Patty Cake!

Julia has just started trying to do Patty Cake and it is so cute!

Class Project

I love the projects that Natalie brings home from school. Below is her current project, an igloo. Of course she just wanted to know if she could eat it.

Mohawk Baby

Julia has been growing more hair, but it seems to be growing only down the middle. Sometimes she looks like she is sporting a little mohawk. So, to play it up after her bath the other night, I made it stand straight up. The really funny apart about it is every time we tried to get a photo we realized that there was something in the background that made it hard to see!

Another Year!

Last Friday I celebrated my birthday. Another year older. I remember being so excited for my birthday when I was little and now, ugg. The only thing that made it great, was my family.

Natalie and I after she helped me blow out my candles.


Natalie helping me blow out my candles.

The wonderful cake Natalie and Jeff made for me that included an entire jar of sprinkles. Yum. Red velvet with cheese cake frosting and sprinkles!

Julia just hanging out.

Me and my girls on my birthday. Natalie is holding onto the necklace, earring set and bracelet she picked out for my birthday. Jeff took her Friday night and this is what she got. I love it. It was too funny because she kept taunting me with the wrapped gift on Thursday night telling me I couldn't open it. She is such a stinker. I also scored some new PJ's and some wine. Overall, it was a great birthday and not a bad way to celebrate another year.


Natalie singing happy birthday to me on Thursday when they were baking my cake.

Really?

Ever since Julia got her two bottom teeth I have been religiously checking her top gums every morning for the first glimpse of her top teeth. Nothing to date. Tonight when I am using the sucker on her nose and she is really mad and screaming at me, I notice that she has not two, but four teeth on the bottom...WHAT?!?! That isn't the order they are supposed to come in. (See chart below from my parenting book.) These teeth are supposed to be fourth. Ugg....now what am I going to write in her baby book and how did I miss two teeth?

Snow Days!

Natalie was so excited when she heard that is was going to snow. When she got up and saw the snow she immediately wanted to go out. Because I couldn't tell her sweet face no, I let her go out alone while Julia and I watched from the warm house. Here she is all bundled up ready to go out. I find it funny, that while a little small, the 18 month snow suit still fits her, well kind of. She loves her princess boots and was very excited to get to wear them.

Here she is, her first real go in the snow. She loved it!

After we got Julia down for her morning nap, I bundled Natalie back up and we went out again. I told her to take a bite of the snow and she did, she loved it and I then had to tell her to stop eating it. It was too funny.

We tried to make a snowman because she is fascinated with Frosty, but the snow was like powder and wouldn't stick. What it was great for was throwing it in the air and pretending like it was snowing.



After playing in the front yard for a little while, I knew that Natalie really wanted to get her sled out, so we did. I took her in our back yard where we have a slope and it made for good sledding as long as Mommy ran as fast as she could half way down the slope and pushed really hard. Natalie thought it was great fun and even tried to push me down the hill. So, after we played for a little over an hour, we decided to head in and get some hot chocolate. She had never had it before and decided that it was a good thing.

For the past week or so I have been smelling this terrible smell in the house. For the life of me I couldn't determine what it was. This morning Jeff grabbed his lunch box and opened it up to find a frozen lunch that had been there way to long! Hurray!! The source of the stink has been identified and dealt with!! So, now that he didn't have a lunch box, we had a problem. Because Jeff is such a great sport and dad, I knew that he would be OK with the following plan. I asked him to ask Natalie to borrow her lunch box. Natalie was so excited to be able to help her Daddy. They packed the lunch together and I snapped this photo of them before he left for work. I think there is something amazing about a man that will sport a Dora lunchbox just to see his daughter smile.

Marty got Natalie these great little seats called Bilibos and she loves to just spin in them. One day she got going way to fast and it pitched her out. It was pretty funny.

So, now with Julia crawling all around she is discovering all kinds of new things. Recently she started sucking on the walls and the refrigerator. It is too funny. Maybe I need to feed her more.

Sweet baby Julia. I am just dying to see what color her eyes will be. Currently they are green/blue. I am wondering if they are going to turn brown like Natalie's did.

This is Julia after her bath tonight. Jeff worked late and Mom came to eat. She was hanging out with Natalie while I was bathing Julia. We came out to see what Mom and Natalie were up to and she snapped this photo.

Shake Your Groove Thing!

Julia had Gerber meat sticks for the first time today and liked them! I also gave her some apples and she liked them too. She really is a good eater. It is funny because everything that I give Julia, Natalie wants. Natalie finished off the meat sticks and the apples. Good thing those things aren't too expensive!! Anyway, here she is enjoying her first bites!



Now that Julia is all over, I not only had to get a play pen for the kitchen, but I had to bring out the baby pen. I wanted to keep Julia in it so she would have a safe place to play and would have some space from Natalie. Turns out I can't keep Natalie out of the pen. Funny, Natalie can't get out of the pen by herself, so it has turned out to be a great place to keep both girls!

Natalie loves to help in the kitchen and I just couldn't resist this shot of her tonight helping me make soup. I can get her to wear pants to school, I just can't get her to wear them around the house!!


As the title of this post suggests, someone has learned to dance and that someone is Julia. She is just shaking her head now, but it is super cute.



Julia has been crawling for a couple of weeks now and today we noticed that she was crawling on her feet. I wonder if it is because we have a lot of hard wood floors and she has found that is the only way for her to get some traction? It is funny to see.

Natalie's Speech

Jeff and I have known that Natalie is hard to understand when she talks. I thought it might be good to have her speech evaluated, so in November I took her to a free screening within our school district. They agreed that she needed further evaluation. I took her to see a private speech therapist before the holidays and we just finished up her evaluation. We received the report last night. Jeff and I were both shocked by the results.

In summary it said that both her speech development and her syntactical skills where below the 1st percentile. It also said that she exhibits a severe phonological disorder with associated grammatical delays.

Jeff and I are both letting this report sink in and are planning what to do next. The therapist said that it will be a long road. We do know that with the support of family and friends, we will charge on!

My Godmother and Me

On Monday Kendra came over to exchange gifts with Julia. We had such a great time hanging out with her and Immanuel. We are so blessed to have them in our lives.

Here is Natalie opening up Julia's present. She is such a big help. All of the kids loved the gift that Kendra got!


Kendra and Julia.

Christmas with the Kids!

We tried to get the kids together before Christmas and Julia started running a fever, so we had to meet after Christmas. We met for lunch at Emily's house and exchanged gifts. It was a great time and it is always so much fun to get the kids together. I can't beleive that last Christmas there were only three kids and now there are six! Ethan, is one lucky man with all these girls!


Emily, Chloe, Abbie, Ethan, Natalie and Julia


Julia was fascinated with Chloe. She wanted to play with her so bad!

Abbie with her new camera.

Natalie with her new jacket from Emily and Chloe. She did have tights on, but informed me that they were itchy.

Santa!

I just realized that I didn't post the photos of Santa and the girls. Julia was fine with Santa as long as she could see me and didn't look at him. It was pretty funny. Natalie wanted to be sure that she wasn't on the naughty list and wanted to tell him that she wanted a choo-choo train and cheeseburger for Christmas.