The big girls

My girls are getting so big. Emily is 7 and Nan is 5 1/2. I can't believe how the time has flown by! Here's a little about my big ones.

Emily is an absolute book worm and frequently gets annoyed when we ask her to put her book down at the dinner table. She is responsible and usually does all her week's homework in one day. She keeps track of her siblings, especially Lydia. She helps cook things, helps with household chores and is now old enough that I allow her to ride around on our street with friends unsupervised. We don't live on a big road, but for her it's a big deal! She also convinced me to let her and Nan take the bus to and from school. She is very dependable, just like me. She is very creative and wants to be an astronaut artist.

Emily loves these cowboy boots and wears them everywhere. She has her own sense of style and has become more concerned about her clothes. Comfort still trumps over style every time though! She absolutely adores being outdoors and spends a few hours outside every day playing with friends. Emily is very smart and her lowest grade for the first quarter was a 96. She is very creative and loves to write stories, draw pictures, etc. She is getting older and prefers more alone time now, as well as more complicated games. She loves her sisters but she also likes older things.

Emily has a very determined personality. I frequently remind her that I am in charge, and that she needs to talk to me respectfully, just like I talk to her. She is picking up on more complicated concepts, like what a vaccine really is and the ideas behind space and solar systems. It is fun seeing her blossom into such a smart, responsible girl.

Nathalie is vivacious! She is 150% about everything. Whether it be tantrum-throwing from homework, or excitement about playing after school, or running as fast as she can, Nan never does anything halfway. She wants to be older so badly, but is still little at heart. She loves to sing as loudly as she can, run as fast as she can, jump as far as she can, play as hard as she can, and so on. Nathalie has an absolute zest for life.

Nan is a social butterfly as well. Every day she comes home from school and tells me who did what, who is her friend (or not!) that day, who said this and that. She already wants to be very fashionable. She loves bright colors and pants. Nathalie loves clothes and always asks for more clothes or shoes. She loves to dress up and accessorize. She especially loves to wear Emily's things, which drives Emily crazy.

Nathalie is so smart. She catches onto things very quickly. She is a good reader now and tonight read me the first page of a Magic Tree House book. Nathalie has a great sense of humor and is so even keeled. She bounces back quickly from hurts and setbacks. She has such a great joy in her and it's so hard to contain in her little body.

Where has the time gone?!

Girls At The Park and REALLY Big Bugs

One summer eve we went to the park and decided to play on a sandpile near the park. Charlotte found this enormous beetle! Luckily it was dead.

Look how big that thing is! Crazy. Georgia has huge bugs. Cockroaches, cowkiller ants, spiders, bleh! I have a hard time with bugs.

Except for this cute bug.

I like her little chubby cheeks and her kissable fat roll.

Little Georgia Critters

Georgia has so many little critters. In our backyard we have seen opossums, coyotes, snakes, black widows, frogs, lizards, armadillos, squirrels, foxes, cats, dogs, cow killer wasps, dragonflies, wolf spiders, caterpillars, beetles, cardinals and more!

There are lots of frogs here. Most of them are tiny little tree frogs. Look at this one! I put my thumb close to it so you could see how tiny it really is. They're funny because they can climb anything. What isn't so funny is when your 5 yr old catches a few and you bring the little container inside for the night and then, when you wake up at 3 am to feed the baby, they are hopping all over the kitchen and scaring the bejeebies out of you!

This picture is hard to see, but they are Mexican horned caterpillars. They are not very pleasant and can devour one of our tomato plants in a day. We checked every day and pulled them all off, but the damage was done and we lost a few plants.

These are monarch butterfly caterpillars. We didn't pull them off, because they were only eating our coriander/cilantro plant that went to seed. They were so cool! I couldn't find any chrysalis' though, so I'm not sure what happened to them.

We recently bought a small dragonfly ornament for our Christmas tree. There are dragonflies ALL OVER. We had seen tiny ones and ones that are 4-5 inches long. Their favorite place to rest is my clothesline. Can you see it? They come in brown, black, shiny blue and green, and red. It's crazy! They are so fun though. Since they're completely harmless, the kids aren't afraid of them and we spend a lot of time observing them.

Little Ones At Home

While the big girls are at school, the little girls play! As the weather cools down, we spend more and more time outside.

This little girl loves waiting for her sisters after school. We have changed and now the girls come home on the bus, but she still loves seeing them!

I can't believe how big she is getting. She'll be 18 months in a few days!

Charlotte is still my little buddy. This picture was taken before she broke her tooth, but she follows me around and is my little "helper" all day long. She adores preschool, which is two mornings a week. Other than that she is my shadow.

Our first lost tooth! But it wasn't Emily's....

On Labor Day I went swimming with the girls. After swimming, Charlotte was wrapped up tight in her towel and we were walking out of the pool area. She fell and started crying. I picked her up and didn't notice any blood, so I told her that she was fine. She kept saying, "My tooth hurts!"

So I looked at her tooth and she had cracked it. I played it off like no big deal....but was secretly freaking out! It was Labor Day! Emergency Rooms don't handle teeth, what were we supposed to do? We don't have a dentist!

I kept her calm all the way home and Matt took a look. She had cracked it into three pieces, and all were still in her gums. It didn't look reparable. We found a dentist and called the emergency hotline. They told us to come in the next morning, first thing. In the meantime, Matt put superglue on the tooth to protect the exposed nerve a little bit and keep things stable to avoid further damage.

It was so sad! Charlotte couldn't eat anything with an extreme temperature, or very hard. She had Special K cereal with lukewarm milk for 24 hours.

We went to the dentist and he took an x-ray. Yes, her tooth had shattered into three pieces. The nerve was exposed and there was no way it would heal. Luckily though, the adult tooth was not damaged at all. He recommended that we pull the tooth instead of waiting for it to fall out over the next few months. That way she wouldn't be in any extra pain with the exposed nerve.

He was SO good with her. She didn't realize he was numbing her mouth, and before she knew it, the tooth was out! She didn't like the numb feeling. They gave her a tooth necklace and a balloon. Then we stopped and got milkshakes after (a huge treat!). She was swollen for the next day or two, and it took awhile to get used to her toothless look.

At this point, she is doing very well. It's been about 6 weeks, her hole has filled in and the swelling is gone. She still looks like a goober, but at least she's a cute goober! :)

One more thing to note is that Emily was SO mad that Charlotte lost the first tooth. Emily has had two loose teeth for an entire year, but she hasn't lost any of them yet. She kept asking me to take her to the dentist and have him pull her teeth!

The Love Book

Nathalie is just starting to realize the freedom of writing. She frequently spells little things now. For example she'll say, "M-O-M, can I have something to E-A-T?" We think it's funny and respond in like manner.

My favorite though was this "love book" she made for us. Three pages long, it express so much and I will treasure it forever.

We love you too, Nan.

Family comes our way

At the beginning of August we headed down to St. Augustine, FL to spend some time with Matt's parents. We'd never been to St. Augustine before and it was so beautiful!

For being on the same ocean, I was surprised at how much softer and whiter the sand was and how gentle the waves were. I loved the sand, but I still like our waves better. :)

We toured some of the old buildings in St. Augustine. We didn't go inside this church, but I thought it was SO pretty!

We were on top of a fort looking out over the bay, and it was beautiful! It was pretty hot that day, but the breeze was nice and we got to watch a dolphin playing in the harbor for about 15 minutes.

I don't get a lot of pictures of these two together, because they butt heads a lot. But this was a sweet moment between them.

I believe these were the original cannons from when the Spaniards were here.

Here is the interior of the fort. It was pretty cool, and one of the oldest places I've been in the US.

We could put our kids in these cannons! (But we didn't...)

A few days later after we were home, Matt's sister and her family came to visit. We got to explore Bay Street, River Street, and historic Savannah with them. We'd never seen it before and I was so surprised at how beautiful Savannah can be! After doing a little research, we found some real gems here.

Family gives us such a good excuse to break out of our routine and explore!

Lydia, who rarely goes to anyone new, absolutely ADORED Uncle E. It was so sweet! Uncle E is notoriously good with baby girls, seeing as how he has four girls as well! He definitely had the touch with Lydia.

Aunt C also worked her way into Lydia's heart.

Notable things we did with them, to use for future adventures:

-- Bonaventure Cemetery: this was absolutely beautiful, with stunning memorials, mauseoleums, very old graves, etc. It will be wonderful to go there in a few weeks when it isn't so hot.

--St John the Baptist Cathedral: this cathedral was on the small side for cathedrals but so gorgeous. It has incredible symbols and art, it was a very reverent place and I can't wait to take Matt and the older girls there (they were at school).

--Eating gator: we had our first gator tasting experience! We went to B&D Burgers downtown one day and got an appetizer platter with gator tenders on it. They were fried, but I was so surprised because they were really good! Charlotte especially loved them and chowed down.

--River Street: shops like the Savannah Candy Company and some of the art shops were really neat. It was in the mid-90s that day, so we didn't explore for more than a couple of hours. I'd love to go back when the weather is cooler. We found a dragonfly ornament for our Christmas tree, which we had wanted to get to always remember Savannah. There are so many dragonflies here that we were looking for something dragonfly themed.