I want to start off this month by telling you both what amazing children you are. We are so fortunate to have both of you in our lives, and we can't believe that we've been so lucky to have such wonderful children. I know that you have no idea what any of this means right now, but I hope that some day, you will understand just how much your parents love and cherish you.
Rachel, we are nearing the end of your first year in school, and my goodness, what a difference. We hear things come out of your mouth now that we know you didn't learn at home, and that's actually not a bad thing. You are so eager to learn and I was telling your Grandpa Rick the other day that if I didn't know any better, I'd guess that you were one of the oldest kids in your class instead of one of the youngest. We were never really worried about you starting preschool this year just because we knew that you were a very smart little girl, but you have shown so much intelligence and maturity this year. I just hope you're not bored next year.
Emily, you are such a different creature than you sister ever was. We've been waiting for you to crawl and get teeth for months now, but you're just taking your sweet time with both of them. You have started to explore your space a little bit more this month, and in the last week you've really started scooting around on your bottom, but it's mostly turning around in circles. And while most children start turning themselves over at about 4 months, you just decided that you wanted something badly enough that you finally flipped yourself over from back to stomach. If we put you on your tummy, you'll scoot yourself backward for a bit, then realize you're going the wrong direction and stop. You have the motion down, it's just getting you to figure out how to do it the other way.
You've also started doing a lot of imitation this past month. You and your sister will trade little noises back and forth, and the other day when Mommy was coughing, you coughed right back at her. When I sneezed, you looked right at me and made a coughing/sneezing sound and smiled as big as you could without any teeth. You'll also try to make us do things that you want us to do. Every day when you wake up, you put your arms over your head so I'll say "soooo big!" and you'll lay your head to the side so I will say "night-night." And then you'll clap your hands. It's funny to watch you do all of these things in rapid succession, and laugh about it knowing that you're being understood.
Rachel, you're at the point now where you've stopped asking "why" so much and you're now starting to ask what everything means. You're such a little sponge, and it's really cool to hear you ask about words that you've been saying and hearing for a long time. I think a lot of times you have an idea of what a word means, but you just want to be sure.
Your fourth birthday is coming up in just a few days, and we're having a party for you the weekend before. This will be your first birthday party where we have people we don't really know attending. We invited all of your friends from your class, so we'll get to meet some of the parents of these kids that we hear you talk about all the time. This will also be the first time we've had your birthday party somewhere besides our house. We really wanted to have it at one of the parks in the area, but getting a pavilion reserved proved to be a rather difficult task. In the end, we were in a crunch and needed to get invitations out, so we decided to have it at Chuck E Cheese. This was definitely not our first choice. Or even our second choice. In fact, it was kind of our last choice. But we think you'll have a good time (you would have had a good time regardless of where we had a it) and we don't have to spend all day cleaning to get ready, and it will be inside, which is good because the day of your party it's supposed to be 100 degrees outside.
Emily, you've started eating more and more solid foods. You're moving farther away from the pureed baby food and eating more of what we have on the table. You're getting to the point where you don't really like us feeding you from a spoon anymore, either. You'd much rather pick up your own food and feed yourself, which makes for quite a mess. Just the other night, you sat there and ate an entire piece of toast in addition to the jar of food we'd given you. I don't know where it all goes, but I sure know where it all comes out.
You absolutely love music, and one of the things that I've found out over the past month is that you love to make music. I've been playing my guitar for you for a long time now, and you've always been fascinated by the tuning knobs because they are shiny. But recently, you started grabbing at the strings, and when I set the guitar down in front of you, you started pulling your fingers across the strings to make sounds. Your favorite thing to do with it, though, is to pound on the box and listen to the whole thing vibrate at once. You get the biggest smile on your face when you do it, and you always cry when I try to take it away from you. Looks like we've found the musician in our family!
The two of you are going to be spending a lot of time at home with your mother over the next couple of months. It should be interesting to see how much you grown when she's there to talk to you and play with you ever day. We always look forward to you learning new things, and seeing how your bodies and minds grow every month. We love you very much.
Love,
Daddy
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