Amelia writes

Amelia loves to trace letters while William does homework. It allows her to be a "big kid" AND she loves the colorful markers to uses to trace. So proud of you Amelia!

Amelia v.4.5

Amelia is 4 and a half today! We are so proud of our big girl. She is...well... A lot of things. She is stubborn, inquisitive, silly, creative, too smart for her own good, has personality to spare and most importantly, ours.

Amelia is SO motivated by school work and learning. She can often be found breathing hard down William's neck as we do school work. She just cannot wait to go to kindergarten. She is ready! She is reading, doing simple addition and subtraction problems and writing well. She can also do the monkey bars solo as of this month, so we can check that one off the list (do we have video John?).

Amelia started her ballet classes again and enjoys this activity so much. We are proud of how hard she is working in this class.

With William in school all day, Amelia and I have finally had time to work on her letter writing and other skills while Gemma sleeps. This little girl is so smart (I'm her mama, in supposed to brag! Plus, it is true.). There really isn't anything she can't do. Her biggest problem is that everything comes so easily she gets frustrated quickly when she doesn't understand something. We're working on it.

She is also working hard on her big sister role. She gets to spend a lot more time playing with Gemma now that her first playmate (William) is in school. It has been very fun to see Amelia emerge as the older sister with Gemma. Fun and terrifying at the same time because Amelia believes she can do everything she sees me/John/William do with Gemma. For example, she thinks she can lift Gemma down off of a table without help or even lift her out of the crib. Terrifying.

The take home message is this: we love this little girl to the moon and back. Good days, bad days and all the in betweens Amelia Ann, we love you!

Gemma's Secret Place

Gemma seems to not like the vacuum, yet she can't seem to stay away. So usually we end up carrying her while vacuuming. When I was vacuuming her room, she spotted some toys that needed to be rescued. I put her down the turned away for a bit to pick up some other stuff. When I turned back, Gemma was gone. I figured she must have gone into her secret place.

William Versus the Bonnethead Shark

The Bonnethead shark is the smallest of the hammerhead shark species.

William Versus Stingray

At the Stingray exhibit at the zoo.

A compliment?

Today while we were at the zoo eating lunch.....


Amelia: mama?
Mama: what?
Amelia: do you have to work today?
Mama: what? No!
Amelia: but you look so pretty today!
Mama: thank you!
Amelia: usually you just look pretty when you are going to work.
Mama: OH!... Hmm... Really?
Amelia: I saw a fish today on the side of the can.


Lessons learned:
1. Maybe lay off the yoga pants a little
2. Beauty is wearing earrings according to my 4 year old

Sent from my iPhone

The zoo

It was a perfect day for the zoo. The temperature was cooler and it wasn't super busy yet. We got up and ready in order to make it there early enough. The first hour the zoo is open, several of the paid exhibits are free. We took in the sting rays, reptiles and a sea lion show before coming home for some naps. Here you'll see the kids with a sea lion after the show- all 3 of the kids were totally mesmerized by the show.

John has some additional pictures I'm hoping he will send tomorrow.. (hint, hint)