Emily & Gavin Lately

I figure I've posted enough about myself lately and I miss writing about the kiddos so here's an update.

Emily:

She's going to be 4 in a little over 2 weeks and I can't handle it.  She loves learning anything and everything and is always asking questions. "How do you spell this momma?  What does this word start with? What's 4+5?"  All day.  She can write her letters and spell all of our names.  She's working on learning to write her numbers and she's pretty good!  She loves music and dancing so much. She can hear a song one or two times and learns the words very quickly.  Her favorite things right now are rocks and jewelry.  We collected lake glass on our vacation this summer and she has quite the collection of glass and rocks that she sorts through and plays with all the time.  I also went through my old jewelry box and gave her a bunch of my old jewelry and she is obsessed.  Her sleep is fantastic- she goes to bed around 8:00 every night and after a couple of songs and naming our favorite things from the day I usually don't hear another peep out of her.  She wakes up around 6:45 or so every morning.  We went through a little phase where she was waking up crying at 4am daily and I got her one of those "alarm clocks" that turns green when it's ok to get up and that stopped that problem the next day.  Her relationship with Gavin is pretty funny.  She loves her little brother so much but she gets annoyed with him from time to time.  She does try to help him do things and she takes good care of him at daycare, which makes my heart swell.

Gavin:

Gavin is 2.5 now and he is so funny and is always laughing about something silly. The past few weeks he has started a difficult phase.  The whining about everything, crying and throwing himself down if he doesn't get his way phase.  It's hard.  I think it happens because he is frustrated.  He wants so badly to do everything that Emily can do and when he can't he gets very upset.  He also doesn't talk very clearly so we have a hard time understanding what he's trying to say sometimes.  He has started sort of stuttering at the beginning of sentences and I remember Emily going through this too.  It's like their little brains are moving faster than their mouths can get the words out.  He is all boy as far as being physical.  He loves wresting around and climbing all over his dad and jumping off anything and everything.  He is much more daring than Emily which gives me a heart attack daily. He loves our animals and walks around the house calling for them during the day "Where are you Sadie? Where are you Pete?"  His favorite things right now are animals, trucks and trying to do anything that Emily is doing.  He follows that girl around and does exactly what she does all day long.  His sleep is not great.  He fights going to bed for over an hour and he wakes up at 6am on most days.

Mostly, I'm just so thankful that I have these two little ones in my life.