Summer Update

In the last 4 months we have had so many big new things happen! We moved to Durham, Evie perfected walking and has begun talking with fervor! She has too many words to even quantify right now, but safe to say she can have a pretty good conversation and even uses some sentences. She loves to talk on the phone, but you might not understand what she's saying. She copies Plate Girl from her favorite show when she asks "Hello Sarah, what are you doing?" It's quite adorable, though a little hard to understand. We're still working on annunciation, but she's getting there. 

She recognizes and points out animals and can tell me what noises they make. Our new bathtime activity involves me drawing animals in soap crayon on the tub walls while she guesses what they are tells me how they sound. Sometimes she gets it wrong, but we are working on it and switching out the animals every few baths. When she gets them all right I'll switch to letters and numbers and eventually words! I saw the idea online and I love it! 

She likes to color, watch Sarah & Duck and hang out with her friends. We have made so many new friends in our new neighborhood! They come knocking on our door at all hours, but if Evie hears them she runs to the door and screams "hello!" until we open the door. And heaven forbid we don't let her at least say hi, because she will melt down. Most of the time we let her to go out and swing with them or have them come in and play with her in the playroom. They are all ages, too. From 4 to 12! They don't mind that she's just a little kid, though. She does pretty well at holding her own with them. She especially loves to show off all of her toys and share our food. 

We've been doing a lot of outings lately with H, including all of the museums in the area. There's one called Notasium where there is a big slide. Evie didn't really enjoy going down it but she was more than happy to stand at the bottom and cheer on the other kids, clapping her hands and yelling "YOU DID IT!" when they'd get to the bottom. She makes my heart full. 

We took a trip with Julia in April to Myrtle Beach. Evie was excited to go out to the sand, played in the pool, and had a blast at the kids museum. The aquarium was kind of a bust because it was expensive and not very good, but we had fun regardless. 

We also went to visit Allison in Wilmington and found an amazing kids museum there, too. Four stories of kid-focused fun. Salem and Evie found a bucket of water to play in and got super muddy and we didn't even stop them because it looked like they were having so much fun. You don't get to have fun like that often as you get older and it gave me an excuse to buy her a tshirt from the gift shop to wear on the drive home. 

I've started a Monday night babysitting job near my mom's house so Evie has been staying with her while I work. I always felt terrible that she didn't spend more time with them but they lived so far away before that it was difficult for me to get out there, especially when I wasn't working at all. I bring her to my mom as soon as I get off from nannying H and I hang out a little while before leaving for my second shift. Evie always looks so happy when I come get her and I'm just so enthralled that they're getting the time together. 

Here are some recent pictures:

New vans and her sweet shirt from Cheap Bastards! clothing!

All snuggled up and ready for bed.

Evie's neighborhood friends stopped by in the middle of cleaning day. Needless to say, that cleaning got horribly derailed. :)

Even though it's going to be a hot summer, I think we're going to have a blast. Lots of pool time and splash pad visits in store for us as well as some exploring outside. I can't wait to post again!