Happy Birthday Julia!

By far our favorite thing to do today was to sing Happy Birthday to you. Your face brightened and glowed with joy each time. You really understood that you were special and that we were singing about you. My other favorite thing from the day was our 1:30 am cuddle that we shared, just because we could.

For Julia’s 2nd birthday we celebrated with a playdate at the pumpkin patch. Every year we go to the pumpkin patch for a playdate and it made for a fun place to celebrate a party too. All the kids dressed as pumpking fairies while we looked for pumpkins, fed sheep (and a llama), walked through a corn maze, and ate snacks and lunch. Julia had a blast! Her grin was huge and adorable as she knew we were singing Happy Birthday to her. The weather was warm and sunny and added a lot to our fun day.

All the little fairies were sweet and seemed to enjoy the day! Thanks fairies for sharing the day with us!

We were able to fit a camping weekend into our busy fall. We spent a beautiful weekend among falling temperatures and leaves. Our days were warm, but evenings cool. This spring we got a new tent and this was our first chance to use it. The old one was a little small for us since we added a fourth member of our family. This one is tall enough for Robby to stand in.

We all finished the weekend with rosy cheeks from the sunshine.

We were joined on the weekend with friends. The little people loved having friends just one campsite away. Our site was next to a playground and sunny field which made for fun play times. Elena enjoyed mothering Julia. Julia also seemed to like the attention from the big girl. The girls enjoyed a hike, throwing rocks in the river, playing at the playground, afternoon naps, getting dirty, and visiting horses. Our girls didn’t eat real well and were not interested in trying different foods. Fire roasted marshmallow were turned down by our girls, but the hot chocolate was a hit with Emily.

Our nights were near freezing, so I spent the night waking up to re-cover or pull the girls back into their sleeping bags. At some point each night both girls ended up in our sleeping bags with us because of the cold. Julia was the funniest, she woke me up, just as the sun was coming up, with the box with her extra pacifier in it. I gave her the pacifier and then she proceeded to move all of her precious sleeping things from her sleeping bag to our bag. When she was done she was slipped into a warm comfy spot to continue her slumber. When I woke up later, her sweet little face was just resting next to mine at complete peace. So sweet. No more camping this fall for us, but hopefully in the spring we can make another trip.

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 had gone to bed with a cough and I wondered if she would be able to go to Thursday school the next morning. Sure enough she was up in the night with a fever. So, this morning, I asked Julia if she wanted to go to school by herself or stay with Mommy. Using her usual method of communicating–head nodding–she choose to go to school alone. The theme of the day was Teddy bears and they were to bring one in with them. Julia selected Minnie Mouse. There was no changing her mind either. Minnie went with her to school. I thought it would be fun to remember her day of independence with a photo of herself with Minnie. She was very brave about going alone up to the point when we went down the hall to her class. I left her in tears to find out later that she quit them quickly.

Emily and I had a fun couple of hours of just hanging out together alone. While it wasn’t the most fun list of activities, we enjoyed just being with each other. Emily visited the doctor to have her cough checked on. She asked to take her doll with her to the doctor’s office, so that she could be like her sister and take a stuffed friend with her. Emily was a big brave girl at the appointment. She had a breathing treatment administered while we were there and I thought she would like to see what she looked like with the fish mask on. She didn’t like the noise of the machine, but didn’t seem to mind the mask. Hopefully with a little rest she will be feeling back to normal very soon.

Emily measured at this appointment 41-1/2 inches tall and 32.8 lbs weight

I love photos of swinging! It is such a fun activity, kids love it, and when the weather is pretty there is nothing better.