The Luckiest Kid in the World is turning 5

December 15, 2008

 December 15, 2009

December 15, 2010

December 15, 2011

December 15, 2012

Reese to Elli:

"You know that I am the luckiest kid in the whole wide world."

Me: Why is that Reese?"

"Becuase I have lost a tooth when I am four AND!!! my birthday and Christmas are ONLY ten days apart!"

That lucky little girl uped the ante THE day before she turned five and lost a second tooth.

There is so much to love about this spirited unique lovely little girl.

My favorite thing about her is that she is herself. She does not live in a world of social cues and boundaries. She has found many ways to express this uniqueness; hair, clothing, art, dancing and singing.

She has taken a liken to traditional boy clothes. My theory is she likes the looseness and ease of boy clothes. Then insert the positive attention she now draws from it and the style has stuck.

 I will take a female doning superman anyday. Because this joyous female finds a y shaped stick and makes it a hat rack...never once considering imitating a gun with it.

 When boredom strikes her in a doctors office, why not perfect her planking skills (stimutanouesly showing off her LONG legs)

 Check out this creative spelling...."Saint Nick"

 "heart"

 "snail"

 "suitcase"

 She LOVES art

 She loves mismatched socks

 This beautiful spirited joyous yet stubborn girl warms my heart daily. Man, I am crazy about her. Gah, she is special!

Sorry this post is so ADD in incomprehensive, but my middlest baby is turning five. I am still trying to wrap my mind around that. 

Mommy's Little (Intivative) Helper

In preparation for Reese's birthday party this weekend, I am doing some 'nooks and crannies' cleaning. You know; base boards, behind the trash can, cabinet doors, etc. I was doing this all while Elli was awake. No biggie really, one year olds LOVE to watch cleaning and always want to help out. So like always, I hand Elli a cleaning rag just like I was using. I even share the spray bottle since it just has vinegar and water.

The applesauce dried on the wall was being extra stubborn. So, I go wet my rag in the kitchen sink and continue my work. Apparently I had an admirer that needed her rag wet too. And in her kindness to not interupt momma hard at work, Elli decided there was an easy solution...

Elli  proudly walked over to the dog bowl, dipped in the water bowl and then continued her work scrubbing the wall!

Tree Skirt Tradition

Three years ago, I started a tradition that I have grown to love. I know as the years pass, I will love it more and more. 

I have taken our old quilted tree skirt (it has a snowy county scene on the other side) and added the kids' handprints with their initial and the year. This was our first step in decorating for Christmas this year. 

 Elli was very interested in the painting of her hand...

 ...but wasn't too fond of the stamping part.

 This is this years' result.

one point five

1.5 years
year and a half
18 months

no matter how you phrase it... I LOVE THIS AGE!!!

Elli is eighteen months old today, and she is not letting me down in all the joys of a toddling one year old. So much fun!

She got her biannual measurement today.

She was about two inches taller than her sisters were at this age. She actually was almost up to their 2 year old height. I mean just look at that belly hanging out of those PJs above.

Now that Elli gets around upright smoothly, I love to see what catches her attention.

One thing that is unique for a Orthner baby this age...she is already a Daddy's girl...BIG TIME. She chooses to snuggle with her daddy sometimes over Mommy. She will chase him into a room, even if he has been home all day. 

 This little one also LOVES her older sisters. She wanted to join them so badly during observation day at dance class.

 Could you not just eat her up?!?!?!

I love this little bundle of joy. She is perfectly awesome. 

American Cuties

Brady recently did two artworks to honor veterans. One even honors her favorite service member. Both are hung up at school.












On base the national anthem plays over loud speakers every morning at 8:00. Out of respect, service members stand at attention. Civilians stand silently and can place their hand on their heart.

The bus stop is at 8:10, so we are normally outside to hear the national anthem. Elli usually rides in a stroller but one day indicated to me that she wanted to walk. When the national anthem was playing she put her little hands clasped together and in the center of her chest!!! I love my patriotic baby!

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Metamorphosis

The fifth year of life (aka leading up to the fifth birthday) seems to be a mini coming of age for the Orthner girls. With it comes lots of outbursts as we work together to build a cocoon then break free as a beautifully spirited KID girl.

Brady starting trying new foods, became a Daddy's girl and found her sense of style (uber girly).

Reese hasn't let us down in this metamorphosis either. Reese doesn't get to pick out clothes very often. She gets a lot of hand me downs. She has been confined to the passing down of Brady's sense of style. UNTIL NOW

I brought Reese to pick out her own fall wardrobe and here are the results.












She even requested a package of boy briefs... Elli wanted to try them out too.


No worries though, there is still a place in her heart for bling.






Oh and she has asked for pink hair too.

Pulling her weight

She has been walking for a good solid month now... Time to start helping out around here.

She loves carrying the dinner dishes to the sink! Yes, that is a bowl of soup she is carrying








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November School Projects

At Reese's school, each child has been given a turkey feather. They are to decorate the turkey feather and write on there what they are thankful for. 

Reese's list:

• holidays
• food
• toys
• my house
• that I'm a person

For Brady, she was given the outline of a turkey. The turkey wants a disguise so that the farmer doesn't find it to sell or serve. The disguise needs to represent Brady in someway.

So I present to you:

Nutcracker Ballet Mouse Turkey

The ballet shoes are made from cut up old ballet shoes. 

They will do more activities with the turkey in school. I am eager to see if she writes a paragraph about her. 

THE bloodly waffle

So I write about 5 blog posts a day...mentally. Only about five a month get published. So the blog post about Reese's FIRST loose tooth was mentally written within hours of her discovery of her FIRST loose tooth. Well, I kept editing and revising my mental post and then before it even got published... this happened 5 days later!

People, SHE IS ONLY FOUR YEARS OLD.  And no it wasn't knocked out or pulled due to decay, it naturally fell out!

So let's rewind back to the first mental post (sorry for the spoiler).

Reese discovered her wiggly tooth late (as in 6:00 pm) on a Tuesday night. She danced and sang about this tooth for the rest of the night. She let EVERYONE wiggle her tooth. She woke up the next day proclaiming "it is even looser, the tooth fairy may come tonight". I heard this proclamation SEVERAL times in that day.

an awful blurry attempt to catch the initial excitement

I thought to myself, this is going to be a LONG three months. In my experience, kids hang on to their first loose tooth for months. So to ease the pain of the wait, we discussed she will most likely turn 5 (December 15) before it falls out. She grabbed onto this and told everyone her tooth was racing her birthday.

Apparently her tooth had been training with an elite personal trainer for this race, because it smoked her birthday by almost two months.

She was spending the night at Beppa and GP's house. Eating her gluten free waffles. Beppa noticed blood on her waffle (yes THE WAFFLE was sent home with her).

Upon further inspection, a gaping hole was discovered where there once was a wiggly tooth. The tooth was no where to be found. But the lost lost tooth wasn't the only thing not present. Reese's mother was also not present. Yes, people, I missed her loosing her first tooth (yes, I got teary over this).

Reese wrote the tooth fairy a little note, luckily the tooth fairy believed her. She delivered Reese a one dollar bill with pixie dust!

Did I mention she is only four? People tell the clock to slow down... At least day light savings time gives me an extra hour to savor!

You been BOO-ed

I say this all the time, but I love living in this neighborhood in base housing. 

We got 'boo-ed' a few weeks back. Someone left a basket of goodies on our doorstep, rang the doorbell and ran. 

This flyer was in the basket.

This is one of the goodies in our basket. 

 The flyer instructs you to create two baskets and boo someone else at dusk the next night!

This is our boo baskets we haunted others with.

What a fun tradition!!!! Start it in your neighborhood...

Going Gluten Free

We have finally bit the bullet (again) and Reese is on a Gluten Free (GF) diet. I have toyed around with the idea for a few weeks. It is a tough lifestyle to acquire. There is no good time to dive in head first. I didn't want to deal with the repeated disappointment of off-limit foods.  

Reese has always had loose stools. But for the last few months they have been frequent and painful. She would spend 30 minutes in the restroom at one time, several times a day. Once school started I thought things had gotten better. I didn't ever hear about the tummy pain so I thought it was gone. I found out that really she had just learned to deal with it. She no longer looked to me to ease the pain. But after a few emergency car ride stops and missed bus stop pick ups, I realized I needed to make change for this lovely little. 

We are just experimenting with elimination diets. We have no official diagnosis. But I do know that until Reese was 18 months old she was pretty sensitive to gluten. 

We are making this fun. I am letting her explore foods that I previously avoided like fruit leather. This is not elimination, it is elitist (at least that it was I am leading her to believe). Just check out this massive GF brownie a local bakery had for her.  She is a happy camper. She never really got to have brownies before, but in my effort to show her life goes on while GF, she is getting all sorts of treats. 

Within three days of being GF, the stomach pains have gone away. She woke up the third day with the above belly rash; detox, maybe? Either way it came and went in two days. Her stools are slowly firming up, but the frequency is much less and so is the pain. Do I dare say it is a success? We are only a week in, so I am holding my breath for now. 

We are learning as we go what it means as a whole family unit to have one member that is GF. For now, breakfast and lunch is free reign for everyone, but dinners will be completely GF. This is an adjustment for some, because this family loves to chow down on bread. 

 In the meantime, Karl will covet all the gluten he can get his hands on. 

Model Magic Sculptures

Today, Brady and Reese had their friend Jack over after school. I got out the leftover over Model Magic clay I have from making Halloween costume accessories. This is a lightweight modeling clay that dries over night.

So I had a 4, 5, and 6 year old molding with colors of their choice.

Here are the three final products...

 Now go back and guess which one the four year old girl did? five year old boy? six year old girl?







Brady simply titled hers "Abstract" Jack created a 'flower' and Reese, yes, Reese create a 'mouse' respectively.

I am reminded again that art class is Reese's calling.

Time to Put the Balls Away

Elli may hypotonia but we are conquering it head on. 

Elli has begun taking a few steps here and there. The most she would take a home was 4-5 steps. We are making progress though and we are very happy. However, the last three times Elli was at Little Gym classes she took upwards of 10+ steps. She loves Little Gym. Every time you ask about Little Gym she replies "ball!" 

So today I decided to go to Little Gym with my video camera in hand and ready to film. I caught several four to five step stints but nothing of the ten steps she had done before. Then I realized she always did her walking when the balls are out and the teacher announces it is time to put the balls away. So today I set the camera rolling fully expecting to catch 10ish steps on camera to share with you all. This is what I caught instead.

Sorry, the video and sideways. No matter what I try it goes back just on the blog.

Yep, try and count all those steps...you will lose count because it is so many!!!! Now, while this isn't a regular habit quite yet, it has happened which means soon it will be a habit.

Do I dare say we have a walker now?

On a side note, due to Elli's readiness signs, potty training has started. We are taking it slow, but she is interested. She has peed on the potty twice a day for the last four days!

Apple doesn't fall far

Remember when I told you that Elli greatly favors her Great Uncle Dave (I just love genetics that passes through generations).

 I finally got some childhood pictures to share with you of Dave. I get so excited about these things!

Can you believe the middle row? Dave is probably about 6-8 (judging from the mix of adult and baby teeth) and Elli is only one but they look like the same kid!