Daddy's Letter to Sophie on her 4th Birthday

Dear Sophie,

March 26, 2008

I will never forget that day.

You came into the world just after 1AM. Born to a brand new mommy and daddy who thought they had an idea about what they were getting into. After the midwives checked you out and mommy was resting as comfortably as possible, I climbed into the bed next to you and mommy and we all slept.

A new family.

I'll never forget it. You nestled between us all bundled up. You barely made a sound. It was one of the most magical moments of many more to come.

You are now 4 years old. You are strong, sweet, kind and thoughtful. You mention your friends and family by name and spontaneously tells us how much you love each one of them. You are kind to Emily in ways that still surprise Mommy and I. You will offer her your most prized new toys to have a turn or try to distract her when she is having a tough moment. Emily loves you beyond measure. When she hears you wake up in the morning she rushes to your bedroom and exclaims "MORNING SOBIE!!!" with all the joy and happiness her little body can bear. You are her best friend and role model. She's a very lucky little sister.

I'm so proud of the little girl you have grown into. I see so much of your mother in you and I consider myself very lucky and I'm very grateful to have both of you in my life.

I'm beyond proud to be your Daddy. Your genuine kindness and considered thoughtfulness will always guide you down the right path. Your humor and your imagination will ensure the world, your world, will always be inspiring...to you and others. Your strength and conviction will protect you and those you love. Your intelligence and curiosity will help make the world a bit smaller and propel your dreams and ambitions. Make the most of each day Peanut. You can be or do anything your heart desires.

Dream of all the things that make you happy sweetheart. I love you.

Daddy

Sophie can write!!!

So we were making out some Valentines over the wekend and all the sudden Sophie says, "I'm going to make a Valentine for Jodi". Lo and behold she starts trying to write out the word "J-O-D-I". I showed her how the letters were made and the next thing you know she wrote the whole name. Did it again for Julie. I was stunned. I admit it.... I cried. I can't believe our little Peanut can write words. And today she wrote a Valentine to Emily and spelled the whole name out. I am just amazed at her on a multiple times daily basis.





This is, you guessed it, a picture of Daddy. (Note the stubble!) Luv this so much...

Happy New Year

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! We so enjoyed getting to see some of our family and friends this holiday. Unfortunately, as many of you know from facebook, our much anticipated trip to Arizona to go see Grammy and Great Aunt Joyce and Uncle Jeff and hang out with Grandma and Grandpa who were driving up from South Carolina was apparently not meant to be. For the gory details of our 6 hour delay in the Philadelphia airport on the day after Christmas with two small children to only have our flight cancelled, please read the thread on facebook. After we recovered from both the disappointment and the exhaustion of the days, we ended up having a pretty nice week just hanging out at the house and visiting with some friends we don't get to see very often. Then, we rang in the New Year with a very exciting day yesterday starting out with a balloon drop for the kids and countdown to Noon and ending with a night on the Delaware River watching the family fireworks show at 6pm. Unfortunately, today Daddy has a wicked ear infection so that's not a great way for him to kick off the New Year. But, we hope you all have a wonderful 2012 filled with much happiness, good health and maybe just a little dash of prosperity for us all!

Baby Cheeses, Crayon Control and more...

Wow. I wish it wasn't so long between entries on this blog anymore. I always feel like I have *so* much to catch you guys up on that I get over whelemed about posting. But, let's take a stab at a quick update.

Lets see. I am watching Emily color with crayons as I type this post. She LOVES crayons and coloring but of course, needs to be closely supervised. While she is starting to not put them in her mouth, she is in that stage where she will sneak away with a crayon and the next thing I know there is organe crayon all over my green couch, or the floor, or the table. So crayones are a closely supervised substance in our house still. But despite that it is so fun to watch Emily make her own original art. Here are a few pix of her masterpieces.

Emily also is obsessed with stickers. She LOVES them!! The other day we went to go visit Nanny in her awesome new apartment and Emily basically just sat by herself with her stickers and placed them all over her feet and her hands and in her hair and had the best time doing it. She will sit in a corner in the lbrary and pull out some stickers and just play with them for a while. No paper necessary - she loves covering her body with them. It's really cute. As is the way she says stickers which is "steeeckers"

Speaking of talking, Emily's vocabulary these days is astonishing. Every day she surprises us by using new words and even phrases. Yesterday, she was standing at the bottom of the stairs and yelling "mommy, wake up" which cracked me up. She finally says Sophie but calls her "Sobie" so she'll say "There's Sobie" or something like that. I didn't think it would be possible but Jim and I are pretty sure Emily is talking even more than Sophie was at this age. She is quite a little chatty girl most of the time. (Wonder where she gets that from, huh?)

Sophie is doing great and also surprises us at what a big girl she is becoming. She gets herself dressed and undressed and is being really kind to her sister (most of the time). You can tell that she is starting to round that corner from 3 and is getting a heck of a lot closer to 4 in so many ways.

Of course, Sophie is SOOO excited for Christmas. Last week she had her school performance which was so stinking cute we almost couldn't take the cuteness. She had been preparing for this for some time now in school and recently would start breaking out in "Go Tell It On a Mountain" getting particularly loud at the "That Jesus Christ is born" part. She is pretty obsessed with the "Baby Jesus" these days. I guess learning about him and talking about him so much in school has her really excited about his birthday coming up. Whenever we pass a nativity scene on someones lawn around town she gets very animated and screams "look mommy - baby Jesus!". The only thing is I'm still pretty sure she is actually saying "Baby Cheeses" and not Jesus.

So, as I was typing this Emily was over watching the Wiggles but here she had taken a crayon and was standing there eating it while watching the show so see, what I mean? We're still not quite in the clear with the whole coloring thing.

Anyway, we're getting very excited for our visit out to Arizona later this month. We cannot wait to spend some quality time with Grammy, Great Aunt Joyce and Great Uncle Jeff, and their family and also Grandma and Grandpa who will be there too!

In case I don't post again until the new year, Merry Christmas and Happy Healthy 2012 to all our wonderful family and friends! We love you all so much!!

Some recent phone photos

I am not feeling like writing a proper post right now but here's a few photos from my phone. Just a couple of snapshots from the last week or two.

Pensive (sleepy?) Sophie

Flower girl

I have to say, and I know this is awful, but in this photo I can see what the girls would look like say after a bachelorette party and they're both puffing on cigars after have too many drinks out with the girls instead of eating pretzel rods. This terrifies me of course.

With their friend "baby" Sophia from next door!

Sophie loves her godbrother Natey.

Oxenford Sesame Place Outing

I was so excited that we got an amazing opportunity to take the girls back to Sesame Place recently. Emmy is such an Elmo lover (or "Elwo" as she so lovingly calls him!). I was worried if we waited too long, she'd grow out of her Elmo phase and it would lose some of the magic for her but the place is so darn expensive it's just hard to justify a family trip there on a whim. But we lucked out and got some free passes to go enjoy a special preview of The Count's Halloween Spooktacular, Sesame Place's awesome Halloween festivities running every weekend through Halloween, and we had such a great time. Emmy got to meet Elwo. There were cupcakes and facepaint (of course) and a parade and pumpkins and lots of fun for everyone! Thanks Sesame Place!! We love you, Elwo!!









Update: When we got home, I caught Emily kissing her new Elmo toy repeatedly. Too cute!

Wait for it...

Ok this is definitely the longest I've gone without updating this blog since I started it in what? 2007? When I was pregnant with Sophie. Wow. Long time... Going on almost 2 months with no updates, no photos, no videos, no NUTHIN! But after I restricted who could see it after getting freaked out about some weird comments, a lot of our friends and family werne't able to view the blog anymore. Which kind of sucked. And of course, made me not feel that compelled to update it because I knew many of you weren't seeing it anyway. But ya'all are looking at the facebook photos or the pix on instagram or twitter, right? Cuz basically these girls are all over the innerwebs. Just not on THIS blog, lately.

But since it's approaching the holiday season and since I've gotten a little less freaked out (for the moment) about who is reading the blog and why, I've opened up permissions again so everyone should be able to view it.

Now... as for catching up. Of course TONS has happened since I've last posted. And I couldn't possibly cover everything. But, I guess here is a highlights reel of sorts. Enjoy!

We went down the shore again, with Dee Ree and Pop Pop. Then we went down the shore again with GGMom this time. The Oxenfords rode a surrey. Sophie rode a horse named Flash at a 4H Fair. Daddy was on call a lot. Sophie uses the big potty now! Emmy teethed a lot. Sophie started her first year of real pre-school (last year was technically a "toddler time" program). Sophie and Emmy both got sick. Sophie started ballet. Dad and Kathy came up for a visit. Grandma Kathy got very sick. Grandpa got sick too and they left early. Mommy started back to work in the office three days. And here we are... Do you feel caught up with the Oxenfords now? I'll try to be more regular about posting. I really will! Promise!


(GGMom would KILL me if she knew this photo was up on the internet. Thank goodness she doesn't have a computer to see it!)