January 2018

Mila and Nellie spent the second half of winter break at a local gymnastics place that offered a winter camp.  While there (only for four days!) Mila learned how to do a cartwheel and she's quite good at it!  She's been practicing daily and always wants you to watch her cartwheels; not to be outdone, Nellie always chimes in asking you to watch her back flip (which is really a forward roll, haha).

Nellie had her 3rd year check up at the beginning of the month and did great.  Her height was 38 1/4 inches and her weight was 34 lbs, 4 oz.  She's in the 79th and 82nd percentile for both, which is right in line with where she should be.

While she didn't test positive for iron deficiency, she did test low in her iron levels . I told the doctor that she doesn't care much for, or eat a lot of, meat so the doctor asked us to look for the iron rich foods that she likes and make sure to feed her those every day.

She did have to have a flu shot, which was kind of sad!  With her personality, I can't remember the last time I saw her really upset about something. Normally is she's mad she yells or tries to hit and she's never really hurt or sad but when she is she just whines.  When the nurse stuck her with the needles she looked really hurt, said "that hurt" and her little eyes welled up with tears; it was SO sad!  It only lasted a minute, though, and then she realized she was getting a shopkins bandaid and all was well.

Nellie also had her first birthday party for a friend this month, for Addison, and she had a great time.  It was a construction themed party and she was so happy, and confused, to see her friends outside of her school classroom.

Nellie has had a better attitude since turning three and she and Mila are playing so well together.  Her talking and language skills are improving too.  Her favorite expression now is "that's cool!" and it's so funny to see when she will use it in a sentence.

One day when I was cleaning up the Christmas decorations, Nellie slammed her finger in the door of a dollhouse and said "oh shit!"  I heard it but didn't react but Mila made sure I knew what was happening and told Nellie we don't say that word.  I had to bite my tongue from laughing so hard; while, at her age, Mila would repeat it like a parrot after we said it, that was the extent of it.  Apparently Nellie is logging it away in her brain and knows exactly the right situation to use it in!

Another time this month we were at a restaurant we had been to before; the previous time I had told the girls that they couldn't use the bathroom because there wasn't one so they better not drink a lot of water (it was a hole in the wall place and I didn't want to take them back to the bathroom).  About a month or so later, now, we visited again and when Nellie was acting out in line I leaned down and said quietly to her, "Nellie, you better quiet down or I am going to take you to the bathroom and you're not going to like it."  With a straight, sassy face she put her hands on her hips, looked me right in the eye and said "There's no bathrooms here, mom, member? Sorry!"  I was shocked and didn't know what to say! She's such a character!

Since Nellie is becoming more independent we moved her clothes from the top rack to the lowest it would go (which is great because with lowering Mila's rod too she can still reach her clothes as well!) so now she's in charge of picking out her clothes in the morning and dressing herself.  She's very particular about what she wears (and will rarely let me pick out her clothes) and loves changing numerous times per day.  We made the change on Sunday and on Monday Robert sent me the picture below(!); when asked what she was doing Nellie matter-of-factly replied, "laying out all of my clothes so I can see what I want to wear."  This has happened at least three times since then, when we had to threaten to move them back up to the top if she kept laying them ALL out every morning!

We took Mila to get her ear's pierced at the mall and, although she was pretty nervous going into it and cried a little after the first piercing, she said that it was all worth it. She is so excited about her earrings and loves to show them off; she couldn't wait to go back to school to show all of her friends.

We had to write the date on the calendar for when she would be able to pick out her new earrings and she was SO SO SO excited to pick the first pair she would wear. She was so cute, too, and kept saying that Nellie can pick out the second pair, and then daddy and then mommy ("because she said her feelings wouldn't be hurt if she had to pick last."); it's so cute how she wants to involve us.

Mila's winter activity is hip hop dance, which she absolutely loves.  She has such sass in the class and loves all of her new moves.  It's the first class where I drop her off and I'm "not allowed" inside (except for the last five minutes).  She's been working so hard preparing for the parent presentation in March.

I spent Martin Luther King weekend visiting Whitney in Minnesota and BOY was it cold!  It was so nice to spend some alone time with her and we had a blast.  I love going to visit her, and her coming here, and just folding into each other's lives; it's so nice knowing the distance between us doesn't affect our friendship.

Back in California, the girls enjoyed their alone time with daddy (and Uncle G) and Nana and Papa.

My parents gave us some money as our Christmas this year so I finally took a chance and put a listing on Thumbtack to have the wasted space cutout area near our dining room table turned into a pantry.  I only got one response and the guy came out to look at it, quoted us a (good) price and was out the next week to build it out.  It's SO nice to have so much space and somewhere to store all of our appliances and lesser used items.

What we're excited about next month: President's Day weekend in Big Bear with the Charlands!

December 2017

Happy December!  Mila started the month off with a bang by swallowing a penny; she was very concerned what was going to happen to her but we told her she would be fine, she just cannot put money in her mouth.  She has also learned how to whistle and now whistles all.the.time.

She's such a social butterfly and has so many friends at school. She's always talking about new friends she's made, as well as the ones she's had forever too. It's cute to see (and reminds me of myself when I was a kid!).

Nellie is now our little girly girl but also our little tomboy, it's fun to watch the transition. She's obsessed with wearing Mila's clothes and pajamas and will get SO excited when she asks Mila if she can wear something of hers and she says yes.

Nellie turned three this month and we celebrated with a princess party at home, which she absolutely adored. I think she had more fun opening all of her presents and wearing her princess crown than anything else and she had a permanent smile on her face the whole day.

We celebrated her birthday with a family trip to Great Wolf Lodge.  The girls had an absolute blast and the place was really geared towards them.  They had their own little "wolf's den" inside the hotel room, complete with bunk beds and their own TV, which they thought was the coolest thing ever.  They had a blast in the water park and at the other activities, like the arcade and the bowling alley.

Every night the lodge puts on a pajama dance party for the kids and our girls LOVED it. They danced for about 45 minutes straight and really loved the teenagers that led the dancing.

We had a bunch of Christmas parties this month, starting off with my client holiday party at Spaghettini, which is always blast.

We also attended Sgt. Kenny Ramsey's retirement party from Cypress PD.  He is a good friend of Robert's but I also knew him well before I met Robert as he was one of the people I worked with when I was interning at Cypress, and we were in the Master program at CSULB together.  He's also the one who brought Robert back to California from Colorado!

On the last day of preschool for the month the girls had their Christmas program at school.  Because of all of the work I have been doing with the school lately, we got reserved front row seats, which was awesome!  We had a great view of everything (even Nellie picking her nose during one of the songs) and the girls were so cute singing all of the songs they had been practicing.

The girls did get to see Santa this year, as he came to their preschool.  We tried to go again another time but the line was too long so we skipped it and went and got candy instead!

Mila's boyfriend, Charlie, picked out a gift for her, which she was ecstatic about.  Thankfully she never tried to tell us that Charlie bought her jewelry ;)

Christmas was so great this year because the Browns came to visit!  Aunt Sissy, Uncle Bret and William were in town from Wednesday to Sunday and we had a blast. The girls COULD NOT have been happier to spend every day with William and they were like the Three Musketeers. I know next year will be even crazies with William running around and talking so much more!

It was so nice having every together for Christmas. We did Christmas with my parents on Saturday and then the Browns left Sunday morning and Robert's parents came down and we did Christmas with them.  The girls had so much fun opening all of their gifts and they were definitely spoiled rotten!  Mila's big gift was getting her ears pierced and Nellie's was a princess house and little people princesses.  

On Christmas Eve Robert and the girls made cookies for Santa and left them out on the plate, as well as "reindeer food" out on the front walkway for the Santa's helpers.  The police dispatch does a call around 9pm for a "be on the lookout" for a suspect, wearing a red suit, possibly breaking into houses in Orange County.  

The girls were SO excited to hear that Santa was on his way that they actually got kind of upset that he was going to come to our house before they were in bed!  They dropped everything they were doing and ran to bed and didn't make a peep. It was super cute.

We continued our New Year's tradition and had a day celebration with the Charlands, which was super fun, as usual.  It's so great that we have a couple as two of our best friends and that all of our kids get along so well (and that they're all girls!).