June's 2nd Birthday Party

I'm only two months late posting about June's birthday party! Really, it was pretty low-key, we had Rebecca and Brandon over and the Thalmans. Though, whenever you add a few extra people to our small house it quickly feels very boisterous. June loved the attention and having other kids to play with. She really loves Abby Thalman, who's seven and the perfect age to give June absolute attention and control and enjoy herself while doing it.

We had spaghetti for dinner because it's easy to make, a pretty standard crowd pleaser, and I can't remember what else. I made this amazing chocolate cake that my friend introduced me to. It is definitely the best chocolate cake in the history of chocolate cakes. She brought it over to our house when Willa had surgery and I got the recipe and have been making it ever since. The density, the moisture, the chocolate-yness. It's perfection. It's also super easy. It's a Betty Crocker cake mix that contains pudding in the mix, an additional box of chocolate pudding mix, 1 1/2 c sour cream, four eggs, 1/2 c oil and 1/2 c water, and 1 1/2 cups chocolate chips (I do half semi-sweet and half milk). It's sooo easy and it's extremely delicious. For the frosting, I use the recipe on the back of the Hershey's cocoa powder box, which is so fudgy and good. I made it for a baby shower at Ryan's work and it's been the talk of the office ever since.

So, the cake was delicious and June knew just when to blow out the candles. She's such a different personality from Willa and not shy at all! In this picture, she's wearing a dress-up dress because all the girls were doing it and she wanted to too, which explains most of her life (wanting to do what the older kids are doing).

I should add that we already had a little mini-birthday for her at my mom's house the week before. We flew to Utah to take advantage one last time of the under two years old lap sitting policy. My mom made a cute butterfly cake.

Here's a short little clip of June getting into her new rocking chair. It's super short because I actually meant to be taking a picture, but it shows her exuberance for life!

Here's another short video of her singing "Happy Birthday" the next week in the car. She's pretty good at singing it now after her birthday and watching the Elmo's World birthday episode over and over.

June is just growing and changing so much. I feel like I always want to write about something new that she is doing, but it feels like she does something new almost every day. She is a big two-year old and yesterday after the closing prayer in Sacrament meeting, instead of wailing in dread about upcoming nursery like she normally does, she gave a half-hearted whimper and then allowed Ryan to lead her away.

She says so many words and speaks in sentences and thinks she's the biggest girl on the block, except when she's interested in being the baby. Several weeks ago she had a major level ten freakout, on a scale of 1-10, when baby Toby was visiting and was using her bouncy chair. She got the most upset that she ever gets for quite a while. I took her upstairs for a lot of the dramatics but finally, she passed through the fire of adversity and came through stronger and more mature. When we came back downstairs she noticed that Toby had gotten out, so she climbed in and wanted to be bounced in it for the next several days. Since then, we have had Toby and some other babies come to visit and they have all had to use the bouncy chair and she hasn't fussed about it once. She's always quick to point out when they leave so that she can climb in and get bounced, but she's resigned herself. She LOVES to have me tell her that she is my baby and to play rock-a-bye baby with her.

June really loves her pacifier and it is becoming a bit of a problem when she wants to have it around the house all day instead of just in bed. Sometimes I'm really strict with her and sometimes on hard days a baby just needs her comfort. She also very much loves her softies and her pillow and reading books together before bed.

June loves Willa and often tries to hug and kiss her when Willa is upset and crying. She has a zero track record of this ever working and mostly she makes Willa more upset, but I think it's adorable to see her trying to hug and kiss her. Willa sees it as a gross invasion of personal space and privacy when she is most vulnerable.

June is doing better at eating food when we sit all down together as a family and she does try most things now. We still go through a lot of cold cereal, but I've noticed it slowing down. She has a big sweet tooth and always notices when Ryan is trying to sneak a little treat out of the pantry. She runs over to him and tries to pry his fingers open. We're currently using jellybeans as our bribe treat of choice. Small, not messy, and once of them makes her happy. Willa has even started calling them "reverent jellybeans" because I offered her one during family prayers if she would fold her arms and participate.

A sweet moment of sister cooperation, Willa is tracing June's hands.

One day after preschool drop off, I ran into another preschool mom at the store. She was trying to navigate with a three week baby and this little boy who is June's age. I plopped Mason down in our cart with June and the two of them had a grand time through the entire store.

My girls have been so sweet these days. We have rough moments, but mostly I'm just loving and drinking in being their mom right now. Willa is still independent, stubborn, and a little self-conscious, but I also see so much growth and maturity. The other day we were hurrying to get going and she was putting her socks and shoes on by herself. Trying to hurry us up, I surreptitiously started putting the sock and shoe on the other foot hoping she wouldn't notice. Well, of course she noticed but instead of totally losing it, she said, "Oh, you remember Mama, that's my job." It was such a calm response! In still in shock a little bit about it.

She's got a lot of love to give and a lot of excitement for life. I hope she always stays excited and young. I love that right now she's more interested in Octanauts than in My Little Ponies right now and that she loves Dr. Seuss books and Mo Willems. They seem much more innocent and childlike than Barbie books or princess books. Of course she likes those too, but she forgets about them pretty quickly and loves to come back and back to Pigeon and Elephant and Piggie. In fact, she has all of them memorized so that she can "read" them with us. She probably has over fifteen books that she can recite to us at any given time. Of course, she's extremely frustrated whenever we get a new one because she tries to read it right away, but doesn't know the words and gets angry if we try to help her. I've noticed that she's started recognizing and trying to sound out words. She'll get the first letter and then guess at a word that begins with that letter. I can't believe that she's figuring these things out!

Here we are at Savers having just found her new bicycle! ( Ignore the transition lenses on her glasses!) Ryan and I were talking this morning about whether not she wishes she had a new bike or even knows the difference between a new and second hand one. I'm sure if she saw them next to one another she would know, but I like to think that we're still creating good memories with shabbier things. I hope she looks back fondly on driving out to the second hand store to find her a bicycle and how excited we were when we found a purple one that was just the right size. I'm not against buying new things, I love new things, but I also love deals and it feels great to pay $8 instead of $80.

Willa has been really into making these crowns. She draws them, cuts them out, and then decorates them. She even came up with the idea of taping a strip of paper around the back.

Willa rides a bike!

Willa sure is having a lot of experiences lately! This past Wednesday she learned how to ride a bike. The Thalmans were coming our direction to see Kim's grandpa in the hospital so they dropped off the children and their bikes at our house. Willa has been asking for a bike "with pedals and no training wheels!" For quite some time and had even mentioned it earlier that morning. I have just put her off, thinking that we might get one for her fifth birthday in October.

Even when the Thalmans unloaded their bikes I didn't think Willa would try it, but then Kim plopped her on Bridgett's bike and the rest is history. She has been very steady on her strider balance bike for quite a while, so when Kim put her on the real thing she balanced fine but didn't realize that she needed to pedal. As soon as we told her (and kept reminding her) to pedal, then she was off. The first time with Kim, Kim wasn't really holding on to her, just touching for reassurance. On her second try I helped her, but again it was really just touching for reassurance and reminding her to pedal, I even took my hand off a second or two. On her third try, I let go and got out my phone to video it. She was a little stressed when I let go, but got really happy when she realized that she was doing it.

I texted Ryan the video and he replied, "What? Without me?!" It was almost without me too, it happened so fast! Ryan was excited to get home and Willa was more than excited to go out and show him what she could do. They spent some time out practicing together and by the end of the evening she could start up on her own, make turns, and was basically just biking laps up and down the street.

The Thalmans were leaving the next day for California, so they graciously left Bridgett's bike with us so that we could have something to practice on. The next morning, I put off a long-procrastinated trip to Savers. We took stuff to donate that had been sitting in the garage because they give you a 20% off coupon when you donate. I wasn't expecting much, but low and behold, there was one, small, purple bike there! It was $10, then 20% off :). It's definitely used and one of the pedals is a little broken, but I figured it would do us for a while. If it was really horrible, it was only $8 lost. We got home, took the training wheels off, pumped the tires up, and Willa was off! The bike still needs a tune-up from Rob, but it was worth $8.

Ryan came home during his lunch that day to ride with Willa. Hooray for living six minutes away from work! She was having the best time and still loves, loves, loves to ride her bike. I can't believe how steady she is! She's actually much steadier than Bridgett, who has been riding for a few weeks, but learned from training wheels. I was 100% convinced on using a balance bike before, but now I'm 150% convinced, if that's even possible. Learning to ride was a total joy, no tears, no falls, no frustrations. It made it the happy experience that we all hoped to have when we were little but that we never did because we all had training wheels first. It was such a difference to have her hop on that bike and already balance it, whereas with training wheels once you take the trainers off, you still have to learn to balance and ride it.

This is a video from the second day when Ryan came home during lunch. You can see how steady she is!

Ryan and I were just so happy for her. We both remember when we first learned how to ride a bike. It's a seminal experience of childhood and she's had it and it was positive! It's also so strange to us that she could be making memories right now that she will actually remember. So, three cheers for Willa and three cheers for balance bikes!

Willa starts piano

Willa started piano lessons at the beginning of March. I've hemmed and hawed for a long time about whether to start her. In Suzuki, you can start as early as three, but sometimes it feels like those lessons are more exercises in sitting still. I kind of wanted to delay also to save money since I knew she would progress faster when she was older anyway, but sometimes progression is not the main point. I finally decided to start her because she is bored and would enjoy some more enrichment. She misses the kindergarten deadline by fourteen days this fall, so we have a whole extra year to have her home. I feel like piano is something we can do during this year (and beyond) that she will enjoy and be challenged by. It will also be nice to get in the habit of lessons and practice before we are locked into the craziness of a school schedule.

Our stake choir pianist used to be the president of the Las Vegas Music Teachers' Association and is really involved in pedagogy and the music community here. She usually takes five year olds, but said she would take Willa at four since she can sit and focus well. I decided to put Willa with a really good teacher opposed to someone who just teaches in the ward for several reasons. First of all, I wanted someone experienced because Willa is so young. This teacher knows how to work with young students. Second, I want Willa to have a solid base. She's not necessarily going to become a prodigy and go on and do professional piano for the rest of her life, but if she loves it and wants to continue on, this is the teacher to start with. If she doesn't care for it as much as she grows, we can dial it back and go to a less demanding teacher, but it's difficult to go the other way (from poor teacher to better) after bad technique and practice habits have been formed. It's so much more fun as a harp teacher to get a new student who is kind of a blank slate. It's hard and frustrating (especially for the student) if they are coming from a less demanding teacher and I have to slow them way down to fix hand position, fingering, and other bad technique. It's just better to start well then to spend the whole time fixing.

This teacher holds regular recitals and organizes her students into piano duos, trios, and quartets which will be so much fun. I think it's important to have group lessons with other students to be motivated and also to make friendships. She also emphasizes a lot of theory and it's naturally worked into the curriculum, which is so important. She won't be totally lost in college theory and dictation if she sticks with this. Our teacher says she has her students reading two full octaves by the end if two months, which really well. If/when we do harp later on she will progress very quickly. 

Which brings me to the last question: why not just start her on harp? I feel like piano is a basic life skill. If you can play piano, you can always help and serve others. You can always make basic music. Most places have a piano, you can own a basic piano fairly inexpensively, especially with all the great digital pianos there are these days. Even in college, other music majors have to take a basic piano skills class. Harp is more of a specialty instrument. The harp is also very physically difficult as far as technique goes and it's difficult for little kids. I was originally thinking of starting her at five, but now with piano I might wait an extra year or two. Growing up in my house, I always felt like I could quit harp, but piano was non-negotiable.

Her teacher wrote her name and the date of her first lesson in the front of her book. Isn't that cute? I'm excited that now we'll always know when she started and how old she was.

Lessons are going really well. It amazes me how much coordination it takes and also how well she progresses. We'll have several days of not getting it, not getting it, not getting it, and then suddenly she can do it. It's so difficult to have good articulation with your fourth finger and to have it move independently. In the beginning, she could not move it and then it would move when she was trying to play her fifth finger. We made a joke about it and would scold her finger saying, "Four! It's not your turn!" Willa thought that was hilarious. Then one day the finger just did it. It was exciting! I also feel like her behavior has improved a little the past few weeks, less defiance and meltdowns. It might be my imagination, but I think having the one-on-one time to practice everyday is good for her. She craves one-one-one and practicing together is something that fulfills that and that we have in common together, just the two of us. She loves to practice and will ask to do it several times a day. Some sessions are more effective than others, but sometimes she will sit and concentrate for thirty minutes at a time. Other times, we have to take a break after five minutes, but she's always happy to do it again later.

Here's a little video from her first lesson.