So Proud of My Little Einsteins!

When Julian was 16.5 months old, we walked out to the mailbox one day and he started counting the numbers he saw on it.  We were blown away!  I told Stace we needed to get it on video, so we did a couple days later.  I was so proud of him!!

Ella Grace is incredibly smart, just like her brother.  Her vocabulary is very robust, as well. I remember worrying the day she was born (and many days/ weeks afterwards) that the time she did not breathe after she was born would cause long-term brain damage. I was terrified, really. I thought it was really amazing that in the blessing she received from her Pop Pop & Dada a few days later, they blessed her that her mental capacities would be fully functioning. This was a tender mercy because the next day we were told she was at risk for two diseases that can lead to mental retardation.

In the baby blessing Stace gave her in the presence of our church congregation, he felt impressed to bless her with a "lifelong ability and desire to keep learning and to pursue your education." I had never heard that in a baby blessing before, and again considered it a tender mercy because of my worries about possible brain damage or mental retardation.  We were so grateful to find out that one of the diseases we'd been worried about, was actually never an issue and the nurses read her results wrong, and the other she was blood tested for over and over until she was in the normal range!  Hallelujah! I was also worried because it is just not possible to give the second child as much one-on-one attention as you are able to give the first.  And Julian is so dang smart, so he set the bar high!

But Ella Grace has taken a liking to numbers, too, and she blows me away all the time with her little mind and all that it soaks up. So I kept thinking it would be so cute/ cool if we had a video of Ella Grace counting at the mailbox at the same age as Julian was. So today we finally made our way out there for the first time with her.  Stace turned on the camera, and this was the first and only video we got.  She did pretty awesome, no?! She doesn't get 4 or 7 in the video (though she's proven time and again that she knows them!), but she also counts all the way to ten, while Julian counted to 8...so they balance each other out:D  I'm so proud of her!!

PS: Please excuse the exhausted 3-year-old clamoring for our attention in the background. It was way past nap-time:/