Catch up

Life moves fast when you are the mom of a 3 and a half year old and a 1 year old. I feel like I am constantly behind, trying to keep up.

First an Evie update. She tips the scales at barely 20 lbs and is 28 inches tall. She took her first steps in the last week of March, was walking everywhere by April 10th and now a week past her first birthday she is learning to run! Evie is my little troublemaker, always finding the most dangerous thing whether it is climbing stairs, chairs or tables, pulling stuff off of tables onto her head, or trying to stuff anything and everything in her mouth. Verbally Evie loves to screech, scream, and say Eh? Aaaah? at everything. She doesn't have too many words yet: Mama, Dad, bye, hi and Ut-oh are the only consistent ones. She also does cow, sheep, and airplane noises. Evie is very affectionate--she gives lots of kisses to everyone and everything :) However she is not a snuggler, she will run by and make kissing noises in your direction and then be off to the next thing. Very independent, she doesn't really mind if I am in sight or not, and she actually enjoys being held by other people (for the few seconds she will hold still :)).

As Evie is getting older, she and Aubrey are really playing together a lot more now. It melts my heart to see them walk around the house holding hands. Aubrey is really learning a lot about making other people happy, even if it means giving up something that you want. She has been a great big sister. Don't get me wrong, we have our moments of sibling rivalry, but overall they get along great. Evie is a stinker and likes to pull Aubrey's hair, which causes great dramatic screaming from Aubrey. Yeah, we are working on that one. When I tell Evie NO about things she just laughs and tries to do it faster or harder. Aubrey at that age would start crying if I said no. I think my discipline approach will have to be totally different for the different kids.

Aubrey is making huge strides in learning lately. She has started being able to sound out and read words. It is so fun to watch the excitement on her face as she sounds out and then figures out what the word is. She is very good at writing all our names, and now she is very into drawing pictures of our family. Just about every day she adds a new detail, yesterday it was eyelashes. She loves learning and begs me to do school with her almost every day (weekends off? no way!) I think I will be starting a kindergarden curriculum with her in the fall. She still is growing like a weed: she is 41 inches tall and 36 lbs--totally grown out of her 4ts in height and is now moved up to 4/5s or xs in childrens. No more toddler clothes here!

Well, there's my catchup post for now...I am hoping to get a little more consistent with updates, but we'll see how that goes!