March 2015

First of all, yes, I know I've gotten pretty lazy with the titles.  I really need to pick up my game.  Be sure to check out the videos at the end!

Other than Emily's birthday, nothing terribly exciting happened in March.  Kara has continued her Tae Kwon Do lessons and will be testing for her yellow belt pretty soon.  Her reading has been improving as well.  We think she has memorized a ton of sight words,but still gets a little frustrated when she has to sound a word out.  She's getting pretty good though!

Emily has learned to count up to 5, consistently, though we've heard her count as high as 11.  One of Emily's favorite things is to race. She'll say, "ready set 1 2 go!"  Potty training is continuing.  Emily has figured out that the potty can be a very powerful tool in delaying bedtime.  Almost every day now, she'll say, "need potty" at some point during the night-time routine.  We want to encourage her to listen her body, so we'll get her down to the potty.  Most of the time she'll do something in the potty but is always very insistent she needs to do more when we try to wrap things up.  Emily has also learned the words "my" and "mine" and applies them to pretty much everything, even Kara's toys.  For the most part Kara is pretty okay with sharing her toys with Emily, but Emily has not learned the concept of sharing....

Near the end of the month, we got a visit from Mom's side of the family: Scot and Cassie (and their babies Amelia and Bryn), Brad and Maggie, and Uncle Randy and Aunt Tracey.  It had been a long time since we'd seen all of them.  Emily thought the babies were awesome.  She helped feed the babies, change a diaper, and pet the babies hair while saying "fuzzy".  Kara, on the other hand, was excited to have people to play with and spent most of the time playing ball with Brad and Maggie.

Kid Qutoes:
(playing a card game with Mommy)
Kara: "I got a 3-4-5."
Mom: "Kara, you're not supposed to tell us what cards you have."
Kara: "Oh, I was just kidding. I don't really have those cards."  She did.

"Oh boy!" Emily's new favorite expression.

"I conjured the toy behind your ear from thin air!" Kara explaining how she did a magic trick.

Link to pictures



Mom made chocolate chip cookies one day. They were a big hit. Here's what Emily had to say about them:


And here are Kara's thoughts:


Here's Kara showing some improvement in her Tae Kwon Do skills:


Emily has been practicing her tee ball skills (notice the hit right at the beginning of the video):

Emily is 2!

It's hard to believe that Emily's been with us for two years already.  It's been a blast, and we've had a lot of fun getting to know our little girl.  Emily has grown into an energetic, intelligent, sweet little girl.  Happy birthday, Emily!

Emily talks quite a bit these days, but we suspect she'd talk more if Kara didn't talk so much.  She's also proven to be a very active girl, always trying to keep up with big sister Kara.  She's become quite a good jumper, leaping off things with both feet.  Emily measured in at 34.25" in height (61st percentile) and 25 lb, 6 oz in weight (33rd percentile).

We did a family birthday for Emily this year.  We Skyped with Mimi, Papa, GiGi, and Uncle Trey in the morning.  In the afternoon, Grandma, Grandpa, and Aunt Amy came over for some cake and ice cream.  Emily enjoyed having everyone sing her happy birthday, even though Kara blew out the candles on her cake (see the video below).  Special thanks to Aunt Amy for some great pictures!

Link to pictures