Extra! Extra! Read all about it (Doctor stats)

Mostly posting this because these are numbers I want to keep and this blog is my way of saving many memories. (Seriously, eventually, this will be printed out as a keepsake memory book for the kids down the road).

The girls had their dual appointment today. It was a bit hectic, since two nurses jumped in and at one point Cadence was in the room having her hearing checked as I answered questions about her allergies and Megan was in the hall being measured while I was trying to assure her I wasn't leaving her behind.

Cadence did worlds better this year, though considering the mess she was last year, she would have really had to try to be worse. She obsessed about the shot, of course, but seemed pretty happy about it in general. She was even happier when the nurse told her she wasn't getting shots this time around. While this was true, she neglected to mention Cadence would be getting a finger prick. Megan covered her ears and shut her eyes every time shots were mentioned, especially once learning she would not be spared like her sister.

All in all, the girls are in great health. They were able to do both the hearing and vision test on both girls. Their eyesight was 20/16 and their hearing test passed. Both are things we want to keep a close eye on as they start to age, thanks to poor family history in both areas, but for now we'll continue to cross fingers and toes they inherited my eyesight and hearing.

Megan surprised me by gaining 6 pounds! (For reference, she only gained 1.5 pounds the year before) She's still a skinny miss, but she's 40" (50-75 percentile) and 31lbs (10-15 percentile). She's more or less the same size Cadence was at age 4, minus 3 pounds.

Cadence is on her usual curve. She gained 4lbs and a couple inches, rounding out at 38lbs (30-35 percentile) and 42 3/4" (50 percentile even). Admittedly, I'm surprised she's so low on the scale, since until all the boys in her class hit their growth spurt last year, she was the biggest and youngest in her primary class. However, they did hit their growth spurts and she's now average sized (and no longer the youngest, due to the population explosion in our ward primary).

The doctor kept asking diet questions and I hesitated. I do try to make sure they eat healthy, but this morning we ran out of milk, so I went to the donut place to pick up donuts and orange juice for breakfast. It's a fight to get them to eat any vegetable other than corn (and currently, Cadence claims to hate it). The only vegetable they eat with a relish is ice berg lettuce coated with ranch dressing. I don't think that's what the doctor meant, but I do try! And milk? Yeah... it's a hit or miss. One day they'll drink the whole cup with breakfast, the other it's untouched.

Do peanut butter and jelly sandwiches count as a balanced diet? Because that's pretty much the only thing I can say for sure they eat on a regular basis. *sigh*

Oh well! They take a multivitamin and I keep trying. Dinner is usually pretty balanced, there's just no guarantee they'll eat it. :-P

Family Pictures!

Thanks to a groupon deal and our upcoming trip, we got some family pictures done the other night. Unfortunately, between Cadence's face smile and James blinking, there was only one that was even really usable as a family picture (and sadly, that one was the only one Connor wasn't grinning in). I will admit, Cadence's fake smile is rather cute (especially in the family picture with the white background), but I didn't want it on my wall, lol. Megan, of course, looks cute in pretty much all of them and Connor is the biggest flirt, so he grinned a lot too.

Birthday Weekend!

In the near future, I might manage to successfully separate the girls' birthdays, but it did not happen this weekend. Both girls anxiously counted down and asked about their birthday since I changed the calendar to November. With our California trip right around the corner and everything, we didn't make a big deal (again) this year, but we had an enjoyable weekend nonetheless.

Saturday morning, Cadence woke Megan up with the news that it was her birthday and they both rushed out to tell me. I was inundated with "whose birthday is it today?" and "whose birthday is it tomorrow?" from both ends.

We went to do family pictures since it's the only weekend that worked out, and then went to Chili's for Megan's birthday dinner (she got to pick the restaurant and chose Chili's based on their picture of pizza). The girls feasted on pepperoni pizzas, salads, and apple juice. Actually, Cadence ate more of her salad than her pizza and Megan picked at both. Unfortunately, I left my camera's memory card at home and my camera has no internal memory, so a bunch of cute pictures were taken and subsequently lost. We topped off the meal with a "skillet cookie", which was basically a small cast iron skilled filled with a chocolate chip cookie and topped off with ice cream. Cadence burned her hand a handful of times and Connor demanded his fair share of the dessert (after filling up on the potatoes and corn from my dinner). Mmm.

At home, Megan got to unwrap her present.

While it wasn't the Barbie she had decided she wanted, upon recognizing the "Sofia the First" design on the box, she was ecstatic. The girls LOVE Sofia the First. I daresay it's overcome My Little Pony as their favorite, mostly because we watch it more often and their love is a fickle thing when it comes to TV shows. Cadence was so excited about Megan's new toy we were constantly hounding her to give Megan her toy back. So, we decided to give her present to her early rather than constantly getting on her case.

Once both girls had new toys, they scampered off to create new adventures with their new characters and even took them to bed with them.

Today, Cadence was thrilled to tell everyone she was 5! She danced with her new Barbie while we got ready for church and couldn't wait to get to primary and tell her teacher all about it. And, sure enough, the moment her teacher sat down, Cadence was chatting her ear off. Her teacher is absolutely amazing and just gushed with the same enthusiasm. When the primary sang to them both, their shy side came out and they both glowered at the floor, and I wished for my camera to capture it. Ah, well...

Cadence's request for dinner was "hot dogs cooked outside by mommy". Alas, our charcoal was old and we were out of lighter fluid, so mommy cooked them inside on the griddle instead while she frosted the cake last minute. It all seemed to be enjoyed, though. Even Connor ate his fill!

So, now they're 4 & 5. Yikes!

There's a very funny story somewhere in there in which James saw a spider on the car and freaked out, or as I describe it "screamed like a girl". I was laughing so hard it's a good thing we were at a red light. Unfortunately, the story ends with me giggling and saying "you just had to be there". So, for now, I'll leave you with the image of my big manly husband screaming and jumping (while buckled) as far from the spider as possible and taking off his shoe to try to squash the thing and demanding I open the window so he can try to brush it out. I got my ab work out from laughing so hard.

She's reading

Shortly after my last update, Cadence made the leap into reading.

It started with "OK". I told her to push the "OK" button and she sounded it out "ah k" before pushing it. Once I heard her do that, it was full-steam ahead, while trying to remain casual about it since she gets overwhelmed with new things and I didn't want to scare her off.

We started with words she already knew by sight, encouraging her to sound them out, and then branched out to words she wanted to know (for example, she began to recognize the word "fox" from 20th Century Fox's logo and has recently become obsessed with the word "fat"). I opened up our copy of "Cat in the Hat" and began pointing to words she knew (cat, bed) and then to a few words she didn't, that I would sound out and she would read (cup, red).

A week later, she's reading. I picked up another Dr. Seuss book the other week and yesterday we sat down and "read" it together. I would read most of the words, point out sight words for Megan to recognize and encourage Cadence to sound out and read some of the CVC words.

I also put magnet letters on our back door and will leave words for her to read and let her spell out her own words. Yesterday, she easily read "fix" and "jump".

She has a little trouble with connecting "stop" beginning sounds (k, d, b, etc.) to the second half of the word, for example reading "cup" as "up" even though she sounded out the /k/ in the word, but we're chugging along.

Just last night she was giggling as we "argued" over the proper way to spell but, in which she fished out the correct magnets but put them together wrong (at one point turning the U sideways, etc.) I commented to James it's a good thing I didn't teach her how to spell the anatomical "butt", because I'm pretty sure she might write "but" on her papers at Church on Sunday...