We have had a never-ending schedule of fun friend/family oriented summer events going on since the beginning of June. My family went camping and we were close enough that we were able to go out almost every day to visit, but didn't have to stay overnight. We had another reunion with our high school friends that included a play-date with all our babies. Brynt and I celebrated our 4 year wedding anniversary and Father's Day all in the same week. We have made several visits to the Ann Arbor Summer Festival's Top of the Park as well as the Toledo Zoo. While all of these things have made for a really fun and exciting summer, I am going to take the time today to write about the every-day things that are going on; the stuff that isn't captured in pictures or posted about on Facebook because those are the things I am going to want to remember years from now.
This post will obviously focus most on Lily because she is growing so much there is no way I can keep up with it unless I write about it. I did want to take a moment, however, to write about my awesome Hubby. With Father's Day and our anniversary being celebrated this month I have done a lot of reflecting and appreciating of this wonderful man. This is the guy who wakes up several hours early every day so he can go to the gym before work, then emails me throughout the day just to see how I am doing. He comes home on time almost every day so he can have dinner with us and play before Lily goes to bed. When he found out Lily woke up yesterday with a high fever he came home to check on us, ran to the store to get juice and popsicles, went to work, left early to come to Lily's doctor appointment then worked from home just so he could be with her. These are the times I want to remember for our daughter so she can maybe get some kind of inkling of how much her Daddy truly loves her.
Lily started her first dance class last week. I didn't get any pictures because the moms dance with their kids but I can guarantee you it was a good time. I was surprised to see the room was set up for actual dance classes with one whole wall being a mirror and bars around the other walls on which Lily and I promptly practiced our ballet poses. I was a little worried she would be shy and not want to dance because technically the class is for 2-5 year olds and as Lily isn't quite 2 yet I had to have a lady change the age for me by a few months. As soon as she saw all the "toys" however, she became excited to participate and only struggled when she had to give back the instruments since those were her favorite. She was so good at following the instructor, I told her who the teacher was and we had to do what she did and Lily would watch her closely and try to imitate whatever she was doing. This was especially funny when they gave the kids beanie babies to put on different parts of their bodes; when the instructor put hers between her knees and walked around Lily did too and thought it was so funny I couldn't get her to take it out to do the rest of the dance.
I am really impressed with her growing knowledge, as a teacher I didn't expect her to start understanding some of these concept for a few more years so I was proud (that's a huge understatement) when she started showing some understanding so early. For a little bit she was able to count "wuhhh, tooo, freeee" but now it's just a combination of sixes, nines and twos. She can tell you her colors if you catch her in a good and participatory mood. If not she usually just says, "buue (blue), oaae (orange), yeyoh (yellow)" until you tell her what it actually is. She also knows a lot of her letters now thanks to the Endless Alphabet app. (Click on the link and it will take you to the video of her doing it, my computer is being silly right now and won't let me post it.) She mastered the art of dragging letters to match the corresponding letters in the word and shortly after started pointing out letters she would see in books or just around around the house. M is her favorite because we have so many things with the University of Michigan "M" on it :) She also knows a, h, j, k, l, o, r, s, u, w, and x. We were eating lunch at a local place called Amer's the other day and they had "AMERS" in big letters on the wall that I didn't even notice until she started pointing saying "M, m, m!" and then proceeded to announce the rest of the letters as well. One of her favorite activities is pointing out things she knows and she knows the words for almost everything so this results in much chatter that is starting to turn from single words to multiple.
Her absolute favorite show right now is Pingu. I was initially really excited about this as it meant less time watching Yo Gabba Gabba but after a month it has started to have the same effect on me. I am lucky that our library does "summer games" where you get points for reading books or watching videos you rent and you can then turn in the points for prizes. This has encouraged me to look for some more educational shows and I found Little Einsteins which teaches a lot about music and art. She enjoys watching and participating but will still ask for Pingu first every time. We have started reading a lot more, too because of the program. I have at least 15 children's books sitting at my feet as we speak, half of them we read before bed. Right now she loves the Brown Bear, Brown Bear books and anything to do with trains. Her Uncle Chad brought over some of his train stuff from when he was a kid and she loves them, she will just randomly shout out "Ahh Booaa!" (all aboard) no matter where we are or what we are doing.
She has so many friends right now, probably more than I do. Okay, definitely more than I do! Most of them consist of her buddies from our church's community group that we meet with every Thursday. There is another Lily (Lily Winter) who is three days older than our Lily that she absolutely adores (despite all the bullying she does to her!) and we see them frequently. She is always walking up and giving her hugs while saying "aww" and loves to see Lily Winter laugh and smile. They are really starting to interact with one another now which is such a cool experience. I really feel like she is starting to understand what a friend is, which is a really awesome thing.
At the end of the day, when all is said and done, I mostly just want to remember how very proud I am of my super smart and beautiful girl. We have a lot of fun together every day and I love, love, love that God choose such a wonderful partner-in-crime for me.
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