Growing Up

It's crazy to me how fast Oliver and Buttercup are growing up. It seems like just yesterday that Oliver was Buttercup's age, yet now he's almost 3.5 years old, and Buttercup is almost 18 months old!! Time just flies so quickly, and I'm so thankful that I get to spend my days with my precious children, enjoying all of the blink-and-you'll-miss-it moments.

Buttercup is learning new words every day, and can parrot almost anything we say to her! It's really funny to ask her to say something, and hear her try to repeat it back to us. She's also very independent, and willing to try anything that her big brother does. This morning at the playground, she refused my help in climbing up the plastic "mountain" near the slide, and she made it all the way up to the top! (She did accept a helping hand from her big bro, though.) She is definitely a firecracker, but she is such a wonderful, sweet, loving baby girl.

And Oliver . . . well, he is just turning into such a well rounded little boy. He can ride his bike fast (fast enough that I have to run at a hard pace to keep up with him!) for a mile or two, can swing across the monkey bars by himself, slide down the fireman pole with only a little bit of help, and yesterday at the playground he flipped himself upside down on the rings! He's also such a good big brother to his little sister, and they are just turning out to be best friends. Oliver is constantly surprising me with what he can do and how sweet he can be.

Oliver can read and spell 9 words right now -- Oliver, Mommy, Daddy, Buttercup, Anna, shark, stop, go, no. He's always asking me to spell words for him, or asking me if I can read something for him. Last night, he and I were playing with his trains right before bedtime, and he pulled out Max and Monty (the dump trucks in the picture below) and asked me which was which.





























I asked him if he could read the letters on the train to figure it out on his own. At first, he was a little hesitant, but when I started spelling "Max", he jumped right in and read out the letters by himself. He said, "Does that spell 'Max'?" I asked him to sound out the letters to see, and he said, "Mmmmmm aaaaaaaa xxxxxxxxx yyyyy! That spells MAXY!!" Yay!!! I was so excited for him! Then he spelled "Monty" and said, "This one is MONTY!" Of course he got that one by default, but he is doing such a great job, and I am so proud of him! He's such an awesome little boy. :-)