June 1st, 10 months old!

Here's our Sweet Pea.  On June 1st she will be 10 months old.  Still as precious as ever.  She is recognizing words more and more.  She knows what I mean when I sign and say "all done" and "more".  A couple times she has given me her own attempt to do the signs back.  She gives a gentle high five.  She eats a ton of "big girl" food and is starting to prefer it to baby food (often rejecting baby food because she is wanting finger foods that she can eat by herself).  She loves to crawl around and pull up on things, but no cruising yet.  Just for fun, here are pics of Lily Kate and Charlotte each at 10 months.

One more momento shot of Lily Kate with her preschool teacher, Mrs Sutton.  We have LOVED her.  I'm thrilled that the other two girls could have her in the next few years!

Preschool Graduation

(I'm going to try to start writing the captions to pictures below them instead of above them.  Above seems natural to me, but I think below is natural to the rest of the world)

 Lily Kate's teacher gave all the parents pictures of their kiddo in a graduation hat, made it very oficial.  

Her preschool had a little ceremony on Monday.  We watched a slideshow of pictures from the school year.  The kids were all cheering and calling out the names of their classmates in the pictures.  And all the parents were discreetly wiping their eyes.  No one can believe that their babies are going to kindergarten.  I sure can't.

 After the ceremony the 4/5yr old class got to have a water day.  The clouds cleared and the kids had a blast. I was itching to go on this blowup water slide myself.  (I exercised restraint and did not, in case you are curious).  

This is Lily Kate with her great friend, Ellie.  Ellie is so sweet, her brother and Charlotte's are two peas in a pod, her mother is SO great, and she's going to Holly Tree Elementary next year (where we will be also).  So, I'm pretty much thrilled about her :)

Lily Kate has grown so much this school year.  I have always thought that I can consider my kids "little" until they are 5.  I can't believe we have a big kid on our hands.  She has made strides this year in self control and being considerate of others.  She is still wildly enthusiastic and imaginative.  She has a fantastic memory and a mind for details (often remembering much more than I do about situations).  She is wonderful with Hadley and other babies.  There is no denying her leadership abilities.  We are working with her to teach her to lead as a servant to those around her.  Her understanding of Christ has grown a lot too.  She seems to really "get" her sin and her need for a savior.  We are covering her in prayer every day.  I am excited to see what the Lord does with her life in the next year!
And, as a side note, her teacher filled out a stat sheet on her the first and last day of school and she grew  2 1/2 inches and gained 4 lbs this year.  I thought that was crazy!  The sheet has a fill in the blank and says "I gained 4.4lbs this year!".  Oh the innocent days when that is good news :)

Mother's Day

A little late posting these.  I had a great mother's day last weekend.  Kate "took me to breakfast".  She was so cute presenting the plan to me.  She told me that she was going to take me out but that I had to drive.  Sounds like the most sensible plan.  We had a good morning by ourselves talking about her upcoming preschool graduation and thoughts about kindergarten.  Pretty priceless.

Cinderella here can pull up now.  No cruising yet.  We've heard her crying in bed a few times lately (which never happens) and we've gone in to see her standing in her crib with no understanding of how to get down.  Funny little sweet girl. 

Muffins with Mom

 Our preschool hosted a Muffins for Mom morning.  It was precious.  I made a craft with each of them. Kate's teachers gave us potted flowers and some treats that Lily Kate had made in class a few days before.  After we ate they sang us some songs about being a mom.  It was adorable, even made me tear up.  Love this school!

School Pics

I'm already chuckling sitting down to write about these....  So, a couple weeks ago Lily Kate had her picture day on a Monday and Charlotte's was on the Wednesday of the same week.  Kate's went well because she loves posing for pictures (bet you didn't know that, did you??).  On Wednesday Charlotte didn't do so well.  She refused to smile at all.  They brought Lily Kate to take some pictures with her.  They had Kate stand by the camera man and make silly faces, dance, anything to get Grumpy to smile. Meanwhile, Kate mentions to the photographer that she saw that some kids took pictures standing up and asks if she can take some more like that.  The kids told me this story on our way home from preschool and I was cracking up.  I kept asking Charlotte why she wouldn't smile and she happily said (every time) that she just wanted to make a "mean face" and kept showing me this Mr T scowl.  That would make me laugh more and I never got any more info out of them.  The proofs are in.

Kate's normal picture on her picture day

 Kate's extra shots

 Straight faced

I will call this look forlorn

 my favorite, by far!

Hilarious.  This is the only smile he got out of like 20 pictures.

So, which ones should I order?

Daily Life

In keeping with the theme of documenting daily life, here's what we've been up to.  Painting bread with  colored milk.  (Pinterest taught me that you can add food coloring to milk, paint bread, toast it, and then eat your creation).  30 minutes of fun.

 Dinners on the porch (our favorite room)

 (sorry about the visible chewed up pork chop)

 The quality of this picture is really bad, but I finally captured Hadley showing us "SO BIG".  She loved the applause she gets when she's done.  

 Can you find the tiny turtle that lives in front of our house?  The water has been stagnant for a few days (no rain) so it's kind of mucky.  

Lily Kate visiting her "pet".