Gabi's letters

Gabi loves to write notes to her loved ones. We each get many letters daily, folded and wrapped in a doll blanket or baby burp cloth as a present. We love it! I had a very difficult time selecting which ones to post here.

Notes from December 2009:


January 2010 pictures from Gabi:

Gabi's favorite color is light blue.
She colored/glitter-painted this especially for her Daddy.


A portrait of Daddy

January letters from Gabi:

Colors for Lolo & Lola
(The butterfly is stenciled; the other drawings are free-hand.)


Gabi is learning about punctuation in school,
so she wanted to write me a question.


Gabi was excited to use the ? stamp
from "Uncle" George for Christmas.


Gratification for Daddy's taking her to school before work
(even though it required that she wake up extra-early and go to before care)


A sympathy card after Daddy got hurt while playing with her
Gabi doesn't want to leave anyone out! She even includes her not-yet-born sister.

A painted note to Bella, "from" Katya
(with a Tinkerbell stencil)


Gabi traced Sleeping Beauty all by herself
and then colored her drawing and embellished it with glitter paint.


Gabi sounded out Wuffel Bear (Daddy's childhood teddy)
and wrote her sister's name in bubble-letters.

February 2010 drawings:

Gabi's drawing of Rintoo,
Kai-Lan's tiger friend


Gabi used a stamp for this person's shirt decoration.

Books by Gabi
At school, Gabi's PreK class has started working on "wordless books" in which the children write a story to go along with the illustrations. Here are a few examples of Gabi's work. (Gabi sounds out the words on her own, then her teacher writes in the correct spelling.) I'd really like to post every page of these books, but I'll limit myself.


The next ball and the arms.


These are the eyes.
(I love her spelling "izs")


The baby chick hatched.


The monkey jumped in the car.


The monkey laughed.
At home during afternoon quiet time, Gabi made her own Alphabet Book with a page for each letter. I scanned the entire alphabet (4 pages at a time), but I decided to post only one.


E is for elephant
F is for fish
G is for Gabi
H is for helicopter

Gabi's broken leg

Last Monday, while I was cooking dinner, Gabi fell in the playroom and said she hurt her leg and couldn't stand up. I expected a large bruise to appear, although it never did. When my kiss didn't help, I gave her an ice pack, Tylenol, and Motrin. I had to carry her to dinner and to the bathtub and to bed. At bedtime, I explained that she needed to sleep because when she rests, it gives her body energy to heal itself. She thought that sounded silly, but she trusted me.

The next morning, Gabi sweetly told me, "Mommy, I must not have slept enough because my leg still hurts." Since she continued to insist that she could not stand up, and she was having pain just moving her leg or flexing her foot, I took her to the doctor. He could not find anything wrong on exam; her leg wasn't even swollen. When he asked Gabi how she hurt her leg, she told him that she fell trying to jump off the slide in our playroom. (News to me!)


NOT what the playroom looked like when Gabi fell
(I told Gabi that she hurt her leg because we had too many toys out in the playroom,
and that's why she needed to put her toys away.)
The doctor told me that he'd seen kids stub their toe and refuse to walk for weeks; however, he'd also had a little girl just sit and smile at him while he poked and prodded her arm, but an X-ray revealed that both the girl's bones were broken. So we got an X-ray for Gabi. Gabi's X-ray showed a non-displaced spiral fracture in her tibia, so we headed to Children's hospital for a cast around lunchtime on Tuesday. The next day, Gabi informed me that when she fell off the slide, she landed on Bella's door. (Maybe I'd have taken her to the doctor sooner if I'd known that.)


Gabi was very decisive about which color cast she wanted.


Gabi was surprised that her new cast was hard.


Thinking of a name for her new puppy from the ortho docs/nurses


Daddy took time off work to be with Gabi while she got her cast.


At physical therapy, learning to use a walker


She did it! (and has since refused to try again)


Gabi pointing out her friends' names on her cast
After a week, Gabi is much more comfortable in her cast and moving around. She still doesn't want to walk on it, but she has put some weight on it just fine. Here are some pictures Gabi's teacher took at school before Gabi broke her leg.


Gabi's PreK class on the first day of school


Omari, Nathan, David,
Gabi, Kate, and Isabel


Gabi and Isabel


Kate and Gabi

First Week of School

Our little two year-old is big enough to be going to school! Yes, it's back to school time for our girls.... well, I suppose that it's technically not back to school for Bella, since it's her first time to go. So it's more like "to school" for her. Whatever you want to call it, here are some cute pictures from the girls' first week back.

Bella's New School

Bella spends 2 1/2 days a week at Second Presbyterian Preschool. We enrolled her here because her drop-off and pick-up times can be managed around Gabi's, and also because Mommy wasn't quite ready for her little ladybug to be away 5 days a week. Bella has really enjoyed her first week of school.




Before the start of the school year, Mommy and Gabi accompanied Bella to an open house. The girls enjoyed playing on the playground, especially the little house with windows just right for peeking.


Bella wasn't quite sure if she wanted Mommy to go home on the first day of school, but after being distracted by the play kitchen, she was ready to run off and make new friends. Here she is with one of her little classmates, Parker. I should probably also comment that there weren't many good pictures from Bella's first day of school, due to the fact that she ran up to Mommy as soon as she arrived to pick her up. Mommy had her camera out and ready, but by the time she opened the shutter, Bella was already too close for pictures.




Bella has quickly acclimated to her new routine and gets very excited when she gets to school. One of her favorite parts of her new school are the painted footprints out in front. So much fun to walk on colored feet!

Gabi in PreK4

Gabi loves going to school. She has moved up to the Transitions/PreK4 class at the Anthony School (sorry, the website is acting funny at the moment). She'll spend this year getting ready for Kindergarten, so she'll be doing a lot more schoolwork-type stuff. She still gets plenty of playtime with all her friends from last year, though.




While Bella was enjoying her first day of school, Gabi had a special day with Mommy. One of the highlights of the day was getting her haircut at Pigtails and Crewcuts. She got to sit in a little airplane and watch Cars while she got her pretty hair trimmed.


Gabi had a get-together with her school friends the day before school started. They all met up at the school playground for a popsicle party. Gabi spent most of the time holding hands with her friend Samantha.



Never one to miss out on popsicles ("ah-sick-ah!"), Bella tagged along for the party. Other little siblings (like Betsy) also came out for the party. Just like at home, Bella lets us know that she's finished and wants to go play ("Finney! Bella pyay?"). Our little monkey likes to climb on the big kids playground equipment.


Gabi's first day of school was very exciting. She told us that her new teacher is named Ms. Stephanie. Her classmates from last year, Kate and Nathan, are also in her class this year, along with some brand new friends.


This pretty little girl is trying hard to be a grown-up, and her assignments are starting to get into big kid material. So far, they have been working on learning to write their names with only the first letter capitalized ("Gabi" instead of "GABI"). Today, she came home from school and said, "Mommy, I'm tired. We worked hard today!"

Little Vampires

No, I haven't read the Twilight book series or even seen the movie. But the vampire topic seemed appropriate for this post given some stories I have for you about blood and teeth.

Memorial Day brought Annabelle a present: her 10th tooth (a lower molar). The fourth molar and her final lateral incisor are trying to break through the gums next. Needless to say, Bella has been fussy recently.


Aunt Lisa with the girls
(I love Gabi's smile in this picture!)


The girls showing Aunt Lisa their dollhouse


Aunt Lisa and Annabelle
One day when it was chilly, Gabi told me that we needed some blood to keep us warm. That caught my off-guard, but, yes, blood does help keep us warm... I wonder if she learned that at school.

Another night, Gabi told Michael she was going to draw some blood for him. She then proceeded to use a red crayon to draw blood on paper for her Daddy. Not the typical meaning of "draw blood," but definitely very literal.


Gabi watering an Olivia-flower and watching it grow


Gabi and Olivia dancing at Olivia's birthday party
Bella loves pointing out all sorts of vehicles; she knows about trucks, tractors, trolleys, trains, cars, buses, boats, and airplanes. Then she will say "vroom-vroom" or "choo-choo" (or "zoom") as appropriate. Today at Home Depot, she was pretending to be a train and calling out "chug-a-chug-a choo choo!" as we walked through the store. Gabi joined in the fun, too, of course.


Bella driving a toy car at Playtime Pizza
"Vroom-vroom!"
It's the end of the school year, which means we've been busy with recitals and goodbyes. Gabi's PreK3 class had an adorable Spring Program on May 5th. I will have to post the video soon!

Back in February, Gabi had told me that after Z week, they would have to start over because she would still have more school. That was clever of her to figure out, although what they really did was move on to numbers. Last week, I heard Gabi singing a song about addition. She would sing "2 plus 2 is four. Five plus five is [pause to count on her fingers] 10, five plus five is ten." etc. It was very cute, and I was even more impressed that she would use her fingers to illustrate her additions and count to determine the answers. That means she wasn't just memorizing the facts/sentences, but rather she understood the concept of addition. Of course, for the past month or two, she's been adding (and sometimes subtracting) with objects in word-problem-type format, so addition isn't a new concept for her. She's also figured out that two numbers together (e.g. 11 or 28) represent a larger (two-digit) number as opposed to just two individual numbers.


Ms. Maureen putting on Gabi's makeup for the Spring Program


Three little piglets in the PreK3 Spring Program
Samantha, Kate, and Gabi


Gabi and her PreK3 teacher, Ms. Laura
After the last day of school, we had a parent-teacher conference with Gabi's teacher. I love that the Anthony School has mid-term and end-of-year conferences for all students so that you don't only hear from the teachers if your child is having a problem. Gabi easily mastered the entire three-year-old curriculum in both English and Spanish, and she has really come out of her shell and matured socially and emotionally. (The first semester she had trouble "participating in class activities with a positive attitude.")

The Anthony School has a regular PreK4 curriculum plus a PreK Transitions class with an advanced curriculum for the students who have completed PreK4 but who are yet not ready for Kindergarten. Currently, there are a couple spots in the Transitions class that were not filled with older children, and Gabi has been recommended for that class! The Transitions class still has recess and PE with the other four-year-olds, and one or two other students from PreK3 will likely also join her in Transitions, so she'll still see all her friends from this year.

The PreK4 class has a letter of the week just like in PreK3, but the Transitions class does a letter a day and then moves on to more advanced material. Students in the regular PreK4 class are usually reading by the end of the year, whereas most of the Transitions kids can read some at the beginning of the year. The Transitions class is more writing-intensive; they keep a daily journal and write stories. It also requires more independence, as students are assigned tasks for the week and given time to work each day, and they must manage their own time and be aware of which tasks they still need to do. I think it will be a perfect fit for our Gabi girl! I'm very proud of her.


Gabi's dance recital costume
Last night, Lola called to ask if I could pick her up at the airport when she returns to town, and then she talked to Gabi. When the conversation was over, Michael asked for the phone so he could hang it up. Gabi insisted that she could do it, and she pressed the button to turn off the phone. After she handed the phone back to Michael, she explained, "You press the off button, the one that says O-F-F," spelling the word off from memory, which she had read herself on the phone. She also reads signs to me when we are out and about.


Climbing on the paddle wheel of the ACH boat


Captain Bella steering the ACH boat
In the last post, did I say that Annabelle was using two-word sentences? What I meant to say is that she is using full sentences! That girl can talk. We went out to eat with Lolo this weekend, and Bella handed me her empty cup and said, "I want more Sprite." (Yes, I gave her Sprite... Big sister introduced it to her.) As we were driving through downtown Little Rock, Bella very excitedly pointed out the trolley (which she can pronounce perfectly, by the way) and then said, "Mommy, trolley go bye-bye" to tell me that it was out of view.

At Riverfest over Memorial Day weekend, we went to the Trout Fishing in America concert and heard some new songs that we didn't know before, one of which was called "I've Got A Friend (and He Won't Be Quiet)." Ever since, Michael and I have been singing "I've Got a Baby and She Won't Be Quiet." After each refrain, Bella adds "E-I-E-I-O" (just because she knows that's a song, and she likes Old MacDonald). She has such a cute voice; I need to post a video of her talking so you can hear her.


Enjoying the Kris Allen concert in Little Rock
(Final 3 week of American Idol)


Walking back to the car after the Kris Allen concert


Preston and Gabi checking out an historical fence
Well, now that is is June, I have finally posted pictures from the first half of May... and I have yet to copy all the videos from the camcorder to the computer.