Kindergarten

Our little Pricess is in kindergarten! Oh my goodness!
She already reads well and does basic addition into double-single digits. And each day she comes home knowing someone else's name. So far she has said that the hardest rule is going to be not taking the kitchen toys into the bathroom to play. And no singing in the bathroom. :) Her teacher is Mr. Bayliss at Nelson Elementary and she is in the morning class. I drive her and Will to school, then she comes home on the noon bus, then we return to pick up Will in the afternoon. AJ is enjoying a little more Mommy Time but he is so excited when Nina comes home!

Almost 5

I can't believe it, our little Nina girl is almost 5 years old!

She is a joy, a little spitfire, a ball of energy and talking and creativity. She is a very balanced young girl: loving to play with her brothers (which means trains, dinosaurs or transformers) but she thoroughly enjoys ballet class and playing princess with other girls.
Her current close friends are Audrey M, Melissa C, and Ella R. Her dance recital song this year is "Goin' To The Chapel" and she is very excited to wear a wedding dress. This is her second year in ballet and she is showing a lot of coordination and balance. She dances very methodically - only doing what her teacher has taught her, and generally in order every time even during free dance.

She has a bicycle with training wheels. We attempted to remove the training wheels once in the autumn, but she wasn't quite ready. Now that every kid in the family has a bicycle & rides, she tends to holler a lot that someone is going to run into her (usually big brother).

Her current favorite colors are pink & purple and she loves Fancy Nancy's vocabulary of using "fuschia" for purple.

For school she is doing A Beka's Letters & Sounds for 5 year olds book. So far she has done a great job. She writes clear manuscript (although mostly capitals still) and can add up to 10. She also reads most small words phonetically and she has a fairly large sight word vocabulary! She has memorized "Hop On Pop" and most of "Fancy Nancy."

She is a very social person and clearly gets reenergized by being around others! She has a fairly strong opinion about most things too! In reading the book "The Spirited Child" she fits most of the categories about 8 out of 10 times. Being by herself is the worst consequence for her. We have a daily quiet time that she hates, but it is a good skill to learn.

She really cracks me up lately by telling me she wants to have 12 people in her family when she grows up: married to Will and have 10 babies! They often argue about this because Will says he wants to marry Ella R. and he doesn't want that many babies anyway.

Nina loves her daddy more than anything, but she likes me quite a lot too. She is very compassionate and is freely giving hugs at very appropriate times. She really enjoys going to Awana Cubbies every Tuesday night where her favorite teacher in the world is: Mrs. Erin!! She also gets to see Mrs. Erin at Sunday School and Nina was part of the kids choir in the Christmas program.

For weight: she seems to be around 37 pounds, which is still very light for being nearly 5 and on the tall side of average. Her wheat & dairy issues are very much under control now, although we do strongly limit dairy.

I know that there is very little structure to this but it was time to jot things down before I forget them and suddenly she's 10!

Summer 08

My oh my, I haven't posted in a year??

Nina has come so far since last September. She is fully potty trained and only wears a pull-up at night. It only took about two months for complete potty control and about another two months for bowel control. Finding the right motivation was the hardest part!
She continues to be tiny, weighing in at 27 pounds, but is a bit tall at 38 inches. She can easily wear size 18 month shorts or capris, since that is her true waist size, but her legs are long and lean so she wears 3T *adjustable waist!* jeans and sweats.
Nina adores gardening and is frequently dirty. Truly truly dirty. Mud caked into her fingernails and sandals! We have a little square of flower garden that has never been planted - now it is Nina's Corner. :)
Nina is great at helping and wanting to be a mommy, she tries to pick up AJ (who weighs over 20 pounds), she tucks her doggy into his bed, she is very concerned over all kids smaller than herself!
She has begun to make friends and remember them. Deanna, Marin & Nicole are some current favorites, but that changes every few weeks. The more we see someone, the more she asks for them!
Nina talks a lot. And she is very very clear. She is also enjoying our church's nursery program where she is in the same room as AJ. She and Will both get to sing in the children's choir - he remembers the tunes, she remembers the words. But the combination is pretty funny! Her favorite song is "my cup is running oooooover!" That song gets faster and faster and she's hilarious!
She will start pre-ballet this fall. I am probably more excited than she is right now! She does dance around the house a lot and she is a good sport when we take Will to tae kwon do twice a week, so she needs to have an activity of her own.
We have hosted a monthly tea part for Nina through my local moms group. Each month about 4-6 little girls of similar ages come over to play. They are too young to enjoy actually having a tea party, but they do enjoy each other's company! Nina loves having some girl time! We will try to continue to do this into the fall as much as possible.
Nina does a good job at listening in during Will's schoolwork. Most of the schoolwork in our curriculum is very adaptable for multiple ages so she can draw while Will does handwriting, she reads along with us, she works on the same memory verse.
Our Nina Boo got a bicycle for her birthday this year and is doing a fantatic job! She loves to go get the mail and then ride around with the mail in her basket. Sometimes a puppy & the sippy cup come along too.
Over the last year we've determined she has a wheat & dairy sensitivity. When she has a lot, her stomach will break out in a tiny rash. It's very hard to explain, it is almost like the pores are open and painful. It's not red right away, but if we let it go it does become red and itchy. We have been able to get on top of this with some lotions but also changing her diet. When she has several weeks with almost no wheat, the rash clears up. We are offering lots of rice, corn and potato alternatives. Rice cakes instead of crackers, potato chips instead of crackers, corn-based cereal or oatmeal instead of wheat-based cereal. She loves white rice and sometimes I mix in a non-dairy "cream cheese" to give it more substance. She loves that!

Summer Recap

Wow 4 months went by!

Here's what we did and how she's growing, hopefully in order...

1) we took a family vacation to Ocean Shores in late May. Nina loved playing in the sand. She wasn't too sure about the hotel's pool.

2) Baby Aaron arrived in early June. Nina loves being a big sister. She adores AJ & kisses him much more than he wants to be kissed.

3) In July Nina & Will spent a week with my parents & went camping in Idaho. Nina really took the opportunity to get dirty seriously. I'll have to post a picture of her -she was so dirty I shuddered!

4) Two neighbors got the chicken pox & I think Nina did too. She's been vaccinated so it was very mild. I even thought it was bug bites for a while.

5) In keeping Nina's big toenails cut, I trimmed one too short & it got infected. It's a little ingrown still but I think the infection is gone.

6) In August we took a family vacation to Birch Bay, WA with my parents. Nina figured out the pool isn't so bad & she "swims" with water wings - but no help please!!

I'm 2 years old!

Nina is now a big girl! She's 2 years old! And she'll tell you by holding up her thumb & forefinger. :) A lot was going on around Nina's birthday and it turned out that the best day to celebrate it was on May 6th, her birthday! Relatives came over and enjoyed an early dinner. Nina was already having a great day; she wore her pretty birthday dress to church and wouldn't take it off. She wanted to play outside while Daddy cooked the burgers and I couldn't get the dress off, so we put on a sweatshirt and jeans right over the dress! I should mention that she LOVED William's birthday and for weeks had been talk about Nina's birthday and how she would get balloons and little Nina cakes. We ordered little white cupcakes with pink frosting and butterflies from the local grocery store. Daddy had picked up a little balloon bouquet of pink, purple, yellow ballons & one big Dora the Explorer balloon. She loved everything. After dinner we moved on to presents and it was just perfect. She didn't get too much or even too much of any one thing. She got a nice selection of clothes, books and toys. The big present from us was a table and two chairs for her and William to play at in the toy room. They immediately had a great time playing with her new tea set. My parents came over this weekend and she got a few more clothes and baby doll things from all the family across the state.

Auntie Ty and Baby Havana came to stay with us for a week a few weeks ago. Havana was 5 months old and Nina enjoyed being a big girl and a big helper. She considered it her job to help with all diaper changes and take all dirty diapers to the garbage. She loved on Havana so much and was always making sure that she had a binky and a selection of toys. Yeah, she did try to sit on her once but everything was fine. :) She came very close to actually saying Havana, calling her "A-Vah-a."

As we get ready to welcome a new baby in June, I really enjoy watching Nina round other babies. She really does very well and there is a very natural maternal instincts in her. She and William continue to be best friends though. Yeah, great enemies too, but mostly best friends. Nina talks more every day and also gets even more clear every day. She is good at enunciating and will repeat a word or phrase maybe 20-30 times until she feels that she is saying it correctly. It drives me a little nuts but it's a good thing.

At her 2 year old checkup she weighed 23 lbs 7 oz! That's her most ever! She is still only in the 10th percentile for weight, but any gains are good. She's become very picky about breakfast foods, eating only scrambled eggs - no cereal, toast, pancakes or waffles! Oh well, it's good for her. :)

Winter Update

Nina has become really attached to William. Every time she wakes up, either in the morning or from a nap, she asks about him. Where is he? Can I hear him? When she does see him, she's overjoyed & often runs to hug him.
After a bout of the flu & cutting 4 more teeth (eye teeth I think) she is finally doing better. She has also learned how to get out of her crib whenever she wants, and does it so well & so quietly that even with her door open, my door open & the baby monitor on, I sometimes don't hear her do it! She is also threatening to stop napping. In the last two weeks she only took naps when she needed cough medicine. That pushes her bedtime back even further (from 7 pm to nearly 6 pm) and I'm hoping that if she is going to abandon naps, she will learn to sleep in. At least until 7:30 or maybe even 8!
Nina knows a lot of body parts and enjoys pointing them out. It's even part of her bedtime routine now. "Where is Nina's eye? Where is Daddy's eye?" The only thing Mommy does different is point out the baby in Mommy's belly. She never fails to kiss it & give it a nice pat. And then she looks at her belly & tries to kiss it too. William started calling his nostrils "tunnels" and she picked it up. So now after we ask about her nose, we ask about her tunnel & she will always point to either ours or her nostril! :)
She also loves bath time & making splashes. For being such a small person, she can really make a mess! She likes to play in bubble bath and has two little tiny bath poofs that she plays with. Nina likes to sing and talk and will talk in the car just for the sake of entertaining herself or keeping herself awake.
Weight! I almost forgot! She had a weight check up in February and weighed over 21 lbs! And that was with only a dry diaper on! The dr. was so happy he said I don't have to bring her back until her 2 year old check up in May!

New Year, New Post

Ahhh, it's been a long time.
Nina had a good Christmas. She got a lot of things she really enjoys. A few examples are: baby dolls, apron & cooking utensils, baby stroller, and a backpack. There were more things that she loves but that's all I can think off at the moment. Nina is still a good sleeper! She sleeps roughly 12 hours at night and still takes a 2 hour nap every afternoon. She is currently trying very hard to be independent and talkative, but it's not going as well as she would like. She wants to talk, she wants to tell us what she wants and doesn't want. She's getting quite particular. However, her vocabulary is still limited to about 20 2-syllable words. That makes getting juice into the correct sippy cup very complicated for her. She throws a lot of fits out of frustration and it often feels like she is trying to manipulate us into doing things her way. She needs to learn that she is not the boss. Especially since she is not the baby anymore, she is the middle child. That's right, Nina is getting a baby brother in late May or early June. She adores all babies we run into (cousins, neighbors) and is very gentle. She's going to be a great big sister and very helpful. But she does need to learn that the world doesn't revolve around her and her opinions.
Nina continues to measure slightly above average height but is barely 20 pounds. We will go see a nutritionist in about a week. She is a good eater and it's certainly not that she's picky or a "grazer." But I really hope the nutritionist will let her get down & run & see how much she burns! That girl is all muscle and she is a very busy bee. Just like big brother, sigh... They have such a wonderful time in the tub. I think bathtime is her favorite time of day. They like to slide down the back and make the water slosh all over.