The day after Christmas I decided I would take advantage of Livi’s day off and take her to her first movie at a movie theater. We saw Disney’s Frozen. I wasn’t sure how she would be there, if she would lose interest, or freak out, but she did great. Watched the whole thing, sat still and quietly and loved every minute of it. I look forward to taking her to more as good ones come out.
Traditional Santa visit. Still no sitting on his lap from Lee. She tensed up immediately when she saw him. She said that she is worried his beard will scrape on her. She had no problem talking to him though and telling him what she wants for Christmas.
Jake went to a hair dresser the first time he got his hair cut. Jake and I had a long talk about it and he told me he wanted to go to a barber where big boys go, so I took him to my place for his first barber haircut. He was a good boy there, but I think he may have preferred the hair dresser.
Olivia gave us a sample of all of her Thanksgiving songs, focusing on Indians. That was my Thanksgiving entertainment!
We had a good Thanksgiving, but the thing Olivia was really waiting for was having Elf show up the next morning. He did, and Lee was excited. She has had fun the last few days finding him every morning. Not sure how long before this becomes old, but right now, she loves it. He is always watching!!
One of Livi’s favorite night time stories acted out. Sometimes she likes her night reading to be interactive.
Lee had a great Birthday. She got to celebrate Wednesday night (her real Birthday) and then on Saturday with Mima and Botow. For some reason I lost the video of her opening her other packages, but I do have her opening Auntie Steph and Uncle C.J.’s package. She did love all her gifts. I’ll try and post the Saturday celebration later this week.
Lee continues to love Katie Perry. Her latest favorite song is Roar. Every time it comes on she sings it as loud as she can. I am impressed at the words she knows. I did ask her if she knew what champion meant and she said no, so I had to explain it to her. Wonder what words she knows from songs that I am glad she doesn’t know the meaning to, she certainly gets her share every day to and from school.
We decided to see if Olivia could start to sound out words since she knows her alphabet so well. So we gave her Brooke’s original A Pig Can Jig book that she learned to read with, and Lee took off reading. She is doing a good job, but tires and starts getting silly pretty quickly. Good job Lee, keep it up!
One of Lee’s favorite movies recently is Lilo and Stitch. It is based in Hawaii and there is a lot of hula dancing in the movie. Lee picked up on it and now loves hula dancing. Over the weekend, Brooke promised her that if she was good, she would buy her a hula skirt. Since Lee was good, she got her skirt, however, for some reason, Olivia won’t wear it with any other clothes. She thinks she needs to be naked. Also, because she is so skinny, we had to put a chip clip on the back of the skirt to make it tighter and hold it up on her waist. Enjoy some first-rate hula dancing!!
Lee has gotten very good at riding her bike. She can stop, turn corners, even do a 180 degree turn in the street. Now we just need to get her to start on her own and she’ll be set. Time for a bigger bike.
Lee’s fascination with bugs never ends, which is great. The other night we were eating outside since the weather is so nice, and I looked over and saw a little grasshopper on the edge of the table. I told Olivia to look and she got very excited. It was very hard to get her to put the bug down and go inside when it was time. At one point of putting the bug down, Lu got a quick hold of it and it lost a leg, but other than that, the bug survived Olivia.
A week ago, we had a stray cat follow us home. I was hoping it wouldn’t stick around, but for some reason, a food bowl full of cat food, a warm box with a towel in it and a flee collar made it think it was our cat.
Olivia and Jake love the cat. Last night we went out front to play with it and Lee had a great time. Olivia has named her Sofia. Jake is the cat’s favorite person though, she loves him.
Our neighbor’s son outgrew his scooter so they were nice enough to give it to Livi. Livi had shown interest in scooters when we were at a block party a while back and had a lot of fun on it. She picked it up pretty fast. Jake wants to ride it but I think he needs to work on talking first.
One of Jake’s favorite games is “hiding” behind furniture and then popping out laughing. All we need to do is say “Where’s Jake, where’s Jake” and he will slowly back up out of site then come out laughing.
Jake is learning to eat with a fork. He is getting good at it, except for when he accidently flings the food behind him. The dogs thank him for that though. He is getting too big!!
Since Jake now has 8 full teeth and many more cutting through, we decided brushing was going to be needed. He took to the task quickly and looks forward to it every night now. And he is good at it.
Not only do our kids have the ability to whine more than the average person, but they are also secret superheroes. I am not sure either one would be able to save anyone from a threat since they seem to be more of a threat to themselves, especially Livi. If she could only get the mask on correctly she could see much better.
Yep, they came off this weekend. So far so good. Pics to follow. She is doing very well!!
Last week Livi’s building at Young World took a trip to PC’s duck pond for lunch. Since I had no meetings at that time, I took a quick walk over to see them while they ate. I got there just as they were finishing lunch and getting ready to head back to YW. Got a picture with Young World’s usual suspects. They all wear matching shirts so they are easy to spot.
They started tearing down the trees on the lot one over from us. Sad to see the trees go but I guess that is how it has to be to put a house there. They left the bulldozer there so we decided it might be fun to get a picture with the kids in the bucket. Livi stayed clean in there, but Jake dove right in and got pretty dirty.
On our weekly trip to DD Olivia told me she wanted a “little coffee, not a chocolate milk, not a fruit drink, not a milkshake, I want a little coffee.” I told her no coffee, but we could look and see if there was anything else she thought looked good. She got excited when she saw the Yoohoo in the refrigerator section. Today she drank her first “can drink” as she calls them.
Jake finally got his first haircut today. He needed it, his little whispies over his ears were getting out of hand. He did pretty good in the chair but got a little squirmey near the end. He got home, took a 3 hour nap and was happy the rest of the day.
I really thought that having a girl first would give us our little princess that would wear dresses and be girly. Our boy could be free to be a boy. Well, I was wrong. Seems dresses have found their way onto Jake just as they did to poor Chili back in the day.
We were looking through one of the new construction houses on our street a while ago, and heard Livi and Jake laughing in one of the rooms, so we peeked in to see Jake sitting on the waste pipe. He was smiling and laughing on it, and Lee loved that he was doing it.
Here is a video I forgot to post after our vacation of Lee and Jake at the beach. This is Lee’s first time seeing a crab. She loved it. She also had lots of fun in the water. Jake didn’t like it so much.
I was hanging out with my Lee this morning and she asked to play on the iPad, so I let her. She played a game or two, then called me over to turn it up so she could hear her movie. I said you are playing games, there is no movie. She said yes, I am watching Lorax. I went over and couldn’t figure out how she was watching anything, then realized I had Netflix installed, and that she had left her game, found Netflix, opened it, scrolled through the movies and started Lorax. Guess parental supervision on all technology devices starts sooner than expected. Smart little girl!
Lee went for another dentist visit. She is the best at the doctor and the dentist, listens and sits still. She is in the no cavity club as well. Way to go Lee!!
She also doesn’t need me around as I found out. When the hygienist came out and asked her to come back, I jokingly told her “go ahead, I’ll wait out here until you are done” and she just said ok and followed the hygienist back. She is too independent at her age. I of course went running after her, not wanting to be in the waiting room alone.
Livi has come to love the movie The Lorax, and especially the music. I found the soundtrack to it for her and she and Jake danced around the living room to it. If there is one thing Livi and Jake like to do it is dance!
A few weeks ago we were out in the back yard pulling weeds and straightening up. Olivia was walking along not paying attention (as usual) and tripped and skinned her knee pretty badly. This video will show the drama. Notice the slow limp she does when walking, and the constant reference to her bad knee. Poor Lee!!
Memorial Day I started talking about grilling ribs, but never did it. The rest of that week all Olivia could talk about was ribs. She would show me how she would eat them, she wanted to know how I grilled them, she wanted to know what went with them and would bring them up every few minutes. So the next weekend Brooke bought some ribs, corn, and bean and we had a cookout. As I expected, Livi ate one rib and was done, which was fine because I got the rest. I think she liked it, but not as much as she thought she would. Jake on the other hand seemed to really love them. In my opinion, they came out great and want to make them again soon!!
Livi has been talking about guitars recently. When the shower head sprays, she strums it like it is a guitar, and does the same with strings and other stuff. I mentioned to her in the car today that her Grandpa got her 2 guitars when she was a baby and if she was good I would get them down for her. She was very excited and would not let me forget. So last night I got one of them down to see how she handled it. All was good until she realized that she couldn’t just automatically play any of the songs from school. This resulted in being rough with the guitar and lots of tears.
Maybe it isn’t time yet for her to have the guitars..
Lee sure learns some interesting songs at school. Not sure this one would fly in other parts of the country. I can’t stop laughing to myself each time she sings this one.
(Or other title: Why Did We Spend So Much Money On Disney)
This weekend was Simpsonville’s Freedom Aloft festival which is a hot air balloon festival mixed in with some concerts, rides, food, and other family stuff. The balloons launch twice daily, once in the morning, and once at night. It is a pretty good turn out of balloons, but a lot of rides for Livi.
Watermelon was a big theme of this event, and everyone got free watermelon, including Lee.
Then we went and got on the rides. Lee’s favorite part, she rode everything, and a lot of them twice.
Then she saw the Ferris wheel. She had to go on it, and loved it.
Later we found the fun house. Lee went on this twice. The first time the little spinning exit tube was not spinning, however, the second time it was. You can only conclude that Livi is a spaz after seeing her exit from this tube.
After this, we headed over to watch the evening balloon launch.
It was a fun weekend. We can’t wait to go back next year!
Sunday morning we even had a balloon land in our development, 2 houses up from us, but unfortunately we didn’t know until they were gone.
