Sissy

I just want to take some notes on the kids because honestly I am terrible at keeping a journal, and our family blog is the closest thing we have to it. So this post is dedicated to our Sissy, Ms. Rylie Jane. Actually her middle name is Dianne but for whatever reason we all like to call her Rylie Jane. :) Rylie is a now 2 and 5 months and she likes to keep me busy. She is a climber and loves to be messy. She also loves to copy everything her big brother does. Yesterday Ezra was pretending to be Super Why and had his Why Reader in his belt so Rylie had to find something to stick in her belt, the only problem was she didn't have a belt so she was sticking everything down her diaper...little did i know! I have said recently that I always thought Ezra was a hard 2 year old, but really Rylie keeps me on my toes just as much if not more because of her love of messes. Haha, silly Sissy. I can't express enough how much she LOVES animals. She likes to pretend she is an animal too and eats like one, and eats the cat's food too. She would spend all day with playing with animals if she could. She also did a preschool but unfortunately I don't have any pictures of it... bummer! She loved it because she got to color and sing songs. She loves girly shoes, the girlier (is that even a word or right spelling?) they are the better. When we go to play areas where shoes have to go off the first thing she will run to is the shoe cubbie and not the slides! She has been receiving speech therapy for almost 7 months now. She still isn't talking a ton, but we are noticing that it is starting to click. Just in the last 2 months she has started talking a lot more. She says "dank you" very sweet and also "where did go"-these are her current 2 big phrases. She uses baby sign for drink and please still and will imitate almost everything I prompt her to say. I think I would be a little more discouraged with her speech, but having already gone through this with Ezra I know that its just a matter of time before she really takes off with her words. Rylie is a lover and and loves to play. She loves to be tickled, get "dizzy" and dance. She loves to be chased and play peek a boo games. She is our Sissy, sugar and spice and everything nice! (most days)

Preschool Graduation

Ezra has completed his first year of preschool!!! I remember the first day he went I couldn't believe I was sending him off to a school for 3 days a week, he seemed soo little and he was still my little baby. He started just a few days after his 3rd birthday. I have to say that I was so impressed with his teachers and everyone in the classroom. He had a wonderful class made up of 10 boys and 1 girl. The little girl loved it too! When he started school he knew all his letters and was starting to write some (he loves letters) and he also recognized numbers 1-10. He did not recognize colors nor could he tell you the names of shapes. But now he knows how to write all his letters upper case and lower case, he can spell several words, knows all his colors, shapes, and numbers up to 30. ( they had calendar time every day so he only went up to 30 :) ) Ezra has a great imagination and is so smart. He taught himself how to write his name, he could do this before he went to preschool, when I realized he could do that I encouraged more spelling and reading for him and now he is spelling and writing words that represent the things he loves most; like Baby Einstein. If I sat down and counted I'm pretty sure he can do 20-30 words independently. He is making amazing progress with ABA therapy and his therapist will even comment on what a hard worker he is and the progress he is making amazes them too. Now that I have said all that I just want to add that I am super excited that the preschool will increase from 3 days a week to 4! :)
A little side note and story about Ezra. He will sometimes wake up with really bad foot pains at night and he is very upset. Ezra really does not cry, so for him to cry and not be easily distracted by something says a lot about his pain. The other night while he was upset he wanted me to sing but I thought he wanted me to sing our typical ABC song like always. So when I started to sing the ABC's he said "No, Mommy" and then said something I just couldn't understand. So I started to name all the other songs we sing, but he kept saying the other name. When he said the song again I told him I didn't know what song he wanted, luckily Devin walked by because he told me he was telling me to sing I am a Child of God. So I started to sing I am a child of God and sure enough it was the song he wanted and it calmed him right down. It was such a sweet moment for me because I remember singing it to him when he was just a baby and around 2 he stopped wanting that song and preferred more of the nursery rhyme songs. So for him to recall that song and for it to calm him so much was a very tender moment for me.
One more story I want to keep for the records.  Ezra has been pretending a lot lately. Sometimes I don't know who I am talking to because he is pretending to be so many different characters. The other day he was a kitty. I asked Ezra if he wanted a peanut butter and jell sandwich, he said "NO!" so then I decided to ask kitty if he wanted a sandwich. The response, "me-yes".  So I have figured out if Ezra isn't hungry then maybe one of his characters is, and 9 times out of 10  I am right and he will eat.  I have even gotten kitty and Handy Many to eat a vegetable!