I heart Fancy Nancy

Drea is in love with The Fancy Nancy books like I'm sure many other little girls are currently. I just wanted to comment on how much I love them too!

Nancy, the main character, loves to be fancy...of course! She is engulfed in a family that is pretty plain but she doesn't let that make her who she is.  She stands out as the eccentric, fashionable, frilly-loving member of her family. That is Drea. She could live in a dress or skirt but we force her to wear pants in the winter at least under those dresses (we're awful, I know!) She doesn't necessarily take it as far as Nancy but if she could I think she would. I love that this character encourages Drea to be who she wants to be even if its not always the same as the rest of us. So...uniqueness (that's fancy for one of a kind) is one of the reasons I love Fancy Nancy and what Drea is learning from it.

The other reason I love Fancy Nancy books....vocabulary, vocabulary, vocabulary! The words that Drea 's learning are amazing me. In the books, Nancy uses a more advanced vocabulary and tells the reader the meaning of each word. Of course, they do it in a way that makes kids like Drea excited to learn them just by calling them fancy words. I quiz Drea on these words often and she usually remembers what most of them mean and uses some of them in her everyday speech now. Fancy Nancy also has me thinking. The concept of the books has made me stop trying to use words that I'm sure Drea would understand and instead use the words I would normally use. I make sure to tell her what the word is fancy for (I know horrible english.) I think she actually hears what I'm telling her because I'm relating it to the way she learns it from Nancy. Oh that Nancy, she's the best! She's teaching me stuff too!

PS. I think Drea likes her because "Nancy" is her Nunnie's name, too.

Example of My Fancy Nancy:
These aren't great pictures but this is after Drea received her Sketchers Twinkle Toes from Nunnie for her birthday that apparently she wanted really bad. They are sparkly if you can't tell. Super sparkly and they light up. I have never really been a fan of light-up shoes but she thinks they are the best thing she owns. As you can see she had to add her super ruffle skirt on with these to feel extra fancy for her birthday dinner. These are pictures of her dancing around in them in sheer excitement!

Just a side note to this blog...when talking about books I wanted to add this note about Drea and reading. (Note: This is not to brag but rather to document so we can remember one day when she asks us what she could do at certain stages in her life.) Below are pages out of a book that was sent home with her from daycare for her homework one night. She can read this book and only needed help sounding out a few of the words. Andy and I have her read for us sometimes but we have to admit that we were blown away by her ability to read this book. Amazed! We have also been astounded by watching the change in her from noticing letters all around her to reading words all around her. She really tries to read everything. This change excites me! Watching a person go from not reading to seeing letters put together to form words in cool.

Down with Valentine.

I have always been a Valentine cynic as long as I can remember. It just always seemed that the holiday was silly. Why we spend one day a year going overboard to make our loves feel special is beyond me. We should be making them feel like our Valentine all year long, right? Yes. But do we do that? No. So I should stop being cynical about it, right? But for some reason, the people we are not nice to...our loves. The people we will be so quick to be mean to...our Valentines. Why is that? Why is it that we can be so nice to strangers, even going so far as to pay for the car behind you in the toll booth but sometimes its so hard to speak only kind words of love to the people that are the closest to us.

It finally dawned on me today. I don't have to be wrapped up in all the hubbub of the holiday. I'm using this day to celebrate! Celebrate my husband. Celebrate my wonderful little girls. Celebrate the life I have because of these awesome people. Maybe that's what the day was already supposed to be about but it has always been clouded by the commercialism of the holiday. I plan on making a resolution today to celebrate the loves in my life and use this opportunity to make them feel special everyday.

So today I spent the day celebrating my husband, our marriage, our children, our love...and it was wonderful! What a great Valentines' Day!

Charlotte's language

Everyone who has a child under two knows you have to speak their language to understand them. This is a feat in itself sometimes. We think Charlotte speaks French. Ha ha! We really have trouble understanding her. We are finally beginning to speak Charlotte's language. Here are some of her words and the real words (not many though because most of the other things she says are so foreign we have no clue):

den-dent: blanket
bubbie pood: puppy food
shuuz: shoes
gockies: socks
jackies: jacket
helpoo: Can I help you? Or sometimes this means "Can you help me?"
poon: spoon
bobble: bottle
bayee: belly
melmo: Elmo
i wobu: I love you.
hap-a-dirde-to-you: happy birthday to you. (She sings it all the time!)


Words she says perfectly clear:
*Yo Gabba Gabba (Hilarious, I know! I didn't even know she had watched the show before when she started demanding it one day.)
*Cheese
*TV
*Nose
*Eyes
*Poppy Jo (little girl at her daycare)
*Pizza
*Pasta (she says both of these brilliantly! Like she's pure italian and doing some hand motion at the end of it! PastAAAAA!)

Here are some cute pictures of our littliest munchkin! She's pure funny lately! Well, mixed with a lot of rotten.

Daddy caught her "reading" to herself. Loved it!

Drea and Charlotte catching a morning show.

Snow Tub with Drea.

Trying to wake Drea up one morning.

She thought feeding her apples would do the trick.

I was trying to capture her new found curls. Look at the long one over her ear. They are usually only there after bath time.

Helping me wash grapes.

Electronic overload!

PS - Right after I posted this post, Charlotte seems to be throwing out all of these full sentences and they are super clear. I put her on her changing table the other day and started changing her diaper and she said, "Don't touch me." I swear it was in a sweet little baby voice and not the little scary voice you probably hear in your head when you read this. : ) Another day Andy was tickling her and she said, "Don't tickle me, Daddy." This was in her best serious voice like she did not want any part of that nonsense for the evening.  Love it!

Random Pictures and Thoughts

Today, as I stayed home with the girls during one of our many snow days, I wanted to share some pictures and some thoughts about the girls and our family.  First, some pictures and then some random musings.

In the first picture it is Charlotte just being Charlotte.  She is all over the place and as you can see sometimes that involves getting a ride from the dog.  I am quite sure Jersey probably doesn't like it, but is happy for the attention.  The other pictures are Drea painting with the art easel.  Drea is such the little artist.  She enjoys coloring, cutting, pasting, and any other art type things.  She usually puts all her effort into her art work and Stacey and I enjoy the results.



Here is Drea at her birthday party, she is such the fashion queen





Drea working the runway

These were all taken at Drea's birthday party.  She had such a wonderful time and she was so happy.  Stacey did a great job planning and organizing her party.  Drea is lucky to have such a wonderful mother and I am lucky to have such a great wife. 

Swimming at FSU


This picture was taken at Fairmont State University.  Drea's friend Madison turned 5 and celebrated her party there with swimming and ice cream.  We had a blast.



Making snow cones on a snow day









Say, "Cheese!"

 

Drea and Momma




Dancing Queen




Pretending to nap

Stacey was talking to someone recently and they were saying to her that when you have a sister close to you in age you will always have a friend.  We both couldn't agree with that statement more.  Drea and Charlotte love each other so much it is obvious.  They both have their own unique qualities that make them special.  The thing that I am impressed with is how much Drea loves to laugh at and with her sister.  Charlotte is a little comedian and Drea thinks so, too.  On the other hand, Charlotte looks up to everything Drea does and is constantly following her in her footsteps.  Stacey and I are extremely blessed to have such wonderful girls and we are glad that we can share them with all of you. 


Finally Christmas

So like most people we had a very busy Christmas.  We had before Christmas, Christmas parties, during Christmas family gatherings, and of course the very popular after Christmas, Christmas party.  However, even though we were busy I never felt like it was too much.  We enjoyed our time with coworkers, friends, and family getting the right amount of time with all. 

Santa came to visit at Stacey's Aunt and Uncle's home on Christmas Eve

 

Oh, family traditions....singing and acting out the 12 days of Christmas





The girls sitting in the wagon Santa bought them.



Our children are extremely blessed.  It seemed they got presents everywhere they went.  We really appreciated all the gifts that we received over the holidays and it was a joy to see how excited the girls were when they got something.  It was also great to see Drea starting to understand to be more grateful for the presents she did receive and how to act when she got something she may not like or already have. 



Stacey, Charlotte, and Drea enjoying Christmas morning



Andy and Stacey at the Bilotta's on Christmas Day



Jody and Chad



Brianna, Jeremy, and Nunnie

 

Uncle Tony and Danielle



Aunt Kareen and Uncle Ben



The girls enjoying one of their Christmas gifts



During our Christmas break we went to a friends to go sledding.  Drea appears to look like she was having fun, but really she felt more like Charlotte looks.  It was just too cold for Charlotte and Drea was scared going so fast down the hill.  I'm sure Drea will grow out of it and enjoy sledding.  She never really liked staying outside in the snow until this year and now I am ready long before she is to go in.

January 7th, 2011 - Drea turned 5

As I said in the previous post, Drea turned 5 on Friday. We enjoy making our kids feel super special on their birthdays...probably because I love feeling special on my birthday. In fact, I was telling Drea that the best part about your birthday is that it's one day when all the people that love you are thinking about you and you get lots of attention. I knew she would care about that as much as I do!

I left work a few hours early and took her for a special trip to the library. I know some of you may think, "really, the library?" My little reader loves books and adores the library. How could you not...all of those rows and rows of organized books...it's like book heaven. When Charlotte joined our family, trips to the library have been close to null. It's hard to go with a baby in tow and now at the toddler age I imagine her ripping books off the shelf faster than I can put them back in their place. I digress...I picked Drea up from daycare and left Charlotte there (which was her naptime anyway.) She loved it! It was a little surprise I knew she would enjoy. It was very special to her. In fact, this excursion made me realize that I should do this other times with her so she gets more one-on-one with us.

We let her choose the birthday dinner spot. Cheddars was the pick! Yay, no Burger King this year! She also asked to go to Cold Stone Creamery after that...with no objection from us. It was delicious and she really enjoyed the evening. We gave her a couple gifts from us...a Fancy Nancy book (which she's really into) and tickets to go see Sesame Street Live with us (which is this weekend!) The only thing that could have made the evening...if Charlotte's milk cup would NOT have busted open and dumped milk all over her and I and if Charlotte's nose would NOT have bloodied after bumping it on the table.

Drea is into having matching things with her sister. I have indulged her lately because I'm sure one day they will never want to look alike at all. I realized I hadn't taken pictures of them in their cute matching stuff and everyone's always saying how cute they are.

Seeing improvement helps

My oldest little princess turned FIVE on Friday. Who knew that this time would go by so fast? Oh wait, everyone does and they tell you that. I should have listened better because it really does…it really does.

I will post some birthday pictures later probably along with Christmas pictures and all kinds of other catch-up posts. So beware, we may have a new post ever day this week. Yeah, that will be funny.

I have to tell you how proud I have been of Drea. We are certainly watching her turn into a sweet, little lady right in front of us. Our focus lately during our teachable moments has been on gratefulness and for good reason. We were seeing a lot of “gimme, gimme, gimme” attitude and not much thankfulness. I tend to get extremely concerned about this issue especially this time of year with the present extravaganza that is Christmas and a birthday two weeks later. So we were doing multiple exercises to encourage the behaviors we expect in our household.

On Friday, we took Drea out to dinner and ice cream for her birthday. I picked her up from daycare early and took her for a special trip to the library before dinner. We had a wonderful time doing all of these things and we kept noting how much she was thanking us and genuinely appreciative. The next day I was preparing for her party and she jumped on the computer and started "coloring" pages her favorite website. After printing many of her creations, she asked me to make a list of her party guests. Then she wrote each name on a drawing, folded it up, stuffed it in an envelope (and by "stuffed", I literally mean some of them look stuffed in the envelope.) and then wrote their name on the envelope also. She was so diligent about it. In fact, I kind of figured she would only make a few and then get interested in something else but that wasn't the case. We even made her stop for bedtime and she woke up to finish them in the morning. My brother was at my house on Saturday night and asked me if I told her to do that for everyone. I hadn't. I hadn't a thought about it in my head at all. I was so proud of her for thinking about her guests. She even stuffed all of their goody bags for the party and decided which color each person would like and instructed me to write their names on the bags because she wanted them to have the bag she put together for them. She was so excited for them to receive it. At the party Sunday she seemed more interested in her friends getting their envelopes than what she was getting. Well...at first...once the party got into full swing and her entertaining gene kicked in, some of the guests that got there later also received their envelope later.

This may not seem like much to some but to us all the little things all week helped me see the fruits of the lessons we have been teaching. I have seen her completely grateful for all that she has been given and has really learned how to express it. And maybe it's just due to the excitement of her birthday but I don't think so. We have struggled with the "more presents, more presents" thing for a while and to watch her seem happier to be near her family and friends during her brithday was a huge win for us. Her "thank yous" for simple acts we do for her has increased. Her general attitude seems to not be as much "give me" anymore.

We are very pleased with what we have seen lately and we do know that its no time to slack off now. We need to be persistent and continue to work on this. Andy and I tend to not be very consistent so my goal is to continue to work on this area even if we start a new focus.

Beware, we have so many posts to catch up on from the holidays, birthdays and winter fun that there might be quite a few back to back here this week.