I have just spent a lot of time reading over my old entries while in the process of making a photobook of Anna's first year.  Reading them reminded me how quickly I forget the funny little moments of everyday.  So I have got to get back on track!

Our house is all ready for Christmas.  A fun tradition that we started this year is The Elf on the Shelf.  It freaked David out at first.  When asked to name his elf, he wanted to call him "Bad News" and "Bad Guy!"  Since the elf's name will be around for years to come we intervened and named him Jack.  The elf changes locations every morning (after his nightly visit to Santa to report on the kids' behavior).  Both kids love looking for him each morning.  Anna found him first today (in all fairness to David she was up nearly 3 hours before him).  She saw him hanging from the paper chain that counts down the days til Christmas, laughed and yelled out "Jack!"  When David got up he couldn't find him and Anna was so proud that she could lead her brother to the elf.  

It's hailing/sleeting (I don't know the difference between all those) - gross!  I am not adjusting well to winter weather.  David is looking forward to the first real snowfall.  A white Christmas would be beautiful, I'll admit... 

David is so excited about Christmas this year and Anna feeds off of his excitement for everything.  I think it will be so much fun this year.  

Anna has so many words in her vocabulary now that I can't even try to count.  She will try to repeat almost anything.  Some of the cutest are belly button, Dayday or Deeeed (for David, depending on how excited or mad she is), monkey, bubble... She says so many words correctly that you wouldn't expect her to know.  She is very energetic.  She loves playing rough and can be aggressive at times.   She adores cats, likes to help feed Penny, throws her cup everytime she's in her booster seat, says NO all the time, gives huge hugs, feeds herself with a spoon or fork, and loves to read books.  She also does a very cute gorilla impression.  Oh, and is super attached to me.  It's very sweet, but I can't often leave the room without her screaming.  

David is becoming very independent.  He can dress himself and does a pretty nice job picking out clothes that match.  He loves to do arts & crafts.  Scissors are his favorite art supply which can be messy but can keep him entertained for long periods of time.  He is trying to figure out abstract concepts like measurement and time.  He often asks how long things are, when things will happen, and how long things will take.  He loves dogs more than anything in the world and sleeps with about 20 of them in his bed each night.  More and more often he is sweet to his sister.  They are learning to play together nicely.  It is a wonderful change!  He talks all the time, earning himself the nickname "Mouth."  Though his speech and voice sound like a child, his words and phrases sound like a mini adult.  He will tell me that something looks fantastic or remind me that a lego house needs a good foundation.  He has gotten very good about remembering to say please and thank you, but gets frustrated when I do need to remind him.  He is inexplicably scared of caves.  

Pumpkin Pumpkin

We braved the arctic winds yesterday to venture out to get a pumpkin for Halloween. Ok, it was probably in the 50's but it sure felt cold. Anna picked out a big round pumpkin and for David? A little yellow gourd. Today he decided it was time to carve both pumpkins. I had read about a pumpkin carving technique for kids D's age so we tried it out. After scooping the guts, he took a golf tee and a hammer to the gourd. The result is a pretty cool lamp with lots of little rays of light coming out. He was also head designer for the Jack-O-Lantern face. He decided that it should be a happy pumpkin. I asked him if a triangle was ok for the nose and he said "no, it look like this" and pointed to his own nose. He prefered oval eyes to circles and insisted on straight eyebrows and hair. I must say it's the cutest pumpkin I've ever carved and we had a great time doing it.

One!

Ok I better do Anna's one year old update before she gets any older. So she's actually getting pretty close to 14 months now.



She is a huge talker. She got started with mama around 9 months, quickly adding dada and dayday. Dog and cat (dah/daa) came next. Recently she has just been exploding with words... ball, more, milk, juice, bath, bubble, wow, flower, Dottie, night-night, book & down are just some of the words that she regularly uses. And although they don't sound near perfect they are consistent enough that we know what she's saying most of the time. I almost forgot NO! For a couple of weeks it was her very favorite word and we heard it all the time. She has stopped saying it so frequently lately with the addition of so many new words. Uh oh is also a favorite - how does every baby learn the "game" of tossing a sippy cup from a booster seat and calling out "UH OH?!?"



Little princess started walking the day before she turned one. She just took a couple baby steps at a time for about a month. Just recently she decided it was time to walk! She went from taking a few steps and falling down to being able to walk from room to room practically overnight. She prefers walking to crawling now and only falls down when she gets going too fast. The only thing she likes better than walking is climbing! Little girl is part monkey! She spends too much of her time trying to climb on the kids' table in the living room. Even a pretty big fall from it has not deterred her. I had to put a tent over her bed for fear that she might try to climb out the crib. She is fearless at the playground, going up steps and down slides without caring where I am.

To my joy she has recently started to enjoy listening to books. Her favorite books are I Love Cats and Goodnight My Duckling. We read Goodnight My Duckling nine times before nap today! How can I resist her though? She gets a book, says "Boooo, booooo," walks over to me, turns around and backs up into my lap. It is the sweetest thing.

The Three Year Old

Catching up with David...

At 3, here are some of his favorites:

Food - fruit snacks (boot nacks, as he would say), juice, candy, doughnuts
Animal - dogs
Color - yellow
TV shows - Caillou, Clifford
Toys - train tracks, anything Anna has first
Books - No David, Astair the Bear, Batman versus Joker
Movies - Making Tracks to Great Destinations (Thomas), Where the Garbage Goes, Finding Nemo
Silly Stuff - playing Peek-a-boo, building lego houses for his puppies, saying "you bad news"
Places to Go - any park, outside in general, grocery store, Avery's house

D is potty-trained now. He loves reading books and building train tracks with his Thomas set. He loves being around adults - he was the life of the party at his Uncle Jeff's wedding. Sharing with his sister is still a challenge though the "no baby"s have definitely decreased. He is learning soccer and basketball through our local park district. This is an interesting experience for him - his first structured anything. He is learning to follow directions and stay with the group. Oh yeah and maye how to dribble a ball. D still loves to help cook, recycle, feed the animals. The other day he was so excited to be allowed to watch me clean the toilets while Anna was napping. He talks all the time and inquires "why" all day long. He is a sweet little man - he asks about his friends and family when they are not around and will say "Me love you!"

The last 6 weeks...

Where to begin? On May 17th we left our home in Hoover with all our belongings in a UHaul truck to start our new adventure. Chris and our stuff went to Ohio for him to continue his job search there while the kids and I, along with both cats and Penny came to Michigan to enjoy summer on the beach. It has been stressful and crazy but we have sold our house in Alabama, put a house in Cincinnati under contract and Chris is a month into a new job.

Little Miss A has made some serious changes in that time. She says mama and nanna (Anna). She waves hi and bye-bye. She has started signing - all done, more & milk. She responds to her name and the word no. Just recently she can stand by herself for a short amount of time and loves to "walk" while I hold her hands up. She is always moving and squealing. A very happy baby during waking hours... Nights have been a challenge for her but she's getting better.

The little man will be 3 in just a few weeks. I'm hoping that the terrible twos will expire at that time but I doubt it as he came into it a bit late. Listening and eating continue to be a fight with him (and I can't even think about potty training) but he is still delightful much of the time. He loves playing at parks, anything related to trains and making friends at the beach. His vocabulary continues to improve all the time. He speaks in sentences much of the time and continues to ask why at least 50 times a day. He has had so much fun getting to see more of his family... So much more that he had to refer to everyone as "that guy" til he started putting names together. He loves his guys and insists on having Grandpa put him to bed every night.

Ahhh!

Anna can crawl up the stairs.

David figured out how to open the child-safe cabinet locks.

Shoes

My little girl is developping her love for shoes at an early age. The only problem is that right now she'd rather chew them than wear them. She can spot them from across the room and takes off in her fastest crawl, squealing with glee. So of course David has made it his mission to keep all the shoes (hoos, as he says) away from her. Yesterday he worked so hard to put all the shoes he could find into a laundry basket. Shortly after he finished his project, Anna saw the basket and seemed to think it was the world's greatest treasure chest!

Another tooth!

Anna's second tooth poked through yesterday. Hopefully we will soon be getting more sleep!

Interior Design

David is redesigning our home. He told me yesterday that we should take down the living room wall that closes the room off from the entry way. He also wants to paint the fireplace yellow.

Imagination

David's imagination is taking off. For a while his favorite games were taking noses and puppies pooping. For taking noses he will come up to you and pretend to grab your nose, then proceed to hide it, throw it or eat it. It can go on for a long time with your nose ending up in the kitchen, behind the couch or even in the sandbox. (He actually used that as an argument to try to go outside to play - "mama nose in sandbox!") In puppies pooping, he would tell me that his puppies pooped in the living room and then he had to clean it up. I wonder if it's a boy thing!

Yesterday he recreated a scene from Bob the Builder. The puppies were trying to eat the sunflowers growing in the living room. First David had to be a scarecrow and try to scare the puppies away. When that didn't work he had to cut down the sunflowers and hide them under a table.

A new word that he says is "beebee." It means pretty. He talks about beebee flowers all the time.

First Tooth!

After torturing her for several weeks, Anna's first tooth poked through on Friday. It is her center bottom right tooth. It looks like the second should be in soon.

Food

David ate broccoli and mashed potatoes yesterday. Voluntarily!

His new independence in all things is both scary and fun. A couple days ago I was caught up changing Anna's diaper. He decided he was hungry. He went into the refrigerator, grabbed a Yoplait, went to the silverware drawer, grabbed a spoon, opened the yogurt and fed it all to himself before I was done with the diaper.

Anna has discovered how great Cheerios are. She loves gumming them down. She naturally has a drive for independence too and will push my hand away if I try to put them directly in her mouth. She wants to use her sticky little fingers to do it herself.

Her favorite foods right now are bananas, a Gerber apple/banana combo, banana flavored oatmeal, Edy's coconut fruit bars (I was eating one and she went crazy for it!) and a sweet potato/carrot soup from Martha's Everyday Food magazine. When I made the soup I joked that it looked like baby food and she likes it every bit as much as I do.

Easter Fun

We had a lovely Easter weekend. On Saturday we took the kids to an egg hunt at a community park. It only took David a few seconds to figure out that picking up eggs was great fun. Of course being David, he had to pick up green eggs first, then yellow... He got a big basket full and was a big boy and traded his egg collection in for a prize bag without any complaints.

The Bunny visited our home Saturday night and left a basket of goodies for each kiddo. He also left a lawn full of eggs for David to hunt on his own. He enjoyed it and only got frustrated when his basket was too small for all the eggs.

We finished off the day by sharing Easter dinner with our neighbors. After a fun couple hours of David plus 3 boys running through our house we were quite happy to have just 2 children of our own.

Baby Detective

I forgot just how observant new crawlers are. I seem to have a budding CSI on my hands. She finds every tiny scrap of paper, crumb, leaf... that has been left on my floor. Then of course it goes immediately into her mouth. Thank goodness for Mr. Dyson.

Why?

WHY is this David's new favorite word? WHY do I hear it about a hundred times a day? WHY can't I just answer, "Because I said so!"

Too Strong!

Baby girl can pull herself into a standing position! She likes to crawl to the window and stand to look out.

Big Girl

Anna continues to grow like crazy. At her six month check up she was 15 pounds, 13 ounces and 28 1/4 inches long. That puts her off the top of the charts for height and about average for weight. The doctor told me that she has the motor skills of a 9 month old! I'm not sure if that should make me proud or scared...

She can do a full crawl now and is pretty steady and fast. She has been working up to it for a few weeks now. I thought I was going to have to go into her doctor's appointment reporting that she could crawl but not sit. Every time I put her down on the floor to practice sitting up she would just flop over and take off crawling. Last weekend I had her outside for a while. I guess the change of environment intimidated her a little because she actually stayed in a sitting position for quite a while. After realizing that she can do it, she now enjoys sitting up and playing with toys for a few minutes before heading off to torment her brother.

He is sleeping right now and she is enjoying having the run of the living room without hearing "no baby" every few seconds. (We did have a breakthrough this week though. After living with her for six months, David gave her a hug and proclaimed "Dayday yike baby." Maybe someday he'll even love her.)

The little angel is a great eater. Her favorite is bananas! Maybe her nickname had some influence? She likes cereal a lot and most fruits. She will tolerate vegetables in small amounts but hasn't found one that she loves just yet.

Princess is also a talker. As she plays she squeals, grunts and babbles all the time. She gives very sweet smiles, but you have to work hard to get a laugh.

No Baby!

Quickly becoming one of my least favorite phrases used by David is "No Baby!" Since Anna has been able to move around the room he says it constantly. "No Baby play cars, no Baby chew hoes, no Baby touch puzzle, no Baby, no baby, no Baby!!" It is the way he greets her in the morning. He has even said it when she is sleeping. We had planned to count one day last week but lost track before breakfast.

My Favorite Words

David's language development is so much fun! I want to remember some of the words he uses that are just so cute.

Dayday - David
Ahn - Anna
Benn - Penny (often used in the phrase Boss Benn, as he is the self-appointed boss of the dog)
Nix & Yocky - Nixon & Rocky (who he'd like to be the boss of if they would stay in the room long enough)
Haha - coffee
Awes! - Awesome! When he falls down he exclaims "Awes crash!" And when I park the car, "Awes spot!"
Lellolellolello - Yellow
Diddle diddle - Tickle tickle
Ass - Ice
Grosh Sto - Grocery Store, oddly enough one of his favorite places to go

Yike - Like, as in "Dayday yike ball" or "Dayday no yike"

Yookin - Looking

Much - He says it correctly, but uses it when he means too, for example "ball much big fit in"

One, Six, Nine, Ten - His version of counting

Dubdubdub - W

Mountain - The word is said correctly. Every hill is a mountain. When we walk down our driveway, "Walkin down mountain"

Artin - Making art - He was painting yesterday. I said are you making some art and he said "Yes, Dayday artin."

Eats - Raisins and craisins

Both - His puppies... Their full name - both pups - still wrapped together in a blanket every night

Stay Stafe - Stay Safe - Everything has to stay safe. We make garages for his cars so they stay safe. When toys get taken away from Anna, they are staying safe.

Heb - Heavy. Used both for heavy objects and anything that is difficult. He was trying to climb up a slide and so it was a heb slide.

Our Growing Girl

At Anna's last doctor's appointment, she was 14 pounds and 11.5 ounces. She was 27 inches long. This puts her in the 50th percentile for weight and the 97th percentile for height!!! She is making the most of her size by trying so hard to crawl. She can now get herself up on her hands and knees, rock back and forth and slide each knee forward a little. Then she collapses because she can't figure out how to balance herself. Once those arms get a little stronger, she'll be off!
This girl can also eat! She has welcomed the world of solid foods, chowing down everything I have given her. So far she has tried - and enjoyed - applesauce, pears, prunes, bananas and rice and oatmeal cereals. I also caught her trying to taste a French fry from my plate at dinner a few nights ago!

Stinker

One of the best parts about D's developing language skills is that we get to find out what has been going on in that crazy little mind. Here are some funny things that he's said lately that make him a stinker...


He told me I have a big butt.
In his defense, it was not meant to be mean. I was changing his diaper and said "what a cute little butt." Anna was next to us so I said that she had a cute little butt too. David responded with "Mama, big butt"

He called Dada stupid.
This one was not quite so innocent. D is the self-appointed recycling police. One morning we came downstairs and he found a Coke can in the trash. He exclaimed "Stupid Dada!"

He learned the word mine.
Not much to say about this one... Everything is "mine!" Even if it isn't.

He is the boss of everything!
He tells the dog when to eat, if I close my eyes he tells me to wake up, he tells Anna to put socks on - or take them off... The other day after finding cat puke on the floor, he made this sentence: "Nix, stop puking under bed!"

He seems to think his sister has cooties.
After Anna got hold of his puppy he very seriously said wipes and proceeded to thoroughly clean puppy. He did it again with his basketball yesterday.

He "asks Dada."
After asking me for something and getting a no, he cheerfully says "Ask Dada" and runs off to see if he can get a different response from his daddy.