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!

Sammy on the move!

We first noticed Sammy doing a sort of Navy Seal crawling thing last week, but the day before yesterday I caught it on film. He's highly motivated to capture the most potentially dangerous toys, especially balloons.

Four years and one month!

This is Olivia. She's four years old. She's having a little nap inside the tent Chris and I made for her birthday. She looks so sweet and yet full of ideas, dreams, deep thoughts, people to be and places to be. Her absolute favorite thing to do these days is to play, but more specifically to create a situation and assign roles ("I'm an evil princess, you be a dragon.") and then use props, sing songs, and make up dialog for all of the players. It's pretty funny and never really goes more than one scene before characters are changed and sets are replaced. Chris is much better an playing in these one-acts than I am. I'm not much of a thespian. I can never think of good dialog beyond "You will never live in the castle again, evil princess!"

Other than the dramas, Olivia makes up songs (tunes and lyrics), stories that basically follow pictures in her books, and tons and tons of drawings. In fact, she's so prolific that I've taken to making little books of her drawings and giving them to strangers. (Not really, but I might have to soon.)

In her outside of the home life, she's enjoying her time at Little Lights where she's made friends and admirers. We're thinking ahead to kindergarten and starting to research different schools and programs that she might enjoy. We still have time, but it's good to see what's out there.

Some challenges have been getting ready in the morning and helping to clean up toys and messes during the day. I've found that if I can make it into a game or laugh about it, she is much more receptive. But, I'll admit, most of the time I get all General Patton on her ("Put on your coat now, because I said so!") and shockingly, that approach never works or ends in tears. So, I'm aspiring to make helping a positive thing in the new year.

Four + one month is fortunate.

My favorite picture

This picture kills me for many reasons: first, it's rare to get a smile out of all three of these folks at once. I mean, look at Sammy! What a cutie-pie! And Olivia with the outfit he picked for herself in the dead of winter: purple shorts. And Chris, what an awesome dad.

As 2013 comes into view, this is what I'm grateful for. 

Like mother, like daughter

I love this picture of Olivia and me getting pretty on Thanksgiving. She's doing her eyebrows.

Olivia is Four!

Olivia turned four yesterday! That seems a lot older that three, doesn't it? Maybe it's just me, but "four" seems solidly into little girl territory. Far, far, sadly far away from baby and toddler. She is a beautiful little girl, though. Cheerful and full of light. Her teachers love her, say she is a joy to have in class. She plays with everyone at school. They know her as outgoing and friendly. Alisa and I visited her at school for a little party, and she reverted to her shy self for a bit, a side her teacher says they don't see very often. That doesn't worry me much. The fact that she can be outgoing without the support of her parents I take as a good sign.

Right now Olivia is into wrestling and storytelling and writing "notes" to her friends and family. The notes are mostly little drawings of faces with feet, but she takes time to translate each one verbally, except at bedtime when she slips them under her bedroom door, signaling to us that she is still awake and playing. Olivia still likes to be held and carried. She likes noodles, juice, cheese and crackers. She dislikes bedtime and dinner. No surprises there.

Her favorite word lately is "helpful" - as in "Daddy, will you be helpful to get me some juice?"