Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss!

In honor of Dr. Seuss's birthday today I thought I would share these pictures of Amelia and Joe in the same Seuss onesie!

Funny thing about this onesie? It is size 6-9 month. Amelia is pictured at around 8 months in it. Joey is 4 months. You can really tell what a chunk he is! She barely filled it out at twice his age! You can also see a huge difference in their legs in the Bumbo chair... She still fit in there with some wiggle room. Little man? His legs often get stuck. So when you go to pick him up out of the chair - the chair comes too!

Have a great day!

Hewp Ko

Amelia loves to "hewp Ko" (aka "help Joe") lately. Little brother has gotten a touch too large for his swings and they won't "swing" him any longer....usually. You can sometimes get them going if you turn them up all the way and give the guy a push. Then, sometimes, the swing can "swing" him for awhile. I guess that's what you get when you have a nearly twenty pound four month old!

Amelia has taken it upon herself to be Joe's swinging helper. She is a bit rough at times and I am working on that with her. However, it is just so rewarding to see her finally enjoying her role as "big sister."

The camera memory filled up right when Joey was really getting going laughing but you get the picture! He loves when his sister pays attention to him!

Adoration

I love watching this relationship evolve. Joey is growing on Amelia more and more every single day - even though she doesn't want anyone to know!

Three Years Stats

Today was Amelia's three year well visit! As soon as nurse Emily wanted to check her blood pressure she got a little concerned:

So, instead of her getting her blood pressure checked her orange pony got his done by a highly qualified Dr. Amelia :)

What? A shot?

She had her Hep A shot. She did great.

Now for her stats and stuff:

• 35 pounds, 85th percentile
• 40 inches, 95th percentile
• Sleeping around10-12 hours a night with varying bedtimes between 8 and 9ish p.m. and wake times varying from 7 to 9 a.m.
• Favorite foods are mac 'n' cheese, cheese ravioli and tortellini, waffles, Uh-Ohs (spaghettios) and peas (they recently made a comeback!)
• Favorite snacks are cookies, fruit snacks and cheez-its
• Dora and Diego ("Go-ah and Gee-go") are major, major hits with this girl. We have started to have to limit her TV because she'd watch those guys 24/7 if we let her!
• My Little Ponies are a new interest. She loves to watch the original movie (from my childhood) before bed right now
  
• Her speech is improving with each passing week which has made life so, so much easier
• She is now attending an early childhood speech class two days a week at the local elementary school for an hour and a half each day
• Her favorite toys are animal figurines, anything Dora or Diego, cars, bubbles and her new Little People pirate ship she got for her birthday
• She is trying to dress and undress herself more and more but it is something I need to be better about encouraging her to try and do on her own
• She is mommy and daddy's little helper - even when we would just rather do things alone!

We have a healthy and happy three year old girl! We love her very much! She brings so much joy (and frustration) to our lives :)

First Day of School

Amelia had her first day of Pre-K speech today! She "graduated" from the county's Birth to 3 program last week which basically means she turned three and now she moves into the school district's speech program! I am going to miss her speech therapist, Lisa, who has been coming to our apartment once a week since November to work with Amelia. She has progressed so much in the short time we worked with Lisa and we are so thankful!

I had to work so Jason and Joe dropped Amelia off today. She went with the teacher very willingly Jason said.

She will go two days a week for an hour and a half. Right now we (well, Jason since I am at work!) are driving her but we will eventually sign her up for pick-up and drop-off by the school's transportation service. For the time being we just want her to get used to going to school before we throw in the van ride with someone she is unfamiliar with as well as other children she doesn't know!

This is the first craft she made at school :) I'm not sure how much of it she actually did but I don't care - I love it! From the things Amelia brought home I figured out today they worked on "K." This is the "K" caterpillar and it has little images of "c" and "k" words. I'm glad that the first day they worked on a sound that Amelia knows well. Hopefully it made her feel confident and helped her enjoy the activities more :)

Bedtime didn't go super smoothly tonight. Amelia came to her gate a few times while I was nursing Joe to sleep and once I had him down I went to shut her door and found her passed out on the floor by the gate. I moved her to her bed and covered her with her favorite blanket.

I can't believe what a big girl she is becoming!

Birthday Weekend

I should preface this post with this - I completely failed at taking pictures this weekend! Amelia is at a point where she doesn't really want her picture taken most of the time so I just didn't try as hard as I normally do. It wasn't worth upsetting her on her birthday!

Saturday night we had dinner with my family at Yarusso Bros Italian Restaurant. We had never been there but it was a hit! Amelia had about half a loaf of bread with butter and a good chunk of her spaghetti. It was the most I have seen her eat in one sitting in a long, long time - so it must be good!

In addition to dinner we did gifts and had cake and ice cream with my parents and sister.

Sunday we had dinner at Jason's sister Liz's house. She did tacos - which were delicious! After dinner Amelia opened gifts and I think she was more excited about all the tissue paper than anything :) Gifts were followed up with cake and ice cream!

Amelia's cake and cupcakes were Dora themed which she loved! I loved that the Dora/Diego cake had Dora and Boots figurines added...so we have spares now! We had the same toppers on my birthday cake last year and they are one of Amelia's favorite toys now. Boots got lost one night last week and bedtime was impossible until he was found.

This third birthday weekend was low-key and that is just fine with us. Jason and I have been very drained of energy the past few weeks. Our work schedules are not allowing for adequate rest and it's been taking it's toll on us. Thank you to our families for planning and executing everything this weekend! We appreciate it more than you know.

Three Years Old

Today Amelia is three years old...but it is technically her fourth birthday if you count her day of birth... Our weekend is full with plans to see family and celebrate this little girl. She is a handful, there is no doubt about that, but that only makes us love her more.

Here is a walk down memory lane:

Happy Birthday, Big Girl! Can't wait to see what this next year will bring us!!!

Squeaky Clean

Afternoon baths left me with two fresh smelling kids to spend the evening with!

We had a pretty good night until it was time to get Amelia to bed. Long story short? All three of us were in tears at one point. Joe was screaming in his swing while Amelia cried because she lost her Boots the monkey figurine and I was crying out of frustration. Yep.

We eventually found Boots and she got to bed where she proceeded to pass out almost instantly. I made sure she put her Dora and Boots figurines (from my birthday cake last year...) into her Dora purse. You know, so we would know where they are tomorrow. And tomorrow? I'll tell her, once again, to put them into her Dora purse when they are not in active play. I do not wish to repeat tonight's events.

Day at the Mall

Amelia's third birthday is this weekend! Yesterday Auntie Kim brought us to Sea Life MN in the Mall of America to celebrate! It had been about a year and a half since we had been there and in that time it was remodeled so it was a little bit different than we remembered it!

The jellyfish were a hit with Amelia again!

After Sea Life we went to Nickelodeon Universe theme park. I got enough tickets for Amelia to go on three rides. She went on the carousel, Azul's Adventure (the train from Dora) and Wonder Pets Flyboat (they sit on a bench and it went up and bounced down several times.) I went on everything but the flyboat with her - she asked me to sit next to her but I knew she could do it alone!


She did well until the last time it went up. She started to cry a little bit at that point.

Waiting in line for rides was the most patient I have ever seen this girl! She was so mesmerized by everything.

Before we headed out we had a late lunch/early dinner at one of the mall's food courts. Amelia was excited about her crown!

This little guy was a trooper all day long! He sat in his stroller content and (mostly) happy the entire day :)

We made a few stops on our way home from the mall making it a nice, full, long day. Everyone was pretty tired by the time we made it home! I got Amelia into her bed and went to get her the milk she asked for and by the time I got back with it she was out cold! We all slept pretty good last night!

Weekend Walks

We had some nice weather this weekend! By nice, I mean mid-thirties... We took advantage of the "warm" weather and went on a couple of family walks. Joey stayed all warm and cozy in his stroller on our walk to the school playground Saturday afternoon.

While at the playground we found a few playground balls that were left out and Amelia had fun playing "be-bah" (baseball) with them. Her version of baseball involved a soccer net so I am not sure what she was actually playing but she had fun!

Sunday afternoon we went over to my parent's house and broke in the kids' wagon that Santa brought them. I forgot to pack Joe's snowsuit so he rode in his carseat in the stroller and Amelia had the wagon all to herself. I think she preferred it that way! We walked nearly two miles!

After our walk we had BLT sandwiches! Amelia discovered a love for Cheeto puffs...her dinner was yogurt and probably a dozen Cheeto puffs! We're slowly working on expanding her taste buds. This weekend she re-discovered peas and was asking for them at meals. That's progress! She used to love them and just fell out of it somewhere between one and two. In fact, between one and two she became a pretty picky eater. Some nights all we can hope for is that she'll eat something - anything!

We had a good weekend! Hopefully that will set us up for a good week :)