Fantastic four! Unicorn power!

We have a four year old!  Wow, how time flies.  The threes were terrific, with some rough spots with all we threw at Sam, especially if she did not get a nap.  But we are ready for the fantastic fours.  She already seems to have adjusted to being more mature.  She told my mom a few times lately that she was angry instead of pitching a fit or crying.  She is such a wonderful child, she never ceases to amaze us.  She is improving on reading every day.  She is creative and getting quite artistic, when she tries.  And you never know what will come out of her mouth, but it rarely matches her little girl voice.  It is not uncommon to hear her say words like interesting, frustrating or such.

At her check up she was right at 40 inches (~50th percentile) and 32 pounds (~25th).  So still long and lean, but not troublesome.  She definitely hit all the milestones they asked about, some years ago :)  What a blessing it is to have a healthy, happy, wonderful child.

Sam had a great birthday celebration.  She opened some gifts early.  She had a wonderful unicorn party with no gifts.  We did donations for the SPCA, she really does not need more stuff and was getting some from family and a few friends anyway.

The party pictures, in somewhat random order.

The cupcakes, pink of course, arranged in a 4.

The birthday girl getting pushed in the swing.  Notice her unicorn horn I made.  Each guest had one, but they did not all stay on as long as Sam's.

General party fun.

A mom's club friend who shares Sam's birthday.

Chasing.

Cupcake time.

 Sam won pin the horn on the unicorn, which was the main thing she wanted and why she picked this theme.

Ribbon cutting of the playstructure for the grand opening.

More swinging.

The birthday girl and her horn.

Zoey napped through the first part, but woke up for some fun, swinging, attention, and cupcake.

The girls and papa.

Sam loved her party.  I tried to really have fun with the theme.  The horns were a hit, so was the game.  Snacks were unicorn horns (bugles), carrots and apples, and oats (a heart shaped oat cereal).  We also served hot dogs.  Even the favors were unicorn theme with some other stuffed mixed in.

11 months!

Wow, Zoey is closing in on a year!  How time flies.  Her official panda shots.

Sam wanted a sister shot, but Zoey wanted to get away. She is a wild child at times.

A close up of Sam.

Then a silly one.

The mom's club theme for January was musical arts, so I hosted a make egg shaker playdate the day before Sam's birthday.

Zoey is getting really good at standing.  She can stand and dance or clap.  She can stand without any help, even from objects.  She just pops right up.  So strong, she just will not try a step.  Stubborn kid.

And the playstructure is pretty much done.  After the coat of gray, Nick dry brushed some lighter shades on.

The inside got panels on the walls and ceiling.  And mats on the floor.

Then the brick mortar was painted on.  He still has to paint the mortar on the garage.

A straight on view.

The back wall has chalkboard paint.  My mom donated her kitchen set, which was a huge hit at the party.

She speaks

We have been busy adjusting to the new semester and trying to finish up the playstructure.  I did host a Wigglers (0-18 months for moms club) Winnie the Pooh Day Party.  It was hilarious, all the kids played a bit but they really dug into the snacks.  A group of good eaters for sure.

My parents, the girls and I also squeezed in a quick day trip to visit my great aunt.  She will be 95 in May and still lives alone.  She has eye and ear problems.  What an amazing lady who has been through so much.  It was great to see her.  Sam wanted to take something cuddly, so my mom bought a bear.

The girls love their swings!

Zoey continues to make strides.  She is now willing to let go and stand for slightly longer times.  She will also walk pushing push toys, but her control is not great and she runs into things a lot.  But she is making progress at least.  She is really making progress at talking, she may tie Sam for 20 words at a year if she keeps it up .  Zoey has been saying Dada, Mama, Nana and Papa for a while, but she is really starting to use them referentially.  She still whispers Papa.  It is really cute.  Her first "real" word was bye-bye.  She also now says baby, but it sounds a lot like bye-bye, just used when their is a doll or picture of a baby.  She also says bye for rockabye, when she is tired.  It usually involves body movement to go along with it.  She says her own versions of dog (dod), ball (bal) and book (buh).  She also says boo as in peekaboo.  And she stills says pretty a lot, but it seems to refer to anything she likes and then some.  She has also been saying something like dotter, maybe daughter or doctor.  She has also started saying "Zzzzz" for Zoey and I am working on shifting it to "Zo".  Soon she will probably be saying Zoey.  Basically she loves to repeat sounds and is picking up words pretty quickly.  She is also still doing some signs.  These include milk, all done (while she says her version, which sounds like lala), more (her own version which is more like wringing hands), and food.  The other day I put her down for a nap, but she stayed awake.  When I went in to see if more nursing would soothe her, she made the food sign.  She was starving and milk was not enough.  She went on to eat a lot.  We are taking a class for the next 5 weeks, so hopefully she will get more signs.  She has the traces of a temper that communication should help with.  Mostly she is a very happy baby and so easy to make giggle.  But she does have her moments.  And she likes to be on the go, which makes life interesting to say the least.  Church yesterday was rough because she kept wanting to talk and play.  No sitting still for this one unless food is involved and the homily was so long it took all my mum mums.

Here is a video of our little chatter box :)

Samisms and a sugar high!

Sam says some of the most clever things, showing logic beyond her short years.  Sometimes she just cracks me up.  I wanted to post a few.

At my moms, they were talking about how we missed Samantha and she needed to stay with us some.  She said, "Oh, Nana,  They have another kid."

She asks a lot about some big issues.  One is angels.  We went through that last Easter.  It was rough, she spent weeks asking at bedtime about them and saying she did not want to be one.  I tried to put her mind at ease without promising anything life might make me regret.  Saying, you should have a long time to grow up and have babies.  You need to make me a grandmother :)  It must still be on her mind here and there.  She was talking about having kids and me being a grandmother and told my mom, "Nana, you won't be here, you'll be died."  And we never told her about my grandmother, waiting for her to ask, but recently she said something to papa about when he died he would get to see his mother again.  As for angels, she has still been trying to wrap her mind around it.  We talked one day about when you die you do not need your body anymore and it disintegrates.  So she figured out that angels do not have brains and told that to a kid at school.  She has also decided that when you become an angel your arms turn into wings and you grow new arms.  I said that was interesting, why do you think that, why couldn't they just grow wings and keep the arms.  And in a near recording of something I had said in the past, she basically told me that some things you can never know and everyone has to believe what is right for them, and she believed the arms turned into wings, but I did not have to.

Since she goes to a Catholic school, they were able to have a Happy Birthday Jesus party.  At some point during the holiday, we talked about how not everyone is Christian.  She recently was talking to Nick about how some people celebrate Happy Birthday Monica.  It took me a second to realize she meant Hanukkah.  I guess she put the two together and figured someone had to be having a birthday for it to be a holiday.

I love how when she does not know or remember the word, she will sometimes make up something logical or close.  She was talking about Nick's belly button the other day and called it a button hole.  She was sweeping the other day and called it brooming.  And she called a nail file a nail scratcher thing.

I think my favorite part about all the stories is how when she learns what she said was silly, she loves it and wants to tell everyone.  Always followed by, "Isn't that silly!" and lots of giggles.

She is progressing a lot on picking up words.  My mom plays word bingo with her and she can find a lot of them without seeing them or having them spelled.  I work with her a lot on sight words when we read.  She has such a vocabulary and can express herself far beyond many 4 year olds.  Her imagination is also amazing to watch.  She makes up elaborate stories, songs, and games.  What a blessing she is.  Watch out world, I have faith that this girl will make an impact.

And most of the pictures lately were from the playstructure or stuff I already posted.  But Zoey got to go to a baby party for mom's club.  They played a lot.  Zoey was the only girl and the only non walker.  She was the youngest, but she kept up crawling efficiently and got into everything just as quickly as all the walking boys.  She even climbed into a basket to get a doll.

We let them "paint" with baby food.  Zoey thought it was just an annoying snack time and really tried to dig into the peas.

I did manage to get her to smear some around.

And then there were cupcakes.  Zoey says yes please!  She sampled it and was determined to get it all in her mouth.  She even tried to eat the wrapper from the table.  If the cupcake is this good, the wrapper must be delicious too.  This was her first cupcake, but I figured why not.  With Sam I probably would have said no, I guess second kids really do get it easier.  I've been broken in :)

Every princess needs a castle!

Here is the first of the playstructure posts.  Nick and my dad designed all of it from scratch.  I gave a few suggestions, but they do amazing work.  Construction is complete, so I will post through completion, but you will have to wait for the final pictures after painting and swings and such.  I did not get a picture of the area before Nick and my dad cleared all the plants out.  But here is what it looked like after, this is on December 21st, several days in that involved some really huge root removal, hole digging and plastic placing.  Many of the other early pictures look just like this.

One of the first things Nick did was build the floors to line up the holes for the posts (12/19).

I helped here and there, but my dad and Nick did most of the work.  My mom was wonderful at watching the kids, so I did get to be involved a lot.  I did help with concreting and on the first night of concreting we worked past dark (12/21).

We bought rubber mulch that was delivered early in the project (12/23).  Nick and I hauled all 1900 pounds from the street to the area.  Yikes!

I picked a multi-colored one.  It is pretty cool.

The frame for the playhouse went up (12/24).

More framing (12/24).

We wanted Sam to be involved, so she got to hammer some carriage bolts (12/24).

We took Christmas day off and we were back at it 12/26. Nick installing the second floor.

It swayed a bit too much to support swings, so cross supports and such went it (12/27).

The plywood going up.  Nick tried to jump out of the way, but you can see him in the corner :) (12/28).

Stairs were built, but not yet installed (12/29).

More plywood (12/30).

Stairs installed with sides (1/2).

And the slide (1/2).  Boy, did that take some effort.  The slide was supposed to go on the other side, but the box and write up online did not indicated that it needed to go a particular direction.  So we all were involved with putting it together and taking it apart.  I think in total it was together and apart at least 20 times.  Nick finally got it with some fun turns and level with the ground.  What a chore.

Framing the garage (1/2).  We needed another support for the swings and decided a garage would be cool for the gator.  And we made it bigger since it did not cost much more and we can store some stuff out of our garage in there.

The garage taking shape (1/3).

Sam was so excited to be allowed to climb the stairs after the concrete cured (1/4).

And she got to go down the slide after the concrete for the support post cured (1/4).  Although I went down it first and Nick followed to test and be sure it was safe.  Just don't tell Sam :)  She does love her slide, lots of trips down and lots of wheeee's!

The garage building is not as cool, so I am skipping ahead to near completion with shingles on the roof.  We slanted it for rain.  Notice the cut outs on the play house to add to the castle effect (1/9).

And a view from straight on to see the slide, swing bar, and all.  Although the door to the castle had not been installed at this point (1/9).

Since then it has been caulking, which Sam and I helped with some and lots of sanding.  Nick has now even started painting.  He was delayed a bit with school starting and rain.  We are getting so close!  Nick, I am amazed at all you do.  And a huge thank you to Nana and Papa who made this possible.  Dad has been over everyday after golf and sometimes between tennis and golf.  Such a huge help.  And Nana should have just moved in she was here so much.  We are so blessed and I am glad we could all give our princesses their castle.  I know they will enjoy it for years.

“Play keeps us vital and alive. It gives us an enthusiasm for life that is irreplaceable. Without it, life just doesn’t taste good” Lucia Capocchione