The 3.5 year old E

 I just finished reading my post about E at 3.  Not too much has changed other than she's in love with Strawberry Shortcake these days.  She keeps asking for "Strawberry Shortcake with choking hazards and Strawberry Shortcake without choking hazards" for Christmas.  She's really getting into the commercialism of Christmas this year...she loves looking through catalogs and telling you that she needs everything in them.


We still visit the "hibary" (library) and eat "hogurt" (yogurt)...every once in awhile an "y" sound will make it out but usually it is still the "h".  I'm going to miss her cute speech when she gets those two consonants where they belong.

She's very much into 'boys' and 'girls' right now.  She'll say around the house, "Mom, the girls need to stick together."  Then, she'll follow me everywhere.  She wants a sign for her door that says, "No boys allowed."  She doesn't even want Jut in her room sometimes.  Right now, Mom is the be-all, end-all for her.  She wants Mom to do everything for her.  Dad is feeling a bit like chopped liver.  She told me yesterday, "Mom, I like you because you have soft hair and you talk nice."  She told Jut he didn't like her today because he "didn't have girl parts".  Crazy girl.  She also likes to count up the number of boys and girls in a room.  Gender is very notable for her right now.

She's becoming more independent all the time.  She made friends with one of our college-aged girls at camp this summer.  She fell in love with "Hindsey" (or Lindsey).  She talks about her all the time.  She loves seeing her at church and will run up to her and give her a hug.  It is sweet. 

At story time at the library, she's one of the leaders when playtime rolls around.  She likes to tell the other kids what they are playing and how they will play it.  Sometimes they listen and sometimes not but it doesn't seem to bother E either way.  She'll keep playing regardless.  One little guy named Jackson follows her around everywhere.  He thinks she rules the place.  It is kind of funny.

She likes to do things by herself and have a 'day off'.  She's looking forward to Christmas and having her 'day off' with G'ma and G'pa.  She baked cookies over Thanksgiving and was quite distraught that she wasn't going to be able to spend the night there and have her 'day off'. 

A walking brother is keeping her on her toes.  All of her favorite toys have been moved up to her bedroom to keep X away from them.  She loved opening all his b'day presents and playing with them.  X got a ride-on truck and E loves pulling him around on it.  They are starting to 'play' some together...usually however, it is usually E playing and getting frustrated by X's interference because he just wants to do everything that she is doing.

Wordless Wednesday...(well, almost)

Aftermath of going down the slide face first...notice the dirt on his hands.  He did try to catch himself

He was ready to do it again after getting cleaned up a bit

Fun outside...

The weather is cooling down...but we are still having fun playing outside.  Or maybe we are just trying to get X down to 1 nap a day and being outside keeps the *grumps* (mostly) away while we are waiting for lunch time to roll around.

 I was attempting another *cute* picture of the two of them together...yet another miserable fail.  X doesn't enjoy getting pictures taken with E, I guess.  Besides that I failed to notice that E's hat was completely covering her eyes.  Oh well.  Guess we'll try again another day.

 Our new play structure....the 'pirate ship'.  Thankfully it isn't too high off the ground.  X has already tumbled off of it at least 4 times.  The one time was quite impressive...he managed to flip off of it and land on his back.  However, he isn't climbing up on it like he use to.  Now he's content playing under it (the keel of the ship?) unless we put him on it.

 Whoops...make that fall #5...well, Jut *kind of* caught him.  One of these days, he'll learn to slide down the slide and not try to walk down it.  He does just fine at the bigger slides in the park but for some reason doesn't do so well on this one.

 Poor guy.  He thinks the photo shoot is over...Mom's not giving in.

 My adorable little guy.  "Peak" gets a smile out of him almost every time.

 Happy guy with Dad.  He looks like he's been having a great time if the trails of dirt and snot are any indication.

 Loves swinging almost as much as E!

My precious 3.5 year old...good pics of her are hard to come by these days.  Her modeling days are few and far between.  But, she still LOVES her swing!

E's Thanksgiving List

At story time today, the take-home craft was to make a turkey.  Miss Tina gave the kids feathers for the tail or paper for them to make their own feathers and write what they were thankful for on the feathers.  E opted to take both feathers and the paper.  Once X went down for his nap, E and I sat down to make her turkey.  She colored him and glued on his feathers while I cut out a few 'feathers' so that she could write down the things which she was thankful for...her list cracked me up a bit, so I thought I'd share.  If I'm good I'll take a picture of her lovely turkey and post it.  But here's her list, in order of dictation to me:  1.  Jesus  2.  God  (She's a good pk...or sunday school participant,  isn't she?!)  3.  Crayons  4.  Grapes (which would make sense if we'd been eating them lately but its been weeks since there's been grapes in the house!)  5.  Paper  6.  Birds 7.  The Sky and finally 8.  my house.  Sometimes I'd love to get inside her brain and she how it all works because she intrigues me!

So, that just got me thinking about my top 8 things I'm thankful for...
1.  Health (mine and my families)    2.  Supportive husband   3.  Wonderful children  4.  The ability to stay home and enjoying life with them  5.  A warm and cozy house  6.  Amazing extended family  7.  Great church family  8.  All of the personal freedoms that we enjoy without thought 

Happy Thanksgiving!!

An evening at the park

X's birthday celebration

X's b'day celebration...a few weeks later. He wasn't too much of a fan of the flaming cake...however, once the flames were out, he gobbled the cake (& ice cream) up. He loved his balloons, the ribbons and the big box. The toy inside the box is pretty fun now that its put together (it was fun watching G'pa put it together) and has batteries...but the box is still fun too. His big sister opened his presents and thought it was great. X just wanted to play on the boxes...sounds like a typical 1-year old b'day party, doesn't it?!

An attempt at a *cute* Christmas card photo...

 I took these pics at the end of October when we were visiting Jut's folks.  Their yard had a tremendous amount of beautiful fallen leaves and my mind I thought, "Great photo opportunity!"  I really wanted a cute pic of the kids in all the fall leaves.  I thought it would make a nice picture to send out in our Christmas cards...Instead, I captured this...

 

E has quite the face...not really a *cute* pic though...

 

X studying the leaves and bushes...interesting, but not what I had in mind...

 

X really didn't enjoy the multitudes of leaves...it was too difficult for him to walk (and he didn't have any shoes on because Jut forgot to put any on his feet before we left and I didn't pack shoes because I assumed he'd be wearing some when he left the house!)

 

My pics of them together...tended to turn out something like this...or E pushing X over or X climbing over E or one of them running away...

 

 Jut got involved to see if he could get a cute pic out of them...hmmm....not very successful

 

 So, this was as good as it got...my cuties in the leaves

Not really a successful photo shoot...We took X in to get his 1-year pics taken and tried for a couple of pics with the kids together there too...That was also a miserable failure.  X took 2 good pics by himself and then decided that he was scared of the flashes and bawled the entire rest of the time.  So, now I've stolen my dad's camera and am trying at home...Oh the joys of parenthood!  :)

How quickly time flies

Happy Birthday!!!

X at 1 year...

Happy birthday to my little guy!  He's already a year old.  Wow!  It doesn't seem possible.

We celebrated today with some cake and ice cream but the real party will be this weekend.  I will add that it was a gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, chocolate cake.  Not the greatest cake in the world but I think I over baked it, which didn't help it too much.  However, X dug right in and enjoyed it.  I bought him some vanilla coconut milk ice cream and he really loved that!

X gave up crawling at the beginning of the month...he decided walking was the way to go.  He's working on running but hasn't quite mastered that yet.  We had a missions conference at church one night and when he had a couple of hours to practice his walking skills in a huge gymnasium...crawling was over.

Tooth #8 broke on Saturday, October 30th.  It was the bottom second right one.

For X's first Halloween, he was a chick.  We went to a truck 'or treat at a local church and one of the cars had a couple of real chickens in cages and he thought that was great.  He would have stayed and screeched that them all night, I think.

His vocabulary hasn't grown too much this month...too busy mastering that walking, I think.  But, his newest word is "bite"...or it sounds like bite to me and he says it when he wants to eat what you are eating.

Otherwise, I think it was a pretty quiet month around here for X...busy for us but quiet developmentally.  Jut's dad got diagnosed with Stage 4 colon cancer a couple of weeks ago...so between Jut's retreat in Colorado at the beginning of the month and spending time with his folks...its been a busy month.  Hopefully, this month will be a bit more low-key.