Gabby's Report Card

Gabby's 1st report card from Room 2. I am a proud mommy. There are only 2 areas to work on and both of those are advanced - Blends and Ordinals. Gabby is really practicing her reading and writing at home and has made great strides. She enjoys learning to spell words and write new letters.

San Diego Trip

It was time for Gabby's check-up so we made a girls trip out of it and Gabby, Grandma Debi and I went to San Diego on Friday morning. We had a wonderful time! Check-ups all went great and then we did some fun shopping - Gabby got a pair of shoes that light up! After that it was nap time for Grandma and Gabby while I went to get my hair cut (it was soooooo needed). I stopped by and visited my friends at SWVP and then we all headed out to dinner at Pacifica. It was an unusual day for San Diego...it rained the whole day! Gabby enojyed the dinner out at the fancy restaurant and came back to the hotel ready for a warm bath and a good nights sleep. Saturday we had Fruit Loops for breakfast and then headed to the zoo. It was an overcast and misty day but perfect for us. We opened the zoo up at 9 and had the place to ourselves - it was perfect. We had an unbelievable experience with the animlas and they were out, making noises and Gabby was able to see them up close. We spent 2 hours there and walked the long loop - if you know that zoo, you know that's a long walk! I didn't get a picture of it but we saw the baby panda and the red panda as well. After the zoo we went to La Jolla for more shopping and lunch. What a perfect way to spend a Saturday! The best part of the trip was that the results came back good and so we are clear for another couple of months :))

San Luis Obispo Childrens Museum

We headed out of town for a day trip to San Luis Obispo. I had researched the Childrens Museum there and so we stopped by for a visit. We got to see a performance from the musical Cats and Gabby LOVED that! She loved the dancing and performing - we had front row seats. The museum was 3 stories and offered several real-life things for the kids to play with. Gabby enjoyed the kitchen, the fire truck, the police motorcycle, the shadow wall, the bank ATM, the Train and the Grocery Store.  I don't have any pictures of Lilly because she was on a separate floor. She was on the 3rd level riding the ladybug scooters, playing with the blocks and rolling on the mats. After the museum we went down to Avila Beach and played soccer, swang on the swings, went down the slide and enjoyed warm sunny weather. Gabby met some girls and they were actually playing in the water (it was cold!). After the beach, we went back to downtown SLO and had BBQ and went to an art gallary and window shopped. We were exhausted affter that so we packed up the car and headed home. The trip was perfect with the small exception that Gordon, Gabby and I all got food posioning from the yummy BBQ we ate!! Hard to have it all but we would definetly recommend this to anyone in the SLO area!

A few fun ones

These are a couple random pictures that Ann took. Gabby had a check-up at Dr. Rabinov's to make sure her ear infection is better and by the look of her - she is fine. Lilly has started to enjoy books to a whole new level. She knows exactly which ones she likes and will bring them over to you from the bookcase for you to read to her. She will sit for a long time if you read the same books over and over! One of her favorites is still The Very Busy Spider.  Lilly is full fledge walking now. It is becoming her preferred mode of mobility. She is into all the cupboards and is a handful to keep up with. She has learned (the hard way) to go down the stairs and to climb off the couch - it only took a few tumbles! Lilly is a climber and enjoys climbing on the fireplace and throwing all the toys and puzzles from there onto the ground...she teeters on the edge of danger which gives me a jolt but I remind myself that that's the only way she is going to learn and she really can't fall that far.

Girls out on their bikes

I love these pictures! The girls enjoy going for bike rides together. Lilly LOVES the tricycle and likes to lay her face on the handle bars and feel the vibration. Gabby is getting more and more comfortable on her bike and can peddle pretty fast. As you can see it was a chilly day but the sun was out and we enjoyed a stroll around the block.

Lillian LOVES Books

This should not come as any surprise but Lilly loves books - just as Gabby does. The only thing is that right now, she only likes 3 books - Brown Bear, The Very Busy Spider and Barnyard Dance. We have read those 3 books so many times in the last couple of weeks that I think we know them all by heart. Gabby even knows them all by heart. There are a couple of other books Lilly enjoys but right now, those are the favorites.

Lilly has been watching Gabby jumping off the furniture and so thinks it is funny to walk over to the mat (we have a soft mat that we pull out for the kids to play on) and fall face down on it. She also really enjoys crawling and climbing on Gordon while he lays on the ground. I call him the human jungle-gym.

This is a video of her taking a couple steps from last week. She is really good at walking while I hold one hand - still working on the no-hand part. She is doing great and had her 1-yr check up last week. She was in the 56% for height, 18% for head and weighed just over 19lbs (I think it was in the 16th percentile). She is on track and doing great. She is starting to talk and trying to form words. She has figured out all the cabinets, where the pots and pans are and LOVES to sit in front of the open fridge, pull out the apple drawer and munch on a whole apple. So...if you come over to our house and I offer you an apple with a couple bites taken out of it - you will know why :)

Lilly got a little riding car for Christmas and that is her favorite toy. The only problem is that her legs don't quite touch the hard floors so we still have to push her around the house. Soon she will get it - she can get on and off the car just fine. We have also moved her onto a tricycle! We took her around the block twice (which is a mile) and she loved it. She held on to the handle bars and just rode that bike like a pro.

Gabby continues to be a joy and a great older sister. She is all girl...two nights ago she got up a couple of times during the night. We are trying to decide if she needs more physical activity during the day (and are considering soccer or gymnastics) or if it was the rain that made her wake up. Needless to say, at 6am when we came downstairs, she had already changed into her 2nd pair of pajamas, put on her lip gloss, her necklace, bracelet, was reading her ipad to her animals and had all of her horses out of the barn! I have no idea if she went back to sleep after she was up at 4:30 - my guess is no. So I tell you this story because last night as I put her to bed, I told her that if she got out of bed before 6am or changed her PJ's that I would get to pick out her clothes for school - that was enough to make her do both! Too funny.

We are working on Gabby's writing and are making strides. She does a pretty good job of writing her name (first and last). She has the ipad figured out and we have to be careful because she just downloads books and stories on her own!

Lillian Took her First Steps!!

I don't have any pictures or video yet...but Lilly took her first steps yesterday! She has been cruising for a while now and is very good at navigating but yesterday was the first time she took multiple steps without holding on to anything. It is such a happy and sad day. My little girl is on the move. She has her 1-yr check up today so I'm looking forward to seeing her progress. I'll post more info later.