Recent Pictures

Here are some recent pictures of Julia...

Helping Daddy drive the boat. She kept asking for a turn.

Yes, we had her ride on the tube. She wanted to do it after seeing some friends ride and kept saying it was her turn. As soon as she sat down she changed her mind, but it was too late!

She settled down quickly and seemed to be ok with the ride. She was relaxed enough at one point to say "airplane" and point up into the sky.

Julia and her friend Raegan decided they should wear rain boots to play one evening.

Wearing Mommy's shoes

I was making dinner and looked up to find her like this. She found a shirt in a pile of clean laundry and put it on over her shorts.

First full pigtails!

First time in a bounce house. She was not a big fan, but it might have been because it was super hot inside.

Not happy about going down the hot slide either.

Enjoying some time at the pool with her friend Raegan on Memorial Day.

Watermelon is in season and Julia is eating lots of it!

Fun with Grandparents

Julia is blessed to have 2 sets of wonderful grandparents who live close enough for visits every couple of months. We spent a weekend at Mamaw and Papaw's house, then drove back home and were welcomed by Gigi and Pop who came to town for a quick visit. The following weekend, Mamaw and Papaw were in the area and stayed for a night. Here are some pictures of some fun we all had.

Going to lunch with Mamaw and Papaw

Dinner that night with Gigi and Pop

After dinner we took Julia to the park to feed ducks and play at the playground.

At dinner the following weekend when Mamaw and Papaw came to visit.

Afterward dinner we decided to check out a local water hole. As soon as Julia saw the water and all the people swimming she said, "Get in! Get in!" and sat down to take off her shoes.

We didn't go prepared to swim, but thought we'd let her get her feet wet.

She kept wanting to go farther and farther into the water so we had to take off her dress.

Julia loves to ride on shoulders!

Children's Museum

Here are photos from our first trip to the Austin Children's Museum.

First Round of Golf

Julia played golf with Daddy for the first time on Friday afternoon. Mommy and Julia rode in the cart and watched Daddy, and Julia got out to putt on most of the 9 holes. It was hot when we first started, but it cooled off and there was a nice breeze. Julia enjoyed looking at the scenery and helping Daddy find his golf balls. When we would drive up near one of his, she would exclaim with excitement, "Eeeyarr!" (the way she says "here they are!"). Then when Daddy got out, she would say, "hit ball!"

Here are some pictures and a video clip of her putting...

Here she is at the house when we were about to leave. She didn't know exactly where we were going, but she was so excited and kept yelling, "GOLF!!"

This is fun!

(This was Julia's first ever full ponytail!)

Fun at Gymboree

The highlight of each week for Julia is going to Gymboree for her Play & Learn class. Here are some pictures of her in class recently, along with a video of some cute moments we caught on camera.





She loves getting her Gymbo stamps at the end of class. Here she is anxiously awaiting her turn.

She can hardly wait to get the stamp on her tummy!

Here is the video:

Library Outing & Feeding the Ducks

Last week we took Julia on a fun outing to the library and then to feed the ducks in the San Gabriel River. Julia always enjoys reading new books at the library and playing with puzzles there. Hard to believe, but this was the first time we took her to feed the ducks and she loved it - there were geese, a family of ducks (and tiny ducklings) and fish to feed also.

Leaving the library with her bag of "new" books.

Julia: 20 Months + Videos

Because of scheduling issues, Julia just had her 18-month well visit. Here are her current stats:

• Height: 32.5 in. (50th percentile)
• Weight: 23.0 lbs. (23rd percentile)
• Head Circumference: 50 cm (90th percentile)

Some things we want to remember about her at this age:

• She now nods her head to say yes, and if she really means it she exaggerates the nod motion, which is really cute.
  
• We often review her day, especially when she has had fun activities. Her eyes light up when we remind her what she did, then she begins listing key words of things she remembers about an activity. Example: If we had swim lessons we'll say, "Did you go swimming today?!" and she'll respond with a nod followed by "octopus!...towels...mommy's towel...Julia's towel...frog...fish...(the toys gets to play with there)...teacher....shoes off...bubbles..." We're always interested to hear what she remembers about the experience.
• If she sees one of her toys/books that was given to her by someone, she always says that person's name and makes sure we know who gave it to her.
  
• She has always enjoyed being tickled, and now she likes to do the tickling too.
  
• She can count to ten, and often tries going higher but doesn't really know the order for the rest. She'll say, "fourteen, fifteen, seventeen"
• She almost has her ABCs down. She still skips a few letters, but is very close to singing it correctly.
• She knows her right from left and will accurately lift up the appropriate foot, hand, or arm when we ask her.
• She often wants to designate a mommy, daddy, and baby in the characters/animals in her books.
• She is keenly aware of airplanes in the sky and notices the sound both inside and outside, and can spot them right away.
• When the wildflowers began blooming around town, she would point out all the patches of "blue flowers" we passed. Now the bluebonnets are mostly gone, but we have even more yellow flowers along the roads so she exclaims, "yellow flowers!!" when she sees them.
• She can always distinguish yellow, white, orange, green and sometimes pink and red. She doesn't have a grasp on blue and purple yet, but we're working on it.
• Her favorite color seems to be yellow. It was the first that she definitely knew, and she can always spot yellow objects, cars, buses, signs, flowers, etc.
• We taught her about stop signs ("S-T-O-P...Stop") so now when she sees a stop sign she says, "A-B-C-D...Bop"
  
• Some common phrases: I see you, later alligator, thank you Julia, almost home, hold it toothbrush please, one more kiss, Julia's turn, right here, right there, down there, one more mime (time), I got it, Mommy/Daddy right back (when we leave the room).
• She still repeats almost everything she hears and we can't even begin to count all the words she says. She is getting better with pronunciation of many that she didn't say quite right before (example: blanket used to be "bebe" but is now "bankek"). Some of her new big words include: armadillo, caterpillar, dragonfly.