Well visits

I was tidying up and came across the girls' well-visit papers from this past December. I love looking back at this sort of information about them. Willa was having her five year checkup, and June was having her 2 1/2 year.

Willa
5 years
Height - 43 inches, 52nd percentile (though, I think she's had a growth spurt since this, because   suddenly her dresses are much shorter on her)
Weight - 41.6 lbs, 57th percentile
Blood pressure - 92/52

June
2 1/2 years
Height - 36 3/4 inches, 52nd percentile
Weight - 26.1 lbs, 17th percentile
Head - 48 1/4 inches, 45th percentile

Two healthy girls. The doctor heard a faint heart murmur on June, but she said it sounded textbook like a Still's murmur, which is a heart murmur that occurs in two year olds and has no side effects. Children usually outgrow it pretty easily. We'll double check at her three-year check up and if it sounds differently we can send her in for more testing. The doctor wasn't worried about it and I'm not, but sometimes when I pick June up and she's been really emotional (tantrum, or maybe running), I can feel her little heart beating so quickly in her chest. I don't think anything is wrong with it, it just makes me think about her and our bodies a little more.

The doctor also suggested that I needed to make Willa use the bathroom more often during the day and that would help her stay dry at night. At the time of our visit, Willa was currently just going twice a day - at lunch and before bed. She always woke up with a wet diaper, so I didn't press her into going in the morning and sometimes at lunchtime she would fight with me about going because she didn't want to. The doctor thinks her bladder is stretched out so she can't really feel whether or not she needs to go and then it just kind of leaks out during the night. So now I'm being more vigilant about making her go several times a day, in the hopes that over the next two or three months the bladder will shrink up and she will be able to hold it overnight. We'll see. The doctor thinks it should help and says that most kids her age are dry through the night (heck, June is dry through the night), but I come from a family full of late bed-wetters on both sides so I didn't think it was particularly strange that she still wet the bed. In fact, it's kind of nice because her and Claire are both a little embarrassed about it, but then kind of relieved that they both still use diapers when we have stayed the night.

Christmas!

I'm behind posting everything because we've been gone on our amazing DISNEY CRUISE!!! That's all I'll say about it right now. First, I must post about Christmas.

We had a nice quiet Christmas Eve with just us. It was still sweet and special and fun with the little girls. I was planning to have hamburgers because I thought the best Christmas gift I could receive was having no one complain about dinner, boo yeah. At the last second I decided that hamburgers weren't quite special or exciting enough since we have them about once a week (see previous comment on no one complaining about dinner). So I ran to the store on Christmas Eve, got some bread bowls, and made a creamy soup. The girls turned their noses up for about 30 seconds, then got a kick of eating soup out of the bread bowl, filled up mostly on bread, and we all left the table happy.

Christmas Eve

 We talked about the Savior's birth and then read the Polar Express, which was a family tradition of mine growing up. We put the girls to bed, but then got them up two minutes later to allow them to open one present on Christmas Eve, which was one of Ryan's family traditions. It was very fun.

Santa doesn't wrap presents at our house. Here is what it looked like when Santa finished. When the girls woke up, they played with their Santa gifts for a while, we ate breakfast, and then opened the wrapped presents. It's a nice way to extend the morning. The girls were pretty happy about their lot, June was going crazy about having her very own princess water bottle (it attaches to the front of the scooter). She's happy that her water bottle came with a scooter :).

 Willa got a scooter, the new Elephant and Piggie book, Anna's coronation gown, and a bow and arrow toy that we had seen at a store earlier in the month and that she loved. June got her scooter, a Peppa Pig playhouse, some play dinosaurs, and the book Harry and His Bucketful of Dinosaurs because she has been obsessed with the t.v. show. Then they each got a slinky, which might have been the best gift of the morning. For me, it seemed a little small, but other years I feel like we've been overwhelmed with stuff so we wanted to try and keep it to a minimum this year. Once they opened their wrapped gifts, it seemed like a good balance.

Breakfast is over! Now for the presents.

Playing with new gifts.

 

Rebecca and Brandon came for Christmas dinner. We also had the Collins family come over. Bobby Collins went to high school with Ryan and he and his family just moved out here with the AF to work at Nellis. We didn't get a photo of everyone, but it was a nice Christmasy gathering. They have two little girls who are two years old and about five months. It's weird to be the one with older kids (though mine are just a tad older). Seeing them was like seeing us two years go.

Rebecca brought her gifts over that evening and Willa was ecstatic to unwrap the last My Little Pony to complete her collection and ROLLERSKATES! She went wild and gave Rebecca a big hug. Here she is the next day skating around. They are just the beginner ones that go over her shoes, so the skating isn't great, but she has been wanting some for soooo long. And I just realized that this isn't an actual video clip. It's the image of a video clip. So just imagine.

Park with friends

Willa has made some cute friends at preschool. After our last day of school before the break, we arranged for a park play date.

They are pretty cute together. There is a park at the community center where the lucky kids with nice moms get to run around and play together after school pick-up. I resisted for quite a while, but Willa's incessant begging wore me down. For better or worse, we go almost every time now. Ideally, I'd just like to get home and put June to bed, on the other hand, I wanted Willa to have more friends and this has helped that. Out of the four girls in her class, three of us usually play at the park after, so I think important to let her have that unstructured time with friends. I only wish we could stay longer. I'm usually the first one to leave because we really do need to get June down for a nap. If it wasn't for that, there have been beautiful days and it would be nice to just be able to stay out as long as we want. Still, it's a nice chance for us to stretch a little if the rest of the day's schedule doesn't allow for something else fun later on.

The Nutcracker

I got tickets for Willa, Rebecca, and I to have a little girls' afternoon out to The Nutcracker at the Smith Center in December. I've wanted to take Willa for a while and thought this year she might be old enough. It was a lot of fun! She was a tad on the young side, but sat on my lap and was very attentive as I whispered some of the plot details to her. It was really good, my only complaint was that the Mother Ginger costume didn't have all the kids hiding inside. How could they not to that? It's iconic!

As soon as we got home, she changed into her leotard, had me put on some Nutcracker music, and started leaping all around. It was so cute.