(4 yrs) Emily loves to dance around the room, especially when she is supposed to be listening or doing something else. She just zones out and off she goes. I love that she enjoys it so much that she puts that much effort into it. I have asked her where she learned different dances and she tells me that one of her Thursday School teachers teaches her. Every day she spends some time twirling around or making leaps and bounds somewhere.

Another game Emily is interested in right now is to play pretend “Goldilocks”. She will get out three bowls, three chairs, and make up three beds. Then she will assign play acting roles for other family members to act out the story with her. Emily likes to play different roles in this story, so you are never sure who you will get to be. If someone tries to be adventurous and like a different porridge or sleep in the wrong bed she will correct you, although she will not make you “do it right”. After playing once or twice, she is satisfied and willing to continue to play by herself eating porridge, sitting in chairs, and laying in beds.

Notice that Julia’s mouth is imitating how she is imagining the Mama eating the food off the spoon. I love it!

(27 months) The girls are always finding new things to play and making new favorite games. Julia has been exploring the dollhouse in the last week in new ways. At Christmas when we got the dollhouse she was more interested in dropping pieces down the stairwell or inspecting each piece.

This last week she has become very interested in playing with the dolls and the furniture. One game she plays is to go to her play kitchen and “fix” a bowl of food and then take it to the dollhouse. She takes turns feeding the different dolls with a big spoon. It was hilarious!

Our dollhouse family has grandparents, parents, a son, a daughter, a baby, and two “best friend” dolls. When Julia plays with the family members she sings a little happy song and occasionally interrupts the song with a doll making a comment to another doll like “night-night”. Once the interruption is gone the song resumes immediately. Her favorite dolls to play with are the kids. Emily rarely plays with the baby, but Julia does all of the time. Occasionally other toys work their way into the dollhouse. One day I noticed that a small Elmo doll was riding the rocking horse and playing in the pack-n-play with the baby.

Aunt Rachelle got to have a short visit with baby Elizabeth (her parents and grandparents too). It was a nice visit and wonderful to meet little Elizabeth. We enjoyed the simple pleasures of hugs, baths, talking baby-talk, a walk around the mall, and lots of photos. I told Elizabeth all about her cousins in Tenenssee. Hopefully, the girls will get to meet her soon.

Our Valentine’s Day was a beautiful, sunny and breezy day. It was still cool enough that you wanted to be in the sun, but warm enough you wanted to be outside! For all the snow and cold we had this winter, an early spring was really wonderful to enjoy. We spent the morning at the Knoxville Botanical Garden in our special “Secret Garden”. The kids drank up the sun and loved moving around.

Emily was excited to go for her 4-year checkup. I’m not quite sure why, but she was. She was great about her exam. She enjoyed the eye chart and took a couple of takes at the hearing test. She was just having trouble with reacting, not hearing. Emily is now old enough to get to wear a gown for her exam. She loved it and danced around in it like it was a beautiful dress. Funny stuff!

Her weight was 35 lbs. and height was 41-1/2 inches. Like usual her percentages are low for weight, but high for height. I was pleased that she averaged out to the 50 percentile. This Mama can handle average.

No shots, but we were told that she had a year and half to work the 4 required shots for beginning school. I thought a shot-free day was in order and we put them off until next fall when we would be getting our flu shot anyway. We will not discuss my sadness at just being a year and half away from starting school.

Both girls were thrilled for some stickers at the end. Given that Emily can stay well, we will not go back for a visit until her 5th birthday.

Little Julia has been struggling these last couple of days. The inner Julia is trying to come out and she hasn’t figured out how to do that.

Yesterday, we had a lot of crying over everything. The details do not matter, but she cried if you said “Yes” or “No” to the same request. After a while and a little Mommy comfort, it seemed to pass and she was ok. Today, we had a rash of misunderstandings. Julia would hear something and interpret it. Then she was devistated when she realized that it wasn’t happening. For instance, Emily was playing pretend shower and Julia thought she was going to take a bath. She was in hysterics when she did not get a bath.

I guess the hardest part of watching Julia figure all of this out is watching her not be able to communicate what she is thinking. I wonder what she is going to discover as she blossoms through this next stage.