Naddy-Boo

My little girl is 3! I love this age. Nadia wakes me up every morning with a hug and a kiss. She is truly the most loving little girl. She cries like the world is coming to an end when she gets put in time out (a surprisingly rare occasion) and has such a soft heart. But she definitely has a temper if you cross her. Her Christmas present to me was being completely potty trained, with the exception of telling other adults she needs to go when she's under their care. I was much more relaxed and gradual with her than I was with Rowan and it worked so much better.

Nadia sings all the time to herself and likes to "read" to herself which usually sounds like this- "Chapter 8, the kitty goes to bed. Chapter 9, the kitty plays with her mommy..." This kid LOVES cats and wants one more than anything in the world. She pretends that she's a kitty sporadically throughout the day which usually involves a lot of conversations with the word "meow". She also has started to write her letters and draw people.

This is a picture of her and Rowan. You can see she tried to write their names on top.


This is another portrait that she did of herself a few months ago:
And Nadia's favorite letter. It regularly makes appearances throughout out house, thankfully not TOO often on the walls.
She loves to say "N is for ME!" She claims full ownership and points it out wherever we go. She also loves preschool that we do once a week. I've been meaning to catalog all the work she's done thus far, but most of it ends up ripped in her loving arms. I seriously can't keep up with all the paper that goes through this house, especially all of Rowan's stuff from kindergarten. Most of it ends up in the trash. :(

Here's a couple of things we've done though.
"P" week- Made purple playdough, did pumpkin puzzles and talked about pigs:


Nadia has also just barely made the graduation from nursery to Sunbeams. She's been doing great!


Princess Leia's evil twin sister. Nadia you keep us laughing- thank you for being part of our family!

Nadia-ism
Nadia: (completely out of the blue) I don't want to live with Heavenly Father and Jesus!
Me: !?! Oh...?
Nadia: No! I want to live with you and Daddy! *starts to tear up* My teacher says I have to live with Heavenly Father and Jesus.
Me: Honey, we'll be there too! We'll all be together.
Nadia: Okay... *long pause* Mommy, I don't want to live with them, just you!
Me: Ummmm....?

The Korean Prophecy was Wrong!

A long time ago, before Steve and I had Rowan, we had a Korean home teacher who was studying as an opera singer. Apparently it's a good thing he didn't quit to become a clairvoyant. One day while he was over, he pulled out a piece of my hair, tied it to his wedding ring and proceeded to predict the genders of all my future children. It was something his mother had taught him- a popular practice in Korea. He had been correct, until now.
She had her face buried and we got no cute profile pictures or really anything discernible beyond her gender. So she can't blame me later on for posting this because she really didn't give me any other options. :)

They tell me she has long narrow feet. It seems at least one of Steve's features made its way through. They also tell me she is measuring 2 weeks ahead of where we should be. That's when my Ukrainian genes come into play. No little Luke girls here!

The funny thing about the "Korean prophecy" is that it went- boy, girl, boy, boy, boy, boy...- eventually I just told him to stop. So I am thankful that I'm not going to be still having babies while I'm in my forties. But I was fairly convinced it was a boy, leaving me to strike out for the third time when it comes to accurately predicting gender.
I wore blue to support my guess. Steve was more conservative and predicted that we would see a baby. He's not the risk taker in the family. :)

We have decided to name her Elsa, unless a better option presents itself, but I kind of doubt it. It just feels right, much like what we experienced with Rowan. So far Nadia is the only one who gave us a hard time when it came to picking names, but Rowan was always very adamant that her name be Nadia. Nadia's suggestions for this baby's name include such memorable monikers as "Lazy Pineapple," which may be a pretty accurate description for now, but I don't think she'd appreciate it in the future. So rather than rely on our kids' creativity, we would love suggestions for middle names!

9 Years Ago...

I married my sweetheart. We celebrated with a seafood dinner and a Tom Cruise movie. Both have the potential for discontent after consumption, but thankfully we made it out just fine. It was a pleasant evening- how I have missed date night since we've moved from Illinois!

Steve was my best friend when I married him and that relationship has only strengthened over the years. I have a lot of regrets in my life, but I can say with complete confidence that this will never be one. My life began when I married him and he has brought me so much peace, joy, and comfort over the years. I can't help but look forward to what's to come.

Another Firstborn Son

Following tradition, I convinced Rowan that he wanted a cherry cheesecake for his birthday. I don't know how many more years he'll go along with it, but I suspect he likes it as much as I do.


I'd forgotten to get birthday cake candles, so we improvised with a lone sparkler and tea lights.
I think I might have to make one for my birthday this week. Sooooo good!!!

Our little 6 year has blossomed this year. He's received just about every award he could possibly get at his school and he's reading like a champ.

He was the Terrific Kid of the School.
He also got another Fatz Cafe certificate for being a good listener and a special Gator award from the school counselor for being a good example. Go Rowan!

Some pictures that his teacher posted on their class website:

We love you buddy!!! You're the best brother/son/boy we could ask for!

The Beginning of the End

It's inevitable that by the time Christmas, birthdays and our anniversary are over, I'm too overwhelmed to even want to start blogging about it. Hopefully I can catch up today.

Christmas

Grandma Dorothy came for 2 weeks at Christmastime giving our family something to look forward to. We've been feeling the absence of family more strongly in South Carolina than we did in Illinois, so we look forward to all the visitors we can get! Nadia took to Grandma like a fish to water. This girl doesn't need much warm up time with extended family.


Nadia learned several Christmas songs, her favorite being, of course, Jingle Bells. She's got the Batman version memorized, but often we hear a mixture of different lyrics.



We were very blessed this Christmas!






We had to wake Nadia up so that we could be at church on time. So she was a little grumpy at first.


Thank you to Walches





(When Steve opened your present, we didn't realize until later that mine was with it. I'm MUCH more appreciative of Mindy Gledhill than he is! :) I also got a great book with your gift card- Thank you!)

Thank you to Grandma and Grandpa Luke



Thank you for the funds to get a wheat grinder and new athletic shoes!! (Sadly this is the best picture of me I could bear to post) We're super excited about it!



Thank you to Chandra!!! (I accidentally forgot to wrap these on Christmas and later remembered they were tucked away in the closet. My bad. The kids were more than happy to have belated gifts though!) We love the books- I'm a big fan of all America's Test Kitchen's cookbooks and Steve really likes Mark Steyn's work.




Everyday while Grandma Dorothy here was like Christmas Day. Fortunately, we were able to discourage her from buying things that wouldn't fit in the house and she was able to restrain spoiling the kids too much. Nadia got a beautiful robot kitty (she's still disappointed that she didn't get a real one- poor kid. Rowan got a remote control helicopter that I think Steve likes as much as he does.



Mom also made me a bunch of maternity skirts and a dress along with treating me to a nice haircut. One day I hope to be as talented as her at whipping these things up! She also gave Steve some speakers for his laptop. Thanks Mom!!

The kids got Nintendo DS players from us with a slew of games. Total score at a garage sale- they were selling a boy player with Lego Games (Rowan said "Lego Harry Potter? Daddy, what were you thinking?!?" Steve's never been more proud. I'm sure one day he'll find that Harry Potter isn't as bad as Steve makes him out to be) and a girl player with Build-a-Bear and Dora games. It could not have been more perfect.



Apparently we've become gamers in this house, because I caved and gave Steve (and Rowan who is also obsessed with the game) Minecraft. Steve gave me some Nancy Drew PC games (don't knock it till you try it). We're all doomed.

Nadia burnt out on opening gifts in the morning, so we waited until after church to open the rest. We should all have such trials.


I stayed up until 1am making cinnamon rolls for the next day and working with Steve to get everything together. Not doing that again! But the rolls were delicious.




We finished the evening with a fantastic dinner. I got too tired to make "figgy pudding", but overall I think we did well. Steve even called me the following day while mom and I were out and told me how good the leftovers were and how much he appreciated me for making it. Such a sweetheart.
Some of the evening's offerings...



Merry Christmas from us all! We hope you had as wonderful of a day as we did! (Rowan was super uncooperative for pictures- stinker!)