Another Trumpet Player!

Raegan loves getting the chance to play Zane's guitar, and one night he let her try out his trumpet. We were all just blown away when she could actually produce sound with it. There are kids Zane's age who can even produce sound because of how you have to hold your lips. I'm thinking we may have another musician on our hands! :)

Reading Mommy's Books

This is a daily occurance. Raegan will play for awhile after breakfast, then get out a bunch of her books and sit in the kitchen and tell stories while she flips through the pages. Over the last week or so, she's been getting out my books and sitting down and looking through them forever. Sometimes she'll point out letters in them, but most of the time she just tells stories about what she's reading.

After I finished taking this video and she finished flipping through the book, she said, "I'm not going to read it backwards anymore Mommy." Smart girl! :)

Random song

One of Raegan's favorite things to do right now is walk around the house singing random songs. It's hilarious!

Big Accomplishment

A big milestone that Raegan has met in the last couple weeks is being able to pedal her tricycle independently. Now she is OBSESSED with riding her trike and asks all day every day to go outside to ride. I took this video last week, when she was still having some trouble getting over cracks in the sidewalk. Since then, she's gotten to the point where she can pedal up and down the driveway with a little extra muscle, pretty smoothly.

LIttle Package, Big Personality

Somedays I just can't believe that such a big personality can be fit into such a little body! Raegan is just full of so much life and energy and intelligence - it just blows my mind. I never imagined that I could love anyone as much as I love this child. Every night before bed, I tell her, "You're Mommy's best girl. For how long?" She used to say "Forever and Ever" because that's what I would always say: "You're Mommy's best girl forever and ever." Now she says, "Three" Three has become a very important age to her. I cannot believe that my baby is old enough to be looking forward to being older at her next birthday.

On Saturday Raegan put on her Elmo hat and her butterfly sunglasses (upside down) and said, "I be a man Mommy." For whatever reason, she decided that in this dress up outfit she looks like a man. I don't even know where this child gets her ideas from sometimes.

Luke and I are staggered daily by how very smart Raegan is. She still counts to 13 (we just can't get her to say 14 or 15, because she'll skip up to 16 and then count to 20), and now she counts objects and tells you how many she counts. She names letters A, B, E, G, H, J, M, N, O, R, S, and Z consistently, and there are a few others that she will get right some of the time. She's finally getting those dang colors in - she names green, orange, and pink all of the time, and the rest inconsistently. Her attentiveness just kills me - it reminds me of Zane when he was that age. Her daycare provider said that they went to a park near our house the other day, and Raegan very clearly pointed out which street our house was on. When we were sitting at the corner of our street to go to the library this afternoon, she told me what direction we needed to turn to go to the library.

Raegan's very excited for preschool next year, although I think she's expecting to go to the elementary school that we've pointed out as "hers". I mentioned it as we drove past it one time, and she latched onto it immediately, and loves to talk about it. One day, I took her to the playground at the school and she just about came out of her skin with excitement. A lot of the children at her child care also go to preschool or kindergarten, so I think Raegan is really eager to join the big kids. We have her set up in the morning class at the Montessori preschool here in town. It's a little pricey, but it is four mornings a week, which is not something that any other preschool in town offers to 3 year olds. To me, it will be worth every penney to further enrich her smart little noggin.

Raegan is getting quite a bit out of child care too - check out this video of her naming all of the planets in order. They learned about them last month at Angie's, and last night Raegan had all of our jaws on the floor when she just rattled them all off in correct order. Luckily, she repeated it again so I could catch it on video. (When I asked her to do it "live" for Granny today, she informed me that she was busy eating her ice cream and could not. She's so sassy, most of the time in a funny way. lol)

Skating Superstar

My school had a skating party on Sunday. I went to see my students, and took Raegan along, since she could skate for free. This was her second time skating (we went in December for a church party). As soon as we got there, she asked for cake (because at church they gave us cupcakes after we skated). I thought that was pretty smart of her to remember that from over two months ago. The child's memory is insane!

Raegan wasn't nearly as nervous about it this time. After our second or third time around, she shook me off and said, "I do it Mama" and took off by herself. I hovered really close for awhile, but she never did fall, so I took some video on my iPod of her skating. The quality is kind of crappy, but ah well.

7th Grade Winter Band Concert

Zane's late winter band concert was last night. His band did a fantastic job. Raegan also did an awesome job of sitting and listening through the majority of the concert. (We have to sit through about 40 minutes worth until Zane's grade is finished with their pieces. For a two year old, that's pretty good!)

This one cuts off before the end of the song because I ran out of memory on my camera. I should try deleting pictures every once in a while, huh?

Before the concert

My cheese monkeys!

Again, with the excess cheese..... :)

Intently watching

Random shots of Zane leaving the stage

Ice Ice Baby

We obviously listen to and sing a wide variety of music in our house. Here's Raegan and Zane doing Vanilla Ice. :)

Pumped Up Kicks

This video is of Raegan singing "Pumped Up Kicks." No judgment, because she doesn't actually know all the words to the song, at least not the words about guns. She sings "faster, boo boo brush your teeth" instead of "faster than my bullet". 

Jammin' to 80's music

When we got rid of our digital cable, for some reason we kept a few higher up channels. It's mostly variations of PBS (that I didn't even know existed) but we did get one 80's music channel. Just about every day Raegan will ask us to put on music so that she can dance. This is her jammin' out on Friday night.

Jingle Bells

Here you go, Mom and Dad:

New Slide!

One of my coworkers told me that she was getting rid of this plastic slide set that she had. I jumped on it right away, because Raegan loooooves slides, but we just don't have enough room in our backyard for a big playplace. She will probably be too big for it by the end of next summer, but for $10 it was well worth it to me. She kept saying, "I like it!" and she was so excited when she first saw it.

ABCs

Here you go, Mom! :)

Counting!

Raegan is counting all the way to 13 now, and has been for about two weeks. We're really working on the 14, because she consistently says 18 every single time after she gets to 13. For some reason when I took this video she kept talking about Grandma, so you'll hear her say that at the beginning and then again at the end. :) I also should point out that it's just audio. Raegan kept acting super silly every time I pointed the camera at her, so I just recorded this on the sly, with the camera pointed down at my leg.

Diaper Changing

Raegan randomly started doing this yesterday evening. Now I really want to get her a baby that comes with diapers! :)

Wichita Zoo Videos

Here are those videos I promised from our visit to the Wichita Zoo last weekend. The first two are of the baby chimp and the last two are of the elephant training.

Playdate fun

Last week my friend Katie and her son Greyson came over for a playdate at our house. I was super excited because we've never had anyone over for a playdate at OUR house before. Raegan and Greyson enjoyed playing with Raegan's kitchen set, and it was so nice outside that we were able to let them jump on the trampoline for awhile before Katie and Greyson had to leave.

New words

Sorry Mom, no pictures in this post! (But I am giving you a short video, so that's good for something, right?) This is just a quick update about new things that Raegan is saying, so that I can remember how funny she is now in the years to come. :)

Something new Raegan has started saying this week that I absolutely LOVE is "sure". More times than not, when you ask her a question, her answer is "sure." "Do you want some more banana?" "Sure." "Do you need to sit on the potty?" "Sure Mommy." I love it! :) Another fun thing that she has learned is Mommy and Daddy's actual names. Every now and then she will randomly call us Luke and Shannon, and it cracks me up! And just today I asked her what Mommy's name was, and what Daddy's name was, and she was able to answer. Now I'm trying to teach her to say her first and last name. My girl is getting so big and smart!

Tonight when I was rocking Raegan before bed, I told her it was time to fold her hands to say her prayers. She folded her hands and said, "God is great, God is good, Thank you goldfish." lolololol (At daycare they do the "God is great, God is good" prayer before lunch each day. I love that most nights when we do prayers we say thank you for a lot of her favorite foods. She's definitely my girl!

Raegan also loves to pretend to talk on the phone right now - either one of our cell phones or one of her play phones. She always follows the same script: "Hello. Yes. No. Bye!"

Over and Under

What a silly girl I have! :)

Birthday videos

Here are the two videos I took from Raegan's party. The first is of Raegan hamming it up before her party, and the second is of the family singing Happy Birthday and Raegan being unsure of what to do about the candle. :)