Happy Birthday Emma Kate!!!!  I can't believe she is three years old...  before I know it she will be off to college...  the time has flown by!  We had a great day, including a cupcake celebration "by the barn" as Emma Kate put it, and lots of playing!  Our neighbor friends came to play in the sandbox and down at the little park at the church, and other than a couple of bumps and scrapes from playing hard, she had a lot of fun!  We've got some pictures to load from recent weeks... just gotta find the time!!

Emma and mommy putting tractor up. Emma does a good job listening to directions and has the hang of turning the wheel to make the truck/tractor go where it needs to.

Coming in on approach to barn

I can't believe we are coming up on Emma Kate's 3rd birthday!!!  It seems like September has flown by so fast, and summer has definitely been escorted out- the last week or so has been cool, overcast, and drizzly, but most days are still great to get outside- it has been wonderful, but it makes me sad that summer is gone.  :(  We had Emma Kate's 3 year checkup the other day, and she is doing well- I believe she was 26 pounds, 2 oz, and I'll have to check what height they got- Gretta was being a little difficult at the time, and I wasn't paying very close attention.  It looks like she's in about the 7th percentile for weight and the 15th for height, so our doctor is pretty happy that the two are so closely alligned.  Nothing worrisome to report, luckily the weird skin spots she had for about a week prior had pretty much healed up and almost disappeared (we think it's likely that they were ringworm, as they seem to have responded to some clotrimazole ointment I had, but we have *no* idea where she got it from, and the distribution was werid...).  We have had some concern over her breathing again in the last few weeks, and the doctor agreed with the notion that it wasn't outright alarming, but good to get it evaluated again.  We've been in touch with Dr. Rutter and he will see us in mid-October rather than waiting until December/January like we had originally planned.  We will have a pulmonologist on board too, to evaluate the upper right lung lobe, and Dr. Rutter will assess the trachea to determine if it needs to be dilated or anything else done.  We're going to also ask if it would be prudent to have a cardiac echo or a perfusion scan done while we are up there, to evaluate the vascular repair that was done.  She's doing awesome, don't get me wrong- she is crazy and wild and loud, she runs and hops all over the place, and hasn't slowed down one bit.  *But* she is making noise and breathing harder than before, and she is also retracting more noticably above her collarbone.  This indicates that her airway is not as open as it was after her revision surgery.  Hopefully there is an easy solution that will buy us a longer stretch before any further intervention would be needed again... it's only been 3 months since she was last evaluated and seemed to be doing perfectly well... :(  We've been advised to plan to at least stay overnight in the hospital, and the way things are scheduled out, we'll have a few days on the other end of the appointments in case we need more time, but we'll be driving up this time, splitting the trip in two parts both ways, this way we can come home whenever we are done, instead of having tickets for a certain day and not being able to change them if we needed more time...

Gretta is doing really well- she is cruising around things like it's nobody's business, and she is waking with us holding her hands.  She has stood ever so briefly a time or two, but she mostly still depends on something else to keep her balance.  She has been such a little ham lately and seems to be turning into a tiny person instead of a baby all of a sudden!  She has been babbling a lot lately and having conversations back and forth, and she has been LOVING playing with her big sister.  She gets such a kick out of seeing Emma Kate being wild and crazy, and when Emma Kate is running around like crazy, Gretta will often speed-crawl after her, laughing and cackling and squealing all the way!  It is quite a sight!  I think she is also getting two more of her lower incisors in...

We've been quite busy in the last few weeks- the girls and Mommy went to the beach with Mimi again for a week in early September, it was the week following Hurricane Irene, and we had a good time, mostly relaxing and playing at the house- there was a lot of cleaning up to be done, plus the "little beach" at the harbor had been destroyed, so it was closed.  Luckily it looks like the playgroud survived, and there are still some trees up, although some of the best beach-front trees were knocked down. :(  We did make it to the "big beach" twice in the evening just to play a bit, and both girls really loved it.  It was amazing to watch the waves those nights- they were HUGE!  There were quite a few surfers enjoying it, but it was too much for most people to want to play in for sure.  We got to visit with Auntie Kimberly a few times, and Emma Kate especially enjoyed going over to her house to love on the kitties.  She actually insisted on one last visit to say goodbye to the kitties on our way out.  The mosquitos were horrific in some places because of all the standing water from the storm, so our outdoor activities were somewhat limited- they were also spraying by airplane for the bugs, and advised people to stay indoors during those times too.  So we mostly played inside and made a few trips out for a change of pace.  It was a great time!

We've gotten a chance to get together with the kids down the road quite a bit since being back home and they have all had a great time together- we even exchanged "babysitting" duties so that each of us mommies could make it to a doctor's appointment without crazy kids in tow.  It has been really nice.  We also got to walk down to their creek for the first time, and the girls LOVED it!  It's a gorgeous small creek with clear running water, and their first instinct was to get naked and get in!  It's got cold cold water, but no one seemed to mind!  Emma Kate was so impressed!  We walked down to their house yesterday to play, and immediately Emma Kate started insisting that we walk down to the little creek!  We ended up making a little hike by ourselves after playing, and both Emma Kate and Gretta had a BLAST playing in the water.   Emma Kate even found a crawfish!  We stayed a while, and when it was time to go, I was able to give Emma Kate a heads-up that we would be heading out soon, but of course Gretta doesn't understand that.  She was *irate* when I pulled her out of the water to dry off!  She was having SOOOO much fun!  It's a shame that we've just discovered this so late in the season- I'm not sure how much longer it will be comfortable (or smart for that matter) to play naked in such cold water... but there's always next summer!

Yesterday Nana and Tutz made a trip down to visit us and we had a combined birthday-halloween event!  Both girls had a great time visiting and playing, and exploring some new clothes and toys.  We got to have lunch together before they headed out to get back home, and it was great to see them again!

There are a lot of pictures of our recent weeks, but they will have to come later... :)

My goodness, it has been a long time!  We had some "technical issues" getting logged into the blog, and we have had a lot going on!  We had a great trip to the beach, got to visit with good friends for a brief time before an earthquake hit the east coast, and then we were chased back inland by Hurricane Irene.  We have a bunch of pictures- here are some highlights (blogspot has changed their post form and now my pictures are in backwards order!  I'll have to change that next time...)