Summertime Catch Up

This was my Independence Day facepainting attempt.  Apple is supposed to be a tiger (at her request) and Strawberry had a flag on one cheek and a ladybug on the other.  The ladybug actually turned out okay, but everything else, not so much.  In my defense, I only had about five minutes for each kid.  I need more practice.

I've been a slacker about blogging lately.  Sorry honey!  At least your internet hasn't been working anyway, right?  :)  We've been very lazy since we got home from Arizona, keeping to the house and the backyard except for swimming lessons and gymnastics, counting down the days until daddy is home again.  But the girls have still been doing their best to learn and grow.

Mango has become quite the little trouble maker.  She's getting stronger and stronger everyday, pulling herself up and cruising along the furniture.  (Keep your fingers crossed that she actually waits to take her first steps until daddy gets home!)  She loves the bookshelves because she can combine her two favorite pastimes:  trying to walk and emptying things.  She can mess up the living room in about five minutes and she loves it.  She still follows me around everywhere I go which I love.  If I am in the kitchen, I know it is just a matter of time before a smiling face peeks around the corner and I get a little laugh of her excitement at finding me.  She chuckles all the time now which is so funny because it took her so long to start laughing in the first place.  Now she laughs about everything.  She loves to get everyone's attention when we go out to the pool or the gym or the store.  She will stare at someone with a big silly grin on her face until they notice her and smile or laugh, and then she'll start flapping her arms and kicking her legs.  Too cute.

She also continues to be super hyper and can't sit still for thirty seconds.  It's a struggle to take her places where she can't crawl around and get into everything because she hates just sitting there.  Church makes her crazy.  She also discovered cats and dogs the last couple of weeks.  I went to a friend's house and she kept her eyes on those weird things.  Later, she was standing up at the coffee table and a kitty walked under her.  She didn't notice it until it was right there in front of her and then she let out a blood-curdling shriek and started bawling.  Then today, I had a friend babysit the girls for me.  She has two labs, one a quiet older black lab, and the other is still a puppy, but he's huge.  Apparently, Mango couldn't get enough of the puppy and was always watching him and even crawling after him.  Looks like she's a dog person.  Apple, on the other hand, got a face full of tail and decided she wasn't so crazy about labs.  Apple was low enough to avoid it.  Oh, and Mango also finally held still long enough for me to get a ponytail in her hair.  It's still a little too short for it, but it was cute anyway.  :)

Apple is getting really excited about daddy coming home.  She asks me a couple of times a day how many more weeks (we're hoping for less than three!!).  On the morning of our drive home from Mesa, she got up all excited and said, "Daddy is already on the plane!"  She thought we had to go home so that we could be there when his plane flew in that day.  I felt so bad.  I think I had said to someone earlier that we needed to get home so that we could get ready for Luke to get home, and she had misinterpreted.  It was so hard to tell her that it was still going to be a little bit longer.  Her little face when she is fighting back tears breaks my heart.  I've seen that so much from both girls during this deployment:  their little mouths clamped shut and quivering chins, swallowing back those tears that make it hard to talk.  These princesses are so in love with their father and so proud of him.  Apple loves to talk about her daddy who is a Builder, building houses for the soldiers.  Whenever you ask her what she wants to be when she grows up, she answers quickly and firmly, "A Builder!"

Apple's been doing so great in the pool.  She really benefitted from the time at grandma & grandpa's pool, getting comfortable with the water.  She's still in the preschool class at lessons, but the teacher says that she has started being able to do some of the swimming by herself and will probably be able to move up to level 1.  And she's still doing flips off the diving board when she gets the chance.  They put them in life vests and have them jump off into the deep end.  Most of the kids sort of have to be tossed, but Apple gets up there and does her thing.  I love it.  She's also getting really excited for kindergarten and loves shopping for new outfits.  She loves hand-me-downs which is awesome.  I hope that lasts a little white longer.  Shopping for clothes is funny though because Strawberry only grows in her legs.  She can still wear shirts that we bought for her in kindergarten, but the pants we bought for her last August are ridiculously small.  But Apple is much shorter than Strawberry was at the same age so the kindergarten pants we had for Strawberry are way too long.  It's hard to buy the right size for them.  They are both crazy about skirts and leggings though and those last forever.

Strawberry, meanwhile has learned how to crochet.  She'd been begging me to teach her, but I thought she might be too young so I was sort of putting it off, but I finally got out a hook and some yarn and taught her the chain.  I figured it would take her a couple of days to figure that out, but it was only a couple of hours before she brought me a crazy long chain.  So then I taught her the single crochet.  She's been at it constantly for the past three or four days and has made a skirt for her doll.  It wasn't bad at all for a first try.  She can be very determined when she wants to.  She's really shown that with this and swimming too.

I wanted to post a video of this on here, but I haven't been able to get it to work.  Before we left, she managed to dive down to the very bottom of the pool.  It's a diving pool (obviously, since it has a diving board) and is 8.5 or 9 feet deep.  Her uncle was testing her and he sat down at the bottom of the pool and had her come down and hit his hand.  Then he laid down and she was still able to give him 5.  Finally, she just went down there and slapped the bottom of the pool.  It was very cool.  We tossed a couple of dive sticks down there and she was able to get them, no problem.  We also got her diving into the pool head first before we left, which she had been very nervous to do.

So, yeah, this summer has been a great one for the pool.  I think they have been in their swimsuits more than regular clothes.  Sadly, we haven't made it to the beach once so far, which is crazy since we live only a mile away.  We need to work on our staycation skills.