Cassidy is 5!

Aviannah just turned 2 a couple of weeks ago and while I found that hard to believe, even harder is the reality that I have a 5 year old now! Cassidy has been wanting to be 5 for a few years now, and it's finally here! So in honor of her birthday, here is a birthday post all about Cassidy!

-Cassidy is approximately 44 inches tall and somewhere between 45-50 pounds. She's a super healthy girl and  rarely gets sick and when she does it never lasts long. Even with preschool this past year, she's managed to escape all the sicknesses going around school. 

- Speaking of school, she absolutely L.O.V.E.S. preschool. She asks every single day if today is her preschool day. She goes for 2 hours 2 days a week but I know she could handle more. I told her the other day that when she goes to kindergarten she will be there for a whole day and asked if that was ok. Her response was a very enthusiastic yes! I get to be parent helper once a month so I've been able to watch how she does in a school setting and I am just SO proud of her! She is such a good student! She sits quietly and listens well at circle time, she follows commands without complaining and is kind to her friends. Makes me feel like I'm doing something right!

- Her attitude has really improved over this past year. She never really throws huge tantrums anymore and has just generally matured so much. She is very kind (for the most part!) to Avi and Levi, although of course she has her moments! She's still a kid, after all. 

- Her love language is definitely quality time. She is always asking me to play with her, and even if I played with her lots during the day, she will still often tell Daddy "Mommy didn't play with me at ALL today!" in a very exasperated tone. She has a great imagination and loves making up games to play.

- She is getting more into drawing and writing. She has almost mastered writing her name (those darn S's are tricky!) and is actually starting to draw real things instead of scribbles. I love the way she draws people, the arms come out of the head, yet there is still a body and legs. She also loves crafts and is always asking me for craft ideas (I am horrible at crafts, so I'm thankful she gets this outlet at school!)

- She is such a perfect mix of girly girl and tomboy. She asks to wear "spinny" dresses every single day and loves to play princesses and tea party, but also loves exploring outside, climbing trees and searching for bugs. At school she'll play dolls with the girls one day and pirates with the boys the next. I love it!

- She has a knack for memorizing things. She gets a new verse to memorize in Sunday School every week and it never takes her long to learn it.

- She also seems to be musically inclined. She likes to play a game with me where I'll sing a note and she'll try to match the pitch. We will go through a whole bunch of different pitches and she usually gets it bang on. She also loves making up songs and surprises me with the things she comes up with. I'm going to start teaching her piano in the fall, I'm hoping she does well with that too!

- She is playing soccer for the first time this spring and is beyond excited! She practices every day and received soccer cleats for her birthday. I can't wait to watch her!

Cassidy's Favorite Things:

Food: same as Avi, candy. But other then that, Kraft Dinner

Toy: her Barbies

Game: Hide and seek (she likes to count and for me to hide. I am all over that! I hide somewhere really hard and get at least a few minutes of peace!)

TV Show: Paw Patrol (I can never get the theme song out of my head)

Color: Pink

Friend: Iyla

Song: Jesus Loves Me

Book: Elephant and Piggie books (they are my favorite too!)

Animal: Giraffe

Movie: Veggie Tales

Things Cassidy Doesn't Like:

-eating foods she doesn't like

-getting her hair washed/brushed/done up (basically anyone touching her hair in any way)

-quiet time (Mommy demands it)

-"the little kids bugging me" (I hear this multiple times a day)

-cleaning up

-time outs

Cassidy's Nicknames:

-Cass 

-Cass-a-frass

-Caster

-Cassilee
-Diddy (what Avi calls her, we've gotten into the habit of calling her it too)
-Diddy Kong (what "Diddy" naturally turns into!)

-Freak (we call Avi this too. It's said with love)

-we never call her Cassy, which I think is interesting. I often wondered when she was a baby if we would naturally shorten her name. I figured if we did, it would be Cassy. We did naturally segue way into a shortened name, but it's Cass. We call her that 85% of the time. 

- there's more, but these are the most common

I keep saying it, but every age just gets better and better! I'm so looking forward to the new adventures a 5 year old will bring! Cassidy is just the best little person ever and I love seeing the person she has become and am looking forward to watching her continue to change and grow. She made us parents and we couldn't have asked for a more perfect little girl to give us that life-changing title. We fall more in love with her every day!

Happy Birthday Cassidy!

Aviannah is 2!

Miss Aviannah is 2 today! In celebration, here's a post all about Avi!

-She weighs approximately 21 and a half pounds and is 33 inches long. She weighs the same as Cassidy did at 1 year. Her height is actually right around the average for a 2 year old girl. I'm thinking she'll be tall!

-Her vocabulary has been slow in coming but has really taken off these past few weeks. She isn't really stringing words together yet but she has quite a list of words she can say. Her pronunciation is excellent and its very easy to understand everything she says (when she's actually speaking English!) Here's some of her words: "Mommy," "Daddy," "Diddy"- means Cassidy, "Avi," "Le,"- which is Levi, "Nana"- which is both my mom and banana, "Papa," "Grandma", "Auntie," "Honey,"- anyone she doesn't know she calls Honey. Freaking adorable! "Maya," "Hi," "Ba-bye", "Uh-oh", "No," "Yeah," "Me," "Up," "Down," "Go," "Book," "Ball," "Baby," "Kitty," "Night night", "Ba ba," -bottle, and more that I can't think of right now. She also knows quite a few animal sounds and has a special sound for when she's "driving" her cars around. She babbles constantly and I don't think it'll be too long before those babbles become real sentences.

-Even though she doesn't speak much, she is very smart. She is really good at following commands like "Go put this in the garbage," or "Go put this toy away"- and she puts it away in the right spot too! I can tell she's always paying close attention to what her sister is doing and tries to follow along with her.

-She loves to give hugs, kisses, high fives and fist bumps. She generally only hugs and kisses people she knows well, but if you're a complete stranger and ask for a high five, you'll get one! She also has the cutest little wave and waves at every single person she sees. Whenever we go somewhere, as soon as I lift her out of the car she starts waving, regardless if anyone is around or not. We have two very social girls!

-She has a fascination with lights. She will always point out lights right away when we walk into a room. Not sure what that's about!

-She is super sensitive. All it takes is a raised, stern voice and she usually bursts into tears. So far we haven't had to do much else for discipline which is nice, but I don't think it'll last. She's also extremely stubborn and determined, and usually doesn't take no for an answer very easily.

-She loves books. She just got her very own bookshelf a couple weeks ago and is obsessed with it! All day she's bringing books out for me to read to her.

-She also loves singing and dancing. She's going through a phase where she sings into anything that remotely resembles a microphone, like her fork at lunch, or the strings on my sweater, or a water bottle. She'll dance around the room singing "La la la la" and have this goofy grin on her face. Both our girls love music, but we always have music going in the house, either from the piano or the iPod so that's not surprising!

-We've been able to spend a lot of time outside this winter (thanks El Nino) and Aviannah LOVES snow. Actually, she loves eating snow. Seriously, as soon as she finds an appropriate spot she throws herself down on her belly and shoves her mouth into the snowbank and eats snow like a dog. It's hilarious. She has acclimated to the Canadian life exceptionally well!

-She is learning very quickly how to stand her ground! If either Cassidy or Levi is doing something to her, or taking something away from her, or just being annoying to her, she will scream at the top of her lungs right in their face. That usually does the trick. I laugh every time at the shocked look on their faces when she does that! She definitely has a little temper on her, and I've witnessed a few tantrums already. Like I said, she doesn't like the word no!

- She is obsessed with stickers. Obsessed. When I teach piano, at the beginning of each lesson I check my student's practice charts and if they have enough checkmarks they get a sticker on their chart. Avi tries her hardest to sneak away from Daddy and into the living room for this part, and then stands there and shrieks until I give in and put a sticker on her face. That's where she likes stickers, on her face. She will literally keep them there all day long.

Avi's Favorite Things!
Food: well, obviously candy. But other then that, mushroom soup.
Toy: she has a stuffed elephant that plays lullabies, she can't sleep without it and often drags it around all day. We change the batteries like every other day. (Ok, not that often but it feels like it sometimes!)
TV Show: Peppa Pig. She snorts along with the theme song. It is as cute as it sounds!
Friend: (other then Cassidy) Levi! Those two are like peas in a pod.
Song: the Charlie Brown theme song that Mommy plays on the piano.

Things Avi Doesn't Like
- the word "no"
-not playing in the cupboards
-not having her bottle
-getting her hair washed
-if Cassidy gets something and she doesn't
-when Cassidy doesn't share
-sharing with Cassidy

Avi's Nicknames: (we I go a little crazy with weird nicknames. Here's just a few of them!)
-Avi (most used)
-Avi Dawn
-Avi Dawner
-Avi Baby
-Avis
-Avis Davis (one time, I shortened Davis to Dave and was calling her that, but John made me stop. Too far I guess!)
-and there is many more, but these are the most common ones. I make sure to actually call her by her full name every now and then so she knows what it is!
**you should hear Cassidy's list of nicknames. I'll do a birthday post for her too, and share them on there.

We are so thankful for another year with our little Aviannah Dawn! She fits in our family just perfectly and we love her so much! Happy Birthday!!