Welcome to Nursery, EmmaLee!

My Crazy Little Baby Bug!

Sweet EmmaLee, you are growing so much these last 9 months since you turned 1! You are officially in nursery at church, and, though you love it, you still have a hard time with us leaving you there. This soon will pass though and you will be running to get in there! You have physically grown a ton! You are now 34 1/2 inches tall (96th percentile) and 27 lbs (90th percentile) with a 73rd percentile for your weight to length. So, you are VERY tall for your age and also still have some cute chunk to those thighs and belly.

While you have physically grown a lot, your speech has not developed much. You sign please, more, thank you (with some verbal), shoes, help, and milk. But your words are limited to thank you, no (though this means yes and no), nose, ears, and cheese. You used to say "hello" when playing with the phone, but this has stopped. You are now starting to work with ECI to get speech therapy. We are hoping that this develops quickly for you. Luckily you are only delayed in your expressive language. You understand everything very well and are very smart otherwise. You are meeting all of your other physical, social and mental milestones!

EmmaLee, you are so sweet and tender! You LOVE babies, whether it's a doll or a real live one. You are very gentle and curious when you are around babies. And you take care of your dolls so well. You also love playing with cars, play food, barbies, the sandbox, and any of your sisters' things that you can get into. You love to color and make pictures as well. You used to love swimming more and could get yourself around the pool very well! You still like the idea and want to go in there often, but you have also taken to wandering more outside of the pool while we are in it. You handle it so well though when I throw you in though!

Sweet Girl, you are such a beautiful little girl! I love looking at your grey/blue eyes and brown curls! You are so much like your sisters, yet so different. You are tall like Lydia, yet have little feet like Hannah. You are so precious, I love you!

Love,
Momma

To Lydia, Love Momma

Dearest Lydia,

It feels wrong to call this a birthday letter this year, as it is already May. But this is your 6 year old letter, so you weren't dismissed :). This past year you have taken on a new role in our family and have done it so well! That is the role of the BIG big sister. You lovingly dote on both of your sisters and look forward to spending time with them. It is wonderful to see how you are such good friends with both of them and how much they look up to you. You help me out so much around the house and have learned to do several chores on your own, including vacuuming, sweeping, washing dishes, taking out the trash, unloading the dishwasher and laundry (sorting, folding and putting away).


You have also grown so much in your academic realm! You went into kindergarten knowing all of your letters and their sounds, writing your name, reading a few sight words, and doing some basic addition. I am amazed at how far you have come! You are reading some second grade books and understand what they're talking about. You love doing math and are very good at it! You love every subject at school and have a very difficult time choosing a favorite. However, art is always the first thing you tell me about when you get home! I'm really hoping that your new school in San Angelo with have a real art program so that you can learn more fun things there!

This year you played a season of soccer again and did so much better than a couple years ago. You were very eager to play this time and made your best efforts to get the ball in the goal. You also tried your hand at gymnastics. You really enjoyed doing that. However, as we already were aware, you are not naturally very athletic. So it will take some extra practice on your part. However, you are wonderful at swimming! You completed your first round of swim lessons already this year and were so excited to learn new things! Luckily we will have a pool at our new home and you will get lots of time to practice and have fun with this skill :).

Lydia, you are such a kind, loving individual. I am so impressed with you consistently! You love the scriptures and the Lord. You try so hard to make good choices and to help those around you. I am so proud to be your mother!

Love always,
Momma


Lydia's 6 year old stats were:
Height 47 inches
Weight 45 pounds

To Hannah, 4 and 1/4 years old!

Oh Hannah! My crazy Hannah!

There never seems to be the words to describe what you are to us! Your laugh can brighten my darkest days! Your silly made up songs make me laugh. And your motherly way of helping everyone around you is beautiful (when the receiving party is wanting to be helped). However, you are still a very strong willed young lady. If you don't want to do something, there isn't much I can do to change that. And if you do want to do something, well... you get the picture. We are working to point you in the best direction for your independence. But I think that your desire help those around you will definitely boost things.

Hannah, you have grown so much since I last wrote you a letter! Not a ton physically. Right now you are 40 inches (35th percentile), 31 lbs (12th percentile) with a 9 percentile BMI. So, you are our little itty bitty. No booster seat for you yet. But it seems that those in the smallest packages are the loudest to be heard. And that certainly rings true for our Hannah Banana!

Your speech is continuing to develop. You had a wonderful speech therapist, Miss Angie, at the elementary school last year that you LOVED! You were always so excited to go play with her and you learned a lot! You also saw another speech therapist at the clinic, Miss Jenny. You weren't very fond of her and so you didn't work very well with her. Unfortunately, we didn't find a good match for you at the clinic until it was time for us to move. So, though you met Mrs. Joan and loved her, you didn't get much time to progress with her. We are working to get things set up for you at the new school and clinic. You are very excited to meet some new speech therapists to play with you! Especially since EmmaLee is already starting her speech therapy and you want to join in!

You had a wonderful first year in preschool and are VERY excited to start at your new preschool tomorrow! Last year you attended a small preschool in Mrs. Spring's home with several friends in our ward. This was a perfect setting for you to get started since it was a small class, just twice a week (9am-2pm) with some of your favorite people. This year you will be attending preschool three times a week (8:45am-1:30pm) at St. Luke's Methodist Church. Mrs. Tana will be your teacher and you will have a few more people in your class this year. We are so excited to watch you grow more!

Oh sweet Hannah, you are so loved by all who know you. When first meeting new people, you are very shy. We learned quickly that I need to disappear from sight during speech and other things in order for you to open up and work with other people. However, once you do open up, you are very talkative and engaging! Sometimes there doesn't seem to be a quiet bone in your body! You may be the smallest one, but we can always hear you when you wake up and run down the hallway! You are very quick to follow directions during classes and follow structure.

I could continue to go on talking about you and all the things that you do right now. But for now I'll just write a few of your favorite things and some of my favorite things that you say. You call frogs "Ribbits" and pigs "Oinkies". I sometimes hope that you never stop doing that! You still love spiderman, dinosaurs, and "D-O-D-O" (R2D2)! This completely took me off guard when you asked for the "D-O-D-O" waterbottle at the store and you had never seen StarWars, at least not with us. So, while you are a pink, sparkly, princess loving little girl, you definitely have your adventurous side. I love your unique personality! Your favorite food is "padeti" (spaghetti). Pink is your favorite color. You love to read most any book, but especially if they're silly. You love to play with your baby dolls, kitchen, dressup, coloring/art stuff, and your Kindle.

Hannah, you are so special to us! We love you more and more each day!

love,
Momma

Welcome to "One-derland" Emmalee!

Happy Happy Birthday Sweet EmmaLee!

I can hardly believe that you are really a whole year old! It has sure flown by! Yet, here we are. It truly has been a wonderful year though watching you learn and grow and find your role in our family. If I were to define your role right now, it would be to follow your sisters around and play with their toys and then desperately try to escape when they decide they want to love on you in return. You are the object of everyone's affections. Your sweet cheeks are constantly being kissed and we all do anything we can to make you smile (which isn't very difficult to do)!

You have made several new strides these last few months! You began taking your first steps a couple weeks before your birthday and then decided that would be your main mode of getting around about a month later. "Easy does it" was your motto. You were still content enough to crawl around, but figured you'd try a few steps if you were already standing. Now your walk is getting faster and faster as your confidence grows. I love watching those sweet pudgy legs waddle you around the room.

You went from only having 2 bottom teeth to 5 teeth in a matter of weeks! You're still working on getting one more top tooth out. But then hopefully we'll be done for a little while. You've had a rough month with both strep throat and a UTI along with getting all these new chompers. So I think you deserve a good break :).

Speaking of eating! You could do that almost all day! You switched from breastfeeding to formula at about 10 1/2 months when we discovered that my supply had stopped and you really weren't getting much of anything. We had thought that you were starting to thin out a little, but as soon as we switched you to formula you quickly chunked back up! I hadn't thought I was starving you before then, but I sure felt bad when I realized that you were just being courteous. Since then you have also switched to drinking real milk. No problems there! Food is food and you'll take it! Well, except for the occasionally offered broccoli, green beans and avocado. Those are royally shunned.

You still aren't really talking much. Occasionally you'll hold a phone up to your ear and I think that you may be saying, "Hello". So maybe that could be your first word. But you don't even give any attempts at saying anything else. I'm hoping this isn't a sign of any speech problems. But I'm trying not to read into it too much. Only time will tell :). Your sweet babbles are plenty for now.

You have a few "tricks" that you love sharing with us. You love to blow kisses, wave goodbye, and play peek-a-boo. You were signing "more" and "all done". But you've been slacking on that lately. Guess I better start making you work harder for your food again! You love putting things on your head and wearing necklaces. You also love to brush your hair. I think we already have a pretty princess on our hands :). You also love being goofy! You have discovered blinking your eyes recently and love squinching them up at us over and over again and you grin from ear to ear! Melts me every time!

We just adore you EmmaLee! I love the look of joy on your face when we walk in the room to see you! You have the most beautiful smile! I am so excited to see your personality grow even more this next year as you experience more adventures!

Love,
Momma