9 Months

This month has been a productive one for Miss Charlotte. Her first tooth popped through and she started crawling on May 25. It was a big day! We've started giving her finger foods and she does a great job guiding the food to her mouth. Although, above, you can see she also gets food stuck to her cheek. Close enough! She has found her voice and loves to "yell" at us--we laugh because she is so loud! She continues to be a sweet, healthy baby and for that we are grateful. She is very strong and likes to wiggle which makes holding or diapering her a challenge. We think she is going to be in to everything!! Watch out, Charlotte Marie is on the move!

So Sick

This is what Evy has been doing for the last 6 days. The poor thing started with a fever Tuesday night, by Wednesday morning she was at 103.5 so I took her to the doctor. Her strep test was negative so they sent us on our way thinking it was a viral infection. We were dosing her every three hours, rotating betwen Tylenol and Motrin but her fever was still around 101. If we missed a dose it would be back up to 103 within thirty minutes. I took her back to the doctor on Saturday morning and they diagnosed her with tonsillitis and noticed she was starting to get an ear infection. Her second strep test was negative, we got antibiotics for the ear infection. On Saturday afternoon we let her sleep and miss a dose of Tylenol--her fever was 105 when she woke up. Finally today, day 6 of this damn thing, she seems to have more energy. It has been a horrible six days--poor Evy has felt like crap, has a terrible cough, has struggled to sleep, has eaten nothing, and has scared the heck out of us. We've been trying to keep Charlotte away from her and pray that Charlotte does not come down with this next. Scott and I have taken turns sleeping with Evy every night and holding her in a chair during the day so she can sleep. We are probably doomed to catch it. This also explains why there are no photos of fun Memorial Day Weekend activities on this blog!

What's My Name?

We use nicknames a lot for Charlotte. Currently on the list are Char-lots, Char-Char, Charlottie, Char lottie lou, and Charlie Sue.

Old MacDonald had a...

We checked out Old MacDonald's Farm last week and turns out that Old MacDonald didn't have much more than some ducks, chickens, and bunnies. But these kiddos LOVED it!

The big girls posing for a picture

The little girls posing for a picture

Evy spent most of her time on this horse. The picture is blurry because she was riding so fast!

*I've never asked my friends' permission to post photos of their kids on my blog so I just went ahead and put blocks over their faces. You'll just have to trust me that they're really cute kids!

Maiden Voyage

 

We have a different boat this summer and were super excited to take it out for our first ride last night. The boat was great. The kids were a different story. Poor Charlie hates her life jacket which is totally understandable. Evy was overexcited about the whole thing and was a little crazy.

Our Little Con Artist

I'm coming off of four days of parenting that have me at my wits' end. Evy cannot seem to eat meals on her own, use the bathroom on her own, retrieve toys on her own and a multitude of other things that she cannot (will not) do on her own. I had an appointment tonight with Evy's teacher for a regular parent-teacher conference and literally left the house without saying goodbye to Scott or the girls because I was so "over" the poor behavior. You can imagine my surprise in hearing the teacher say "I see nothing in Evy that concerns me on any level. She is a very intelligent little lady and is one of the most independent children in the room. She uses the bathroom on her own, puts her shoes on herself, can be paired with any child in the room because she gets along with everyone, she feeds herself at lunch with no problem, and does not sass back to teachers." I nearly fell off my chair when she used the word independent to describe Evy. It makes me very happy to hear that Evy behaves well for her teachers. It has affirmed the fact that she can do things by herself but chooses not to do them at home. Little con artist.

The Secret Keeper

On Thursday night Scott took Evy to Target and let her pick out a Mother's Day gift for me. He told her to keep it a secret. Friday night while I was putting her to bed Evy said, "Mom, I wonder where Dad hided your purple flip flops?" The Easter Bunny brought Evy purple flip flops and she choose the same for me so we could match. Good shopper. Bad secret keeper.

Toddlers and Tiaras

Evy started her first dance class in August (the day after Charlotte was born), went to class every Wednesday night at our recreation center, and just wrapped with her recital last weekend. She made a new friend along the way and seemed to enjoy her class and the recital. Most days after school she would ask "Is tonight dance class?" Every week after class she begged to get a treat from the vending machine. On her last night of class I let her pick something and she choose "the red things"--known to most of us as licorice. Her teacher was Miss Caroline and they danced to Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo from Cinderella. We weren't allowed to watch class and Evy never gave us any details so I'm not sure if they learned anything at class, the recital performance was an adorable mess and we're looking forward to doing it all again next year!

Evy made a new friend, Savannah.

She looks like she knows what she's doing, but no one else is doing the same move!

Savannah's Dad took this video, but you can see some good shots of Evy too.

Evy is in the front row (duh!), second from the right.

Greeted by her Grandparents after the performance.

Our adorable ballerina.

Drill

Grammy Sherry emailed the whole family this morning to let us know about the recent recommendation to wear bike helmets while taking shelter during tornadoes (they've found that most storm related deaths are due to head injury). I wanted Grammy to know we were taking this very seriously so I sent her the picture, above, to show her that Charlotte, Evy, and I had been practicing our drills this morning. Evy knows to grab her bike helmet. Charlie doesn't have a bike helmet so she gets Rubbermaid.