March

Lexi has turned 9 months!

check up stats:
Height: 17th percentile
Weight: 30th percentile
Head circumference: 79th percentile.

We have discovered that after 2 months of fruitless struggling to get Lexi to eat anything other than her bottle, we gave her table food, and all was right in her world. She loves it all, fruit, veggies, scrambled eggs, Italian marinated chicken. Meat and strawberries are her favorite, but she still will gobble down anything so long as she can feed herself. No one else can place food in her mouth, on or off a spoon.

She's been cruising furniture for a few weeks now and will occasionally let go and see how long she can balance before landing on her tush. If she is holding onto our fingers she will walk all around the house. She loves to follow her sisters and is particularly talented at getting into mischief and destroying lego castles. Although she doesn't complain, her sisters pull her by her pants to wherever it is they want her to go, either with them on an adventure in their room, or away from cords or their doll house. She is often referred to by her sisters as "our kitty cat!".

We think she waves hello, both of her arms go up and down excitedly when she sees someone, or when she gets really excited, so we're not completely sure if it counts as a salutation wave. After some coaxing we got her to say "MaMa", although she is always babbling "DaDa". She has 8 teeth and uses them to bit toes as she is crawling around on the floor. She's earned herself a new song by doing that.

As calm as she was a baby, she is now the wiggliest wiggler. She refuses to be held unless she's bonked her head, eating a bottle or being rocked to sleep. Otherwise, she is on the floor. Sometimes she will let me hold her, as long as I'm walking around so she has things to look at, but it usually doesn't last for long.


Lucy

Lucy got her third set of ear tubes! And for the first time in months, her ears don't hurt anymore! Her last ones just stopped working a few months before they fell out. It takes so long to get into the ENT that she was just in pain for that time while we waited. She sucked her finger a lot more than usual, but other than that, she was pretty brave about the whole thing. She went in for surgery around 7 and was home and jumping around by 7:45. We went to the park that day since it was spring break and 70 degrees outside and frozen yogurt. She is a brave little toaster.

She has started to come out of her shell and talks to everyone. She loves to tell them her name (now that she can actually say her real name instead of just Kitty Cat or Goose), that she is a big sister AND a little sister, and that she is not in nursery girl anymore. Those seem like basic things to say, but her big expression and vocal intonations are hilarious. Last week in primary she came up to me and said, "My name is Lucy!". Her primary teacher, Sister Pendleton, said that everything Lucy says is a great one liner that needs to be written down. She's not afraid of anything, she even squashed a bug with her own two little fingers. She does sometimes pretend to be afraid of the dark so she can snuggle with Lily at bedtime. I've said it before, but it is as if her personality is just too big to fit into her little body.

One Friday, after running 5 different errands with 3 children, we all returned home, exhausted and frazzled. Lily and Lucy sought solace in quiet time looking/"reading" their Books of Mormon. Lucy kept asking me, "Mom, am I getting taller?", "Mom, is this where it talks about where Jesus dies?", "Am I growing right now?". I, perpelxed, but with no brain power at that moment to try to understand 3 year old logic, said 3 "yeses" in succession. It wasn't until later that night while Jordan and I were in the temple did I remember our FHE lesson the previous Monday where we planted seeds and talked about faith and what we need to do to grow our faith, reading scriptures being one of them. I had a difficult time not laughing out loud when I connected that Lucy really thought that reading the scriptures would make her physically grow, not her faith. I guess she really is listening, even when I think she isn't.

She is still doing gymnastics which she loves, we switched gymnasiums and is learning a lot, although she is really looking forward to swimming lessons this spring/summer.

Lily

Sweet Lily. She loves to sit and chat, telling me, "mom, let's sit on the sofa and have a conversation." Our special thing that we are doing together is reading lessons, and she is coming along fabulously. She is still on basic phonics sounding out words but works hard and will be soon reading real books. Last week we were reading books when I saw herself look a little confused, ball her hand in a fist and hit her thigh. When I asked if she was upset about the story line of the book we were reading she responded by, "No, sometimes I just like to make sure I'm awake and not dreaming." - I couldn't help but laugh a little bit to which she was genuinely confused as to how that was funny.

Lily really wants to be a good kid and her sweet prayers always floor me. She tries to teach her sisters the gospel in the mornings - not that she doesn't also loose her patience with them sometimes too. But, overall, the 3 of them play so well together.

February 2015

Friday movie nights with our favorite family, the Eusebios while our husbands are off working.

She started army crawling last month and loves being mobile! She doesn't cuddle any more, she just wants to be down on the ground moving and chasing her sisters. 

Lucy left Lexi a present on the ground, my lemonaid in a waterbottle. I don't know how much she got in, but she was extremely happy about drinking in the sweet liquid. Her tummy had a different opinion an hour later...

We looked over and saw her pulling herself up! This girl is miss independent and loves to hit milestones when she thinks we are not looking. 

Valentines Day is one of favorite holidays and is the theme for Lily's wardrobe all year round. Jordan and I did our favorite tradition of pizza, egg rolls and Lord of the Rings. I wouldn't change a think about our Valentines Day traditions. 

Lily and Lucy's favorite part of Valentines Day (besides passing out and receiving cards & Candy from school) is we always make and decorate sugar cookies and then deliver them. This year's recipients were the Eusebios and the Pendletons. 

8 months and this girl is crawling, crawling everywhere. Also we are giving her table foods and she loves them, and being able to feed herself. She struggled with fluid in behind her eardrum for a few weeks but we finally got that cleared up and she's back to being our happy girl. 

Winter finally arrived in February here in Columbus - with plenty and plenty of snow days and sick days. Here we recreated the Eiffel Tower.

Jordan's favorite baby bonding activity

Even on sick days, Lily still loves some little sister snuggles!

Lucy is getting herself dressed these days and we both couldn't be happier. 

Creative play at work

Here comes Lexi T-Rexi, watch out for your toes and fingers!

After my gym workout, there is still about 30 minutes for me and Lucy to do some bonding time while Lexi naps and I've seen a big change in Lucy from it - she is much kinder and sweeter to Lexi and, overall more obedient. 

I love my sleeping angels. Her cheek is shiny because she applied her minnie mouse lip gloss to it right before bedtime. Those lumps in her pillow case? A few of her kitty cats :)

March 2015

I need to learn to plan to give Lexi a bath immediately after Lily or Lucy's showers since this is her favorite perch and always gets 3/4 of her body wet. She just loves to play with the falling water and watching her sisters play.

The local high school was putting on the play, Cinderella, and Jordan being the awesome dad that he is, turned it into a Daddy/Daughter date. The girls wanted to dress up so he did too, although he was probably the only guy there in a suite, he did it to be his girl's Prince Charming. As Lily told me, "Daddy is the family's Prince Charming". 

This girl loves loves loves to get into anything she's not supposed to. Her basket of baby toys will go days untouched. 

Nathan is one of Lily's best friends. He is in a class lower than her in church but is in her pre-k class. They hadn't really talked before the first day of school, but they recognized each other and Nathan came up to her and asked her to play with him. He is a great friend to her, she always tells me that one of Nathan's talents is being kind. Lily is gets overwhelmed easily and at school when every other student rushes to line up for recess in hopes of being first. Lily likes to hang back and Nathan will hang back with her. Through Nathan, Lily has made other friends and now has confidence to branch out and make other friends on her own. Nathan will ride the bus home with her for playdates after school a few times a month. He is all boy and she is all girl but they always find ways to play together. For example, Lily will be a mermaid and Nathan a pirate, or Lily the princess fairy and Nathan the castle guard. Lucy loves it when Nathan comes over too. We often have to tell her to only give him one hug and kiss, otherwise she won't let him go. 

Lily has been working hard at ballet. She find the barre work boring but wants to be a ballerina when she grows up so keeps at it knowing that it will pay off in the end. And it has, she is has progressed in her ballet technique and is looking really good. 

Lexi wants with all her heart to be in dance class with her big sister. We have to create barricades to keep her out and she will watch the class for the entire 45 minutes as will Lucy. 

Lucy is a brave girl, but is also a snuggle-a-holic. So she pretends to be afraid sometimes so she can snuggle with her Sissy at night. 

Lily and Lucy are usually very patient with Lexi playing, and sometimes destroying, their play. 

Taking these pictures is getting more and more difficult as Lexi doesn't like to sit still for very long and wants to explore everything around her. 

Lexi and her bites! We all have marks from her strong jaws and sharp teeth. Which is why we still call her Lexi-T-Rexi. 

That glowing smile? It's for her sisters who were standing right behind me. As Lily tells me daily, "Lexi is the family's cute baby! She belongs to the whole family!" Meaning, I have to share her snuggles with both of them.