By far, “Mary Poppins” is the girls favorite movie right now. Emily asks for it by name and they both get excited when they hear the music. The movie is pretty long, but the amount of the movie that holds their attention is amazing.

Several things from the movie have been big influences on the girls. Emily has added “cheeky” to her vocabulary. I asked her where she heard that word and she informed me that, “Mary Poppins said it”. Emily likes to dance like a penguin and has been known to try to ‘adjust’ her pants so that she looks like Dick Van Dyke when he dances like a penguin. Julia runs to get shoes on so that she can dance properly with the chimney sweeps. Both girls dance during the movie, but mostly with the chimney sweeps and trying to imitate the kicks. Today, Emily’s favorite song was “Spoonful of Sugar”. Julia managed the whole word “movie” tonight. For Julia, that is a big deal.

Julia has been interested in getting in Emily’s booster seat lately. She can climb in all by herself. This particular day she climbed in and asked to play with the puzzle she saw Emily playing with last. She is studding it so seriously. She is growing up quick these days.

Julia made her 18 month check-up visit to the doctor. Our regular pediatrician was out due to an injury, so we saw a different doctor in our group. She was really kind and good with the girls. My favorite thing from the visit was that she involved Emily to make Julia feel comfortable. Basically all the checks that the doctor did, she did first to Emily and then to Julia. This was especially great given that both girls had a cold.

I was pleased to learn that Julia now weighs 20 lbs. At 18 months and now 20 pounds, she can now sit facing forward in the car. I have no complaints about her in the car, but I think she will really enjoy looking at where we are going. This is a 2-1/2 lbs increase since her last checkup three months ago. As far as weight goes, we are at the 3rd percentile – she is one skinny kid. She is now 30-1/4 inches long and her head and chest both measured 17-3/4 inches. Julia was agreeable for the exam and only was offended when she had to receive three shots at the end.

What a fun time little girls can have at an aquarium. We went with our friends Elena and Maeve to check out a preschool program and explore the aquarium together. The girls wore themselves out playing and checking out the exhibits and fish. Emily touched a Horseshoe Crab, saw the teeth on live sharks, found out that there can be catfish longer than she is, and pushed a million buttons and knobs. Emily’s favorite thing to do was to look for Nemo and Dory, which she succeeded at.

Julia hung out a lot in the stroller and her highlight was getting to steal french fries from her mama’s tray. I always tear everything small so she can gum it well, but she wanted to try at a whole fry and kept stealing them. Then she was making the action motions to try to dip them in catsup like mama was. It was really cute and she did just fine with the french fries. Hopefully for her sake she will get more teeth soon and have some help chewing her food.

We spent a beautiful hour out picking strawberries with some friends and their girls. It is nice to be out with people that Emily is familiar with; so that, she is so much more bold. She also wants to be like the other girls so she generally acts better and tries new things to be like them too. I think she had a lot of fun, she didn’t have any inhibitions about picking the red strawberries straight from the plants on the ground. No lesson on how to pick was necessary. I might need to check over the ones we picked to see if we have any overly ripe ones.

Emily picked strawberries, visited with the different mamas, hung out with the girls, fell down and required comfort, played in the dirt, found mud, played with Julia, snuck snacks from Elena’s lunch, and sampled Mommy’s strawberry fried pie. I call that a successful outing! It is hard to take photos, herd kids, pick strawberries, and get great photos. So, I have no photos of Julia because she hung out in our front pack and no great individual photos of Emily. But we had fun and enough photos to help us remember it by.

I wish I had photos, but I was too caught up in the moment – Julia rolled over from her tummy to back today three times like she had been doing it forever. After I put her back on her tummy the fourth time, she decided that she was over it and fussed until I turned her over. I know it isn’t fair, I rewarded her monumental event by putting her back on her tummy. I also rewarded her by praising her and clapping for her. She did smile and laugh a lot during the first three rolls. She is so close to rolling from her back to her tummy. Wouldn’t it be funny if she figured them both the same day?