Monday, February 21, 2011

18 Months!

It is so hard to believe, but our little Juju is 18 months already! Time flies and our baby is turning into a big girl right before our eyes. We took her to the doctor last week (when we took Ben) and she did great. She got two shots, but only cried for a few seconds (unlike big brother). She was 30 inches tall and 22 pounds, which put her in the 10th percentile for height and 20th percentile for weight...our little jelly bean! I guess she takes after me, although I apparently wasn't even on the growth charts when I was little so I guess she is doing better than I did!

As for her development, she is moving right along. She talks a lot and is starting to put together little sentences. Her first sentence was "Can you hold me?" - so like her sister in that respect! She repeats anything you say and anything her siblings say, which is often pretty funny. She loves to sing songs and can sing her abc's, Baa Baa Black Sheep, "Dream a little dream of me", which is the song I sing to her before bed, Happy Birthday (she sang the whole song to Ben on his birthday, which he loved), she can sing a lot of Ariel's song in "The Little Mermaid", thanks to her sister who is constantly singing it, and most of her nursery rhyme songs. You can usually just listen and hear her singing various songs to herself. She also likes to dance now, which is very cute. As for her sleeping habits, she is still on one afternoon nap and sleeps very well all night long. We think she eats really well, so not sure why she is so little, but oh well.

As for play time, she is a perfect combination of loving to play with both her big brother and big sister. She knows all the major super heroes, yet takes time to care for her baby dolls by feeding them, changing them, taking them for walks in her stroller and putting them to sleep. She loves to play dress up and can rock the Batman costume accessorized with princess shoes and a tiara. She loves to read books and is constantly bringing us books and asking us to read her "stories". She likes to be held, but also likes to run around with her siblings and act like a big kid as best she can. Ben and I frequently comment that our little baby is growing up and we don't like it one bit - stay our little baby forever!!

Here are just come cute pics of her...


Love this one because it shows her little mischievous smile...plus, this shows her usual position - her left thumb in her mouth and right hand twirling her hair...
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Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Happy Birthday Ben!

10:55am, February 15, 2006, Benjamin Stephen was born and changed our lives forever. He is such a great kid and he had a really great year. I've said it before, but he was a difficult 3 year old. When he turned 4, everything seemed to ease up - he matured, cared about his sisters and just enjoyed playing peacefully. I'm not saying he never disobeyed or that we didn't go through rough patches, but on the whole, 4 was a great age for Ben. I am looking forward to seeing what 5 brings for us!

We started out the day by taking Ben to the doctor for his 5 year check-up (I know, worst mother for making him go on his birthday). It all went very well, until he had to get a shot. He got so upset, that he hid under the chair when the nurse came in. He cried way more than Juliette did when she got her shots and the nurse felt so badly for him that she even teared up seeing him so upset. Again, not my best mothering moment, but I told him a few weeks ago he would get a shot and he has been upset and anxious about it ever since. Lesson learned...from now on I will tell him that I do not know if he will get a shot until we get there - at least he won't have the anticipation, which is worse than the actual shot! Besides the shot though, he did great. His blood pressure was good, he got his finger pricked for a blood sample (which he wasn't happy about, but none of us realized it was happening until it was over), and gave a urine sample, which he found to be pretty funny. So, on to his stats...43.5 inches tall and 45 pounds, which put him in the 75th-80th percentile. He has consistently been in that percentile, so that was good. As a side note, he has always been around 75th percentile, Abbey has been 50th percentile, and Juliette is our little jelly bean being in the 10th-20th percentile, so we got all our bases covered on sizes. Juliette also went in for her 18 month appointment today, but that will be a later post. OK, back to Ben...

After the appointment, we went to McDonalds for lunch and he was happy to play in the indoor playground and get his new toy. Later, we had spaghetti for dinner (his favorite) and then sang to him again while he blew out candles on his cupcakes.

Then he very sweetly unwrapped one of the cupcakes and gave it to Juliette...what a great big brother!
Abbey enjoyed her cupcakes...
Then it was time to open more presents! Again, being the awesome big brother that he is, he let Abbey help him open the presents when she started to get upset that she didn't have any to open! As a side note, with all the commotion of Ben's birthday this week, Abbey has taken to planning her birthday party (which isn't until July). She knows exactly what kind of cake she wants and what she hopes to get as presents.


HAPPY 5th BIRTHDAY BEN!!! WE LOVE YOU!!!
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Happy Valentine's Day

We had a wonderful Valentine's Day at our house! Look at all we received - we feel so loved! Thank you to Patch for the flowers, Nana and GrandPatch for the gifts for the kids, Madgie for the candy, and lots of other people for all the wonderful cards that you sent!

Abbey and Juliette both got two stuffed animals (a teddy bear came with their flowers and a separate stuffed animal as a gift). Ben got a stuffed animal too. They were all so excited - here they are with their animals!
With all their presents!
Ben loved his animal so much, he named it "Lovely".

Thank you so much to everyone for making it such a fun and special day. We hope you all had a great Valentine's Day too!
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Monday, February 14, 2011

Ben's Party - Part 2

All that jumping made for a tired Juliette. Luckily, Aunt Domi was around to provide her with that much needed cuddle...

Meanwhile, Caroline took to the climbing wall...
Here is everyone at the party - thanks to all who came! It was so great to catch up some people we hadn't seen in a while and meet some parents we didn't know yet from Ben's class.
Then it was time for Ben to blow out his candles and everyone to eat cupcakes!


Then it was time to open presents!
After the party, we had some family and close friends back to the house for a little bit more partying...here are the kids eating lunch...
While the boys went off to play super heroes, the girls settled down for some joint coloring.
It was a fantastic day and made for a very happy little boy. Thanks to all who came and helped us celebrate!
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Ben's Birthday Party - Part 1

Ben is about to turn 5, so we had a party for him this weekend. He invited everyone in his class, as well as a few other close friends. We had the party at the same place as last year, at his insistent request. He had a blast. He is very into Batman lately (no, he has never seen the show, but there are a lot of batman toys out that he likes to play with), so Aunt Theresa made him this AMAZING cake...
Here is Abbey getting her jump on...love the pigtails flying high in the sky!
Ben running around having fun...
The Kurby's are jumping too!


Juliette got into the spirit as well. She is crawling through one of the jump obstacles...
Abbey sliding down...
Here she goes...

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Wednesday, February 02, 2011

Chicago 2011 Blizzard!

Well, we have had our first experience with a blizzard now! It was actually really amazing to watch and experience (especially given the fact that our power did not go off and we had nowhere to go so we could just sit and enjoy it). We heard "thunder snow" and saw "snow lightning", which was pretty cool. And we accumulated more snow than I have ever seen - probably a little above 2 feet in total (on top of some snow that was already there). Here is Abbey making her way down the driveway - luckily with the wind drifts we had a nice little path next to the cars already made for us!

As a reference point, here is Juliette next to the snow...
Ben and Abbey (with Daddy's help) made a huge snow slide off the end of our driveway.
Which then turned into our very own sledding hill.

For some perspective, this was our backyard before we went to sleep last night...
When we woke up this morning, this was the view out our front window - snow up to about half of our neighbor's door and still coming down pretty hard...
This was our backyard when we woke up...snow up to the bottom of the seats!
This is our backyard now that the blizzard has ended and sun has come out...Check out the drifts by the trees and snow now well into the seats...


Look at our garden!
A view of our street...

That was quite a storm!


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