Juliet TWO Years Old

Juliet, precious and sweet girl, you are TWO years old!! I blinked and you have turned into a toddler! You are SO much fun and the past two years have been the best with you in our family!

You are my absolute cuddle bug. Our friend Emily says it is as if you are trying to crawl back in my belly. You want to be ON mommy at all times. The first hour of the day, at least, you need to be attached to me or else big tears and fits ensue. You give the BEST hugs and I adore them. You love to hug mommy, daddy, and your big sister! You are selective with "your people", but once they're in your circle, you give them big hugs too. 

You are becoming more and more verbal each day and have even strung together some short sentences. Until just recently, you said "yesh" for yes and it was THE cutest thing. 

You are a good climber, intentional runner, and bike enthusiast. You love to kick the soccer ball, hit plastic golf balls, swing and slide on the playground, and bounce in your crib. You sing continuously when you color.

You still give us nice, long afternoon naps. Thank you, princess! You are a good sleeper at night as well, though you protest every single night about bedtime. You are still in your crib, but have to be in a backwards sleep sack to prevent you from crawling out. You insist on having about a thousand stuffed animals in your crib and have a different favorite one every couple of weeks. You call the dog, "woof" and your unicorn "neigh". 

You love screen time (oops, mom fail) and ask to watch Moana constantly. It is your favorite movie and I've seen it enough at this point to last my lifetime. You think Hei Hei is hilarious and you try to sing along to some of the songs. 

Your favorite foods are mac and cheese, bananas, applesauce, apples, dog dogs, yogurts, MILK, and pirate booty. We offer you fruit consistently, but you reject it most of the time. Unless we give you clementines! You LOVE clementines.

You would be perfectly content to sit in the dirt and dig all day if I allowed it. You don't mind playing independently, as long as someone you love is close by. 

You miss Olivia when we take her to school, and even verbalize this. I love your sweet relationship and how excited you are to see each other after being apart for a couple of hours. No one makes you laugh like Olivia can. Especially right before bedtime. 

Juliet, there aren't enough words to describe how much we all love you. You are tender and tough and sweet and stubborn. I cannot wait to continue seeing who you grow to be!! Love you and we are so thankful to God for allowing us to be your parents!!

Olivia's 3rd Birthday Party

Sweet, Olivia. Your life has sped up and I'm writing this almost a whole year late. I think I should get partial credit for at least loading the photos to the post last December though! ;)

For a long time you have been obsessed with finding the moon. It's pretty precious and sweet. We even have a video of you hopping of your bike and trying to jump up to the moon once you spotted it.  Since you love the moon, we decided we'd celebrate your third birthday with a moon theme. 

We invited your family, friends, and classmates. Our original plan was to host the party at the neighborhood playground, grill food, and rent a bounce house. Unfortunately, due to the weather, we had to move the party to our home. 

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For food we served hotdogs, mac and cheese, fruit, raisins, and chips. For sweets we served beautiful star and moon cookies and, of course, cake.

We kept the decorations minimal since we were hoping to be outside, but we had some pretty balloons and things. 

 

We attempted to play some games while we waited for your special guest. Playing games with two year olds was about as successful as you would imagine it would be. But it was a nice way to pass time at the party. 

While we were playing games, your special guest arrived. To your delight it was Rapunzel!! The few months leading up to your birthday you were obsessed with Rapunzel. You were SO happy she came to your party!

Rapunzel brought lots of fun activities to your party. She gave you all makeovers with colorful makeup, made jewelry with you and your guests, and played games with her hair!

Rapunzel even sang Happy Birthday to you! You were quite delighted to be the birthday girl and center of attention. I love that it was caught on camera. 

It was so special and fun that Karis, Evan, and Charlotte came to your party all the way from Atlanta! They stayed for the night which you also thought was pretty great!

After our guests arrived we opened presents with the family. 

Safe to say you had a pretty wonderful and great day. We loved celebrating you and are always telling the Lord how thankful we are that he gave us YOU!! What a blessing you are to our family! Love you Olivia!

Juliet One Year Old!

Can't believe I'm writing your ONE YEAR blog!! WHAT?! This year seriously flew by!! Juliet, you are so so so much fun. I just absolutely adore you. You are a homebody and prefer to be with mommy at all times. I love being wanted and I love your cuddles. Sometimes, though, it's a bit hard to leave you with someone else or to get things like making dinner done because you literally want to be attached to me at all times. But, I know one day you won't need me or want me as much, so I'm cherishing this stage of life with you. 

You can be quiet and hesitant in situations that aren't familiar to you. But at home, you are a bubble of laughs and joy. (I kind of love how you only open up around the people who you know love you and who actually know know you.) 

You are curious and on the move. You book it towards the stairs anytime the gate is open for a chance to climb up the stairs. You've become very quick with your walking. I think, in part, because you are motivated to catch up to and run away from Olivia. 

For the most part the two of you play well together. We have run into some of the "No! Mine!!" problems that come with siblings, but Olivia loves you so much and she often showers you with hugs, kisses, and "i love you"s. 

You've started to try to copy Olivia whenever she dresses up and will walk a pretty dress over to me, put it in my hands, and then babble until I dress you in it. I have to tie up the ends so that you don't trip since they're WAY too big for you, but once you are dressed up you seem quite content. 

Other games you enjoy are knocking over towers that mommy or Olivia build, climbing under blanket forts, bouncing lap games with mommy, being pushed in the Little Tikes baby car, being held upside down, and playing with shape sorters. 

Recently, over the past month and a half or so, you've started to engage when we read to you. You love turning the pages of books and seem to really enjoy books with flaps and texture books. You bring me books often throughout the day and love to sit on my lap and help turn the pages.  I read to you before bed each night too. Your favorite books seem to be: Llama Llama Valentines, That's Not My Bunny, A Little Piggies book that goes with the toe game, the Sandra Boynton Doggies book (you "bark" at the dogs and it cracks me up), Goodnight Moon (you wave goodnight to everything... adorable!), and Peek-a-boo Zoo. 

No bookshelves are safe from your path. You loveeeeeee to pull books off of them. I cannot count the  amount of time I spend each day putting books back on shelves from various bookcases. You haven't quite learned the concept of "helping" clean them up, though Olivia is a big helper in cleaning up your book messes too. 

 

Your hair has started to curl up in ringlets on the ends around the nape of your neck. I'm pretty confident you're going to have curly hair like your sister. 

At One Year Old you:

• Weigh 20 lbs and 10 oz (gaining a whole 12 pounds and four ounces since birth!)
• Measure 28.75 inches 
• Have 3 and a half teeth (two middle bottom ones, one front tooth, and a upper side tooth coming in)
• Wear size 3 diapers
• Wear size 12 month clothes and size 4.5 shoes
• Sleep through the night
• Are weaned (I weaned you right after your birthday)
• Favorite foods include any kind of carb, bottles with whole milk, and any kind of fruit pack like applesauces or baby food packs
• You say the words, "dada", "mama", and "baba"(bottle)
• Are still giving me at least two, 1hr naps a day!
• Nicknames include: JuJu, JuJu Bug, munchkin, nugget pie, sweetie, love bug, princess, princess-pie, idget

Juliet, you truly are such a joy. I cannot imagine life without you. What a blessing you are. You are cherished and SO loved. God certainly knew what he was doing by gifting us YOU. Happy ONE YEAR baby girl!