We made our final trip of the year to Dollywood the week after Christmas. We arrived an hour after they opened for the morning and they were already filling up parking lot F. Wow, it was busy. Luckily for us the lines were for things the kids aren’t ready for. Maybe we would have caught a show, but we didn’t even try. The day was cool, but comfortable. When the evening cool came we had plenty of warm clothes and blankets to bundle up in to stay warm. We did the girls favorite rides and activities: car driving, carousel, pig, duck, bumble bee, playgrounds, and rope course. We got our funnel cake to share too.

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.

The pictures are a little busy, but this is the girls’ new bunk bed. It is their big Christmas gift from their parents. They got it a few days early because it wasn’t going to be possible for us to get it put together and remain a surprise for Christmas. They were thrilled with it.

Emily is sleeping on the top of the bunk bed. She has graduated to a twin bed. We got her the canopy for the top to help her feel comfortable sleeping so high. Blue is her favorite color so she thinks it is perfect. She has been sleeping really well in it. The first night was a long one because of the excitement of the new bed. But every other night she has slept the whole night with no fear or incidents. She had been in the habit of coming out to the couch to sleep part way through the night and that has stopped. Nap time has gone well too.

Julia is sleeping in the floor space below the bed. We opted to keep her on her toddler mattress. The smaller mattress give her extra space to have some storage cubbies and play space. When she grows longer we will get her a bigger mattress, but until then she can play in her own special area. Julia has been thrilled with her new space too. She struggles with the ladder to climb up to the top, but we are going to get some handles to give her some help. Since the new bed has come she has requested to nap in her own bed instead of the pack ‘n play. The girls have successfully taken naps together since then. They are highly motivated to go to sleep so that no one has to move to the pack ‘n play.

We chose this bunk bed because it was lower to the ground making it’s presence in the room less overwhelming. Because the girls are younger it makes the transition easier too. The new bed has allowed the play table to be put in their room which they have really liked. Sometime in the near future they will both get new bedspreads that their Mama is making for them.