My Girls!

I've been meaning to write a post about my girls for a while now, but I have so much in my head I'd love to share about them that it always overwhelmed me. So I put it off. Isn't that silly? I should write it all out now so I can keep updating and capturing these memories/thoughts in writing! So here goes. I'll try to keep it somewhat limited but be warned that I have a lot to gush about :)

Bella
Bella is now 3.5 yrs old and makes me laugh every day. She also can make me extremely frustrated...but honestly, I believe it is because she is too smart for her own good.

Not to brag…but it’s my blog, so I’m going to brag away: About a month ago her preschool did a bi-annual assessment of each of the students. Bella exceeded expectations, of course ;) She not only knew all the colors, letters, shapes, numbers…but could count higher than anyone in the class, identify both capital and lower case letters, tell the teacher what sounds each letter made, read a few small words, tell the teachers WHY each shape was the way it was (squares have 4 sides the same size, rectangles have 2 big and 2 small, etc) and write her name pretty darn well. I am so so proud of her and know that this is because of a lot of one-on-one attention and work from everyone – my mom, my sister-in-law, the teachers at school, etc. She adores rhyming and comes up with the silliest things. She can read a handful of words and knows how to spell words out. The other day we had a bottle of Taco Bell taco sauce on the table and she spelled out “Taco” by herself and already knows “Bell” (because of her name). I never thought I’d be so proud of a kid saying “Hey, this says Ta-ta-c-c-co Bell!”

Bella is also insanely silly. Of course, all toddlers are but Bella’ imagination is just so entertaining. She has a few imaginary friends, but the most prominent is Piglet. Yes, like from Pooh. Which is interesting because she’s not really into watching/reading Pooh stories. But Piglet is always around and “very naughty”. At first, we’d hear about Piglet and her family daily (It’s Piglet’s birthday today! Piglet’s Mommy had a baby brother! Piglet’s Mommy works at Target! Piglet’s family is staying over night with us!). And now I hear how naughty Piglet is – more than once we’ve been called into her room after she’s gone to bed because “Piglet is kicking Roo” and we have to escort Piglet out. Piglet also doesn’t listen and goes on a lot of time outs. The only downside is that she has started using Piglet as an excuse – if she did something wrong she’ll say “but Piglet ….”. We’ve tried to nip that in the butt right away. She has to be reminded that Piglet can still get HER into trouble.

We are working on her being more independent, the one thing that came out of her preschool assessment – putting on coat and shoes by herself, going potty all by herself, getting dressed, etc. She’s getting much better at it and many days wants to do these things by herself, but still has moments where she wants Mommy to do everything. I’m really working on the dressing and potty thing though as that is super helpful for her to do alone with Addy around!

Soon I’ll do an “interview” with Bella (an idea I found on Pinterest)  because every day she seems to learn, say, do, experience something new. I want to do a better job at capturing all this because I think she’ll enjoy reading it someday too!

Adalyn


Oh my sweet, Addy! If Bella is by best friend, Adalyn is my little cutie cuddle bug. I can’t get enough of her. Granted, she is starting to get into the independent/”no” phase (just this weekend she started shaking her head for no and pulling things away she didn’t want you to have) but for the most part she is a happy, giggly, snuggly baby-almost-toddler. She’s starting to talk more and more but mostly communicates what she wants by grunting and pointing. She can get her point across quite well this way. I love it when she actually grabs my hand and moves it to what she wants me to pick up/feel.


The past 2 weeks or so she’s started to get all the animal noises down. So she’s in the adorable phase where she sees a monkey and goes “ah ah ah!” or blows raspberries for an Elephant or tweets like a bird. Words she says includes: Mama, Dada, “Bella/Lala” , kitty, milk, knock, book [she loves the hard ‘k’ words], bye bye, nigh night… and will try to mimic just about anything now.

We’re down to no bottles during the day and the past 5 days she hasn’t had a bottle in the middle of the night. Up until this point she was still waking up between 2-3am and we fed her a bottle to get her back to sleep. She still gets a bottle right before bed which will probably have to be cut out soon – but I just love the snuggle time.

Addy adores books. I remember Bella liking books…but not like this. Addy can sit by herself for quite a while just flipping through books. Jeremy and her often spend a good chunk of the evening reading. Addy also loves dolls and anything that plays music. She loves to dance!

There, now I feel somewhat caught up...even though I could write for days about those two. Now I feel like I can add more 'real time' stories, pictures and memories.