AbbyGirl Turns Six

Last month, we celebrated six years of having Abby in our family.

Our Abby has always lived life in extremes.  She was born extremely early, went through major ups and downs during her first months with us, and has continued her roller coaster into her elementary years.  When she’s happy, she beams.  When she’s mad, she’s furious (sometimes so much so that she forgets why she was angry in the first place).  When she laughs, she belly laughs like no one else.  When she hugs, her hugs are tight.  She loves life deeply.


Along with living her life in extremes, Abby is just a little bit crazy.  She’s a bundle of energy and is ready to start running, rolling, and playing hard the moment anyone will join her.  I’ve noticed lately that I can’t let Abby be the one to hold Hannah right after a nap or right before bed, because Abby gets others wound up and doesn’t know how to “settle down”.  She’s full of fun and laugher and silliness that she can’t always manage to turn off when we ask her to.


This makes Abby a terrific team player.  She joins right in with enthusiasm.  She’s also very good with younger children.  Abby is my go-to girl when I need someone to help Elijah or play with Hannah.  In fact, she has started fighting with others when they get to hold Hannah, and, even when I don’t need someone to hold her, Abby often asks.  She’ll also keep her brothers entertained, “read” to them, or sing songs (sweet ones and silly ones).





One way that Abby has surprised me this year is academically.  Lydia has always been so quick to pick up on things without me directly teaching her.  Abby…not so.  With Abby I will walk through something step-by-step for days before she gets it.  I thought this might be a struggle in school, but it turns out, Abby just learns differently than Lydia.  She loves workbooks, flash cards, and repetition.  She is very visual and struggles immensely if you give her verbal directions or read something to her without pictures.  But, put a visual in front of her, make up motions for a song, or show her the letters to a word, and she has no trouble at all.  I noticed it first in how well she’s been doing with reading lessons – even in only five minutes a few times a week, and while she’s basically rolling around on the floor or standing on her head because this girl just cannot sit still, she’s still taken off with reading above her age level.  I noticed it again during Camp Tikva when Abby mastered the motions to the memory song by the second day, even though it took her almost the whole week to learn the words.

Another way Abby has surprised me this year is by how observant she’s become, especially while we’re driving.  We visited a large park several times this summer, and one day we were trying to get there from a different direction than usual.  I missed my turn but thought I was on the right track, when Abby started arguing with me that I was going the wrong way.  After a few minutes, I realized she actually knew what she was talking about, and I had her tell me how to get back to the park.  I’m terrible with directions when driving, so this has turned out to be incredibly helpful.  She’s also really good and finding lost items.  Everyone else will be wandering around with no idea where to look and she’ll run into a room and spot the lost thing instantly.


One thing that has not changed in the past year is Abby’s love for pigs.  She has three stuffed pigs now, and sleeps with them every night.  They are her most treasured toys.  Although, Abby loves to latch onto anything new that comes into the house.  At any moment, you could search her backpack to find all sorts of interesting “treasures”.  This has proved a bit of a challenge to my tendency toward minimalism, when, every time I bring in a piece of junk mail, Abby asks if she can have it to keep forever.



Lydia and Abby don’t have an easy time getting along. They are just about as different as can be, personality wise.  They share a room and are always in each other’s space.  Lydia is an extrovert, Abby an introvert.  Still, they spend so much time together that they are becoming each other’s best friends.  It’s cute to watch them play.  Lydia makes up something to pretend and literally dictates to Abby what to do and say, word by word.  They come up with all sorts of little games.  The interests they do share are ballet, dressing up pretty, and spending time with their favorite teenagers at church.  They also have to deal with their two tougher little brothers, which is turning out to be quite a bonding experience.



Abby is incredibly helpful.  As long as she’s not overtired or pulled away by something really exciting, she loves to be my helper, especially while I cook.  She used to run around gathering ingredients for me, but now she has graduated to being my salad chopper and veggie peeler.  She loves those chores and will sometimes cry if she finds out I did them without her.  Whenever I need someone to do something, she is usually the first one to jump up and run off to be my helper.

This year I’ve realized that Abby’s love language is physical touch.  She loves gifts, treasures them for as long as she can keep them in her backpack, but this kids needs her snuggles.  After anything unpleasant, or if she’s feeling sleepy, Abby will quietly sneak up behind me and lean on my arm.  Or she’ll put her hand on my shoulder.  When I was pregnant, she would offer to “pet my head” while I was laying on the couch not feeling well.  And she will still quietly reach up and hold my hand if we’re walking next to each other.



Days aren’t always smooth when you run through a roller coaster of extreme emotions: very sleepy, super hungry, eager for the day, bored with school, passionately not tired enough to nap, too exhausted to do anything after not taking a nap, excited to hold Hannah, disappointed not to help peel carrots…but at the end of each day, as I reflect on everything that happened and how Abby’s handled it all, the word that sums Abby up is simply: Sweet.  And in my head, I see her with her messy, curly hair belly laughing and lighting up the whole room.

Easter According to Lydia

Our family had a wonderful day celebrating Easter this weekend.  In fact, we had such a nice day, I didn’t even think to take pictures.  Sorry!

But, I do have something to share with you all today.  🙂

A couple of years ago, I used a picture book to teach Lydia about Easter.  We looked at it every day for about a week and in the end, Lydia was able to use the book to tell me about Easter.  Well, since Abby is now two and I thought it would be a good tradition to keep, we pulled out the same book and learned Easter again this year.  I was hoping to capture Abby’s version, but it turns out she isn’t quite as eager to be videotaped or to share anything on demand.  So instead, I have for you all, four-year-old Lydia’s version of Easter.  And, just for fun, I’m posting her two-year-old version here too.  Her voice was so high and cute!

Happy belated Easter everyone.  He is risen!

Abby Update: 7 Months Old

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Weight: 12 pounds, 11 ounces

This month, Abby learned how to roll from her tummy to her back! Although she can now roll anywhere she wants, she remains pretty content on her back or tummy most of the time. When she does want to move, she rotates in a circle and can make it more than halfway around.

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Abby has also learned how to hold on to things and grab. She likes to hold on to blankets, toys, and her sister’s clothing. She, like her sister, loves to hold my hair.

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Abby has the most squishable chubby cheeks and amazing blue eyes. I don’t remember Lydia’s eyes ever being so brilliantly blue and I am secretly hoping the blue eyes and reddish hair are here to stay. But we’ll see.

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Can you believe she used to be the same size as that doll?

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Abby has no teeth yet and we are really enjoying her happy toothless grin. I’ve mentioned, occasionally, that I don’t want the toothless grin to ever go away, but Dan assures me it would eventually cease to be so cute. I guess he’s right. She is often very smiley, but occasionally gets in moods where nothing anyone can do will get her to smile.

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Abby is a conundrum when it comes to sleeping at night. Some weeks she’ll sleep until 7 AM every single day. Other weeks she gets up once or twice. She almost always will go right back to sleep, so I’m still a happy mommy. And, even though we can’t get her on a consistent schedule during the day, she always lets me get a nap so I am, again, a happy mommy.

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It is hard to believe that Abigail is now over half a year old. The first months were slow and long and hard, but since she has been home the time has flown and she just keeps growing bigger and happier and more and more loved.

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Changes…for the Better

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When I was a little girl, I remember coming home from church and promptly going to our rooms as we announced, “I’m going to change”. We, of course, meant that we were going to change our clothes. But my dad would often respond, “Change for the better!” Well there have been changes happening around here lately, and they have all been for the better.

First of all, I know all parents think their babies are the cutest, as they ought to think. So I know I am completely biased, but, isn’t that the most adorable picture you’ve ever seen?

Abigail has been sleeping through the night all week. The first morning we wondered if something might be wrong with her. Lydia, despite half a million attempts to get her to sleep through the night, continued to get up once a night until she was almost two. Abby has been sleeping from about 10 until about 6 or 7. Lydia doesn’t know the difference. Mommy is thrilled. And Daddy might be just a little bit concerned (will she keep gaining weight now?). Abby is over nine pounds now, and continuing to grow at a satisfying rate.

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This kid is getting bigger and bigger, and her hair is (finally) getting longer and longer. The big change for her, though, is that we’re going to be attempting potty training starting on Monday. Our first potty training attempt didn’t work out, but we are hoping the past few months have prepared Lydia a little more. We’re stocking up on “potty books” from the library and we’ve been spending a little time each day this week praying that all will go well.

And now that Abby is sleeping through the night and we’re settling into our routine, I’ve actually been able to start getting things done. After calculating that I have about half an hour extra each day to do something profitable, I made a list of all the tasks that need to get done and asked Dan to prioritize them. We prayed about it but didn’t feel any one thing was more important than another, so I’m tackling them each one day of the week. It’s only half an hour a day, but it sure makes me feel great to make some progress on long-awaited projects.

Along with tackling those projects, I’ve begun my post-baby tradition of training for a 5K. After Lydia was born I actually trained and ran a 5K, but this year I’m just doing the training. Since the whole point is to give me a workout plan and get back in shape from months and months of sitting around, I didn’t feel it necessary to spend extra money on the race part this time.

So that’s us: sleeping through the night, potty training, exercising, and getting things done.

Munchkin Update: 2 Years, 2 Months

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When Lydia wasn’t yet two years old, I started writing down monthly “reports” describing the latest things she was learning, saying, or doing. I thought it would be fun to keep a record of how she was growing and changing, and to be able to look back with her later and show her how much we enjoyed her and all the precious things she brought into our lives.

Just like those early days in the NICU, Lydia is continuing to display her feisty spirit. She is very stubborn, very strong willed, and more and more, she knows what she wants. We’ve been working, though, on sitting still. Each morning we listen to Adventures in Odyssey online and Lydia loves to sit in my lap and listen. Recently I started putting her on her blanket for Odyssey each day, which is much harder for her. She usually cries and says, “Mommy, lap?” over and over for a while before finally getting distracted and playing with a toy or lying down and sucking her thumb. So, I have been rewarding her for blanket time with some time on my lap! When Aunt Steph has new videos up on her vlog, we’ll watch one of those as the reward. Often Lydia will wander over to me and ask, “At Steph?” She’s also been sitting in my lap when I do my German practice on duolingo, and when it gets to be that time (just after lunch), she’ll ask “Guh-man?”

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Lydia loves raisins (which she pronounces “Reeses”) and peanuts (which she calls “cookies”) and watermelon (which she calls “gamma”). It’s a good thing we don’t have other people feeding and watching her or she’d be eating peanut butter cups and cookies and no one would know what to do for “gamma”!

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Lydia also loves having Daddy home. (I don’t blame her!) She’ll often say to me during the day, “Daddy at wuhk?” When I answer in the affirmative she sometimes asks “home?” When Daddy is home, Lydia loves to play outside with him at the playground (where he often challenges her to hang from the rings all by herself) and exercise. She’ll copy him as he does push-ups or sit-ups and sometimes she sits on his back to help him get more of a workout.  photo rings_zpsb545f136.jpg

Despite some battles we have to fight with her stubbornness, Lydia is still so sweet. When we ask her to, she can go get her hair brush from the bathroom drawer and put it away, throw away diapers in the trash, and fetch people their shoes (which she does on her own when she wants to go outside). When she gets hurt she will point to the painful area and say “it huhts” or, better yet, “it huhtses”. When I lay her down for a nap, she rarely goes to sleep without a little crying first. But even through the tears, she’ll give me a kiss and say “Bye” as she waves. She has started saying “See ya!” to Dan when he leaves for work, and also waves and says “bye” when we tuck her in at night. She’s picked up on some of the things I say to her. For example, when I have to quickly leave the room to do something I will point to her and say “I’ll be right back.” It’s pretty adorable to see her point at me and say confidently “All back!” before leaving the room.

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