L's 4th Birthday

 

L turned 4 on July 7th!  She's getting so big!

I went into labor with her on my birthday on the 5th, and she was born 2 days later.  My first VBAC baby, my lover of all things creepy crawly, my quiet child.  She generous, kind, easy going, and sweet, with a love for jumping off anything high, digging in the dirt, bugs, critters, and swimming.  Happy Birthday, L!

We went camping for her birthday and the 4th of July weekend.  She got to swim in the hotsprings and the cold pool, which is quite a treat since we don't have a pool near our house.  We also hiked to a waterfall where she swam.  She's not *quite* swimming yet, but getting close to swimming under water, and she likes to jump off the side.  

L's Third Birthday

I can't believe I'm just now getting around to posting this, but I had a lot of pictures to go through. L's birthday was on July 7 and she had two birthday parties. One was a pool party a week early while visiting my sister and the other party was at the lake with my parents on the 4th of July.
It's pretty tough to get a reaction out of her. Her grandparent's hid her bike behind a tree and when she walked back there to see her present she said "Oh" and then rode it a little, but mostly let her sister ride it. But I know she liked it, because she wanted to ride it every day after that until we had to leave it at my sister's house. I'm sure she'll be glad when we can get it back!
She had a blast at the pool- she loves swimming!

Swimming

We put our YMCA membership on hold for 3 months and just started it up again. E had been pretty close to teaching herself to swim before we stopped going, so I wondered if she would remember everything. She jumped in tonight as if she had never been away from the water! She can swim underwater and doggy paddle short distances over the water. She's also learning to tread water. L LOVES the slide and jumping off the side of the pool. She goes under and when she comes up she says "I went under! Do it AGAIN!"

Swimming

We just got a membership at YMCA and I'm now quite sure that my girls are part fish! They LOVE the water and are completely fearless. E is learning to swim without any prompting from us. She asked me to show her how to do it, so I showed her the basic movements of the breast stroke and whatever the over the water one is called. She's starting to get the hang of swimming underwater just in the 3 times we've been to the pool. She doesn't want any help, in fact she doesn't want us to touch her at all. She'll be in the water up to her chin and bouncing up and down holding her breath every time she goes down and when she pops up she'll say "don't (down again) touch (don't again) me (down again)." But she does want us to watch and play along as she pretends to be all kinds of animals in the water. She also did some underwater flips for the first time today. I'm glad she's having fun, but since she's so fearless I'll feel much better when she can actually swim.

L is pretty much the same way. She walks in the shallow water and just wonders around splashing while we follow her. She walks into deeper and deeper water and I keep my hand in front of her so she can grab it when she's ready, but she just keeps going. She jumps off the edge too. The first few times, I held her hands while she jumped into the water. But the last time, she sat down on her butt and gave me the grumpiest growl. So I put my hands out to offer to catch her and she turned her face away with her nose stuck up in the air. It was hilarious and she was so serious! I tried so hard not to laugh. I finally figured out that she didn't want me to put my hands out. She would only jump in when I put my hands up in the air and backed away. I don't know how she holds her breath. She keeps her mouth wide open and she comes up with this shocked, upset look on her face, but she never cries. She just wipes the water off and wants to do it again! She also sat down in shallow water and laid her head back. I thought she wanted to float, but no she just wanted to lay back under the water.

Busy, busy

Wow, we've been so busy I've hardly posted lately! Then we were sick last week- yuck!

Let's see... we went to the Janzten beach carousel with some friends. It's beautiful and E had so much fun!

Our garden is producing massive amounts of tomatoes and cucumber. I love both of those, but there's only so many salads and sandwiches a person can eat!

We went to Powell's- the world's largest book store. I only got to browse the kid's section, since D's brother was visiting and I let them do their thing while I watched the kids. When my mom visits, I want to go back and check out the rest.

E found a book there called ALIVE and it's all about the body. I'm hoping I can find it for her at the library. She can't get enough of body books right now. We got a bunch at the library, but they aren't nearly as good as ALIVE. We've been talking about bone marrow, ventricles, cells, neurons, platelets, tibia, radius, ulna, skull, dentricles, carpels, intestines..... I explain some things in simpler language, but a lot of times she just wants me to read the books.

We've discovered some new favorite movies. E really likes Balto since it's about dogs (another current favorite thing), and we just discovered Harold and the Purple crayon. It's cute! She's also enjoying the Signing Time movies. They are sign language movies that show the signs for different themes. And I have the Wonder Pets song permanently imprinted on my brain- "It's Seweus!" lol

She got to see some new dogs too. I cleaned a house for a friend who has two dogs and E came with me. She's always pretending to be a dog complete with howling like a wolf. She calls all her food dogfood, and I'm just waiting for some stranger to think I'm a horrible mother when she asks for her "dogfood" in public. :)


This morning E discovered that one of her coloring books has letters in it that are the kind where the lines are broken up so kids can write over them to learn how to make them. She thought the was really cool and wrote E, H, I over and over. And she got to go swimming today at an apartment building managed by the same company that we work for. We've had an open offer to swim there all summer and D and E finally did it today. We'll have to take her back a few times again before it's too late.

L is cranky every morning until she gets a morning nap. I think she needs more sleep in the mornings, but gets woken up by a wet diaper and the rest of us moving around. Then she's too busy playing to go back to sleep, but too sleepy to really enjoy herself. Not sure how I'm going to help her with that.... for now I've just been nursing her a lot all morning long. Maybe I'll start wearing her more- she's happy if she's in the carrier and maybe she'll fall asleep that way. And she's climbing non-stop. On the chairs, the table, IN the kitchen drawers. Pulling stuff out of the drawers and turning off the tv. It's the age of perpetual redirecting... But she's SO CUTE and so much fun! She has two all purpose words "Ow" and "Ah Oh." She walks around all day "Ah oh! Ah oh!"

So, that's all I can think of that's happened in the last few weeks. I have some new projects in the works, but nothing I'm ready to share yet. Still, they have been taking up time. And I've been doing more meditating and mindfulness practices, which I'm going to do a different post about.