good things to say

Abby's teacher, Ms. Dorothea, put her in the car today after preschool.  She had such nice things to say about our Abs!!  She said Abby is doing great at preschool, she is very sweet, she is a wonderful teamplayer, and she's very bright.  Yay!!  That'll make a Mama super proud!!

Abby also had plenty of interesting things to say on the way home.  Apparently Brandon is line leader this week, but he wasn't here today so Lauren got to do it.  I asked if she knew where Brandon was and I was rewarded with a good five minutes of "or maayybe's."  A couple noteworthy ones:

Or maybe his belly had a tummyache [my personal favorite]
Or maybe he had to go to the doctor or to the dentist
Or maybe he went to the grocery store
Or maybe, or maybe, or maybe. 

In other words, she didn't have any idea why Brandon wasn't there :)

Gotta run, just a quick post while all this was fresh.  According to Abby: "my belly is telling me it's hungry", so lunchtime it is.

here I am, I love you

Chloe has taken to crawling over to someone and then sitting herself up so that she is pretty much on top of them.  Super cute!  She started doing it to Ryan awhile ago when he'd get home from school.  If she was awake [she's normally napping], she'd slither right over to him and then sit up.  It was as if she was trying to get in his lap.  Both the girls really miss Ryan when he's gone [who am I kidding, I miss him too!!]. 

 

interruption:

"I miss Brother when he's at school.  When's it time to go pick Brother up?  Let's go pick Brother up."

Abby is in my lap while I'm writing this.  She can't read.  I'm not talking out loud as I type.  She just announced exactly what I was writing when she had no way possible to know what I was writing.  Point proven, we miss Ryan.

 

Back to my story:

She continues to crawl to her sibs and here's the girls today:

 

 

Chloe crawled right on over there, put herself in a sitting position, and wiggled around to get just right.  In Abby's words: "Our backs are leaning on each other. That was funny."  Too bad it's a blurry camera phone picture.  But you still get the idea.  Look at the joyous smiles on both my girls.  Love, love, love my babies!! 

squeeky clean

Yesterday afternoon we washed the cars.  Abby wore her bathing suit and had a great time.  She was so cute helping wash the car with lots of soap and sponges.  But the best was when she was scrubbing the front grills and told me: "I'm brushing the car's teeth!" 

Chloe the crawler

Chloe started crawling on Wednesday.  Just like that.  She was wearing a dress and I thought maybe it was hard to slither on her belly with the dress for some reason.  But she was still crawling yesterday and now today.  Belly up, hands and knees, a real crawl.  Now if only she would considering this whole standing up and walking thing :)  She is getting closer though I suppose.  She will pull up and balance on her knees; she just doesn't have much interest in using her legs.  But you know what?  That's probably just as well.  I am sure when there are three of them running in three different directions I will miss being able to carry Chlo! 

where does she come up with this stuff?! :)

We were sidewalk chalking one afternoon last week.  A small piece of Abby's chalk broke off and she threw it into the grass:  "I throwed that out there so the ants could eat it for their lunch."  Mmm, tasty!!

Abby Chase, Three Year Old

Abby started preschool yesterday.  She goes T, W, Th this year.  Her teachers are Ms. Dorothea and Ms. Terry.  She has a few friends from last year: Lyla, Virgil, and Benjamin.  No Max though, bummer, but we still get to see him a lot around the neighborhood and we may carpool some.  She did great at preschool!  She picked out her red Easter dress to wear and was super excited to have Chloe match her.  Since it was the first day, Chloe and I walked her in to her classroom.  She looked around, gave me a hug, and then asked if she could go play with the dollhouse.  Just like that she was gone!  No tears, no looking back.  Mommy cried a little on the way home :)  Preschool itself wasn't too emotional, I think it was just the culmination of everything.  Having two babies gone and in different places is a little weird.  I loved when they were at preschool together.  They didn't see each other all that much, but it was a wonderful feeling when they would say they saw each other and waved.  And I do know that at least once they took Abby to see Ryan when she was upset about something.  Loved that!  Anyways...

Picking up Abby in afternoon carline was a bit crazy.  The first week with beginner parents is always rough :)  She had lots of fun on her first day.  She played in the gym with balls.  She did a picture of day and night for the first day of Creation.  We had snack duty this first week, so she was excited about that.  She helped me shop and we picked out all her favorites: bananas, cheese, goldfish, and vanilla wafers.  This also meant that she was line leader which has gone straight to her head!  This afternoon when we were going to the playroom, I got fussed at for not following her and I had to go back and walk in again  :) 

Nana offered to take her to school this morning.  When she woke up, I asked Abby if she still wanted to go with Nana.  She said "yes, Nana can take me, but I want you to pick me up Mommy.  That's a good idea." super cute smile with a thumbs up.  She's going to do just fine in preschool.  She'll probably run that school by the time she's in the fours class next year.  Have a great year my Sweet Abs!

bored or brilliant?

I am hoping that the first couple of weeks of kindergarten are more of a review and a chance for the teacher to assess the abilities of the class.  I think Ryan might be bored.  He must finish his worksheets in record time because this is what the backs of them come home looking like: 

He's not a huge fan of naptime, so thanks to Nana's suggestion, last Monday he spent naptime thinking of a story.  When he came home, I helped him write it.  And by that I mean, I literally wrote what he told me to write.  I had nothing to do with the creativity or storyline [alright confession, slight story alteration, he wanted koala bears orignally but I couldn't even begin to draw one.  he then suggested penguins, not that I drew them all that well either].  He came home knowing exactly what his story was.  He even knew how many pages he wanted.  He would only recite the story to me one word at a time; I couldn't have swayed him even if I wanted to!  I did help outline a couple penguins and whatnot, but again only exactly what he told me to do.  And I'm sure you can't tell on here, but the doctor's name is Dr. Melons, it says so on his hat.  And oops, I misspelled penguin, that's all me.  The rest is all him, even the thought bubble [I didn't know he knew what those were]:

 

Helen

The theme for this summer has been rain, rain, rain.  And cool, cool, cool.  Now don't get me wrong, this weather would be great... if it was November!  But c'mon, for real?!  It's mid-August for crying out loud!!  I bet I could count on one hand how many times this summer it hit 90 degrees.  And we only slip 'n slided maybe four times.  This past weekend, AUG 17th and 18th, not Nov, not March, but August the high was 70.  That set a record low high.  We turned the air off on Friday and opened the windows and the temperature in the house dropped several degrees.  Fall weather is great, I just wish we could have had summer first!  Alrighty, alrighty, off my soap box now.  maybe.

So on Saturday we had a family adventure day.  We decided on Helen since that's been on my bucket list of sorts for awhile now.  [It's not really a bucket list per say, I just have a list of nearby places I'd love to go or things I'd love to do.  Like the UGA game we went to in April.]  Coleson and I used to love Helen, and we went there a million times pre kids.  And even once when Ryan was little and spent a weekend with my parents.  Believe it or not though, the kids had never been.  We ate a picnic lunch and then went to Anna Ruby Falls.  Now keep in mind three or four weeks ago I picked a hike for us.  It was a long drive, a long hike, and we got rained on.  Pouring rain.  Fortunately we were able to squish into a rock wall and really didn't get that wet.  But we did have to turn around before we got to the waterfall.  It really was a great adventure though; I had a wonderful time.  Ryan however has asked to not go hiking in the rain again.  Thus I was a little afraid of how announcing another hike would go over.  Anna Ruby Falls seemed safe enough.  And fortunately the kids seemed to have forgotten about hiking in the rain and were very excited.  It's a super short trail and therefore we actually made it to the waterfall this time.  The kids all did great and loved it.  They did seem a little confused by the paved sidewalk, and Ryan asked to keep going when we got to the waterfall so quickly.  I love that my kids know what real hiking is!  The waterfall was beautiful and it was a fun little hike.

After our hike, we headed into Helen.  The car said 64 degrees.  It was chilly!  I hiked in jeans and a sweatshirt, in addition to the bodyheat of wearing Chloe.  And it was drizzling a little.  But we still had fun wandering, and hey, Ryan enjoyed wearing his raincoat.  He also loved watching the handful of crazies that were tubing the river.  You couldn't have paid me money to get in that water when it was 64 and drizzling.  We stopped for fudge and ants on a stick pretzels.  Unfortunately the rain was getting heavier, so we snapped a quick picture of the kids for proof of our visit, and then we ran to the car.  We had thought about staying through dinner, but just didn't have it in us to hang around in the rain.  So we drove a ways before dining at El Rio in downtown Dawsonville.  Love that place!  I used to eat there when I worked at the bank, and that's where the fajita nachos that we all know and love originated.  Always a fun stop if we can work it in; it's not exactly convenient these days. 

While the weather wasn't ideal, it was still a great day.  With our busy schedules and kindergarten, we love our Saturdays!  I really don't care what we do, as long as we do it together [cheesy! but true!].  The crazier the day, the better the memories :) 

random Girls stuff

*Chloe ate a scrambled egg for breakfast this morning!  I am so excited!  Third time's the charm in regards to eggs; R&A still won't touch them.  Way to go Chloe!

*Abby misses Ryan like crazy when he's at school.  When she sees the bus coming over the hill in the afternoon, she goes crazy.  She'll jump up and down while shouting, "Brother! Brother!"  Quite possibly the sweetest thing ever.

*Chloe drinks her milk out of a sippy cup now.  Not her first choice of course, but she's getting the hang of it.  This morning she sat in my lap, held the cup all by herself, and drank it all at one time, awesome!!  We're still working up to that consistently, I tend to have to help and nudge her along, but she's getting much better. 

*Abby met her teachers yesterday, Ms. Dorothea and Ms. Terry.  She did great at open house and was really excited about it.  She knew two kids already, Virgil and Lyla.  Hopefully she'll be as excited on Tuesday morning as she is now!  She'll be in the three-day threes class- Tues, Wed, Thurs from nine to noon.

one year stats

Chloe had her one year checkup today with Dr. Bowman.  We love Dr. Bowman :)  Abby was a great helper and all about telling Chloe "it's okay, it's okay."  Chloe did pretty good at her appt, she only cried for the vaccinations - three shots.  She didn't even get upset about the finger prick for her iron levels [which were normal]. 

*She has six teeth.  Dr. Bowman said most likely the next teeth to come in will be baby molars in the back.  None are erupting yet, but she says the top left feels like it'll be first. 

*She's 17lbs, 6oz.  Woohoo!  I was hoping for 17, and she surpassed my goal!  She had dipped off the bottom of the weight chart at her 9month appt, but she's back up there now.  Of course she's right at the very bottom line, but at least she's on there again.  Dr. Bowman was pleased too, no concerns.

*I didn't end up with a copy of her growth charts, I honestly don't think I was given them, I wonder if Dr. Bowman put them in her stack instead of mine.  I only ended up leaving with the financial stuff, boring!  I think she was 29.25inches.  They have been known to mail me paperwork in the past, maybe they will this time. 

*Her head I think was 17.75.  Fairly large on the growth chart of course.  I do know her head was big, her height was right at average, and her weight was still Itty-Bitty.

I know I'm not supposed to compare my kids.  But in objective issues such as height and weight, it seems harmless enough to me, and it's interesting :)  So here's the comparision between the three amigos at one year: