That means Haddie was 4 months old the last time I wrote anything about our family. Time flies when you're having fun...and chasing down a 16-month-old while keeping your terrified 4-year-old from falling off her bike, again.
I remember that life seemed to get a bit easier when Ella turned a year old. I remember that it got even more manageable when she turned 18 months, then 2, and so on. The same seems true with two kids--each six month span has continued to bring more independence for both girls. So here's a quick update on where they're at right now:
Ella is in school 5 days a week this year, in a private kindergarten class that her preschool offers with a wonderful certified kinder teacher, Miss Annie. She was actually Ella's teacher in the 2-year-olds class when the school opened a few years ago, so the continuity has been great for Ella. Ella doesn't accept change easily. She needs some preparation beforehand and then she needs some time to adjust, to settle in, to find her way. And once she's found it, she won't stop talking to you about it until you tell her that your ears aren't working anymore tonight and so maybe she could tell Daddy all of the thoughts. And she will. Happily.
She is quirky and sensitive and bright. She loves pets and is desperately vying for a kitty, but accepts the reasoning that "Crazy Haddie would hurt the kitty" because she would. She loves her sister, and loves being a big sister, but she doesn't love sharing the attention and that is a continued work-in-progress.
I registered her for Kindergarten today at our neighborhood elementary school, Purple Sage (adorable name). Ours is the only elementary school in the district that offers a bilingual Spanish/English program for K-5th grade, in which 10 native Spanish speakers and 10 native English speakers are placed together and more or less remain together from K-5th grade, with instruction in Spanish MWF and in English TTH. You have to "opt in" to the program, and in May Ella will be evaluated on her English fluency and reading and writing ability to assure that she would be able to handle a dual language program. I have some anxiety about sending her this route--see above regarding her ability to handle change--but I know that learning a second language will ONLY help her in the future, and it is something that she and I can work on and share together hopefully.
As for her health, she's all good! When I wrote the last blog post a year ago, Ella hadn't had her tonsillectomy yet. She had a chronic cough for 2 years, had been on prednisone and antibiotics from October-February, with bouts of pneumonia, bronchiolitis, etc. Things were rough, rough, rough for her. And yet.. here we are, with a healthy, happy Ella, and we're coming up on the year anniversary of her surgery, and that calls for celebration in the Denbar house! The girls and I will actually be in Disneyworld with Dama, so I'll have to pack some party supplies. I hear there's a plan to eat lunch with Doc McStuffins and Sofia the First, so we may claim that as her celebratory lunch. In all seriousness, a weight has been lifted from this house since last April, and very few days pass, even still, that I don't thank God for the health and spunk of my energetic and precocious Ella Bella. She is a joy and too smart for her own good and I love her.
And then came Haddie. And she is teeny. And feisty. And rebellious already. Full of determination and void of regret. She ran before she walked, and since then she has never looked back. She pulls hair and then laughs. She hits her head on something and unless the circumstance is dire, she can't be bothered to cry because she has places to be. She sleeps--Hallelujah!--11 hours a night with two great naps. She's like clockwork in that area and completely unable to be bridled in all the others. Her favorite thing is to hurl herself across our bed into a pile of throw pillows, and it's like a workout for Hal and me to keep her from flinging herself off the edge. By her third swim lesson, she was flinging herself off the platform and submerging herself as I stood, gripped in panic, waiting to catch her and bring her back to the surface.
In the midst of all her curiosity, she is cuddly and so many hugs-and-kisses and attached to me in a way that makes me wonder how I'll ever move on once she's decidedly out of my arms. She has curly brown hair, not as curly as Ella's, but enough to be absolutely adorable in two tiny pigtails. She is in the 25th percentile for weight, 50th for height, and at 16 months is still very much in 12 month pants. She's my tiny warrior and I love her.
