Daily Lily - April 16, 2012

A post just because...

 Kissing her bunny. Such a sweet kid...

She was looking at the new flag we put out. 

I am going to miss our yard, this porch, this life. I'm going to miss my family and everything I know. Most of all I am going to miss the memories made in this house. I know we are going to make new memories and Lily will have someplace she can play outside, but here at OUR house, in OUR yard, she is free. Down here, she's a little girl in her yard. Barefoot, blowing bubbles, picking flowers, collecting sticks, petting caterpillars, and catching lady bugs. I will miss it more then  I can ever admit or even speak aloud.

Okinawa could be the best place ever. Lily could learn so much and experience so much and be SO VERY happy. Jeff and I could be too. We will just have to wait and see. 

Daily Lily - April 9th, 2012

Well, HELLO! It has been a LONG time since my last post. Things around here have been CRAZY! CRAZY, I tell you. The powers that be in the Air Force have decided that our little family will be moving to Okinawa, Japan! We are so excited, scared to death, overwhelmed, happy and sad ALL AT THE SAME TIME. It is going to be an amazing opportunity for Lily Grace and us. We will miss our families and we will miss the only culture we know, but man is it going to be fun learning a whole new culture.


 I am so sad Lily will not be going to her private preschool here in town and we are sad to be leaving our church family as well, but we have researched schools and have narrowed our choices down to about 5 that we will look at when we get there and we have narrowed our churches down to two. We are thinking we are going to send Lily to a school off the military base. We think a full Japanese immersion school will be too much for her, but we are seriously looking into dual immersion school teaching her proper English and formal Japanese. We will see. We might hate them all and I might homeschooling her and just getting her into a Japanese class for preschoolers (which they have on base.)

 We have been busy fixing up our house, getting it ready to sell and DOWNSIZING. MAJOR downsizing. The housing in Japan is really small and we will be losing 500 to 600 square feet of living space and 2000 square feet of storage space, when we get there. (I am not kidding, we have a TON of space here and will have literally 1200 of living/storage space there if we are lucky) We hauled away about 6 truck loads of crap away from our house and sold over $700 worth of stuff at a yard sale. It is AMAZING how much useless stuff you accumulate in 7 years. We are still getting rid of stuff! We are not messy people at all, but you would think we were HOARDERS looking at all the stuff we got rid of.We just keep praying that the house sells quickly and without too much of loss.

 Our beautiful Lily Grace is just growing and thriving. She gets more beautiful everyday. I am just in awe at how smart,funny, precocious, curious, and bright she is. She picks things up so quick and understands a vast amount of knowledge for her age. She is speaking in 3 or 4 word sentences and can express her wants, needs, and feelings very well. And let me tell you....she will let you know exactly how she feels. :-) She is getting so tall, but remains our lanky little girl. She is in size 18 month clothes these days and some 24 month things. Everything is loose fitting on her, but I have been knitting TONS of items that fit her tall, slim build. It is so fun. Here are some pictures from Easter and the past couple of months:

Daily Lily - Feb. 23

Dear Grandpa and Grandma,

Thank you for the lovely card. It really brightened my day. I am so happy that you are feeling better and that things are on the up and up. Life around here has been REALLY BUSY. I am getting ready for preschool (starting in August) and have been visiting my class once a week. I have also been quite sick recently. My friends just keep sharing their germs with me, but my immune system is getting stronger and stronger. Of course all this sickness has had mom and dad on their toes and they have not had a whole lot of time to do anything except care for me. My doctor says that I should get plenty of vitamin D, which is fine with me because I LOVE being outside! The weather has been beautiful here! I love to run, collect leaves, pick up sticks and observe bugs.
I love and miss you both so much and cannot wait to come visit you again very soon.

Love, Hugs and Kisses,
Lily Grace

PS: Here are some pictures of me at the park wearing the new shirt Mama knitted for me.




I got my new cookie monster plush toy for being a brave girl at my last check up. I love him and I have been taking him EVERYWHERE with me.



The swings are my favorite...



I love the play structure too. Mama thinks I am a little TOO brave on it though...

Daily Lily - Feb. 2

Today it was 76 degrees, sunny, with a light breeze.
Perfect weather on the second day of Februrary. FEBRURARY!!

So, the old ground rat, Phil, said there is going to be 6 more weeks of winter...



Beautiful, sunny mid 70 degree



Play in the park, collect leaves in the yard type days...



cool, cuddly, hot chocolate, footie pajamas type nights...6 more weeks....

I think I can handle that. :-)

Daily Lily - Jan. 26

Around Christmas, Jeff and I went on a candlelight tour of homes around town and discovered this GORGEOUS working farm 10 minutes from our house.
I try to feed the family as organically as we can afford, so an organic farm this close to my house was DEFINATELY worth a second look.
They have a store, a canning kitchen, and a working farm full of animals. This is NOT a petting zoo, but they are kind enough to allow kids to visit with the animals.
Lily Grace was in HEAVEN. She loves animals and was signing, saying and making animal sounds as soon as we set foot on the property.
Everyone was so friendly and we will definately be back. They have reasonably priced organic meat, eggs and wool yarn.

Welcome to Old McCaskill Farm!



She thought those herding dogs were bears.



Super friendly sheep named Blue.



That poor chicken was running as fast as she could from Lily Grace...





"Thanks for the trip to the farm mom! I can't wait to go back!"

Daily Lily - Jan. 17

It was almost 70 today. In the middle of January, it was 70!!! WOW, what a change from LAST year when we were in the house FREEZING half to death.
In any case, Lily and I took FULL advantage of the pretty day and walked to the park.
Things have changed quite a bit now that Lily Grace is running, climbing and more curious about the world around her.
She spent the first 10 minutes or so just RUNNING. It is pretty rare that Lily can just RUN. I imagine it was very freeing for her because she was just beside herself with giggles.
After she was winded, she spent a while checking out nature. Ladybugs, a few winter moths fluttering about, squirrels and random sticks and leaves. It was only until we were about to leave (I like to leave before the school age kids get out of school), that she realize that there was playground equipment around. Boy, is it scary to watch a tiny toddler try to climb on a play structure meant for children 5 and up. I don't have any pictures of her on it because I was too busy monitoring her, but I do have a few pictures from our day. Jeff got me a new camera for Christmas. I think it takes pretty good action shots of my girl!

Excited!

Running!

Daily Lily - Jan.12 Christmas/2011 wrap up

So, I am a horrible mom blogger.
It has been over a month since my last update, but seriously life has been a complete whirlwind these days. We went to PA for Christmas to visit Jeff's family for 14 days, my best friend got married and Lily is BUSIER THEN EVER! At the end of the day I am exhausted and want to vegetate. I have not even knitting.

Here are a few bullets about our girl:

- She is not walking...she is RUNNING! Lily Grace is ALL over the place, full throttle ALL, DAY, LONG. She is so happy and full of life.

-Lily Grace is 17 months old. I have not taken her to her 18 month appointment yet, so I don't know her exact stats, but she is still tall and lanky. She is officially in *pinned* 18 month pants for the length and still wears 6-9 month tops. She can wear some 12 month tops, but most things just look a little big on her these days.

- She knows about 20 signs and uses them everyday. She can say about 25-30 words and will try to mimic anything you do or say. Her latest skills are correctly answering questions with a nod, a shake of the head or a shrug. Lily knows 10 animal sounds and can identify and correctly sign 8. Any animal she does not know she says it's a dog, cow, cat, or bird. Really cute.

-She is amazing at pretend play and is developing a great imagination. She mostly reinacts our everyday things, (changing diapers, bedtime, reading, feeding, ect)but she chatters and babbles away and seems to go into her own little world, she is completely content playing alone. The most impressive scenario to date is when she took her Elmo doll through her entire bedtime routine. Read him a story, nursed him, kissed him good night and patted his back signing "sleep."

- Her stuffed Elmo from Busche Gardens is her FAVORITE TOY. She also LOVES books and will often force anyone who comes to the house to read to her. If Jeff sits on the floor, she IMMEDIATELY grabs a book and plants herself in his lap, forcing a book in his face. He is always more then happy to read to her. She listens like a child much older then 17 months.

-Lily loves being around other children. We go to play group once a week and story time once a week. She is very social and will often try to communicate with the other children using sign language. She doesn't understand that not all of them understand her. She is not shy at all though and will interact with kids she has never met. I am hoping preschool will be an easy transition for her. She will be starting when she turns 20 months.

-We are very loosely potty training. We still cloth diaper her and she is NO WHERE NEAR official training, but she signs "potty" and sometimes will even use the potty when I put her on it. I try to put her on it at the same times during the day, just to get to use to the potty in general. When the time comes, I will take it slow with her. I know she will be easy to train though.

Ok, now for some pictures....this is a mash up of Christmas and other stuff.