Hallie's Dedication

We had a busy Mother's Day at our house.  Our church does ALL the baby dedications for the entire year on Mother's Day, so Hallie (and 4 other babies during our service) was dedicated.  She looked beautiful- with her white dress made by Grandma Sue.  Mom has made both of the girls dedication dresses using the scraps of fabric left from when she made my wedding dress.  They are priceless, and something we will save forever!  We arrived at church and went to the back room to wait with the other babies and their families for it to be out turn to walk out to the front for the dedication.  As we were waiting Natalie was a little anxious... she would really rather have been out in the seats with all her grandparents and great-grandparents, who had come out in support.  But, we told her we needed to wait a few more minutes and it would be our turn.  She said, "That's right.  Because baby Hallie has to be decorated!"  We about died laughing.  That kid.  After we were done she didn't want to go back to Sunday school, so she stayed in 'big church' and really was a good girl (to our surprise!).  We had brunch here at our house after church with all the grandparents to celebrate, and it really was a great day.  

Natalie continues to baffle me... her new thing at night is that she reads the stories to us before she goes to bed, rather than us reading to her.  Last night Hallie was fussy so Cameron was in the living room with her and I took Natalie back to read books.  She read me 2 different versions of Cinderella (her very favorite story... we have about 4 different versions in the house).  It amazes me to hear her rattle off LONG passages of the books word for word.  My favorite last night was "The fairy Godmother waved her wand and turned Cinderellas rags into a dress the color of moonlight.  And, on her feet, 2 dainty glass slippers twinkled like stars."  Word for word what the book says... and I had to look it up to remember.  She doesn't. :)   Two nights ago Hallie wasn't fussy at story time, so she and Daddy got to come with us.  Natalie was reading, I think that night it was Snow White, and Hallie was laying on the bed next to Natalie.  When Natalie started to read Hallie was completely fixated on her face... just staring at her, listening.  And, then she started to smile at her big sister.  It was the sweetest thing.  I can already tell I am going to love watching those girls interact. :)  

More Natalie

That kid just never ceases to amaze me. Her latest fad is a series of books called Fancy Nancy. She loves them. We read them on an almost daily basis and there is even a game that came with it. The premise is that this little girl loves to be fancy and her family is not. She uses words like exquisite, posh, and iridescent. So of course Natalie is in to those as well. Our favorite two are posh and exquisite. Posh is because she tells everyone that her family is posh. The other night we were out to dinner and bumped into some friends we hadn't seen in a long time. She was complimenting us on having a beautiful family and Natalie said "we're posh!". I am not sure the lady heard her but Sara and I were laughing pretty good about it. The reason we like exquisite is the way she pronounces it..."ex-quiz-a-bit". It is priceless!

Every time Hallie cries, Natalie likes to help calm her down. Lately that has involved singing to her and sometimes Hallie actually does stop when Natalie sings to her. This leads to a couple of stories. The other day they were at my mom's house and mom was singing to Hallie to calm her down. Natalie was playing on the other side of the room. The singing worked, however my mom didn't stop. She just kept on singing to her granddaughter as any grandma would. Natalie would have NONE of it "GRANDMA, quit singing, she's NOT crying anymore!" Mom wasn't sure if the singing was that bad or Natalie just thinks you should sing when babies cry and no other time. Those of you that know my mom, I'll let you decide. :) The other story is from the other night when we were in the car. Hallie started crying and so we asked Natalie to sing to her. She sang Rock-A-Bye-Hallie to her and it was precious....only one problem, Hallie didn't stop and actually cranked up the volume. Natalie goes "(gasp)That made her cry even MORE!"

Hallie is much more entertaining these days. She will lay on her back for long periods of time and if you talk to her she will smile, kick, flail, flex, anything to let you know she hears you. Last night she and I were having quite the conversation. Natalie wanted to join in. So she came over and I had her tickle Hallie. Hallie smiled at her...it was awesome...and so I said "Natalie, are you and Hallie going to be good friends?" She looked me dead in the face and said "No, first I have to finish my candy, THEN I can be her friend". Apparently in Nat's world it is candy or friend, never both. :)

Big news around our house, Natalie is going to school next year! A little back story first. Derby has a program where they take kids that aren't developing as quickly as others or have certain conditions like Autism and stick them in pre-school classes with "mentors" so they can hopefully pick up the basics and be ready for Kindergarten. They do it for 3 and 4 year olds both. Three year olds in the morning and fours in the afternoon. There are a lot more kids that try for the four year old program so if you can get them in as three year olds you have an in the next year. Sara found out about all of this, I had no idea let's be honest. So a couple weeks ago we took Natalie to a screening to be a mentor. She did really well and was put on the list of possible mentors. There are like 20 spots for mentors and they had somewhere around 30-35 kids qualify. So out of that list they just start drawing names (or so we're told) and our Natalie was chosen to go to Carlton next year from 8-11 Tu-Fri. My favorite part is that I get to take her to school now. I can't wait, we will have quite the time and I will have TONS of stories, I'm sure. :)

Here are a few pics of Hallie working on that smile: