Independance and BUGS Gym

Hope and I recently discovered this gymnastics school that has an open gym time. So we had to get Chloe and Lillian together for an hour of fun before we leave town. Chloe jumped right in the foam pit and LOVED it! In that first picture, you can see her kind of trying to stiffle a huge smile. She does that a lot and I think it's really cute. It seems so old though. She's now old enough to get emberassed. Lillian took a few minutes to warm up, but was ok because Chloe was doing it. They liked the foam pit and the trampoline the best. In fact, that's about all they did. Toward the end, Lillian discovered this octagon. I think Chloe liked it too, but she had gotten hurt and was grouchy (I felt so bad; I rough housed a little too much!) And always back to the foam pit. Chloe's favorite part of the day: "Lillian!...Oh, and the square pit!" She was very excited about this fun surprise. Click on the pictures to see the expressions on her face. They're great!

I can't believe how much Chloe's personality has blossomed these past weeks. She is so social and confident. It's incredible. And she wants to be really independant. She has recently become good friends with the little girl next door (Darian, she's about 8-ish) and always wants to go out and play with her. Chloe even went out this morning and just sat in hopes that she'd come out too, she didn't know that Darian was in school. When Darian goes down the street to play with some other kids, Chloe wants to go too, but of course I can't let her. And to think, last summer, I worried about her seemingly extreme anti-social behaviors!!

I have mixed feelings about it all. I love to see her grow, happy and healthy, but I don't wanna let go. Over all, it is a good thing though. She has suddenly wanted to be more independant in lots of good ways too like getting herself dressed or going potty with no help at all and she has been pretty helpful. It seems that her sudden interest in caring for her dolly is a sign of her age too. I guess it's the first of MANY periods of pulling away :\

Tomorrow, she gets to go on a date with daddy. She's terribly excited about it. They're going to take the bus over to Jiffy Treat to get ice cream. Super Fun!

Everett is also suddenly really independant. Ok, actually he's super clingy because he's cutting more teeth this week and got his eyes dialated this morning. But he's getting really mobile. The almost daily learing milestones were all SO exciting with Chloe; I was in such a hurry for her to grow up. But this time it's all bittersweet because this time around, I realize just how quickly they do grow up. It is fun though. He's rolling all over the place (especially now that we don't have any furniture to stop him.) He's now very good at sitting up. He gets his knees under himself and rocks and scoots backwards. Mostly he does it in his crib. It's hillarious to watch, but I can't get any good video of it. I haven't seen him do a ton of this, but tonight, he actually managed to scoot his knees forward before falling. For a moment, it seemed like he might just take off crawling at any moment. He was very excited to play and get me excited.

I'm feeling overwealmed a lot these days but they're great kids, and I'm excited to have some time in Utah just for them. I'm grateful for them and grateful that I started packing so early. I now have no furniture, but in exchange, we can afford to spend some of these beautiful days outside before hitting the road.