole year to wear them and they were so excited to wear them Christmas Eve. They were good to get Mama and Daddy before they peaked in their stockings.

Our Christmas Dinner – we waited for the girls to have a nap first. Dinner was great and left us with a weeks worth of leftovers.

Julia got a diaper bag full of baby things. She was delighted to stop opening gifts and feed her babies for a while.

Emily was VERY pleased with the Cinderella nightgown that Santa brought her. She asked all day if she could put her nightgown on.

Julia received a cash register toy and her reaction was awesome. She would play with it and discover something and get excited. Then she would play more and then discover something new and get excited again. Christmas is so much fun to watch.

Julia got a Rapunzel nightgown from Santa. She was pleased.