School Days

I feel like we've entered a whole new stage of our lives. We are back to defining our years based on the school calendar instead of one year melting into the next as they have for the last 8 years.

Lizzy started K2 on Tuesday morning. I've been putting off the post hoping that by the end of the week, I'd have a positive report on how much she LOVES school. Unfortunately, I can't give that report yet, but I'm holding out hope that we'll get there. She goes 3 days a week, and doesn't get done until 1:30 in the afternoon. All 3 days this week she has been crying when I've picked her up. She is EXHAUSTED. She is used to taking a nap at 1 o'clock and is definitely not accustomed to such a structured day. Hopefully she'll enjoy it more as she adjusts to the schedule and isn't quite so worn out. We did have some progress today as she was willing to take a nap when we got home (she didn't nap at all on Tuesday or Wednesday).

Despite the tears, she's excited to go in the morning, so I really do think she is just over-tired by the end of the day. Stay tuned for all the fun that pre-school brings!

New Room!

We passed! On Friday, the county inspector came and signed off on the new addition! Of course, as soon as we got the go-ahead, we couldn't wait to start using our new space! Beckie got to test out the new bathtub and Jason spent Saturday playing musical beds so that we were able to spend Saturday night in the new room! Yeah!

Oh yeah, there is a new, massive garage too ;)

Celebrating the Differences

Well, we are supposed to be having the final inspection on our addition tomrrow, so expect a post on that soon, but this post is about the girls!

For this brief period where they are both one, it really brings into focus the differences between my little girls. They are both sweet and adorable, of course, but Annabelle is definitely not a repeat of where Lizzy was 10 months ago.

Lizzy is (and was) curious, physical, and silly. Lately, she has really started hamming it up. She has started to be interested in dress-up and wants to pose for the camera or take pictures of Emily. She continues to be a full throttle kind of kid. Thankfully, she is an excellent sleeper, sleeping 12-13 hours at night and 2-3 hours during the day.

Annabelle, on the other hand, is an observer. She watches her sister, studying her every move. She is brave, but not impulsive. She likes a good cuddle, but doesn't seem interested in putting on a show. She doesn't want to miss anything and the nap definitely gets in the way. She's up before Lizzy in the morning, goes to bed after her at night, and often her only nap is spent over her lunch in her high chair.

It will be really interesting to see how these girls will grow up learning from eachother and pushing eachother outside of their comfort zones. Its amazing to see the connection they already have. Annabelle wants to do whatever her sister can do and Lizzy wants her sister to do everything with her. Such a pair!

Annabelle Turns ONE!

Our little girl is growing up SO fast. Monday was Annabelle's first birthday. We celebrated over the weekend with a little party for her (despite a little ice and snow). She loved the chance to eat some sugar (in cupcake form) and got to play with both her grammys! Such fun!

This morning she had her one-year doctor visit. Here are her stats:

Weight: 19.2 pounds (20th percentile)

Length: 28 1/2 inches (32nd percentile)

Head: 17 1/2 inches (32nd precentile)

Needless to say, Jason was quite dissapointed that our little munchkin isn't big enough to use her new forward facing carseat. She's a little on the small side, but she's right on target saying a few words (up, woof-woof, hi), pointing, and taking a few steps at a time. I'm expecting lots of running around the backyard with her big sister this summer!

Back to Blogging

Hello out there in the blog-o-sphere! After a long (and unintentional) hiatus, I've returned to update!

I really should do several entries to cover all the excitement over the last couple months, but I'm sitting here with 90210 on in the background and I know it is moments until one of the girls wakes up from their naps. Instead of great stories and descriptions, we'll just add some pictures of these growing girls!

Holiday Spirit

As Thanksgiving approaches, I'm attempting to get a jump start on my Christmas to-do list. First thing on the agenda is getting a decent photo for this year's Christmas card. The girls have their darling matching outfits and I even pulled out an ornament to use as a prop. I guess this is what I get for trying to be ambitious! My prop turned into something to fight over. I guess I should have gotten two!

Annabelle is 9 months old!

Annabelle had her 9 month check-up this morning. At 9 months, there aren't any scheduled shots, just a finger prick to check her hemoglobin. She did great! She didn't even cry when they pricked her finger. She did give the nurse a look of confusion.

Here are her stats:

Weight: 17 pounds 10 ounces (28th percentile)

Height: 27 inches (31st percentile)

Head: 17 inches (26th percentile)

She is definitely smaller than Lizzy was at this age. I guess that is to be expected since Jason and I are on the smaller side.

Even though there were no scheduled shots today, they had just gotten there supply of the H1N1 vaccine so we went ahead and got that taken care of. Apparently the office has seen a lot of cases so we'll hope we can avoid that. We are trying to get Lizzy in to get her vaccinated as well, but she had to be put on a waiting list. Keep your fingers crossed that we can make it through the season healthy!

Trick or Treat

Happy Halloween everyone!!!

We met up with the Waughs tonight to take Lizzy for her first trick-or-treating experience! We only went to a few houses but Lizzy had a great time showing off her bumble-bee costume to all her admirers.

Annabelle got some oohs and aahs for her snail costume as well, even if she didn't get any candy out of the deal!

It is really exciting as the girls get older and these activities become things they are actually interested in instead of just a photo op for mom!

18 Month Old Lizzy

I'm WAY behind on my blog posts, but I've had Lizzy's stats sitting here next to the computer for 2 weeks now, waiting to be posted. Here goes:

Height: 32 inches (62nd percentile)

Weight: 22.1 pounds (18th percentile)

Head: 17.5 inches (6th percentile)

More to come on what we've been up to lately!

Construction - Day 1

Friday was groundbreaking day on our big construction project here at Casa Fuller. The girls were VERY interested in all the noise outside the playroom window. Who needs Dora the Explorer when we've got tractors pulling trees out by the roots?!?

Visitors

Grammy Pammy was nice enough to volunteer to come down this weekend to babysit the girls while Jason and I enjoyed an afternoon out at a baby shower for Mike and Terry Friedman. We appreciated the break and even got a welcome surprise when Pappa Jack got to join us unexpectedly on Sunday after a work travel snafu left him stranded in Atlanta. The girls loved getting to play with Grandma and Pappa. They were especially fascinated with the noise activated ghost Grandma brought with her (that is what they are fighting over in the pictures above). Lizzy couldn't get enough of it, even though it scared her too much to touch herself. She was constantly asking for more whenever we turned it off. Even Annabelle was intrigued by it. Within a day of Grandma and Pappa leaving, Annabelle had managed to pull the sheet off the ghost which apparently was enough to relieve Lizzy's fears. The sheet has been returned and now she'll happily carry it around the playroom, setting it off every minute or so, bringing it to me with a giggle to show off what a big girl she is carrying the ghost. I've gotten so used to his spooky howl now that I don't even hear it anymore! I guess we're getting in the Halloween spirit a little early this year!

Folly Beach 2009

Did you know you can't cut and paste from Notepad to Blogspot? It has taken me a week to get a post for our Folly Beach trip written (because of countless interruptions and pesky computer issues). I finally wrote something out and copied it to a notepad document when my computer wouldn't let me post, but now I can't copy it in to this post! Oh well. I guess I'll start over.

We spent an extended Labor Day weekend at Folly Beach with some friends for some fun in the sunshine. I'll admit, with two under two, "vacation" isn't exactly the relaxing recharge time it once was, but this was about as good as it gets.

This year the decision was made to rent a house on the beach rather than the usual condo. I didn't think it was going to make that much of a difference, but I was wrong. It was the ideal setup with the muchkins. We were staying in a 4 bedroom house with a total of 4 families. There was a bedroom and bathroom for each family. As expected, the Fuller family didn't get much sleep the first night. The girls always have trouble the first night we are sleeping somewhere new. After the first night, Lizzy was great. She adjusted quickly to her spot in the closet and wore herself out each day in the sea and sand.

Staying at the house on the beach was the perfect setup. We gated off the stairs at the back deck so Lizzy could run around and be as loud as she wanted each morning without disturbing anyone. We could head on down to the beach whenever we pleased and didn't have to pack up everything we owned each time. If someone got hungry or tired, we just walked back up the stairs to the house! Each night, we'd walk the 7 blocks to the restaurants and by the time we made the walk home, it was time to put Lizzy down for the night and enjoy a little adult time. Lizzy loved the beach and playing in the surf with Daddy and her big-kid friend, Meghan. Annabelle tolerated the beach but preferred playing on the floor of the air conditioned, shady house. The only real bummer was that Annabelle never adjusted to sleeping in the room with us. She woke up 3 or 4 times each night which left Mommy a little on the tired side. Even with the lousy sleep, it was nice to get away from the normal routine and spend a little time in the sun with some friends!

Growing Girls

Our girls are learning and growing more each day! Annabelle is now sitting up and has moved into the highchair. She looks so little in the big chair! Lizzy seems to understand everything you say, but we are working on using her words. We're trying to build our vocabulary beyond dadda and animal noises.

The girls are at the point where they are interacting more with eachother. Now that Annabelle is sitting and playing with toys, Lizzy is learning about "sharing" and "taking turns." All of a sudden, she is interested in toys she hasn't played with in months because her sister is playing with them. She does enjoy helping mom by "wiping up" whenever she spills some of her milk or her sister spits up.

We had our regular check-ups today. Unfortunately, Annabelle woke up early this morning with a slight fever. The doctor checked her out and nothing was wrong (other than the fever and being fussy) but we decided to put off her shots for a few weeks. Here are our new stats.

Annabelle-

Weight: 16.6 pounds (46th percentile)

Lenght: 26 inches (45th percentile)

Head: 16 1/2 inches (24th percentile)

Lizzy-

Weight: 21.6 pounds (21st percentile)

Lenght: 31 1/4 inches (65th percentile)

Head: 17 1/2 inches (10th percentile)

California Visit

We were happy to be able to make the trip out to California for Ryan and Amy's wedding. It was a beautiful evening at a vineyard in San Martin. Jason was only able to stay for the weekend before heading back to South Carolina to get back to work, but the girls and I were able to stay for a while to enjoy a longer visit with friends and family.

Lizzy enjoyed getting to know her California relatives during her visit. She demonstrated to everyone her incredible energy and was always excited to have a new hand to guide around the house. She really enjoyed swimming at Auntie Vickie's house and going to the San Francisco zoo to see the baby giraffe. She also had a few play dates with her BFF, Mia. Lizzy was a little overly affectionate with her friend Mia with her headlock hugs. Mia will have to get used to it with many years of hugs from Lizzy ahead of her. :)

While in California, we received some tragic news about my dear friend Tori's mother. She became very ill and died suddenly within the span of our 2 week visit. I was grateful that I was in town to be with my friend during this difficult time. I was able to move my flight back 2 days in order to stay for the funeral with Annabelle while Grandma Sue flew as scheduled with Lizzy.

Despite the rough news, we had a very nice visit with everyone and are excited to see everyone again at Christmas time.

4th of July

For the 4th of July we took a long weekend trip up to Chicago to see our friends, Andrew and Shenade. In an attempt to minimize stops, we decided to drive through the night, leaving after Annabelle's last feeding at around 11pm. The strategy worked pretty well and we arrived the next day by around 2pm. We had a great visit and took a day to go to the Brookfield Zoo. Lizzy sure does love seeing the animals!