18 months old...

Wow, I can't believe Vera is 18 months old already! We met her when she was 13 months old and now she is a year and a half old.

We went to the pediatrician last week and I knew Vera had grown, but she has grown beyond my expectations. 3 months ago, Vera weighed 20 pounds and was 6% on the growth chart. Today, she was a little over 24 pounds and almost 50% on the growth chart! 3 months ago, Vera was 30 inches and 37% on the growth chart for height and today she was 32 inches and a little over 62% on the growth chart! Our little girl isn't so little anymore!

This is a picture of Vera and her cousin that is only a month older. Aren't they cute?

I had a couple of concerns to talk to the doctor about. Vera has a bit of a "duck" walk, but he said that should correct itself by the age of 3. You can almost always hear Vera breath, so I was a little concerned about that. But, he said he couldn't hear anything in her chest or lungs, so she just has a cold. So, my question was, "So, she has a cold all the time?". He said that kids have 7-8 colds a season.

I have noticed that when Vera gets hurt, she looks for me to comfort her. I didn't realize that she didn't do that until she actually did it, does that make sense?

Vera now will sit and look through books or bring a book to me to go through the pages with her. Vera also loves music. When she hears it, she will bop around. It is so sweet to see Kiara and Vera dancing together.

Vera can say 3 things. Mama, Dada & Night Night. I think she calls her blanket her Night Night. She is becoming more and more attached to her blanket. One of the corners of the blanket has a knot in it, she will find that corner and put it under her chin and then pop her thumb in her mouth. It is so cute.

Vera loves to go places. She will bring me her shoes or coat because she wants to go somewhere. Here is a picture of Vera waving goodbye to Kiara as she leaves on the bus.

Easter 2009

Easter weekend started with Ryan and Kiara dyeing eggs on Saturday. It was even nice enough to do it outside. It is always so wonderful when a messy activity can be done outside!

On Easter morning the girls were up a little early, they must have known the Easter bunny had left them some goodies.

Next, we were off to church. Kiara went to Sunday School and then all 4 of us went to the second Easter service. Kiara was able to go to children's church for the second half. Vera lastest the longest in church that she has ever, so the morning was a success. We need to work on getting her to be able to stay in the nursery, but I am not sure how to make that happen.

Then, it was off to my aunt's house. We had a yummy lunch and then had an Easter egg hunt. One of my cousins has 2 year old twins and they were so much fun. One loved the Easter egg hunt and the other just wanted his grandpa to take him for a ride on the riding lawn mower.

Vera and Mi Mi

Vera and Pa

Then, it was back inside to open the Easter baskets. It was like Chrismas! Here is Vera modeling one of her gifts. Vera even took a 2 hour nap on the floor in a make shift bed Ryan made.

Next, we were off to my other aunt's house. Kiara got to play with her cousin the same age and we had yummy ham sandwiches for dinner.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter! I feel very blessed to have such a great family and that Jesus died on the cross for my sins and rose again, so I can spend eternity in heaven.

Hard night and life lessons...

I had a hard night last night. A week ago I had taught the new choreography for Body Step and it didn't go well at all. So, I worked really hard this week to make sure things went better. And, they did, but still not as well as they should have. Unfortunately, the wrong person was in the class to see that. Others were very encouraging and thought things went pretty well. The hard thing is that from my conversation, she thought things went worse than they did. I KNOW I can do better and I have done better, for some reason this new choreography just isn't sticking with me. At my gym the expections are extremely high and probably border on unrealistic, but that is why the instructors are phenomenal.

So, I had a great conversation with my husband when I got home. He helped me realize that just because I am not meeting one person's expectations, I am not failing. I crave the feeling of success and accomplishment since becoming a full-time mom. So, it is so disappointing when I have worked SO hard, put in SO much time and energy to become a good instructor, and I feel like I am not succeeding. I need to learn to focus on the positives and not the negatives. The fact is that I have had several of my participants tell me that they enjoy coming to my class, before this new choreography I was teaching great classes and things were coming more naturally. One of the other instructors has been a great encourager and is willing to help me even though her life is very full. I made it through training and accomplished getting certified as a Body Step instructor. Those are the things I need to focus on.

The fact is that preparing for Body Step takes a HUGE amount of my time. I think as time goes on it will get better, but there will always be new choreography to learn. I need to decide if this is a good fit for my life right now. Right now, I don't feel like I can not do much else than work on Body Step and take care of my girls. I love that the process keeps me working out even when I don't feel like it. The best part for me is actually teaching the classes. Teaching has given me something that gets me out of the house and something else to focus on other than kids. So, I know I would miss those things. I am not ready to make any decisions right now, we will see how things go.

So, of course I couldn't sleep last night and got up to watch some TV to get my mind off of the night. While I was up, Vera was rocking a lot in her bed, so I went in to see if she had gone #2 since she didn't do that at all during the day. She hadn't, but her diaper was full and I got her out to change her. After that, I rocked her while she layed her head on my shoulder. After a little while, I put her back in her bed. She sat right up and then stood up, so I picked my sweet baby back up. She was pointing at something, at first I thought it was the nightlight, but then realized that she was pointing at the rocking chair. She wanted me to rock her again! That just melted my heart because this is the child that barely lets you rock her and she is pointing at her bed. So, I sat and rocked my baby and probably cried as much as I had earlier in the night. This time they were tears of joy! God helped me realize that I am succeeding and accomplishing being a mom. The accomplishments aren't always obvious and don't always come right away, but they are the most fulfilling accomplishments of all.

First family vacation...

We took a little trip together as a family of 4 for the first time. It was a lot of fun and soooo good to get away. We went to Fun City in Burlington, IA. It is a complex of 2 hotels, event center, restaurants, arcade, laser tag, bowling, indoor go carts, small indoor waterpark, and an outdoor waterpark. I think I got it all! It was less than a 2 hour drive up, which was nice to see how Vera did with an extended car ride. She did pretty well.

When we got there on Sunday, they were having a special Family Fun Day in the event center. It was nice, but everything was in one room and it was packed. We waited an hour to have Kiara's face painted, but it turned out great. Then, we lined up for the easter egg hunt. Well, I think there were four times more people than they expected, so they basically ran out of eggs. Kiara got to go in and find one egg! But, a nice lady gave her a couple more eggs. She ended up with $15 for the arcade, so I think she made out okay.

Our little tiger!

Next we had dinner at one of the restaurants and then went back to our room. No joke, below is the amount of leftovers that we took out with us! I don't usually get an appetizer, but they had fried cauliflower and I couldn't resist. I filled up on that and could hardly eat any of my main course. Ryan got fried shrimp and I have never seen so many in one order before! He ate the rest of them for breakfast!

Ryan and Kiara left to swim at the waterpark and I put Vera to bed. She did great for only sleeping a half an hour in the car on the way up for a nap. She basically went right to bed, but did wake up several times in the night. We were all up at 8 AM and got ready to swim.

The waterpark has a great toddler, younger kid area. It has lots of different little slides and things to play with. Kiara loved it. Vera loves her baths, so I was hoping she would like it too, and she did! Ryan would take her down the slides and she would make the sign for more because she wanted to go again. It was Vera's first time in a swimsuit and first time swimming!

My little poser!

After swimming, we went and ate at the buffet restaurant. Then, we hit the arcade to use all our arcade money. There really is only one kiddy ride in the arcade for Vera's age, but she seemed to enjoy watching everything going on.

This is Kiara playing Deal or no Deal.

Next, we packed up and were headed home. Vera basically fell asleep right away. I think she would have slept the whole way home, but we had to stop to let Kiara go to the bathroom.

It was a great vacation for the first time as a family of 4. Now, I am praying that my kids travel as well when we go to Phoenix in a couple of weeks.