Ella & Annie - My Pride and Joy

Since my last kid update, Ella turned 6 years old and Annie is now 9 months old!  I know I say this every time, but where is the time going?!  It definitely seems like it goes by even faster with the second child.  I can't believe in three months I won't have a baby anymore.  And Ella, she will be starting 1st grade in a couple months (and then Stephen and I will be turning 32 and 31 respectively)!  OMW!!


So, over the past few months, Ella has definitely moved from her Kindergarten days into a young girl who has shown her blossoming interests and talents.  Late spring she finished her final swim class.  She has aspirations of being on a dive team, but yet this summer she wanted to take a break.  But, I am very proud of her and her accomplishments and her abilities.  She is a great swimmer and has every stroke down (except for the butterfly). 

She also had another great soccer season and scored three or four goals over the course of 6 games.  She has turned into a great team player and finally doesn't think that she has to score a goal every game to be successful.  We aren't sure what's next for her.  She is interested in starting dance or maybe going back to gymnastics, but I'm not sure I (or she) can handle both.  Until then, her summer has been filled with lots of play dates and running around the 'hood with her friends.  She has a little more freedom this summer as she is allowed to ride her scooter or bike (she is officially off training wheels - which I feel took longer for her since we really only ride bikes about 5 months out of the year) to her friends house's as most of them live in the front of the neighborhood like we do.  She definitely thinks she's hot-stuff and it reminds me of when I was her age and I was riding my bike everywhere and into OTHER neighborhoods to visit friends.  But, not only is that not possible as neighborhoods aren't connected or really close to ours, but I seriously doubt I would even let her if that was an option.  It's sad to think about.  Our world is making us all crazy and limiting the fun and freedom kids used to have outside.  Anyway, she loves hanging out in neighbors' blow-up pools and using her slip-n-slide.  


She has also spent a lot of time reading which I love!  It's amazing how much her reading has progressed even over this short summer since school ended.  We take weekly trips to the library where she gets to pick out two books and a DVD.  And she also loves reading to Annie!  Ella has also become a techie...she loves her iPod Nano, which is Stephen's old one.  So no, we did NOT buy her an iPod.  But, she does take over my new iPod Touch that I was finally able to upgrade to.  I'm pretty sure she knows how to use it better than I do.  All of a sudden I saw her on Netflix the other day and I thought she had bought something accidentally, but no, she was just watching some cartoons that she put in the Watch Now queue....seriously.  AND she knows how to use Stephen's iPad.  Come on!!


Oh, as for Ella's (my petite one) 6 year stats...She is a mere 44" tall (23rd percentile) and 43.4 pounds (39th percentile).  For some reason she is very sensitive about being small.  Not sure what to do about that one.  She's kinda screwed since she has me and her daddy's genes.


Now onto Annie.  My chunky monkey is now 9 months old.  Her stats right now show she is 29" long (91st percentile) and 20.5 pounds (76th percentile).  She decided to start crawling the day she turned 7 months old.  She first started out doing a military crawl, but within a month weeks finally got onto her hands and knees.  She also loves music and head bangs to her favorites songs.  She also claps when she gets excited.  She continues to teeth...constantly.  She has at least 9 teeth, if not more.  It's crazy.  Since she has so many teeth we started her on table foods around 8 months.  She loves black beans, cheese, tomatoes, watermelon, french fries...she would eat more if we let her.  She finally started babbling around 8 1/2 months.  I was getting a little worried there as it seemed our pediatrician was going to send us to a speech therapist if she wasn't babbling by her 9 month check up.  Thankfully, she finally started vocalizing some b's and d's...but she is still not saying ''mama' or 'dada'.  Oh well.  I think we're just a loud and talkative family that she's just listening and taking it all in.  I fear to think of what her first words or phrase might be!!  :)

While in Florida Annie was able to experience the water for the first time.  She was able to go swimming at her aunt's house and she also went to Blizzard Beach at Disney.  She also went to Blue Springs and handled the 72 degree water like a champ, unlike her mommy who screamed like a little girl when she jumped in.  Just like her sister, she LOVES the water.  She could stay in it all day.

I'm happy also to brag that both my girls love church and their children's department.  Ella is about to graduate from Waumba Land (birth to Kindergarten) and jump to UpStreet (1st-5th grade).  She is very excited about that, but she is also sad that she will be leaving her teachers that she has been around since she was 2.  And Annie loves the nursery!  Ms. Val is the best and Annie has blossomed.  I'm also happy that the nursery seems to be the only place where Annie doesn't cling to me!

I can't imagine what my girls will be doing during the next update.  I suppose the next one will be in a couple months when Ella starts 1st grade and then again in three months when Annie turns 1.  OMW!!!