Olivia Rose

Thought I'd just post a couple pictures on here today of my littlest one. I thought I could spend the next few posts talking about each of my kids individually and what they're doing now for all of you that don't get to see the kids and know what they're up to. The blog is giving me a great way to tell about our daily activities but I thought I'd just share a few things about what each of them are doing. So, here, I'll talk about Olivia. :-)

She's 2 1/2 now and is a very active little girl. She's been taking speech therapy for the past 4 months and has made great strides. Back in April she didn't say more than maybe 2 words and even those you couldn't really make out. She did a lot of sign language and just let her brother and sister talk for her. She wouldn't really even babble when playing by herself. Well now she says lots of words - probably over 20 now - and is trying new words every day. You can tell we have a Wii, because two of her words are "Wii" and "Gonk". That's for "Gonk Droid" on Lego Star Wars. ;-) It's pretty silly. She can't say "Darth Vadar" yet, she'll make the scowl face for him instead, but I'm sure that word will be coming soon.

She's almost completely potty trained now too. She's my miracle potty trainer. Never with any of my children have I ever been able to get them to the underwear stage without stressing out for a good year and dealing with the craziness that always accompanies the training. But she was able to be in underwear in less than a month! The heavens were rejoicing and so was I!!! It's been fantastic!!

Her favorite foods are grapes and ice. This girl will eat ice until there is no ice left in the house! I used to be a big ice eater myself, but I don't get to eat much of it anymore, because if she sees that I have ice or hears me crunch on a piece a mile away, she runs out to find me saying, "ice! ice!". Her other favorite, grapes, is something she eats every single day. If she wants a snack, it's grapes. If she wants lunch, she has grapes with it. Those are by far her two favorites things in the world!

She's also ornery and loves to do everything Noah does - EVERYTHING! I can see sometimes when Noah will pull her to the side and tell her to do something that he knows HE'S not supposed to do, so he'll get her to do it instead. Then when I tell him he's not supposed to do that, he'll say, "I didn't. Livie did." And, she'll do whatever he asks too, because she thinks it's so funny. She loves to laugh and will say, "HA HA" when she pulls one over on you. She just absolutely loves playing with Madie and Noah and if they're doing something, she wants to do it too. I don't know what she's going to do when both of them are in school next month. She'll miss them so much. Anyway, she's just a really special little girl and I just wanted to share a little about her.

Jumping Jellyfish!

Noah came in laughing today about the Backyardigans and how Tyron said, "Jumping Jellyfish!", so I had to use that as my title of today's entry. I had a bunch of jumping jellyfish today! All that hard work paid off today as we went both to swim lessons and to the Marseilles pool. We practiced for an hour last night in the bathtub (as you'll read below) about putting our faces and heads in the water. Well, today, Madie and Noah did a great job! Madie practiced swimming with her face in the water the whole time and didn't freak out. She even put her face in to pick out different rings. And, Noah kept showing off to his instructor Adam that he too could put his face in the water. He was practicing swimming back and forth along the wall all by himself. Granted, he's not going to the Olympics anytime soon, but hey, it was a start! Then Adam had him try and jump in the water from the side of the pool. Thanks to his cousin Trevor's awesome diving board experience the other day, I reminded Noah of how Trevor was scared at first, but faced his fears and jumped in. So, Noah did it and never looked back! He must've jumped to Adam 6 times during swim lessons and did it again MANY times at the Marseilles pool. I was really proud of all of them. Livie had a hard time at first, because she's my water girl. She absolutely LOVES swimming and didn't like sitting on the sidelines while Madie and Noah got to swim. She had to sit with Pete and watch. But, once they were done, we all headed to the Marseilles pool and were there for nearly 2 hours, so she was much happier after that. She watched Noah jump in the pool several times and wanted to try it herself. She LOVED it and she would have us take her to the ladder and she'd crawl out and before we'd get over to her to catch her, she'd be crouched down, on the edge, ready to go! We played water tag and tried to swim to the rope. It was great! We didn't even get home until after 7. And, of course, in Marseilles fashion we arrived to a house with no electricity! But, we didn't care. We had a great time and that's all that mattered. :-)

**By the way, the first few pictures were taken at Mrs. Palmer's house where we have swim lessons and the last several pictures are at the Marseilles pool. They have a great pool in this town. Not much else, but definitely a great pool! It's usually not that crowded and they just redid the whole thing a couple of years ago. We always have a great time there. :-)

Bathing Beauties

The past 3 weeks Madie and Noah have been taking swim lessons. So far they haven't learned a whole lot, because they've been too afraid to put their heads under water. Noah's gotten pretty close, but not quite all the way. So, we're trying to work on it. I filled up the bathtub tonight to practice. We had planned to take them to the pool on Tues, but we got storms and then again tonight we were going to go and we had more storms! Doh! So, the bathtub it was. :-) They both did a great job, though with Madie it took some bribery. Needless to say they just finished bowls of ice cream with sprinkles on it!! But, hey, at least I have 2 kids that finally might be willing to put their heads under the water and finally learn how to swim! Livie wanted in on the action after the "lessons" were over. She insisted on wearing goggles, which absolutely cracked me up, because they were so fogged over, she couldn't have seen anything out of them. But, she loved them, so I guess that's all that mattered. Noah also wanted to show off his Transformer tatooes that he got at his friend Ryan's birthday party last Sat., so I included a picture of him showing off his muscles. Another night of silliness in the Trolinger household!!

Kitt Kittredge...An American Girl

Tonight Madie and I went with my friend Kerry and her daughter Lexi to see the new American Girl movie. If any of you have young daughters or granddaughters, I highly recommend this movie. All American Girl movies are cute, but it was a fun experience to actually go to the theater and see it. All the other ones have just been on TV. Both girls took their dolls - Lexi took Kit and Madie took Emily. And, a few other girls in the theater had their dolls as well. They had special popcorn buckets with Indiana Jones on them, so Madie insisted we get that for Noah. Didn't matter that it cost $7! ;-) It was a sweet movie and a lot of fun for us moms to take our daughters out for a special night. Madie was super excited that she got to stay up late. We got home around 9:45 tonight. She thought that was cool, but by the time her head hit that pillow, she was out! I had planned on taking pictures of the girls and their dolls for the movie tonight, but I forgot my camera and since the movie theater was over 30 min away, I didn't want to go back for it. So, I've just attached a picture of the movie poster. Anyway, it was a fun mommy/daughter night for us. Guess the next one will be in October when the new High School Musical movie comes out. :-) Can't wait!

Happy Fourth of July!

Tonight we went to see fireworks. It was so exciting! There is a couple named Rocky and Norma who have a fireworks show in their yard. They spend thousands of dollars on fireworks every year. It's awesome! The best part about it is that you don't have to fight the crowds or anything. They live north of town - basically in the country - so you can take a blanket, sit in a field and watch it with just your family. We didn't go last year, because Pete's brother got married over the holiday weekend. So, this was the first time we had been there in a couple of years. The word has gotten out, because this year the road was lined with cars and there were people parking in the fields just like we were. But, we were still able to sit on our own and enjoy just having family time. This was Livie's first fireworks experience and she was nervous. Noah brought earmuffs to help with the sound (as you can see in the pictures), but eventually decided he didn't need them, so he gave them to Livie and she loved wearing them. After a few fireworks went off she was loving every bit of it! She kept saying "Wow!" or "Boom". Except "Boom!" came out more like "Bome!". hehe It was cute. :-) All of the kids had a great time. We got there a little early, so they ran around the field looking for lightning bugs for a while. Noah found the biggest bug and kept it in his hand basically for the entire 45 min of the show. I don't think the bug recovered. :-) But, as I was sitting there, enjoying the fireworks and hearing my kids laughing and exclaiming, "AWESOME! WOW! BOME!", I thought to myself - this moment is the type of thing I dreamed about as a child. I wanted to grow up, get married, be a mom, and have these special times with my family and here I am living it. I sat there and thanked God for the blessings He's given me. It's so easy to get caught up in the craziness of every day things: shuffling kids here and there, working on projects... whatever it might be. But, once in a while, you get an hour where you get to sit back, enjoy the laughter of your children, and look up to the sky and say, "Thank you Lord for this moment". What a wonderful fourth of July it has been!!

Sleepy Head

We went to our friend Kerry's house today to go swimming. We were there through lunch and got home around 2. Livie typically takes a nap around noon, but lately hasn't been taking them every day, so I thought she would be fine. But, after we got home, I sat her at the table with the other kids, made a quick lunch for them, and went to do a couple emails. By the time I finished just a few minutes later, I found her asleep at the table. It was so cute, I had to take a picture and post it. Guess all that swimming and fun just tired the poor thing out! At least she ate a few bites before the sleepiness took over. :-)