16 months old...

my sweet sweet Violet, you turn 16 months old today....you are my teeny tiny little BALL OF FIRE:) you are the most opinionated & spirited little one!  And i mean 'little one' quite literally...you weigh all of 16lbs and although we have spend your entire first year of your life worried about your weight your daddy and i (and your doctor) have finally just decided that is just the way you are!  You have the sweetest most quite voice...but the loudest most passionate cry.  The words that we can clearly  hear from you is mommy, dada, pippa (piper), puppy, pa, no, ball, weeeee(for slide), shoes, bubbles (for actual bubbles and for bath), drink, nana(banana), caca (cracker), cookie, down, up, baby, cheese, and tonight for the first time you said BIBLE!  yeah, i may or may not have cried. And you still sign for all done, water, banana, milk, thank you, bird, eat, more and cheese. We have struggled with your seperation from me:(  that loud passionate cry comes out ANY and everytime you are left, for the entire durations...which up to this point no one can last with you more then 30 minutes...they all say that you are very cough strong cough.  Your favorite books are "SO big" (which was also your sisters at this age!), "Beautiful Oops" and your 'words' book.  It is so hard to believe that when your sister was this age i was 4 months pregnant with you!  I feel like you go most days eating only crackers and milk...you have had eating issues since your early reflux days and you are still incredibly picky. You are working pretty hard on your 'fang' teeth and it seems to be pretty painful...but inculding those you have 16 total teeth!  Your love for water has grown and you will finally take a long bath and play in the water with your sissy:)  Speaking of your sissy...you want to be just like her and copy every thing she does.  And you love Piper so much that you will randomly reach out to hug and kiss her all the time...which warms my mommy heart!  You still fight naps hard and even when you fall asleep in the car its never longer then 20 minutes....and NO MATTER what time you go to sleep you are awake by 6am.  You are the sweetest, most loving little girl who i think will challenge me our whole lives....i'm up for the challenge;)

should i do it!?

should i get back in to the swing of blogging?! I read my blog often...its my little family's life and yet the last year... basically our whole first year in Texas is no where to be seen:( it made me sad today as i was looking back at old memories and it made me wonder if it was time:) i could spend an un-Godly amount of time 'catching up'...but that is a bit overwhelming to me...so i'm going to do it...i'm just going to pick up like i never left...

 Today Piper started her fall semester swim class...she is a 'advanced aquatot' and we are beaming with pride! We started this summer taking classes at a swim school here is the Dallas area called Emlers Swim School and we have been overwhelmingly impressed with how they have turned our 'my NOT going underwater' 'clinging to us with death grip in the water' little girl to a fully SWIMMING 3 year old! My mom loves to tell the story of the 'my future family' book i made probably in jr.high complete with jcpenny catalog cut outs of models of my 4 children all whom where swimmers (and yes this was before the Phenom of Micheal Phelps!). It probably had something to do with the fact that my best friend at the time was a swimmer...but non the less i wanted my kids to be swimmers...and i'm not saying that Pipe will be our little Olympic winner (although i would not put it past her;) she is having a lot of fun in her very first 'away from mommy' class and she is learning a life long sport! here are some photos from last week on her last day of her summer session with Ms.Tami (which thankfully she also has Ms.Tami this semester too!)