birthday girl

so our greta girl turned four. we had a day of beautiful weather to celebrate our girl with our family. it was a fun day, complete with a princess cake (per request)!

selma is on the move!!

check out this video of selma moving around the kitchen!!

this girl

she continues to amaze us. you would think that having a degree in early childhood education and working in this field with 3-6 year olds for over 10 years would mean that not much would surprise me. but when it's your own child.....it's all pretty much amazing.

we all know that our girl can read. i mean, READ. like chapter books. it's crazy.
and she can compose words with the moveable alphabet at school, using wooden letters to "write" words.
but now she is starting to put pen (marker) to paper and actually physically write. STORIES.

she didn't want me to take a picture of her story, but i had to. the part in black says, "one day a princess climbed a tree and fell and a prince saved her"
look closely. very closely. and you can see some of the words. "wun da"(one day) are the first two words. and you can see "tee" at the end of the first line (tree). and the last few letters in black say "sav hr" (save her).
yes, she's got a ways to go to get from phonetic spelling to conventional. but give her a break. she just turned four.
we think she's amazing.
even with green crayon on her teeth and mucus running out of her nose.

selma eats

selma has finally gotten the hang of eating solid foods. she has had green beans, peas, zucchini, squash, carrots, sweet potatoes, apples, pears, peaches, and prunes. and she seems to like them all. she didn't really care for baby cereal all that much, and since she was having a bit of a constipation problem, the nurse suggested we omit the cereal for a bit. selma doesn't seem to miss it. she does prefer fruits to vegetables, but she'll eat pretty much anything (so far).
and she LOVES puffs and cheerios. she can pick them up in her hand but can't get them to her mouth....they just stay in her palm all gummy and wet while we have to feed her other ones straight to her mouth.
now we're working hard on teaching her the sign for "more". she whines so loudly when she wants another bite of something, it's crazy how loud she can be. even greta and otto are trying to teach her the sign so that she can sign instead of whining and we can eat dinner in peace (somewhat)!!
she also LOVES these mesh bag things (in the photos) that you can put food in. she was going to TOWN on the pears today!! i put 3 slices of ripe pear in there and when she was done, it was completely empty!!

blooms and berries

shortsleeves and sunburns again for us this year at the pumpkin patch! it was another warm day (like it was last year) when we headed to blooms and berries to pick pumpkins. well, pick pumpkins, walk the sunflower maze, slide on slides, play in giant vats of corn....you get the idea. everyone had fun....selma loved the corn and actually played in it for several minutes before trying to put some in her mouth.

happy fall!

another trip around the sun

our sweet greta girl turned four! i was lucky enough to get to observe her birthday celebration at school, just like last year. looking back at the pictures and posts from last year, it is crazy to see how different greta looks. i mean, obviously she's bigger. but she just looks so much more like a KID and less like a toddler. her face and her body have thinned out. where did that baby girl go? it was amazing to watch and see how much she has grown and changed in just one year. she is still our sweet, sensitive girl. but she is also confident and capable and more outgoing and is just turning into such a amazing person.
i like these pictures because you can see how lovely her classroom is....and some of her sweet little friends are in the pictures.
happy birthday greta josephine!