Well visits

I was tidying up and came across the girls' well-visit papers from this past December. I love looking back at this sort of information about them. Willa was having her five year checkup, and June was having her 2 1/2 year.

Willa
5 years
Height - 43 inches, 52nd percentile (though, I think she's had a growth spurt since this, because   suddenly her dresses are much shorter on her)
Weight - 41.6 lbs, 57th percentile
Blood pressure - 92/52

June
2 1/2 years
Height - 36 3/4 inches, 52nd percentile
Weight - 26.1 lbs, 17th percentile
Head - 48 1/4 inches, 45th percentile

Two healthy girls. The doctor heard a faint heart murmur on June, but she said it sounded textbook like a Still's murmur, which is a heart murmur that occurs in two year olds and has no side effects. Children usually outgrow it pretty easily. We'll double check at her three-year check up and if it sounds differently we can send her in for more testing. The doctor wasn't worried about it and I'm not, but sometimes when I pick June up and she's been really emotional (tantrum, or maybe running), I can feel her little heart beating so quickly in her chest. I don't think anything is wrong with it, it just makes me think about her and our bodies a little more.

The doctor also suggested that I needed to make Willa use the bathroom more often during the day and that would help her stay dry at night. At the time of our visit, Willa was currently just going twice a day - at lunch and before bed. She always woke up with a wet diaper, so I didn't press her into going in the morning and sometimes at lunchtime she would fight with me about going because she didn't want to. The doctor thinks her bladder is stretched out so she can't really feel whether or not she needs to go and then it just kind of leaks out during the night. So now I'm being more vigilant about making her go several times a day, in the hopes that over the next two or three months the bladder will shrink up and she will be able to hold it overnight. We'll see. The doctor thinks it should help and says that most kids her age are dry through the night (heck, June is dry through the night), but I come from a family full of late bed-wetters on both sides so I didn't think it was particularly strange that she still wet the bed. In fact, it's kind of nice because her and Claire are both a little embarrassed about it, but then kind of relieved that they both still use diapers when we have stayed the night.

Christmas!

I'm behind posting everything because we've been gone on our amazing DISNEY CRUISE!!! That's all I'll say about it right now. First, I must post about Christmas.

We had a nice quiet Christmas Eve with just us. It was still sweet and special and fun with the little girls. I was planning to have hamburgers because I thought the best Christmas gift I could receive was having no one complain about dinner, boo yeah. At the last second I decided that hamburgers weren't quite special or exciting enough since we have them about once a week (see previous comment on no one complaining about dinner). So I ran to the store on Christmas Eve, got some bread bowls, and made a creamy soup. The girls turned their noses up for about 30 seconds, then got a kick of eating soup out of the bread bowl, filled up mostly on bread, and we all left the table happy.

Christmas Eve

 We talked about the Savior's birth and then read the Polar Express, which was a family tradition of mine growing up. We put the girls to bed, but then got them up two minutes later to allow them to open one present on Christmas Eve, which was one of Ryan's family traditions. It was very fun.

Santa doesn't wrap presents at our house. Here is what it looked like when Santa finished. When the girls woke up, they played with their Santa gifts for a while, we ate breakfast, and then opened the wrapped presents. It's a nice way to extend the morning. The girls were pretty happy about their lot, June was going crazy about having her very own princess water bottle (it attaches to the front of the scooter). She's happy that her water bottle came with a scooter :).

 Willa got a scooter, the new Elephant and Piggie book, Anna's coronation gown, and a bow and arrow toy that we had seen at a store earlier in the month and that she loved. June got her scooter, a Peppa Pig playhouse, some play dinosaurs, and the book Harry and His Bucketful of Dinosaurs because she has been obsessed with the t.v. show. Then they each got a slinky, which might have been the best gift of the morning. For me, it seemed a little small, but other years I feel like we've been overwhelmed with stuff so we wanted to try and keep it to a minimum this year. Once they opened their wrapped gifts, it seemed like a good balance.

Breakfast is over! Now for the presents.

Playing with new gifts.

 

Rebecca and Brandon came for Christmas dinner. We also had the Collins family come over. Bobby Collins went to high school with Ryan and he and his family just moved out here with the AF to work at Nellis. We didn't get a photo of everyone, but it was a nice Christmasy gathering. They have two little girls who are two years old and about five months. It's weird to be the one with older kids (though mine are just a tad older). Seeing them was like seeing us two years go.

Rebecca brought her gifts over that evening and Willa was ecstatic to unwrap the last My Little Pony to complete her collection and ROLLERSKATES! She went wild and gave Rebecca a big hug. Here she is the next day skating around. They are just the beginner ones that go over her shoes, so the skating isn't great, but she has been wanting some for soooo long. And I just realized that this isn't an actual video clip. It's the image of a video clip. So just imagine.

Park with friends

Willa has made some cute friends at preschool. After our last day of school before the break, we arranged for a park play date.

They are pretty cute together. There is a park at the community center where the lucky kids with nice moms get to run around and play together after school pick-up. I resisted for quite a while, but Willa's incessant begging wore me down. For better or worse, we go almost every time now. Ideally, I'd just like to get home and put June to bed, on the other hand, I wanted Willa to have more friends and this has helped that. Out of the four girls in her class, three of us usually play at the park after, so I think important to let her have that unstructured time with friends. I only wish we could stay longer. I'm usually the first one to leave because we really do need to get June down for a nap. If it wasn't for that, there have been beautiful days and it would be nice to just be able to stay out as long as we want. Still, it's a nice chance for us to stretch a little if the rest of the day's schedule doesn't allow for something else fun later on.

The Nutcracker

I got tickets for Willa, Rebecca, and I to have a little girls' afternoon out to The Nutcracker at the Smith Center in December. I've wanted to take Willa for a while and thought this year she might be old enough. It was a lot of fun! She was a tad on the young side, but sat on my lap and was very attentive as I whispered some of the plot details to her. It was really good, my only complaint was that the Mother Ginger costume didn't have all the kids hiding inside. How could they not to that? It's iconic!

As soon as we got home, she changed into her leotard, had me put on some Nutcracker music, and started leaping all around. It was so cute.

June gets a haircut

I never thought I would cut June's hair short until she was positively begging for it, but the time had come. At this point, and maybe for her whole life, her hair isn't nearly as curly or thick as Willa's. If I don't do Willa's hair in the morning it looks like a giant haystack. If I didn't do June's it was just kind of meh. Well, the more we have been rushed out the door, you can guess which tasks got left undone. Willa's hair had to get done, but June was coasting by.

The other thing is that she started hating to have it down because it bugged her. Her long hair was always getting in her way. In the bath, it would hang done and wrap around and get caught under her armpit. It was a pain in the car seat. She just started complaining all.the.time. if her hair wasn't completely pulled back. I couldn't just do one big ponytail in the back because she had so many little flyways that were always getting in her face, so I had to use various clips and extra rubber bands and it rarely looked good, in my opinion.

One night during her bath as she was complaining about it, I broached the idea of a haircut. It wasn't a threat, I was just curious how she felt about it. She was immediately on board and after that she kept bringing the idea up. I finally asked Ryan his thoughts and, naturally, he didn't really care - which is good because he's not all sentimental and prideful about her beautiful long locks like I am.
 

A lady in our ward is in cosmetology school and I thought she had done a really good job on other friends in the ward. She said she would love to see Junie.

I tried to get a good "before" photo, not much success. It was pajama day at preschool for Willa, so June is in her jammies too.

She was really brave even though I could tell she was a little nervous. Jessie (my friend) had her stand on the floor for part of the time because she's so little in the chair and while I tried to sing funny songs to calm her, she would start dancing - not effective for an even cut.

Isn't she just such a doll?

Sniff

Here she is later that day, having changed into a different set of pajamas. Most days I put a little clippy in and she looks so adorable. I had major cutting remorse after the haircut, I thought it was cute and sweet, but I couldn't believe what I had done! I felt a little sad about it the whole day, but I kept telling myself that it was cuter than a ratty ponytail. It's really grown on me and I love it now. Plus, June LOVES it and says it's "much more better". She calls getting a haircut a "shortcut" and loves showing it off to people and puts her hands just so up by her face.

Christmas Piano Recital

Willa's teacher has been giving her Christmas music ever since Halloween ended (though, for a week or two around Thanksgiving, we worked on the Primary song "For Health and Strength). Finally, it was time to choose a song for the Christmas recital. Her teacher pulled out a few options and it was love at first sound for Angels We Have Heard on High. She loved it and practiced it NON-STOP for the first day or two after her lesson until she had mastered the notes. It was really cute, when she first played it for Ryan she stopped right before the chorus and said, "And now, daddy, here comes the tricky section."

She also became quite frustrated at any mistake and was having full-fledged meltdowns during practice when she would get a wrong note. I tolerated these meltdowns with a mixture of humor, exasperation, compassion, and probably anger.

The day of the recital came and we actually had a lesson that morning. While I was helping her get shoes on for her lesson she told me she was a little scared (thinking we were going to the recital). Ah, performance anxiety. I can't believe we are there already. We talked to her teacher about being scared and her teacher gave some good advice to her. There is a duet option to the piece, so even though she had planned to play a solo, she thought maybe she would like her mom (me) to play a duet with her so she wouldn't be as nervous.

We practiced the duet, but when we got to the recital she decided to go solo. There was supposed to be a piano team before her as the first song, but one of them got stuck in traffic, so Willa had to go first. I think that threw her a little because she wasn't expecting it, but suddenly had to get up. You can see her fear and her concentration as she walked the long walk. I'm really proud of her for pulling through it. I especially love the extra long bow at the end. Her teacher tells her to say "hippopotamus" when she bows and I think the nerves maybe added to it. It was darling. The video isn't great, but when I tried to zoom closer it got all fuzzy.

She's doing so well in piano and I realized that she's learning some of the same songs that my 12 and 13 year old piano students are struggling with! She has her own five-year-old struggles, but I'm so glad we started with such a good teacher who is giving her a strong foundation of note reading and music reading. The teacher told us we could leave the recital early since it was in the evening and rather long. Willa didn't want to go, she was sitting with the next youngest girl, and totally enjoying her night. June, on the other hand, was becoming quite the pest so we hauled out of there.

This little girl, Valerie, gave her own solo recital a few days later. Ryan took the girls (I had a harp job). Willa is working on the same books and is just polishing the songs up and memorizing them, so it was good motivation to see Valerie's recital. Her teacher thinks we could have Willa's in January, but I think because of our cruise, we'll probably push it to February. Exciting things happening in the piano world, though! I kind of wonder if she'll really even take to the harp when we eventually start. It's fine if she doesn't, but I was just thinking about this holiday season when a lot of unexpected gigs popped up with lots of unexpected money. The harp is good for things like that, the piano isn't quite the specialty instrument.

Waiting for the start.

Her teacher got these chocolate pianos for the students. Willa was enchanted and wanted to place it so it looked like Mickey was playing. She then started eating it.

Girl with her piano

Ice Skating

There is an outdoor skating rink at the outdoor mall where Ryan's firm move to over the summer. We were meeting a family there for dinner and to see a little Christmas parade one evening and it happened to be the opening night for the rink. They had Elsa, Anna, and Hans skating out there. It was so cute and Willa was entranced and pretty much pestered us non-stop to go ice skating.

Finally a week later, it was her turn. Ryan started with her while I stayed with June, but I took over after a bit. Ice skating with a child is a labor of love. It probably took us 30 minutes to get around the tiny rink once, but slowly and surely she got used to the feeling and movement and was doing much better. She was in absolute heaven and wanted to stay out forever. She got brave enough to even skate a little without holding onto anything. There were a couple of hard spills, but she loved it. The next day at preschool she drew a picture of us skating at the rink with the Christmas tree in the background. She was so excited to show me the picture, it was adorable. She is dying to go again, but next time I think we will try to find an indoor, less touristy and expensive rink. It was fun for the experience, but now can go the cheapy route :).

It was a really pretty and festive setting with lots of holiday music.

Her drawing, the tree with the star, the blue ice. So sweet.