July 24

We drove down to Utah yesterday.  We will be here for a week.  This past week has been a lot of preparation for the trip.  I just want to do a quick re-cap of each of the kids this week.

Cade

• Cade completed swimming lessons and has advanced to the next level.  He can swim a few feet on his front and back by himself.  He is doing so much better than last summer.  
• He loves dinosaurs right now.  He asks millions of questions about what the dinosaurs eat and how they lived.  He has a couple of dinosaurs that he plays with a lot.  We are planning his 5th birthday party and we are getting dinosaur stuff ready.
• He loves to play with his friends, run around outside and pretend a lot.
• He is learning how to add and read.  He can read well if the word is something you can sound out.  He knows several sight words as well.  It is fun to see him learning.  
• Cade loves Cami.  He loves to tease her and play with her.  They play princess games, dinosaur games, trucks, cars, bad guys, house--everything.  One day last week they each had a couple of princesses and a castle made out of blocks.  The princesses would do something girly like change their dresses then something masculine like fighting dinosaurs.  It was funny how they would switch back and forth.  
• Cade also loves Ellie.  He loves to make her laugh and get toys for her.  He is very gentle with Ellie.  
• Cade talks and sings all of the time.  I told him he talks a lot and he said "thats becuase I love to talk!"  It's true.  
• Cade and Daniel talked on facetime one day for 40 minutes.  They were showing each other toys and making silly faces on the phone and just chatting.  It was cute.  I wish we could see them more often, but I am glad we have video chat.  

Cami

• Cami loves all things pink, lacy, sparkly, dressy and pretty.
• I picked out her clothes one day and she told me I picked the wrong ones.  I asked what she wanted to wear and then she picked out a shirt and told me she needed cute pants to go with it.  She showed me which pants were cute pants.
• When you explain something to Cami, she responds with "aahh."
• When she plays with toys she always makes one the mommy and one the kid.
• She loves to color and is doing better at staying in the lines.  She is just starting to write her name too.
• We have been doing Math Monday this summer.  Cami can now count to 30, line up cards to make a number line, recognize numbers 1-9 and count objects up to 10.  She learned #9 by saying "circle on top and then there's a line, that's how you write the number 9!"
• She loves Cade and does a good job of sharing and making peace between them.
• Cami loves babies.  She loves to crawl around with Ellie or Jex and show them toys.  She is really good at making Ellie laugh.  

Ellie

• Ellie is super cute.  She is happy and crawls everywhere.  She can climb at least one stair.  She can pull herself up to standing and loves to stand.  
• Ellie is adventurous.  She crawls around room to room to see what is there.  She likes to find paper and eat it.  
• Ellie loves to eat solid food.  She can now pick up small pieces of bread or cheerios and get them in her mouth.  She loves blueberries and pears but will eat anything.  Whenever she sees me getting her bottle ready, she gets excited and crawls right over.  
• Ellie is a great sleeper.  She is usually up for about 2.5 hours at a time and takes 2 1.5 hour naps and one 45 minute nap each day.  She does not like to cuddle before bed and usually cries until I put her in bed, then she will cry for a minute or two and fall asleep.  She sleeps about 11-11.5 hours at night.  
• She smiles a lot.  She likes to do finger songs like "wheels on the bus."
• She likes to sit in the rocker/recliner and have us rocker her and she gets bounced around in the chair.  She loves to play and she also loves to do her own thing and crawl around in the same room as the kids.