Updates from the Past Week

We went out to visit Grandma Nancy before they left for their trip. The girls wore their matching shirts that a family friend gave them, so we had to get a picture.

Kyle's Grandma turned 94!

Tessa's starting to get fussy when others hold her, but she was all smiles with Aunt Bobbi.

Kyri started her first ballet class!! I have to admit, I got a little emotional about this.

She was sooo excited to go to class.

Here she is at the bar before class started. She really wanted to have fun at class, but I'm not sure she did. I learned that Kyri is a bit of a perfectionist. She's really hard on herself, and when she couldn't do some of the moves exactly right, she actually started crying. She's the youngest one in the class, and while she can talk better than most of the other girls in it, her motor skills just aren't as great yet. Poor girl wants to do everything that the other girls are doing, but doesn't understand why she can't quite get it right. We tried to practice during the week, but she usually would just get frustrated and start doing something else. We may have started a year too early... Hopefully the next couple of classes are more fun!

At home, she continues to use her imagination more and more. She is really into telling stories right now. I've tried to capture some on tape to remember this adorable stage. She actually creates better plots than some of my third graders do, and she includes a beginning, middle, and ending. There are transition words like 'suddenly' and 'finally', and what cracks me up is that she includes language like "said the girl" after she gives her characters dialogue! I want to try and turn some of these into books this summer.

She also plays pretend all the time. Everything she comes across gets turned into a family, "This is the mommy grape, this is the daddy grape, and this is the baby grape." Her bean bag chair is her "nest" and she is a baby bird. Aubry is the mommy bird, but yesterday I actually got to be the mommy bird!!

These next two pictures show her playing "bretend mommy". She treats her babies just like we treat Tessa, and we hear her saying the same phrases we use to calm the babies down. (That crown came from Aunt Sherry who stopped by for a visit last week. It is on ninety percent of the day. She even wore it to Jewel this morning. When she wears it, she is a princess, I am the queen, and Kyle is the King. He is loving that!)

On to my Big Girl Tessa B. I keep the camera on the table so I can grab it quick because every time I walk by Tessa, I swear she looks bigger. It amazes me how much she is growing and getting stronger. I want to capture all of the new things she is doing.

She still LOVES to eat. During the day, she'll eat every 2.5 - 3 hours. She becomes a bear when she is ready for her bottle, but afterwards she is back to her smiley self. She is starting to hold her bottle on her own, which I'm loving because it frees me up a bit!

Tessa does not like to lay on her back on the floor to play anymore. As soon as I lay her down, she instantly flips herself over to her belly. This is fine for about 1-2 minutes. Then she gets mad and starts to cry until someone picks her up. This is a little frustrating, because that basically means that we can't lay her down for more than 2 minutes anymore! She is getting much stronger on her belly now, though.

Here she is sitting in front of her gym since she refuses to lay under it like a baby anymore. She is clearly a big girl!

And this week we got the exersaucer out of our storage room. She is LOVING it! Since she loves standing, this is perfect for her right now. I just keep changing up the hanging toys to try and keep her interested.

Tessa has a pretty short attention span these days, so I find myself holding her quite a bit while she gums up a toy. EVERYTHING goes into her mouth, and she pretty much is a slimy, spit-up stained mess all day long (as are we). She's the cutest mess I've ever seen, though! I remember this stage from Kyri. Time to pull out the bibs!

Love spending all this time with my girls. Now, hopefully we'll actually have some summer weather next week so we can get outside and play!