Almost two weeks ago our Celia turned three and a half! And she’s very proud of it. She will tell you now that she’s three and a half, a big change from when she was three and wouldn’t tell anyone how old she was. That half is clearly very important!

Celia is a bundle of energy, always running up ahead, walking on the stone walls, bouncing on the balls and off the couch and the walls. Her gymnastics teacher says she has the stride of a runner, and she sure does like to do it! She loves to run, ride her bike, swing, and jump off of very high things. Not only does her body go non-stop, so does her mind and mouth. She’s got lots to tell us and lots of opinions on how she wants things to be. She’s getting better about controlling her impulses with Josie and using her words, but Ewan doesn’t listen so well and so she has a tougher time remembering to use her words on him.

She adores Josie and spends most of her day playing with her. Celia loves to play pretend, mostly ‘baby’ where she is the baby, Josie is the mommy and I (Jen) am the ‘pama’. She also greatly enjoys playing games and flipping through books. Her favorite game right now is the cupcake game, but games tend to go in and out of favor very quickly. She also likes to play hoot owl hoot, high ho cherry oh, and go fish.

Celia will eat a variety of food, but often favors mostly fruits and vegetables which can be difficult at times to get her to eat enough to maintain her high energy lifestyle. She’ll walk away from a meal only to be hungry a very short time later which doesn’t really work for anyone. I never thought I’d be holding the fruits and vegetables hostage until she eats something more calorific!

Academically, if you want to call it that, she’s made big progress in the last few months. She recognizes all the letters, knows the sounds for many of them, counts to 60, is starting to do some addition with very small numbers. She loves to do science experiments with us and listen to many stories, Maisy books are her favorite right now. She’s got a few memorized. When we go to the library she’ll go pick out all the ones that they have and bring them to me to read and try to negotiate bringing them home. She likes to be big like Josie and work on school work, Josie likes to lead her in the instruction of how to do each one. Celia can write her own name now, although her C’s end up sideways and look like U’s and the letters aren’t always quite in order, but they’re usually close.

Being the middle child is a tough business for Celia right now as she struggles to figure out how we all fit together and how to get what she needs. We work hard to give her one on one time every day as possible. She still tells me that she wants Ewan to go away. She had her visit to preschool this month to meet her teachers for next year. I’ll be very interested to see how she enjoys some time away from all of us together and branches out on her own a little. She relishes all one on one attention right now. Spring has brought a lot of fun activities for her as well though, she loves to be part of a gang at the park and she also enjoys digging in the sand and dirt around town.

One activity we do now is at an open gymnasium we visit for a few hours of free play. Celia swings on ropes, and jumps off of high things into a foam pit and jumps on the trampoline. She tries flips on the bars as well. She has no fear, I have lots of fear for her 🙂

• Size/weight: 4T’s, 34lbs
• Favorite foods: cheese, tomatoes, blueberries
• Favorite toy: whatever Ewan is trying to play with
• Favorite book: Maisy series
• Favorite activity: digging and getting dirty
• Sleeping: bedtime ~7:45; gets up about 6:30
• New skill: counting, using her words when she’s upset
• Teeth: holding steady with all 20
• Literacy: reading us books that she’s memorized, letter sounds like t, s, b and d

The girls started a new set of swimming lessons this spring. Josie was super excited as they moved her up two levels after the first day. Celia was not so pleased by the second lesson though because now her sister wasn’t in class with her anymore (although they were at the same time). But we persevered and went to family swim as well to help her get more comfortable and now they’re both swimming like fishes. Well sort of, Celia swims like a fish with a big piece of styrofoam on her back, and Josie swims like a fish with a lot of water getting in it’s mouth, but it’s been big progress for both of them.

They’ve just about finished up the first session and will start a second to keep the moment going for summer. Josie got moved up a level so she’s thrilled, Celia’s teacher says she made fantastic progress, but will need to learn to swim with fewer bubbles on her back (4 currently) before she’ll be ready to move on to another level. Celia has thus far refused to move down to three bubbles, but she says she’s going to jump in off the block next time. This past week was ‘peek week’ which meant the parents got to come in with cameras and take pictures. I was the only looney one doing that pretty much. But I’m pleased. My dad came and hung out with Ewan so I wouldn’t be trying to balance a baby and my camera next to the water.

Celia has a habit of chewing her finger nails these days. This happened in the car on the way home from soccer.

Jordi: Celia take your finger out of your mouth. (but he said it in spanish)

Celia: But I’m just eating my booger off of it.

Touche.

Yay it is finally getting warmish up here. Just watch out for pushing your toy into fish on the basketball court. He had a total fit that the fish wasn’t moving, back arching, crying-fit. Also loved to try to eat some dirt and sticks. Girls did a lot of biking and tried to climb some trees and we all soaked in the sun.

They like to hang out at the gate, maybe they’re hungry?

Being a bit behind, Celia has now turned 3 and one third years old! She has taken a delightful turn from being 2 and now is three and has a bit more self control, moderation and patience. A bit anyway. She is still a super big ball of energy and love and hams it up for the camera for me with lots of emotion. Lots of emotion is always her thing actually! Lots of love, and lots of intensity. Winter has been tough being inside all the time, she’s missing out on riding her bike and playing in the sand. We are trying to get out more into the snow when it’s available but with the early darkness and school there isn’t a ton of time to be out there.

One of Celia’s most requested activities when she gets to pick are board games. She plays high-ho cherry oh, sequence for kids, busytown, plus uno and go fish as well as others I’m not remembering right now. She’s gotten the hang of counting out spaces and following the rules. We’re still working on being a good sport when losing, but she actually wins a good percentage of the time, at least when there’s a good amount of luck involved.

Academically she’s doing fantastically learning her letters and numbers. She can recognize most of the letters, definitely the most common ones. She also knows the numbers up to 20. Beyond that has been a challenge so far, we’ve been using the ‘i have, who has’ games with her that they do in Josie’s classroom. (Yes I take the Kindergarten work and use it on my three year old, more on that later) She ‘reads’ us books, like Red Hat, Green Hat and other things she’s memorized. She also wants me to make her ‘homework’ which involves tracing letters and words that I print out from the computer. She’s very good with her horizontal, vertical lines and circles, but the slants come out straight unless she’s tracing right on something.

Most every morning she’ll ask me if today is a gymnastics day. She loves her gymnastics classes and is progressing well in them. Wearing a leotard is mandatory, even in the local rec classes, she pretty much refused to do class the one day she didn’t have a leotard to wear. She says her favorite is the beam and being up high. She doesn’t get that from me.

As for her siblings. She’s been known to hug Ewan so hard he spits up all the food he just ate. She always wants to help out with him as well, bringing me diapers and toys. At the same time she can verbalize that she’s mad and jealous of him, all perfectly normal. It’s tough being a middle child I think. She loves Josie but gets a bit sick of being bossed around. She’s doing better standing up for herself lately and changing the games, but for now Celia always insists on being the baby and making Josie be the mommy. I’ve got my ears peeled for when she’ll allow a role reversal at playtime. Josie is definitely her favorite playmate though.

• Size/weight: 4T’s, 33lbs
• Favorite foods: cheese, tomatoes, pasta
• Favorite toy: dress up and pretend
• Favorite book: Arthur series
• Favorite activity: playing pretend
• Sleeping: bedtime ~7:45; gets up about 6:30
• New skill: memorizing books, using her words when she’s upset
• Teeth: holding steady with all 20
• Literacy: reading us books that she’s memorized

So nice, she’s owned it twice. (once when she was a baby and this outfit was Josies)

Just in under the wire, right before bed. Guess they found the story intense. It was “Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 3”.

Earlier before I got the camera set up, George was also on the scene, and Ezzy is just out of sight off camera left.

Our goal for this trip was to spend a lot of time seeing people. Not doing anything in particular, just visiting, getting the kids to get reacquainted with everyone and hang out. So we did a lot of hanging out, and thankfully people came to us to hang out as getting three kids in the car at any particular time when everyone’s so off schedule is tough. Some day we won’t have any more nappers and it should be easier. That’s my theory anyway. So what did we do? First off, the girls did a lot of puzzles. Josie would easily do six a morning. We got everyone into it!

Another major attraction were the pets. It’s always a small zoo at their house with a dog and at least one cat, often two.

One of the highlights for the girls on every visit is taking Simba for a walk. Josie is finally old enough to hold the leash and actually not let go. She still needs to learn a more gentle touch, but once we got the hang of which voice commands to use and got some practice, she and Simba were enjoying those walks together. Celia actually bowed out of taking the dog at all surprisingly, and walked her baby around the block with us each time in her stroller.

We had a lot of time and attention from Javi as he got to meet his nephew and hang out with the girls.

Jordi’s friend Arturo even came over to visit. Josie asked where was his wife? ah, marriage pressure from a 5 year old.

And in the following picture please kindly replace Arturo with Gilbert in your mind, as Gilbert was napping, so Arturo jumped in to round out the group shot. And give several of us bunny ears in other shots.