Monday, June 15, 2015

hello?

it's been awhile and i won't even attempt to say that i'm back to blogging but i have missed keeping a record of our family's life.  so i'm going to attempt to do just that every once in awhile.  poor ellie has had rather sad documentation of her life compared to avery and while i know she's loved every bit as much i would like to actually have a place to look back on her growing up because i know i sure won't remember it all!  so, here's what's been going on in the past year: 

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... ellie is 18 months.  crazy town.  i love this age so much.  she's a running, climbing, following her sister around all day, talking up a storm, crazy toddler.  charlie and i die over how cute she is daily.  she's imitating everything that her 'cool' big sis is doing these days including her newest phrase "knock knock, who's there? pee" that she definitely picked up from avery.  she's also stubborn, brave, and still very much attached to her mama these days.  she knows what she wants and how she wants it and she will let you know exactly what that is.  and (knock on wood) she is finally, finally sleeping in her crib all through the night.  it only took us a year and a half to figure that one out.  she wakes up at the crack of dawn but i can deal with a 5:30 wake up time as long as she's not in my bed thrashing around like a fool for hours each night.  

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...  avery is three and a half and growing by the minute.  she is pretty opinionated about things these days too and like most three year olds has zero patience for things like waiting for things she wants, sharing toys with her sister, and picking up after her own giant messes.  she seems so old to me these days and she'll start preschool in the fall.  i'm both excited for her and so sad because how in the world is she old enough to go out into the world without me.  she's a pretty great sister most of the time and over the past 6 months they have started to play with each other a lot more.  i find it pretty adorable and usually waste all the time that they're happily playing sneakily watching them from the other room instead of getting anything done.  

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...  we recently put dunkin to sleep, which was the hardest decision i've ever made and thing i've had to do.  charlie and i miss him like crazy.  he was the best and the house seems so empty without him following me around everywhere.  

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... i'm so excited that it's finally summer, my very favorite season.  we're busy enjoying things like flip flops, dresses, open windows, fires, grilling, the water table, running around without clothes on (the kids, not me), and growing our first garden.  we don't have a lot of plans this summer and i'm trying to really enjoy the last bit of completely unscheduled time that we have before after starts school.  i know after that we'll "only" have summer's off and i'm really going to miss the freedom of these before-school days.  

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...  we took our annual trip back to maryland in june to visit family.  it was really great to see everyone and we even squeezed in some beach time one day but ellie not the chillest traveler during our second leg of the journey and we were all happy to get back home just to get back to our normal routine.  i'm usually complaining about how short those trips are and this one was only a week, compared to the last two years when we've stayed for two weeks, but with ellie being so difficult i was basically counting the days until we got back home.  hopefully she'll be a little more laid back next year.