Chloe's words

Walking, check, on to talking next.  Chloe mostly just points, grunts, and nods.  But she does have a few words.  And hey, Dr. Bowman counts sign language as words, so she's not a bit concerned, and I'm not worried either.  I am actually pretty convinced one day she's just going to start talking complete sentences.  It'll be scary and rock our world.  Guess only time will tell. 

As of March 2014, 19months old:
*"Mama!" yep, I'm her favorite person in the whole world and I'm okay with that :)
*"hi!" Chloe one hundred percent knows hi and is adorable when Daddy comes home from work.  Or when she peeks around a corner.
*"eee" she poses and says eee for cheese when she sees my camera.
*"up" sorta kinda.  I know she can, she just usually doesn't.
*yes and no.  Again these are sign language head nods, but hey it counts.  And she absolutely knows her yes from her no.  My current favorite is when I lay her down at night, and I say "sleepy tight" and she nods yes.  It's almost scary how much she can communicate just with her head shakes.
*"Dada" I'm almost positive on this one, but she's not quite consistent.  I swear I even heard her say "hi dada" a couple days ago. 

the white trees

We have a beautiful pear tree in the backyard that blooms pretty white flowers every spring.  For some reason, it's always a little behind most other flowering trees.  Abby and I have been watching the progress of the tree for a week or two now.  She's been really interested, and I've picked her up several times so we can peek at the blooms and see how they are coming along.  And of course, we see lots of white trees around, so we've been talking about how our tree is going to look like that soon. 

On Sunday after church, we stopped by Kohl's.  Abby had been coughing that morning, but while we were in Kohl's she started feeling feverish and eventually she feel asleep in my arms.  I carried her around for a bit, but then we left to sit in the car while the others finished up.  We're sitting in the passenger seat, she's asleep on me, I'm all but asleep, when she sits up a little and opens her eyes.  There is a little island with a white pear tree right next to us.  In a totally normal, not sick or sleepy at all voice, she says something along the lines of: "look at that pretty white tree, that's what our tree is going to look like."  Then she closes her eyes and is back asleep.  So silly and so sweet!

We had not looked at our tree on Saturday; we drove to Maxim's birthday party [happy happy day to Maxim!] and back, so we were gone 12hours.  When we got home from Kohl's, Abby settled in on the couch and I opened the curtains on the back door.  Our tree was in full bloom!  I asked Abby if I could pick her up and show her something special to which of course she agreed.  We finally have white flowers on our tree!  Yay! 

eighteen on nineteen, two weeks ago

Wow, umm, so happy 18month to Chloe?!?  Chloe's eighteen month checkup was scheduled for a long while back, but it got snowed out.  We weren't able to get another appointment until her nineteen month birthday.  Which apparently was already two weeks ago!  Time flies!  Her paperwork has been sitting out as a reminder for me to type up this post since then, oops. 

So alas, happy eighteen month birthday to Chloe! 

 

 

Alright, so thinking back to what Chloe was up to at 18months seems a little too challenging, so I am just going to post about what Chloe's up to now.  At 19plus months old...

 



Chloe finally took up walking!!  About three weeks ago she finally decided it was time.  We've known she was able to walk for a long time, but she had to decide it.  And that's really what happened.  She was ready and she stood up and started walking.  She was so cute with her arms up balancing.  She's gotten better and can walk with her arms down for the most part now.  And she can even walk with her tasty left thumb in her mouth.  Hopefully the thumb is a little cleaner now though that she's not rubbing it on the ground.  I love having her walk!  It's adorable and fun and I really do think its easier.  And hey, I've been waiting nineteen months for crying out loud :)

Chlo-Chlo started her Music Class last Thursday, so she's been twice now.  We are in class with Ms. Anna, just like Abs did three times.  It's even the same CD that Abby and I did one time, so we already know the music.  Last week Chloe sort of took it all in.  Today she got into it a little more.  She still prefers to suck on the bells and eggs instead of shaking them.  But she did walk and dance and participate more.  So much fun! 

She doesn't say much of anything at all.  "Mama" is about the only word I am confident that she knows on a consistent basis.  But oh boy does she know what she wants!  She points and grunts and shakes her head yes & no.  She really, truly, 100% understands everything.  It's borderline scary sometimes! 

Speaking of understanding everything...
*A few days ago, Chloe and Abby were eating some goldfish out of a plastic bag.  Chloe ate the last one, picked up the bag, and walked it over to the trash.  She can't open the childproof cabinet door, but she can crack it open a couple inches and stick her hand in. 
*I shaved my legs on Tuesday.  It had been a looong time!  I collected all my stuff, including a brand new razor that I sat on the counter.  I did a few things, picked up the shaving cream, and walked to the tub.  I started to sit down on the edge of the tub and Chloe went nuts.  She was pointing at the counter and grunting.  Yep, I had forgotten the razor.  How did she even know what it was or that I needed it?!  It had been weeks since I'd shaved and several minutes since I got the razor out of a cabinet in the hallway. 

I love you my sweet Chloe!!

in case you were wondering

I went back and looked for pictures of the shamrock shirt.  Over the four years of St. Patrick's Day celebrations with girlies, I found three pictures with the shirt.  I don't know what Abs wore in 2012; there are no St. Patrick's Day pictures from that year.  I don't think it was the shamrock shirt though, I am thinking it was a green and navy floral dress.  So three out of four ain't bad.  I think I got my couple dollars worth out of that little dress/shirt! 

sneaky spinach

In honor of St. Patrick's Day [and thanks to Christa's love of pinterest], we ate a green dinner!  Pureed veggies are already green, but then I supplemented with lots more green.  I stuck a bag of raw spinach in the blender to make our own food coloring.  I added just a little water which wasn't enough, so I added just a little more and it was wayy too much.  Our green coloring was much too soupy.  I added it to mac & cheese and that worked really pretty well.  And tasted exactly the same.  I also added some spinch to rice krispie treats.  They also tasted the same; however since the spinach had gotten too runny, the rice krispies had a wet, squishy texture to them which wasn't overly appealing.  It was a fun dinner I suppose, although the kids weren't nearly as excited as I'd hoped.  Kids and change and colored food don't mix well.  Too bad. 

Ryan was all about dressing up in green this year.  As the kids get older, they get more and more excited about these little holidays.  He looked super cool in his new green no-pinching tshirt.  And Chloe-Chlo wore the same shamrock outfit that the girls have worn for years :)  It starts as a great dress and then becomes a great shirt.  Mommy's pretty cool like that.  I should look back and see how many times its actually been worn by one of them. 

So, happy St. Patrick's day!

happy heart

After church today, we drove down to Kennesaw to meet Mommy's high school buddy, Ms. Valerie, and her family for pizza and visiting.  It was great to see them!!  We all love Baby Milo, especially Abby :) 

We got down there even earlier than I thought we would and since it was pouring rain, we didn't want to get out or stop.  So we kept driving around.  It was a great drive though!  Chloe fell asleep, always a good thing.  And then we realized that Ryan was reading out loud from his big ole' Berenstain Bears collection of books to Abby.  Happy Mama here!  Ryan is really catching on to the whole reading thing; I love it!

shark tooth

Ryan lost his first two teeth!  With a little help from the dentist :)

A few weeks ago, Coleson was brushing Ryan's teeth and called me to the bathroom.  Ryan had a new tooth erupting on the bottom of his mouth, behind his baby teeth!  It was pretty far back, making its own row, not even wiggling the baby tooth.  So of course we talked to the dentist about it last week at his checkup [which went great, no cavities, everything looks good].  Dr. Miles says its not all that uncommon and called it a shark tooth.  After an x-ray, he recommended that we wiggle the baby teeth out of the way.  If we wait too long, the adult tooth will come in fully and set itself permanently in that wrong spot.  However, if the baby teeth are out of the way, his tongue can push the new tooth into place, hopefully avoiding future corrections/ braces. 

So on Wednesday, we went back to the dentist and Dr. Drew pulled the two front, bottom teeth.  Ryan did awesome!!  They gave him some happy, laughing gas and then numbed his mouth a little.  He did great, didn't even cry or anything.  Dr. Drew said he had "monster roots" and that pulling the teeth was the right thing to do, they weren't going anywhere on their own.  So now he has an adorable, toothless smile [well, sorta toothless, you can definitely see that adult tooth set off to the back :)].  He did great with the recovery.  I gave him one dose of Tylenol when we got home, but that was it.  I kept asking if he was okay, if anything hurt, but he was fine.  The doctor had said we'd need to alternate Tylenol and Motrin all day, but apparently not.  I made him some orange jell-o salad and he also had applesauce, but he got back to normal eating pretty quickly.

The tooth fairy came that night and left Ryan two dollars and a cool note.  She also left the teeth so he could show them off and put them in a baby book if we so choose :) 

let it go

We've joined the American masses ... Disney has wormed and wiggled its way into my children's thoughts and minds.  Ryan isn't much for movies or songs.  Like his Daddy, he's just not wired that way.  Abby is more like me though, songs stick with us.  We pick out lyrics and after only a handful of times hearing a song, we've got it down.  And so now that Abby's getting older, she's picking up on the trendy songs, movies, and other such stuff.  We have watched the "Let It Go" music video half a dozen times today.  It would be five times that amount if I didn't limit them!  We are now cool, pop-culture people.  We did see Frozen in the theater.  And we've been playing clips of the song during UpStreet at church.  [Abby's not in UpStreet, but she loves hanging out during our rehearsals].  Then, today at gymnastics, Ms. Danielle played Let It Go for their free time at the end of class.  Abby was sooo excited; she told me dancing to the Frozen song was her favorite part :)  So of course she wanted to play it at home too.  And so it begins! 

Fortunately, I do like the movie, and I thought it had a surprisingly good & wholesome plot, especially for a Disney movie.  I am also a sucker for sisters, even more so now that I'm raising a set of sisters.  You better not tell, but I'd love to get Abby the movie for her birthday!