Monday was a good day.

Annie swinging.

Ruthie making a mango smoothie by letting the chunks sit in the sun and then smashing them. It took a long time and part of me wondered if we weren’t going to see the ER later that night.

I like when she sits next to me and talks “old”.

I found a couple bows on clearance a couple months ago and have finally let them use it. Annie is still too small, she can’t even hold it up without tiring, but Ruthie latched on and I’m excited to push her down this road.

This is also the summer of getting Gertie dirty. She’s just like her sisters.

Our new neighbors came by to mow their lot and brought their 18 month old. They are just the sweetest. They hope to start building in the fall/winter after their second child is born in August. Our other friends wanted to buy that lot but ended up purchasing one across the street and until they can find a contractor that will work with their designs (it’s a steep hill), it’s gonna be slow-going. It’ll be nice to have a tribe in the same stage of life so close.

At dinner afterwards, Ruthie brought up how that their little girl is walking and Gertie isn’t. So they’re starting to notice. And Ryan always reminds me that a great gift we can give them is to learn how to care for someone less fortunate than them.

Ryan had a meeting with G’s speech therapists today. I didn’t go because we work better where he downloads the long term strategy (that’s his day job!) and then spells it out for me.  But…

They are very pleased with her.

Sometimes, in therapy, one skill emerges and takes off while the other stalls out. So while over the past 6-8 months she’s come leaps and bounds with crawling (which they didn’t think she’d do) and walking in the walker), her speech as taken a back seat. But in the last couple months, she has been increasing her speech immensely (for her), mimicking a lot which is a huge foundation. I asked them earlier this week (which is what prompted an update), what general age it is when kids start tapering off and get “stuck”. They said that she has a few years before kindergarten and a lot can happen. I guess we’ll wait and see!