Emily is 4 years and 1 month old!

I cannot believe how quickly the time is flying by.  It's almost December!  We are chugging along, enjoying our family and watching our sweet girls grow up.  Emily is 4 years and 1 month old now... how did that happen?? Here's what life is like with her right now.

- She has gotten extremely loving lately.  We, of course, love this, but it still catches us off guard a lot.  Nothing is sweeter than hearing her say, "Mommy, Daddy...I love you guys" completely unprompted.  Sweet girl.

- she LOVES riding her bike.  We have a bunch of great kids in the neighborhood and she has gotten to be good friends with them.  They all look out for each other and play outside when the weather is nice.  Looks like we have our own little biker gang out there. ;)

- she is being a bit more gentle with Audrey lately, which is nice.  We've had a lot of struggles with her wanting to hug Audrey too tightly, or trying to pick her up, help her walk, etc.  Audrey has decided she's not going to take it any more and has been rougher with Emily...oh dear. What's a mama to do? On one hand, I want Audrey to be gentle, but there's very little I can do to "punish" her for pulling hair, etc...on the other hand, I'm glad she's standing up for herself.  Double-edged sword for sure!

Somewhat gentle.

Judging by Audrey's face....not gentle.

- she likes dance class with Miss Melissa.  One week she even ran back into the studio and thanked Melissa (I didn't tell her to).  I was SO proud!

- she is OVER me taking her picture.  Can you tell? WHAT do I have to do to get a normal, non-strained, not ridiculous kind of smile???   :)

- she is becoming more empathetic-- always asking if we are ok, giving hugs if someone is hurt, etc.  It's very sweet.

- she's using words like definitely, actually, appropriate (yes, really), obey.... kind of funny to hear some of the words coming out these days!

- Some funny situations:
-- I was carrying a bunch of winter clothes into my room to put in the closet. Em looked at me and said, "You buyed all those new clothes for you?" I said I didn't and she totally didn't believe me and gave me such a hard time for having "buyed" new stuff....I swear, a Baby Paul if I ever knew one. ;)
-- she was looking through the Toys R Us catalog and said she wanted a Dora kitchen.  I explained that we already have a toy kitchen, so Santa probably wouldn't bring that.  She said the Dora kitchen could be "for Audrey" (clever kid!!)  I said that Audrey could just share Emily's kitchen.  Emmy said, "But Mommy, you know I'm not good at sharing!"
-- We have tried to institute a chore chart where she earns stickers for doing chores (making her bed [I help], brushing teeth in AM/PM, cleaning up her toys in AM/PM, and doing her breathing treatments in AM/PM).  After so many stickers, she earns a dollar. (If you want to get right down to it, each sticker is worth 10 cents).   On the first day I asked her if she wanted to earn some money.  She got very excited and said she did, so I said, "OK, come and help Mommy do a couple of things real quick."  She stopped dead in her tracks and said, "No, that's ok...I'm going to go watch my shows and you can just do it."  haha!  Also, another day she informed me that she "doesn't care about stickers and money".  She is too much, I swear.

We are super excited for the upcoming holidays- lots of fun things happening around here!  Stay tuned and as always, thanks for checking in on our girls!