Spring 2012

June 2, 2012: .
It has been so long since I updated my blog. So I will have to give a wrap up of the Spring and what's been going on with the girls. In March we drove down to Florida for Spring Break again. We went straight through the night and made it in 18 hours. After such a successful trip last year I was worried that Molly would be very difficult or that it just couldn't possibly go as smoothly, but it did! We had a great two weeks down there. We watch the sunrise almost every morning from the beach and not long after are in the pool to start the day. We move in a constant rotation from pool, beach, bikes, food, naps and start again. The girls absolutely adore the pool.
Casey is a strong swimmer and can snorkel in the pool and is working on her real swimming stroke. Julia had a lot of improvement over the vacation but is still not swimming independently just yet, but she is close. Molly is brave as ever and loves dunking under and jumping off the side to us over and over again. Easter was very exciting in our house, the kids loved the candy at 6:30am!
In April the girls' preschool had a day when you can come and visit the classroom and get a feel for what they do. It was chaotic but so fun to sit in with them for a little while. Julia is just so small and cute that it kills me to see her in class. It is amazing to see how much the kids grow and mature in the course of two years in preschool. Casey is so old seeming and so ready to move on (not that she doesn't love preschool, just that the difference between her and some of the younger kids is very noticeable). Casey turned 5 years old on April 30th. Wow, as a parent it suddenly seems shocking to have a 5 year old. We've been happy to have the nice weather upon us and have spent lots of time outside. Julia has taken to biking and wheels around on her big girl bike with training wheels. Molly likes pushing a stroller or lately wants to push me in things, so I have to squish into the little bikes or cars while she pushes me. In May the girls had their first sleep over. Casey slept on a trundle bed in her friend Sydney's room and Julia started out sharing a bed with her friend Maya but, of course, could not go to sleep, and had to be moved into another room. We slept over too so it was a big family sleepover and so much fun. Our big news is that we are moving. After four years at Taft we are moving on and heading back to Greenwich. James took a job at Brunswick and we are so excited. It has been lot of work for me getting the girls new schools and doctors and a new place to live all lined up. Casey will be going to Greenwich Academy, where I went, which is just amazing. She is so excited and absolutely loves the uniform and everything about the school. Julia is going to Round Hill Nursery School for a year before hopefully going to GA as well. So now onto what the girls have been doing...
Molly continues to be a handful. She is just into everything in a way the others were not. She will move a chair all the way across the house to use it to climb up onto something and get into something she shouldn't. I think she is border line obsessive-compulisve. She washes her hands a million times a day and must have used up more soap than anyone in our house. She also likes to give herself hand soap shampoos when I am not looking. I will come into the bathroom and find her with a wet soapy head 2 seconds before we are to leave to take the girls to school. She also does not like her hands to be messy in general. When we eat she always wants a napkin to wipe her hands. She loves bagels with cream cheese but can't figure out how to hold it without getting cream cheese all over her hands so she gets so frustrated that she cries and yells at me until I cut it up nice and small and place the piece in her hand so that she isn't covered in it. She also flushes the toilet about 20 times a day and will refuse to go to the bathroom is someone else's peepee is already in there. She has to go in a clean bowl. She is very loving and sweet sometimes and just still has that innocence that the other two have grown out of. She says "thank you Mama" every time I hand her anything. It is the most adorable voice too..sort of like "tank-eww muma". She continues to have a love hate relationship with her sisters. She loves them and gets a kick out of the things they do. But she can also be mean and has bitten them before and will also scream, 'NO JJ BAD' at the top of her lungs. She is an incredibly picky eater.
Julia is doing well. She is learning a lot in school. She knows all of her letters and is learning how to write her name, which just amazes me. With Casey I had more time to spend with her on it but Julia has really learned all of it in school. Her drawing has also gotten much better. She used to just draw blobs of color but lately she has drawn people that actually have some resemblance to people. It is so neat to witness this change and development. A few weeks ago I said to James that we had really turned a corner with Julia. She has always been our toughest challenge but I really felt like things had gotten much better. I must have jinxed myself. She got the stomach bug (again!) and ever since then has been such a pain in the neck. She has temper tantrums, she is disobedient, stubborn, will not listen to us, and so irrational. It drives me nuts. Needless to say, with all the work I have right now trying to pack our house up, I need nice, agreeable kids right now, not this monster. It is so difficult to manage as a parent.
Casey has had an exciting month. Shortly after turning 5, she came to me crying saying something was wrong in her mouth. She had her first loose tooth! Two weeks later it popped out into my hands when I was wiggling it. Casey and I made a tooth pillow and the tooth fairy brought her one dollar for her first tooth. She now has a second loose tooth right next to it. One day at dinner Casey declared to us that "when I get married I am going to marry Austin". Austin is a little boy in her class that gets a LOT of air time in our house. It was so funny to hear her say it. As James said, "and so it begins".