Joana's 3rd Birthday!!

Joana is now 3! Our little girl is growing up so fast! We celebrated her birthday with the Strawberry Shortcake them (see cake picture above) in the company of our closest friends and relatives and had a blast! John prepared his now traditional crawfish boil extravaganza, the kids enjoyed the bounce house, games, cake and food and we were all exhausted at the end of the day. What a great birthday! Joana got tons of new cute clothes, some princess outfits and accessories, a pop-up princess house with a tunnel, tea sets and cooking sets, and so many other wonderful gifts. She was in heaven!! She also got a bounce house from mommy and daddy so that she, her sister and her friends can have fun bouncing throughout the year.

Joana and Julia are now communicating a lot better and playing with each other more frequently, which is a relief for us, the parents, who don't have to be the entertaining act as often. Below is a video with a couple of funny moments. The first one is Joana is the bathroom shouting "Oh Baby, Oh Gary" as she is trying to make #2.....ehehehehehehe......don't ask us why she says "Oh Gary"...it's a family joke. During the second clip they are both playing hide and seek in our closet. Check them out.

Julia is doing great and speaking more and more every day. She has moved on to full sentences, though short, they are complete. She likes to ask "What happened, mama?", "Where's daddy?", "Mana, (sister) come on!", "Whatcha doing, mama?", "I want it." , "What's that/this?", "I (don't) want it", "Come on!", "I'm coming!" and our favorite, "I love you too, mama/daddy". She is also counting in both English and Spanish but she always skips #7, ...in both languages! Well, at least she is consistent. ehehehe. She also likes to count backwards starting with 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and then she shouts "Blast off!". As far as the alphabet is concerned, she knows the song but skips quite a few letters still. It's wonderful to see Joana teach Julia news words and songs and asking Julia to repeat them to make sure she says them properly. A natural teacher, oh boy!

She is also now going to the same day care as Joana's and is loving it. She only goes once or twice a week but it is a great start because she will start going full time at the beginning of 2012. She loves her teacher Ms. Donna and everyone at school even though she cries for the first 15 to 30 seconds as I leave. She says "It's MY school" and they both claim ownership of the school. The word MY or MINE has been quite prevalent in Julia's vocabulary in the last few months: "Mama, my car", "Look, my truck", "No! It's my ball". Aaaaaa the terrible twos all over again :)

Next month we are going to Portugal to spend about 3 weeks with vovô, vovó, Tio Jorge, Tia Ana and baby Clara, now 6 months old. Namaw and Mawmaw will come with us and I cannot wait to show them all the beauties of the Algarve and enjoy the beach every single day we are there. Check back in about a month to see all the great pictures and videos.