two things of note

I've been wanting to mention these for awhile now....

Chloe can get both shoes and her right sock off if she so desires [which is anytime we are in the car!].  She can't get her left sock off though.

Chloe loves raisins, anytime, anyplace!  And when you're as picky as she is, this is pretty impressive. 

Thing One & Thing Two at four

At their four year checkups:
Abby was 36lbs 3ozs and 39inches tall
Ryan was 37lbs and 40.5inches tall. 
Pretty similar!

Abby's stats

I don't have time for a nice, long, emotional, sweet blog post about Abby's 4th birthday right now.  But I am really, really tired of this huge stack of paperwork from her checkup that's been sitting on my kitchen counter for over a week.  So here are her stats so I can file away all the papers :)

She's 39inches, 36lbs 3oz.  Both are right smack in the middle of the charts, perfectly average. 

Phew, check that off my list, hehe!  I'll come back and compare to Ryan's 4yr because its interesting to me.  And hopefully I'll write something fun about her birthday and the party and all the wonderful things we've done the last couple of weeks.  But until then, off to dinner and baseball!  April is always soo crazy busy!  but lots of fun!  I love you Abby Girl!!

Happy Belated Birthday

Ryan was making paper airplanes today after school.  He came over to me at the kitchen table and handed me a simple little paper heart and said "Happy belated Birthday!"  What a great present!!!  I absolutely love it when he does thoughtful things like this without any prompting. 

 

Easter

Ryan pretty much gets Easter this year, at least the UpStreet version.  He'll tell you that Jesus died to be our Savior.  Abby, on the other hand, has some super cute, random thoughts about Easter.  She told us last week that Jesus "undied" on Easter.  True enough :)  Today she asked if Jesus lived on Earth and I told her he did 2,000 years ago.  When I asked her about Easter, she told me that "on Easter Jesus started growing again."  Gotta love my Abby Girl!

Abby!!!!

Happy 4th Birthday Abby Caroline!!!
We love you sooo, sooo very much!!!

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!