3 Year Check and Facts

Adrienne had her 3 year well-child check this morning, and received a clean bill of health. She was 3 ft 4 1/4 in. tall (greater than 97%) and 35.6 lbs (87%). She was very silent during the exam, watching the nurse and Dr Valdes very, very carefully.

I think it's so cute when they start checking the kids' blood pressures.

Saying "ahhh" for Dr. V.

As part of every well-child check I have a questionnaire to fill out. Today I was asked to describe Adrienne's strengths, and I realized I hadn't ever really thought about or had to articulate her strengths so succinctly. So, after a few minutes I decided that Adrienne's strengths are her conversation/verbal skills, warm sensitive nature, coordination, and sense of humor. So, a bit more on those....

This kid can talk, talk, talk. She has questions about everything, can explain herself and her feelings well, and does this cute little stuttering thing with the word "but" when she is flustered or upset. And then there is the whining. Oh can she whine. It's like a little switch she flips, and it is like nails on a chalkboard.

Adrienne is so sensitive, so warm and loving. Her feelings are easily hurt, and you can expect big crocodile tears. She apologizes quickly when she gets in trouble, "I'm so sorry, Mom", and needs a regular snuggle to make sure all is right in her world. She loves to tease her sister by saying "I am the snuggly one and Jillian is the wiggly one". This comes from us telling her how snuggly she was as a baby. Matt also told Jillian that she was pretty wiggly and didn't like to be held as much. Jillian interpreted this as a bad thing and her sister smelled the weakness. Now it's on. Snuggle Girl and Wiggle Girl are the resident superheroes.  Adrienne loves to cuddle me, kiss me, tell me she is my baby, play with my hair, touch my cheek, all that wonderful stuff that turns me to mush. I'm eating this love up.

Adrienne also seems to be pretty naturally coordinated. I've seen this with ball skills, climbing at parks, imitating me while I exercise, etc. I think she might be a natural athlete, but we'll see.

And then there is her sense of humor. It is always impeccably inserted into tense or quiet moments. She makes up jokes, does funny faces, and seems to get a lot of joy from making others laugh. She also has quite the infectious giggle herself.

Other things I want to remember about Adrienne right now are that she just started sleeping with her door open (so she can get out without me coming to get her--oh boy!) and she has some crazy night terrors. Both girls are pretty scared of the dark, so I went to Target and got some fun new night lights and gave them each a cute ladybug flashlight. This seems to help. I love when Adrienne comes downstairs in the morning, pitter pattering into my room and cautiously asking, "Mom, is it morning?" If she has a hard time falling asleep she always makes one of two pleas, "I just can't sleep 'dat good" or "My eyes can't close bery good". Night terrors are a new thing for her (and us) and they generally center around her fear of bugs. The first night was about the fly trying to get into her "mouf", then another night it was about "a big bug with hands trying to take my lovey", and the most recent was a giant outside her window riding on a fire truck. Oh, to be in her little brain for awhile. The dreams always cause her to plea to sleep in my room "Your room is  much more cozy than mine", to which I hold firm to my rule about no kids in our bed (unless sick or in the morning) and always sit outside her door and wait for her to fall asleep again. She periodically calls out to check--"Mom are you still there?"

This 3 year old of mine is one of a kind. Love her to pieces and wouldn't change a thing.  OK, except maybe the whining :)

Summer Fun--Week 7

We had a fun, full week! Jillian tried basketball camp, both girls attended a one-morning soccer camp and Wee Wednesdays at Sargent's (aka "gardening class"), had a fun playdate with Caden and Miss Julie, and capped off the week with a visit from Aunt Mal and Uncle John. Good times were had by all!

Make Something Monday: Monster Puppets. Big hit, easy prep.

Try It Tuesday: Cyclone in a bottle (thanks, Grandpa Bennie for the cyclone tube). Easy and very fun for the girls. We added different food colorings and soap to try different effects.

What's Cookin' Wednesday: Peach Frozen Yogurt. Made in a food processor, with very minimal effort, and was amazingly delicious.

Throwback Thursday: I gathered up a pile of books that were favorites of the girls as babies or toddlers, and read them aloud to them in a story time fashion. We all loved this so much, we could have done it all day.

Friday Funday: A day packed full of fun with Aunt Mal and Uncle John here...they babysat so I could get my hair cut, then we took them to Newt's for lunch, to basketball camp and to play in the RAC neighborhood, to Flapdoodles for ice cream, and then home to play some games before dinner.

Playing with Miss Julie and Cade inside the princess castle

Poor Caden was just at the mercy of the girls as they did their best to boss him around

Ready to catch a pass at basketball camp

Girlfriends at camp: Chloe, Kaia, Ella, and Jillian

Thor and Adrienne watching their big sisters

Our monster puppets. Paper bags leftover from A's party, googly eyes glued on, construction paper cut outs for teeth, and crayon art. You can tell we are a house of girls...don't know any boys who would make "nice rainbow monsters"

Oh! I had fun this week, too! I got invited to go on a trolley to the Four Daughter's Winery for a tour and 6 course tasting dinner. This was right up my alley, so of course I eagerly accepted. I enjoyed the evening with Mary and Shirlyn and other folks I happened to know who came along too. Late night and big fun for an 'ol mom like me.

What I first sat down to at dinner. Yes, please.

Listening to instruction from Miss Beth at Sargent's Wee Wednesday class. She is so wonderful and the staff at Sargent's really does a nice job with the class. My girls always love this monthly class and are excited when it works for us to attend.

This month's Wee Wednesday class involved a scavenger hunt that included getting to select a colorful rock when we discovered the "treasure"

Jillian found the only blue rock in the bunch

Adrienne chose this vibrant yellow

Crossing off items on our scavenger hunt list

Sampling our peach frozen yogurt. Yum!

Making cyclones 

Purple, soapy water is extra fun!

Mini golfing with Uncle John while we waited for Jillian's camp to end. 

Excited to show Uncle John the Lego movie, as we were sure he'd love it. We were right.

Snuggles with Aunt Mal

Uncle John is my dream "manny" (male nanny). High entertainment factor that wears kids out.

Yep, he's a really good sport

Aunt Mal and Uncle John came bearing goodies from Lawrence--yee haw!

We decided to take Aunt Mal and Uncle John to Stone Barn Pizza in Nelson, "Winds-Consin" (how Jillian says WI), but first we stopped at LARK Toys in Kellogg. When we got to Stone Barn we had a super long wait and it seemed like the perfect time to bust out the Kubb game.

Obligatory post-pizza ice cream. Chocolate-covered Adrienne. Not pictured: Uncle John's chocolate stained shirt.

Summer Fun--Week 6

What happened to week 5, you ask? Well, we kind of fell off the wagon, but we hopped back on this week. Highlights included a Tuesday morning RAC camp for both the girls with an "I Spy" theme, and Jillian attended her soccer evaluation. She will be playing Upward Soccer Aug-Oct and we had to go to a little mini-clinic so they can test all the kids and make sure they don't put all the superstars or first-timers together. Jillian was really excited about this, and honestly, she surprised me with what she was able to do. The fun part of the little evaluation is that her coach was a friend's dad, and she seemed really excited about this. Stay tuned for more soccer fun around here!

Make Something Monday--Fork Flowers. We painted flowers and dipped plastic forks into the paint to use as a "tulip stamp". Big mess, not as defined as it looked on Pinterest. Adrienne didn't really get it.

Try it Tuesday--Sink or float? We talked about how some things sink in water and some things float. The girls gathered a bunch of objects and we hypothesized about each object before testing it out. I was kind of surprised at how much fun they had doing this. Jillian kept going to grab more objects and they worked on this little project for nearly an hour together. Big win!

What's Cookin' Wednesday--Apple Chips. Definite hit. Tasty, easy, and loved by all.

Throwback Thursday--Spent the afternoon poolside as I did so many days of my youth, and capped it off with their first of one of my favorite childhood treats (fudgesicle...now called fudge bar it seems). We will be remembering this all summer as I can't seem to remove all the chocolate stains from their swimsuit and cover ups.

Friday Funday--The girls have been asking to have a slumber party with each other for awhile now, so we blew up the air mattress for A and put it in Jillian's room. We told them they could stay up until 9 as long as they played nicely together. Jillian was very excited about hosting the event and even built a pretend fire with blocks and they pretended to roast marshmallows. The fun fell apart (read huge, disappointed tears) when Adrienne wouldn't cooperate and be quiet as a very tired Jillian tried to sleep. Who woulda thunk it? They eventually settled down and we ended up letting them sleep like this on Saturday night, too. Oh it's so fun to have a sister!

Sink or float?

It's pretty exciting when you hypothesize correctly!

Apple chips

Poolside. Adrienne loves to wade out into the water, put her face in and try to swim for a few seconds, and then promptly turn around to look at me with a big grin as she gives me the 'thumbs up' sign. Bet she did it no less than 20 times in a row. 

Let the first official slumber party commence!

4th of July Fun

I was delighted when my dear friend, Melanie (brief history: met in OT school, bridesmaid in our wedding), texted me many months back and asked if they could come for a visit over the 4th. The Krumsicks last came to visit 4 years ago (also over the 4th), so we had lots of catching up to do! They arrived from Omaha on Thursday evening and the 4 of us celebrated our reunion by clanking glasses of dirty martinis while the kids got acquainted. We enjoyed lots of food, laughs and late late nights over the next three days (us old people need time to recover...3 a.m. is just too darn late!) as we enjoyed one another's company, played yard games, tried to master Hanabi (fun new card game Matt bought) and battled over the board in Ticket To Ride. The girls did really well together all in all (a few bumps are inevitable when we are talking about this much estrogen--4 girls between us), and it was tough to say goodbye Sunday morning when they rolled out of here and headed south. A few photographic highlights....

Decked out in USA attire

With Kelsey (9) and Avery (5) Click here to see pics of the girls the last time we were together....pre Adrienne!

My one attempt at festive food. The kids were delighted by this. What would I do without Pinterest???

Rolling out the slip n slide for some holiday fun

Here comes Avery

A and K try it backwards

See that pointer finger cocked back? Ready to give a directive.

I see you, Matt, Greg, and Melani

Wish my cheeks looked this cute hanging out of a swimsuit!

4 friends in a tiny baby pool

Obligatory post-swim ice cream cone.

Jillian was really excited about the fireworks she had selected

A view of the kubb field Matt mowed. We are getting lots of use out of the game he and his dad made the week before

Checking out the spread for the show later

Matt gave Jillian permission to go out into the tall grass and explore. All I could think about were ticks.

Avery was a bit worried about Jillian 

Love these pics of Avery

Pretty sad that the only pic I got of Melanie and I was this selfie I took just before dusk.

After a long, long wait, it was finally dark. Jillian got help with her first sparkler

Watching Matt's "show"

Love this--hands in ears and A was helping with her flashlight. She was VERY worried about being outside when dark and kept asking to go inside. I finally gave her a flashlight and a job (to help Daddy see inside the fireworks bag) and she was much better.

Adrienne tests out a sparkler

Not sure what this face was for, but I find Matt's expression hilarious

The fireworks show lasted about 10 minutes too long, because we went from happy girls to total meltdowns in that time. Both of mine were whining and crying, and Jillian totally lost it in the shower when she realized we forgot to sing "Happy Birthday" to the USA. Total sob fest. So, there the 4 of us were in the bathroom singing it before bedtime. Doing our best to raise patriotic kids I guess. 

Cute pic of Krumsick girls peeking down over the living room