Dear Chloe

I recently read a beautiful letter and it has inspired me to pen my own as we enter the next chapter of our lives and things inevitably change. This blog will no longer be exclusively about Chloe, it cant be... and so I thought I needed to write a letter to our beautiful first born daughter, explaining why. So here goes…

Dear Chloe,

As I sit here in our lounge room, listening to you helping daddy in the garden of our new home, contemplating just how much our lives are going to change come September. It makes me so blissfully happy, but sad as well. You see, for the last two and a half years, you have always been the light of my life, you have always been the thing that I race home from work to see, to smother with love and kisses, and you have been my most favourite person in the whole wide world. But come September, when your little brother or sister arrives, I won’t be able to say that, because it won’t be fair on them, just as it hasn’t been on your beautiful, understanding father. And as I type this, I am already crying, because for now, I can’t even begin to fathom how I will be able to do that, because so much of who I am centres around my unconditional, unlimited, uncontrollable love for you!

You, my beautiful first born daughter, you. 

You... were the first one who hurled me so unexpectedly into this crazy world of motherhood. The first one who made my heart fill with so much love I felt like it would burst from my chest. You were the first one to hold my pinkie as I stumbled and bumbled my way through the first nappy changes, the first breastfeeds, the first sleepless nights, and all those times of squeezing you into so many ridiculously cute first outfits. You were the first one whose giggle and smile, levelled me and made me hold my breath in awe of just how beautiful you are and  how lucky we are to have you. You, my darling daughter, are the first one who took her first steps in front of us both because deep down, I'm sure your beautiful heart knew we both wanted to be there for such a special milestone. You were the first one who made me cry happy tears each time you held my face, kissed me and told me you loved me lots and lots and lots. And you are the first to hear I love you more than 20 times a day. You were the first one to know what my heart beat sounds like, from the inside.

But our baby is coming, and while you will no longer be our only child, you’ll be the only one to know what it’s like to have my undivided attention, the only one to know what it’s like to have their needs consistently put first, the only one to have known the adventures of our first home and a trip to Japan, Brisbane, Hobart, Melbourne, Maitland, even the shops as our only child. You will be the only one to know what it was like to not have to share their toys, their food, and their mum and dad. So whilst you will no longer be our only child, find comfort in the fact that you will always be our first. Our first newborn, our first infant, our first toddler, our first true love as parents.

So dear daughter, although our lives will change come September, never doubt just how truly loved you are, know that our love for you will remain as constant and as unchanging as the moon. That we will continue to love you to the moon and back and tell you more than 20 times a day. And even when you are no longer our only child and no longer able to reap the benefits of all that, that means, know that we have more than enough love for you both, because our heart now knows no limits to the love we can give, because of you.

You, our beautiful first born daughter, you. 

xxx

 

 

Chloe's Third Christmas, eeep! Third!

 

Ok, so its new years eve! And as I frantically reflect on the year past and all the things I wanted to achieve, I actually relax. This year has been a good year, nay, a GREAT year, as far as achievements go we really did knock this year out of the park. I'm so proud of our little family and all we have done and am so thankful that when I look back at our life so far I can honestly say I have no regrets. There is not one single thing I would have done differently. Everything is perfect, and just as it should be! So with that itty bit of self reflective nonsense out of the way... Lets get into it.

STATS
Height: 87cm
Weight: 13kgs
Size: 2
Shoe: 6.5

EATING and DRINKING

 

As with the last post not much has changed on the eating and drinking front. Although it is worthy to note that meal times have significantly sped up. They are no longer drawn out affairs since Chloe now has mastered using utensils and no longer consistently asks to sit on our laps. hehe. Although during this festive season there has been a lot of the sweet treats! But this mumma isn't any bahhhhh humbug!

She also drinks from a proper cup now, although we still (I think out of habit) will give her straws to drink from. As far as drinks go she far prefers Milk to anything else but we are doing our best to minimise that and encourage water instead. She tends to have a small amount of something in her cup with meals and then only when she asks for it at other times.

COMMUNICATION

 

Holy smokes. The kid loves to chat! You can now have pretty long conversations with her where she will string together quite a good sentence and participate in strings of dialogue with us competently. She now understands word orders and this has helped her to create more complex sentences. Because of all this, her speech is becoming much clearer which makes it easier for non-family members to understand her, or at least manage a pretty accurate guess at what she is telling them. She is also able to now more efficiently express negative statements by tacking on negative words such as 'not' and 'I no like it' to other phrases and words.

She is using pronouns more regularly now, instead of saying 'Chloe do it' she will say 'My (or I) do it', instead of "mummy get it, please" she'll say "you get it, please". Her vocabulary is also increasing dramatically as well, just the other day she bumped me with her pram and said "Whoops, sorry mummy, my fault". She uses more technically specific words too.


She is also able to follow two step commands now easily; "Chloe can you go to the kitchen and get Mummy the towel?"  Its made life SO much easier! "Sweetheart, stand over there against the fence and smile for mummy" Bam! "Chloe can you go to daddy and see if he'd like a coffee?"... off she toddles, she returns shortly and announces "Daddy said YES!" It's so sweet.

We have also seen her empathy and affection for others improve as she is now able to ask 'are you alright?' Recently when her cousins came for a visit, the younger (Lucas) was upset as he was waiting for his turn of a toy, Chloe went up to him and offered hers. It was really heart warming.

She still absolutely loves to read. We have found that she is able to 'read' some of her books now by recognising visual cues and through predictive text. Her favourites at the moment are "Room on the Broom" where she'll say the "whoosh, they were gone" part religiously and in "Where is the green sheep?" if you pause before the adjective for each sheep she will say it....
Me - "Here is the .....
Chloe - "RED!"
Me - "sheep, and here is the ....
Chloe - BLUE sheep!

It really is impressive. She gets lots of praise for this. hehehe.

GROSS MOTOR

Swimming
Chloe is very confident and capable in the water. On our recent trip to Maitland she was diving and swimming to us in the pool of her own accord, much from the encouragement of her older cousins. She still needs a bit of a running start when swimming, in that she needs to propel herself from a step or us, but she understands how to move through the water now without floaties. She also understands that when she is out of air, she raises her head to breath. I think in a few months she'll be able to swim across the pool, which is pretty amazing!

Love of Music and Dancing
Chloe has lately really started to show a love of music and dancing again which makes me think, perhaps its time to re-enrol her in a dance class. Whenever a song comes on the tv or radio, she jumps up and wiggles her hips. She likes to twirl and most action songs will see her perform the moves. Her favourite is Justin Clark's 'dancing face'.

Jumping
Chloe just loves to jump, although she's not very proficient at it. Santa got her a trampoline for Christmas and she has spent some part of the day (when we're at home) jumping in in. Whilst she will jump on her own, she much prefers holding our hands to jump. Which through the netted walls is really quite difficult. hahhaha.

Riding her bike
Now that we have space for her to ride her bike/car in our very own street, she has been doing it a lot more. There is a soft hill that she likes to push her bike up to and then ride down, it always makes her smile and giggle. She thinks she's quite clever.

Walk up and down stairs
Chloe no longer needs help on the stairs and can walk up and down without any assistance from us or a rail. Given the number of stairs she has to climb to come and go from our new house, its quite a relief.

 

FINE MOTOR

 

Chloes fine motor skills are pretty good, she correctly holds a pencil using a tripod grip. Thanks to her OCD teacher mother. She is also beginning to form shapes resembling letters, such as circles and E's. She is able to use scissors correctly and will follow a line drawn when cutting.

EMOTIONAL, SOCIAL and COGNITIVE DEVELOPMENT

 

She has started to show much more interest in playing with her friends and just loves having people over. Often asking to see her friends when we're home. But she can only cope with a small amount of interactive play, particularly when its her things being played with. hehe. She still needs much adult interaction and guidance when playing with her friends. She feels much more confident when we are nearby and will come to us when she cant resolve her own conflict. I think much of this behaviour has been learnt through the observations of others at day care and through the necessity to protect what's yours in a high traffic environment. But she is getting better each day sharing her things.

Chloe is pretty good at recounting events to us that happened earlier in the day and answer questions about who, what and where when asked. Making it easy to figure out what has happened. This recounting of events in time, has also helped with her understanding of "now", "soon", "later", "first" and "after". Chloe has always been a child of routine so she has a very strong understanding of time and order of a day. After lunch she'll often say "Bedtime now", once dinner is finished "Bathtime now". It really makes things easy.

Chloe is also developing a wicked sense of humour and just loves to make us laugh. She'll pull funny faces and say silly things then cackle and exclaim "Silly Chloe". It is delightful!

SLEEPING

 

Chloe has had a string of really bad nights with sleep, waking multiple times overnight. We're not sure why. But like most of our battles with sleep, we are just rolling with it. We suspect it is that she is too hot, but she refuses to sleep with a fan as the fan is 'too noisy'. lol. So... we battle on.

We have also not dropped her day sleep and have adopted a 'just let her sleep' attitude, which at the moment is fine as we have ALOT of evening functions and activities going on at the moment. I think once we are back into work etc, we may look at cutting it back or out. But at this stage it doesn't seem to matter whether she has an hour or three, any sleep in the day means Chloe won't be asleep until 8 or 830 at night. It may also be that she is finding it hard to go to sleep as it is still pretty bright at 8 with the sun setting around 815 now.

 

LOVES and HATES

 

Chloe has been Santa MAD this year! She just loves him! Anytime we were at the shops she HAD to see him! She also loves having her friends/cousins over to her 'big house'. She LOVES running and racing because she's "very fast". She loves animals, washing up and generally 'helping', eating hot chips and lollies. She has a bit of a love / hate relationship with the modelling at the moment. She will happily pose but after 10 or so minutes will announce "all finished mummy" and walk off. She also had an aversion to bath time for a week or so but that was overcome with the bribe of ice cream.

 

OTHER STUFF

 

The House
The house is amazing!  We're so happy to be here. The space is ridiculous. I always use to wonder how people with kids could spend all day at home claiming it to be easier. I get it now. I totally get it. Chloe is so happy playing in her toy room that an hour or so will disappear and neither of us are the wiser. That would never happen in our unit.

As far as renos go we haven't done any more other than ripping up the carpet. Our dream is to pull out most of the garden and turf it in a few months, at the moment its a hodge podge of stuff and full of bugs and spiders, making it hard to let Chloe play in it unsupervised. We have a rough idea of what we want to do inside, but funds and really a clear vision are the issue at the moment. So the plan is to attack the yard first, as we know exactly what we want to do there.

Our first dual property mortgage repayment comes out of our account on the 1st. We have both already transferred that over and have set up the transfer so we are always a month ahead, but the sting of that will start to really take affect this coming month.

Christmas
We also celebrated Christmas this year as we do most years, celebrating with the Wyatts for lunch Christmas day and then making the mad dash to Maitland to celebrate with the Sciffers boxing day. As always it was a stressful affair and had us rethinking our plan for next year. The most enjoyable part of the day was watching Chloe painstakingly slowly open each of her presents over the morning and relish with each new gift and ask "Its mine?"... "Yes baby, its all yours" *sigh*

We also spent a fair chunk of time exploring (as Chloe called them) Santa lights, seeing some Christmas Carols with fireworks and dancing with Santa over and over again. I still haven't managed to get a photo with her and all her spoils..... but I just have to figure out where I can set it up given her presents include a trampoline, sandpit and giant water sprinkler ball. hehe.

 

All in all this year has been a great one. We have loved every minute of it and sharing it all with you. Cant wait to see what 2015 holds. Happy New Year to you all. xxx