Julia's Artwork

Julia has really been "into" coloring lately. She has become very meticulous about filling entire areas with color and staying in the lines. Her teachers at school have also commented on her coloring, creativity, and how careful and detailed she is during craft time. We are so proud of her!

A couple months ago when we started seeing improvement.

This page from her coloring book was colored in several different sessions over a period of time. It is interesting to see her progression. The patches of color on Piglet's belly were first. Next she focused on the grass on the right side. Then she decided Piglet should be entirely red, and later did all the orange grass and tree leaves.

This is another Piglet page she worked on after making the stray marks a long time ago. This time she carefully colored each letter a different color.

Here is a cute drawing she brought home in January. We thought she did such a good job making a snowman with chalk.

The day she made this lion puppet at school, her teacher made a point to tell me how hard she worked on it, and how long she spent arranging the yarn pieces around the mane. I was impressed with how well it turned out, especially once I realized she was the first child to put her yarn pieces on and she didn't have a sample to go by.

Recent Pics

Way behind on recent pics! Here are some random favorites from January & February...

Love this sweet face!

Dressed and ready for "white" day at school.

All winter Julia has loved wearing her "Rainbow Jammas"

First tummy time!

One of my favorite pictures!

A fun evening with friends at Chuck E. Cheese

Showing off a craft she made at church.

At her Valentine's party at school.

A cute tu-tu Julia received as a party favor.

One-on-one time with Daddy

What a mess!

Julia loves sitting on the counter while I cook.

Holding her baby brother.

Micah, our babysitter, getting to hold Colin for the first time.

Julia keeps Colin company during tummy time.

Julia's first time to ride on an escalator, which she thought was great fun. We rode up and down 3 flights 3 times. She said, "Escalator...starts with the letter 'S'!"

Our precious little boy!

Julia: 2-1/2 Years

Julia is 2-1/2 years old!

These are a few of her favorite things:

• Her favorite color is red. Second favorite is pink. If you ask her what her favorite color is she will often reply, "red AND pink." Her love for the color red is really more of an obsession. She will ALWAYS pick whatever is red if given an option, whether it be crayons, M&Ms, cereal bowl, etc. The other day we were headed out to eat and she asked which restaurant we were going to. I told her Blue Oak Grill. She said, "No. It's RED Oak Grill."
• Her favorite song to listen to in the car is "If You're Happy And You Know It."
• There are lots of foods that she really likes, but her favorite is cheese. These days when we are ordering at restaurants she will turn to the waiter and say, "I'll have cheese." She'll be happy with macaroni & cheese, grilled cheese sandwich, cheese enchilada, or anything else as long as there is some cheese on it. She still loves pasta, fruit, peanut butter and jelly, peas, carrots, etc. She also loves shrimp!
• She still is happy to drink only milk and water. She has only had juice a few times (at school), but usually just takes a few sips.
• When we're home, fig newtons (a.k.a "raisin cookies") and dried dates are her favorite after-dinner treats.
• Her favorite show on tv is Dora the Explorer, or as she calls it "Doo Doo Dora" like the song goes. Every morning after she eats all of her breakfast she politely asks to watch Dora. As soon as it is over she usually comes running to say, "Mommy, it's over. I need you to turn it off."
• We try to vary her breakfast choices, but if we have bananas she usually wants a bowl of Cheerios with banana. She will also eat Wheat Chex and Grape Nuts.
• Her activities of choice come and go. Currently, she colors a lot and likes to play tea-set. She is currently on a break from puzzles and other activities.
• She loves sitting on the island counter to watch me prepare meals and snacks. She usually just watches, but always wants to help pour, scoop, mix, and scramble eggs. She also will "help" by picking out eggs to use, holding her slice of cheese until I need it, etc.
• Piglet is her favorite friend. She calls him, "Pwiget" and sleeps with him almost every night. As much as she loves him, she is ok with sleeping with someone else just to change things up a bit or if he needs to be washed or gets left in the car.
• She is not a fan of naps and will almost always say, "But I'm not tired." When that doesn't work, she'll say she's hungry in an attempt to stall. Usually it takes one of us standing in her room to make sure she doesn't fidget, whisper to her doll/piglet, start singing, or playing pretend games with her doll/piglet and blankies. And when she does fall asleep, she usually sleeps 2 hours.
• She is obsessed with her left side, just to be particular and demanding. She is adamant that we put her socks/shoes on her left foot first. Same thing with a pant legs. Sometimes when we head out for a walk, she'll say, "I want to go left."
• She still loves going places. Often one of the first things out of her mouth in the morning (certainly by the time she gets dressed) is, "Where are we going today?"
• She really enjoys going to the kids' workshop at Home Depot. She loves everything about it: getting to go somewhere special with Daddy, wearing her own orange apron, using tools to build something, getting a special pin for her apron, and coming home to proudly show off her craft.
• She is very interested in learning to spell and often asks how to spell words. She also likes us to name all the names/words we can think of that start with certain letters. One time she said, "Colin starts with C and Chloe starts with C!" (We had never talked about her friend Chloe's name or how to spell it.) She also said, "Jesus starts with a G" and "Escalator starts with S!"
• She enjoys learning Spanish, and often asks what certain words are in Spanish. One time she asked me what something was in Spanish (something like "toothbrush") and when I told her I don't know, her reply was "Can you look on your phone?" Kyle has the Spanish/English dictionary app on his phone, and I guess she figured I do too.
• Some of her other favorites: rainbows, stickers, glitter, chapstick, riding her "cooter", the park, her magna doodle, picking flowers, watering plants, wearing sunglasses, singing, counting.

Some recent accomplishments:

• She can finally open doors! We definitely were not encouraging her to learn this, and were glad she never even attempted it before now.
• She wears panties at night now and has never had an accident. Every once in a while she will call me in the middle of the night to take her potty, but most nights she doesn't wake at all.
• Not only can she spell her name, but she can spell Colin's too.
• She knows our address.

Some cute words/phrases that we don't want to forget:

• Tickle Box = To-Go Box
• Hokie Dokie = Hokie Pokie
• Ba Fa Fore = Before ("Mommy, we never saw that one ba-fa-fore!")
• Po Bo Be = Supposed to be ("Hey! That's not po-bo-be in the trash!")
• Woose = Use ("It's my turn to woose it.")
• Widdle = Little
• Diffway = This Way
• Diff-one = This One
• Teeny Tiny = Anything that is very small
• Fidge-E-A-tor = Refridgerator
• By My Own = By Myself ("No, I can do it by my own.")
• Neh-Behind = Next to / Behind
• Show Me = Tell/Remind/Explain to Me (Us: "Julia, what is bird in Spanish? Julia: "Can you show me?"
• Hoo-Hoo! = Hula Hoop ("It's my hoo-hoo!")
• "That will be a great idea!"
• "It's ok! I will show you!"
• "This time (now)/Yesserday/Later/Today/Earlier" - she says these a lot.
• "Rise and shine, and give God the roll-y, roll-y!"

Houston Visit

I took the kids to Houston while Kyle went on a ski trip with friends. We took Julia to the Houston Zoo for the first time, which was fun, and Colin got to spend some quality time with his Mamaw & Papaw. Overall it was a great weekend, although Julia got her first 24-hr stomach bug - we hated for her to suffer through that.

Pics from the zoo...

She's almost too big for the horse!

Tummy time with Papaw

Colin really enjoyed looking at the lion.

Colin: 3 Months

Things we want to remember about Colin at 3 Months:

• He has a very predictable routine...he wakes to eat and is up a total of about an hour, then shows signs of being tired (either chirping noises, discontent face, some "weh" complaints, or just sucking on his fingers), then he takes a 2-3hr nap.
• He typically goes to bed around 8:30pm, wakes around 4:3oam to eat, and then he is up for the day around 7:30am. If we stay home during the day, he will usually take 3 good naps, and maybe one short 45-min nap.
• He rarely sleeps anywhere but his crib. If we aren't home when he wants to go to sleep, he just stays awake and waits til we get there, even if it means he has to wait a while.
• He is great with bottles and nursing, so we do bottles for him during the day (to keep him flexible and easy to be left with others) and nurse in the middle of the night and first thing in the morning.
• He has started showing such a sweet personality. He is easy-going and keeps to himself, but grins happily when anyone acknowledges him.
• He is pretty quiet, only cooing and blowing raspberries occasionally each day. He is most vocal in the swing.
• Tummy time is tolerated very well. He enjoys looking at himself in the mirror.
• He grabs objects and pulls them to his mouth.
• He loves when we sing to him.
• He is quickly losing all his hair.
• He is ticklish, especially on the sides of his neck. He has the cutest giggle!

Colin's Cardiologist Appt

At Colin's 2-month doctor's visit, the pediatrician heard a steady heart murmur that she wanted us to get checked out. A couple weeks later we went to a pediatric cardiologist. As it turns out, Colin does have a hole in his heart, a VSD, but it will likely close and is nothing to worry about. We were relieved and thankful for a good report. I was worried that Colin wouldn't do well at the appointment because it was in the middle of his nap time, but he was an angel and was perfect.

The first step...

What a sweetie!

Waiting for the doctor

The doctor listened to his heart for a long time, from all angles.

The echocardiogram (ultrasound of the heart) took over 20 minutes. Colin laid quietly the entire time, and just kicked a little toward the end.

How cute! He found the cord to hold onto.

Recent Videos

This is one of the cutest videos of Julia...

This was so sweet, I just had to capture on video...