Weekend in Houston

We went to Houston to celebrate Madison's 4th birthday, Katelyn's 1st birthday, and Katelyn's dedication. We also helped celebrate Papaw's birthday, Uncle James' birthday, and Aunt Kimberly's birthday, and got to meet our friends' new precious baby, Benjamin. It was a busy weekend!

The joint party for Madison's and Katelyn's birthday began at the park.

The 6 cousins: Julia & Colin, Madison & Katelyn, Shane & Hunter

Then we went back to the Davis home for more play time, dinner, presents, and cake.

Julia enjoyed her first corn on the cob with her big cousins.

The cupcakes were a big hit, too!

Colin with his Gigi

Gigi with Hunter and Colin (Hunter is about 3 weeks older than Colin)

On Sunday we went to see Katelyn's dedication at church. Julia and Shane enjoyed going to Madison's sunday school class.

Lunch at Chili's after church.

Gigi and Pop brought Julia's Cozy Coupe for us to take home. It was their Christmas gift to her, but we didn't have room to take it back at the time. She was so excited to take it for a spin!

Julia was so sweet to baby Benjamin.

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!"