Nature Girl

We planted some sunflower seeds and hope they will be full grown by spring. Our goal is to line our fence with sunflowers.

Lexie likes to help in the yard. She helped to scoop dirt to put into the pot and then she carefully placed our sunflower sprouts into the dirt.

Lexie patted the dirt down. She takes her gardening very seriously.

We decided to plant more seeds. We love that they sprout in about 5 days. Lexie checks on them everyday.

Lexie counted the seeds as she pushed each one into the dirt.

We had butterflies at school. There was one chrysallis left and I didn't want to have the butterfly stuck in the jar over the weekend, so I brought it home for Lexie. She was so excited when the butterfly finally came out.

She got to hold the butterfly for a few seconds before it flew away.

Valentine Hearts

My latest addiction is Pinterest. I can spend hours on it. I was looking for an easy Valentine's Day gift for my kindergarten students that would be easy to make. I found this cute idea to make crayon hearts. Lexie helped me make the hearts. After I took off the wrappers and broke the crayon into pieces, Lexie chose which colors she wanted to mix together .

Lexie loves to help and she was excited to put the crayons into the oven to bake.

After the crayons melted, we put the hearts into the refrigerator. It hardens within a few minutes.

Here are Lexie's masterpieces. The colors are just amazing. No matter what colors you mix together, it turns out beautiful.

Lexie inspects her work. For being such a great helper, I let Lexie choose her favorite colors to keep.

Lexie had fun testing out her creations in her coloring book.

Future Olympian

We always knew that we would sign Lexie up for gymnastics. From the moment she could grab on to things, she would hang from bars, tables or anything her tiny fingers could wrap around. Lexie is always jumping, rolling, and tumbling, so gymnastics is right up her alley. We have been going for about a month now and Lexie is loving every minute of it.

The class starts with some songs and warm-ups. Lexie loves this part because she gets to dance. She's learning new vocabulary and how to stretch her muscles. Then we move on to the floor rotations. In such a short time, she has learned how to do each exercise. When she first started, I had to roll her over to do a backflip, but now she's able to pull her legs over all by herself.

And she usually lands on her two feet and sticks her landing and will put her arms up and say, "Ta-da!"

The first time Lexie went on the bar, she tried to swing on it. Then she was able to get her toes to touch. Now, she's able to flip her legs through.

Then if she has time, she'll do some swinging and a few splits for good measure!

Lexie loves the ball pit. She jumps into it and then we have to coax her to come out. When we can finally get her out of it, she has to do a forward roll down the ramp.

The balance beam requires intense concentration. Lexie loves to do everything quickly, but has realized that if she walks slowly, she has a better chance of not falling off.

Her best exercise is the bars. It really shows off her upper body strength. Lexie is able to hold herself up and can point her toes. Her coach has her do several front flips each time.

Lexie is still learning to use the springboard. She is so light that when she tries to bounce on it, nothing really happens. This was probably the best take-off she's had.

Lexie has shown the most improvement on the trampoline. It was hard on those skinny legs to jump the distance of that trampoline, but she's been practicing and does pretty well now. She's one of the few students who can jump backwards the full length.

At the end of the class, they have some free play time in the foam pit. Lexie really enjoys this. She thinks it's a huge foam swimming pool. She'll run and jump into it over and over again. Lexie is so light that she practically walks over the foam.

Almost 3

I can't believe in a month Lexie will be 3 years old!! The year has gone by so fast. I look at her pictures from last year and all I can say is, "she was so bald!" I'm so glad her hair is starting to grow and fill in a bit. She even has some curls, which I love.
Lexie is a tough cookie, but we've found that she has a fear of blood. She has fallen numerous times and she's always okay about cleaning it out and putting a band aid on it because there usually isn't any blood. Tonight, she was jumping around and my toe nail scratched her foot. When it started to bleed, she freaked out and wouldn't stop crying. She was finally okay when we covered it with a band-aid. She was even worried when Eric scratched his arm and it started bleeding. She couldn't take her eyes off it and finally felt better when she played doctor and put a band-aid on for daddy. That was very cute!

Lexie has always been a great sleeper, but lately one of us has to stay with her until she falls asleep. As soon as she knows it's time for bed, the first thing she says is "stay with me." She also realized that she could open her door and started coming out of her room at all hours of the night. We finally put a stop to that after watching this problem solver in action. She figured out how to climb over her gate and even turned off her cameras so we couldn't see what she was doing. Now we're trying to get Lexie to stay in her room at least until the sun comes out instead of waking us up at 6:00am.

We're finally getting Lexie to eat some veggies. We still have her eat baby food veggies because she thinks she's drinking soup, but whatever works! Now she'll eat a few peas, carrots, lettuce, broccoli if we tell her that she'll get some dessert after dinner. She'll also eat more veggies if she chases it down with some sweet fruits.

Lexie loves to help. She wants to help clear the table, so I have to make sure she doesn't carry anything that is breakable or drop any food along the way. She likes to fill up the dog food bowl and will feed the dogs. The other day, she carried her box of pull-ups from the front door and into her bedroom.

Lexie's fine motor skills continue to impress us. She is able to write the letters in her name, not always in the right order. Her coloring has improved and she's actually coloring in one area at a time.

Lexie has started gymnastics which she loves. She is always asking when she is going to class. She uses terms such as pike, straddle, and tuck. She knows the names of the equipment that she uses. Her legs and arms are getting stronger each time we go. Lexie is able to hold herself up on the bars and now does her flips by herself. She follows directions and is one of the few children to walk behind her coach and keep her hands behind her back. Her favorite part is to jump into the foam pit.

We're so excited for Lexie's birthday next month. We have some fun things planned and will be having a party with all of her little friends. She came up with her guest list and told me who she wanted to invite. Too bad some of them live oceans away.