4 years and 2 months!

 Here is our girl Olivia yesterday. She told me that her eyes were too sunny and needed to use my sunglasses. This month has been an adventure in cuteness, I tell you. Here are some of her drawings: 

 Her drawings are almost always of people, especially families like the one on the bottom right. That picture has, as Olivia explained to me, a brother who's a bunny, a little sister, a mommy with long hair, a daddy hiding in the hair, another brother who's got whiskers and a dot. Another popular thing she draws are flowers with their eyes closed. (See picture, bottom left.)

One new thing this month is that her letters have turned from chicken scratch to actual readable letters. Here's her grocery list from the other day:

She's learning early what the necessities in life are: coffee, milk, and ice cream.

We had her four-year-old Well Child visit with Dr. Carol who pronounced her a very healthy and smart girl. When she was getting her shots, I thought that I needed to sing in order to distract her from all of the needles. I started singing "Jingle Bells" a little manically and the nurse asked if I needed to leave the room. Olivia didn't cry or seem upset at all about the shots, it was just me.

In other news, Olivia is enjoying Sammy more as he's able to interact with her. Several times a day she asks if she can hold him. Here's one such moment:

I'm so thrilled that Olivia is constantly changing and growing. She has her moments of frustration, but she seems much more able to verbalize and talk through issues. Last night, I accidentally nearly closed her foot in the car door. This precipitated a long and thorough line of questions by Olivia of Why I had nearly closed her foot in the door, that I hadn't meant to do it, that I was very frightened by the thought of closing her foot in the door and possibly lopping it off, but that she wasn't scared and in fact was quite brave. It was the cutest thing ever.

4+ years is super cool.

6 months!

The little guy is six months old! He just had his checkup so here are his stats:

Height: 71 cm (91%)
Weight: 16lbs 7oz (29.4%)
Head Circumference: 17.32" (67%)

So, he's still on the same trajectory: tall and skinny like his dad.

This month has been all about food and Sammy's love of it. Here he is pondering when he might get some more food:

 I also wanted to get a photo of his hair color which is reddish-auburn:

 And his sweet face that says, I love the heck out of you:

 I love this toothless grin face:

He's been crawling and moving around so much. We've also discovered he very much enjoys gnawing on wooden things; it doesn't matter what the wood is or what it's attached to. I think it makes his gums feel better since his teeth are threatening to come out any day.

We love Sammy!