Zoo

Last week we went to the zoo with Lindsay and Mason. Laura and Connor were supposed to come with us but Laura finally succumbed to the cold that has terrorized the men in her house so they couldn't make it.
We had a beautiful day...I love having 75 degree weather in January. Mason, Emmie, and Ellie had lots of fun running around in the fresh air and checking out all the animals. I didn't get too many pictures...I was busy chasing after my two wild girls!

We met at the zoo at 1 which is naptime. Fortunately the girls did great while we were at the zoo but they sure did conk out as soon as they hit the carseats!

18 Months!

 

I am 18 months old!

• I weigh 22.8lb (50th percentile) and am 31.25in (35th percentile). At my age Emmie was 26.4lb and 33in, my mommy was 32in and 21lb 10oz and my daddy was 32 1/2in and 21lb 10oz.
• At my 15mo appt the doctor was concerned about my lack of weight gain. I'm such a good patient that I gained THREE POUNDS in 3 months. (By the way, Emmie only gained 1.4lb between 15 and 18mo...I'm definitely going to be able to squish her soon at this rate.)
• I didn't have to get any shots at my appointment today. We're going to try to go see Gran sometime in the next week and so we're holding off on shots until after then. I've decided Gran is my best friend.

• I wear a size 12-18mo or 18-24mo in clothes, a size 5 shoe, and a size 5 diaper.
• I sleep 12-13hrs at night and take a 2-3hr nap after lunch. I take a really good nap if we're at home but if we have a super busy day I can manage just fine on a catnap in the car.
• I sleep with my yellow blanket and my baby. I REALLY love my yellow blanket and get upset if I don't have it in my crib.
• I refuse to wear a sleeper at night. Mommy thinks it's because I like to play with my belly button while I'm going to sleep and I can't do that if I have a sleeper on!
• I have 9 teeth. Four on the top, four on the bottom, and a molar on the top right. I have lots of teeth that are sooo close to popping through.
• I say a lot of words, still have my lisp, and am still working on making sentences but most of the time I can get my point across even if people can't understand me.
• I LOVE to be outside. Everytime Mommy opens the door to let Franklin out I try to escape!
• This month I celebrated my second Christmas. I had so much fun!

Santa thinks I'm a fairy princess!



Some of my Christmas presents...a doll from Uncle Ben and a Carolina tailgate chair from Uncle Blake and Aunt Emily.

I really enjoyed getting to hang out with my Uncle Giant on Christmas!

• I am SUPER easygoing. It is very rare that I get upset about anything. There is however one thing that I will pitch a temper tantrum about...SHOES! I get super upset if I have to wear shoes that I don't want to wear! Our getting dressed routine now starts with me picking out a pair of shoes and then Mommy picks out my outfit. My current favorite shoes are my pink cowgirl boots!

The infamous boots!

• I love, love, love my sister and we play together all the time.

• I love to dance!
• I am very sweet and loving and give great hugs.
• I love to play with my playgroup friends.
• I am a bit of a wild child. I'm always into something and I'm a big climber. I recently learned how to climb up on the kitchen chairs and how to climb into Mommy and Daddy's bed.
• Some foods I'm loving right now are salmon, asparagus, strawberries, multigrain cheerios, chicken, eggs, waffles, and hot dogs (among other things).
• This month I turned around in the carseat so I face forward now and I love it (plus my legs aren't squished anymore!).
• I got to play with Elizabeth this month and we had lots of fun!

• We went to Summerville this month and I had a blast hanging out with my family there.
•  I went to Edventure this month with Mommy and GG and Emmie. My favorite things were the wind tube and the slide!

Sweet Sisters

I LOVE how much my girls love each other. I know I say that all the time but I can't even put into words how it makes me feel to watch them play together. Sure, we have days where I spend all day refereeing but honestly the majority of the time they play together really well.
I'm pretty sure they even have a "twin language". You know, you always hear about twins that can comepletely understand what the other one is saying even when noone else does. The other day we were sitting at the dinner table and Ellie was a little fussy and clearly wanted something that we weren't understanding. Finally Emmie looked at me and said "Ellie wants an orange". Now, a few months ago Ellie was really into the little cutie oranges but after a few weeks she started refusing to eat them. I figured Emmie was just projecting (she loves any fruit) but I went ahead and got an orange for Ellie figuring I would give it to Emmie when Ellie didn't want it. Well little miss priss Ellie ended up eating TWO oranges!! After that night I started paying more attention and it doesn't happen every day but a few times a week something along those lines will happen. It's kind of crazy but I love this connection they have!
I love that when Ellie is upset at naptime or bedtime Emmie can almost always get her calmed down. I love how Emmie will read to Ellie and help her put on dress up clothes. Emmie never puts on a necklace without helping Ellie put one on too and if Ellie sees Emmie's shoes in the floor she'll take them to Emmie and try to help Emmie put them on (Ellie has a deep love of shoes and wears them from the time she gets up until she goes to bed and therefore thinks everyone else should wear their shoes all the time as well...but that's a funny post for another day!). I love that Ellie insists on giving Emmie a kiss every night before bed. This is what I hoped and prayed for when I was pregnant with Ellie. I was going through my pictures of this month and I found some great pictures of my sweet girls together!

Pretty Princesses

Ellie's face in this picture cracks me up...I'm sure my brother will come up with a great quote for her!

This is one of my favorite pictures. Ellie LOVES to get in Emmie's bed. One night they both laid down and covered up and so Paul and I told them goodnight and left the room. Well Ellie was out of the bed quick as a flash and suddenly very ready to go get in her own bed! Mousie must have spread the word about what a wild sleeper Emmie is!

Ellie's new thing is to go and sit on Emmie's lap. Emmie doesn't love it usually but I figure it's revenge for all the times Emmie has tried to sit on little Ellie.

I think it's hilarious that they're both playing with their hair in this picture!

Ellie really wanted me to leave her alone so she could eat! Emmie was so cute when I was getting the picnic ready. She got BOTH of their milk cups out and took them outside. One thing I've loved seeing is both of the girls develop an awareness of someone else's needs...things like Emmie getting Ellie's milk as well as her own and Ellie making sure Emmie has her shoes on...and then some days they yell "mine" at each other all day. And I wouldn't trade any of these moments for the world!!

Homework

For the past few months Emmie will randomly sit down at the table after dinner and tell me she needs to do her homework. Well, to a little 3 year olds delight she got her first "homework" yesterday. She's now going to an art class at My Gym and they had homework this week. We had to pick up our homework sheet today because they ran out last night so tonight after dinner we went up to her desk (which was mine when I was little) and did homework. She had the BEST time and was so proud when she got done...now if only I can still convince her in 10 years that homework is fun!
The art class she's doing at My Gym is new (the first week was this week) and I am so excited about it. They played some games involving colors (I'm getting all this info second hand from Emmie so the details are a little hazy) and then made a color wheel. Emmie apparently had lots of fun mixing her colors together to make new ones! The class ranges from 3-8 so Emmie was the youngest but they said she did really well although they did say she was always the last one done coloring in the "spoke" on her wheel because she was so meticulous. She's such a little type A child!
I was so proud of her for hanging in with the older kids in the class and I loved watching how excited she was about doing her homework. She was even willing to listen to me as I explained her homework assignment to her.

(look at these pictures...my ambidextrous child still hasn't figured out if she's right or left handed!)

So proud!

Summerville

Paul's 10yr reunion was this weekend in Summerville so we headed down there Friday night when I got off work.
Saturday we all hung around the house in the morning but that afternoon Emily, Gin-g and I headed to the outlets to shop. I had a Banana Republic gift card from Christmas so I had LOTS of fun picking out some new clothes...plus they were having some really good sales. They had khaki pants on sale for $25 and I got a LBD (little black dress) for over 50% off!. These were both items I had been needing for a while and I was super excited to find them! (Thanks to Gin-g for finding the LBD which I LOVE!) I also got some really cute tops. We hit some other stores too while we were there and I picked up some sweaters at Talbots...I really needed new sweaters. All in all I think I did pretty good for the trip! On the way home we stopped at Belk and Emily and Gin-g found another LBD for me...this one is a little more "fun" than the other one. The BR one is very simple and classic and the Belk one has a little flair. I love them both and am super excited that I can mark that off my list!

Mrs. Baker brought her grandson, Hudson, over. He's almost a year old and so cute!

Emmie loves to rub other children's heads!

That evening we got ready and then headed over to the reunion. It was so much fun to have another girl to get ready for an event with...it made me a little nostalgic for my days living in the sorority house! There weren't many people at the reunion but those of us who were there had a BLAST and everyone else missed out on a great time. After the reunion we went with some of Paul's friends to O'Lacy's and did some karaoke...always lots of fun! It was a very late night but we had fun and Paul enjoyed catching up with his high school classmates.

Some of the reunion attendees. (Those who were left at the end.)

Karaoke

Sunday we slept in (and were very thankful for grandparents who took care of the girls so we could!) and then headed back home after lunch.

Some funny things from the girls:

• Emmie heard about sleepovers somewhere (I think probably Sesame Street because I know there's an episode where Elmo has a sleepover) and she's been talking about wanting to have one for a while so on Friday night when we told her we were going to GG and Papa's she got so excited that she was going to have a sleepover. Saturday morning we asked her if she enjoyed her sleepover and she said yes and that she didn't want to leave her sleepover. So cute!
• Ellie apparently acquired a tapeworm while we were down there. The child acted like she was STARVING  the whole time! At one point we were standing in the kitchen and she had already been saying "eat, eat" and then she went and sat in her seat and finally she picked up her plate and walked over to Gin-g and said "eat". Hilarious. Poor starving baby! Also, we're all pretty sure that her tapeworm likes milk. The child went ballistic over her milk. She would squeal and do a happy dance everytime you gave it to her!! She enjoys milk but never acts like that! At one point we made Blake taste it to make sure it was really plain milk!

BFF

Abby, Ben, and baby Elizabeth went to Florida for Christmas so they stopped in Columbia for a quick visit on their way. We picked up Wild Wings and just spent an evening at our house hanging out. It was so much fun watching the girls interact. They had a BLAST. My girls just love Elizabeth and I hope that even though they live hours away from each other they will be great friends as they grow up!

This was our attempt to get a picture of 3 toddlers.haha! Ellie DID NOT want her picture taken. Fortunately the other two were being pretty cooperative.

**On a side note: Yesterday Emmie was cutting a magazine up with her scissors. Today at breakfast I went around the table to her chair to hand her something and found a pile of hair in the floor. EEK! Did I mention that she was getting her 3yr old pictures taken today...double eek! I asked her what that was on the floor and she said "my hair". I knew she hadn't wacked it off from anywhere super obvious since I hadn't noticed a big chunk of hair missing last night. I finally asked her where the hair came from...it was from her bangs...she'd given them a trim. At least that part of her hair was going up in a rubberband anyway!

Edventure

Monday I was on call so Gin-g and I took the girls to Edventure. They had a BALL...and they got to see the ball drop! We didn't know ahead of time but Edventure does a ball drop at noon on New Year's Eve. I actually thought we'd slip out before it started since it was lunch time but Emmie had heard some of the other kids talking about it and so she wanted to stay so we did. The girls loved it!
The traveling exhibit right now is Snowville which was pretty neat but the best part for both girls was the slide. Ellie loves a slide and I convinced Emmie to go down the intertube slide. I really thought she'd back out when it came time to actually do it and I was so proud that she tried it! She was not willing to go a second time though!

They had some new exhibts since the last time we'd been there including a little library exhibit complete with dress up clothes and a puppet show stage!

One of the other new things they have is this tube that you get in and it produces wind up to about 75mph. One of my coworkers was there with her daughter and she offered to let Emmie go in with her and I really thought Emmie would freak out once it started but she LOVED it. Then Ellie caught sight of it and was insistent that she wanted to do it too. I wasn't sure how Ellie would react once it started going so I went in with her and Emmie but I should have saved my hair and stayed out because they did GREAT. Both girls thought it was so much fun and laughed the whole time!

Of course the girls have some exhibts that they ALWAYS love and spend the most time at. Some of their favorites are the vet clinic and the grocery store.

Emmie has never played in the news station exhibit but she did this time (probably because there were some older kids there).