Angel girl

Kurt took this picture with his phone one day and I just thought it was precious. He gets the best pictures even with a camera phone. Doesn't she look angelic?

nine months old

How is my little girl nine months old. These nine months have gone by a lot faster than the previous nine months. What a difference nine months makes. I can't believe she was in my belly nine months ago and now she's just this little smily person who eats everything off of the floor that she can possibly find. I left her in the kitchen the other day where she was crawling around playing while I went to the bathroom and in the two minutes I was gone, she got into Jackson's easel and had written on her face with one marker and had sucked on the other colring her tongue, teeth, and the whole inside of her mouth orange. And so it begins...

Annabelle passes the time these days by hunting for inappropriate things to put in her mouth and choke on. We discover about half of them pre-digestion and the other half 12-24 hours later. She literally does this all day long, more interested in the hunt than toys. I vaccum and sweep at least once a day but with a 3 year old she still succeeds. She has now learned to lock her teeth and bat our hands away. I introduced her to cheerios yesterday in the hope that if I gave her something appropriate to put in her mouth it would serve as a replacement behavior for the constant crumbs and carpet fibers that she lives for. She loved them and yelled any time her tray was empty even if she had a mouth full. She currently babbles mamama, and dadada and Jackson would tell you that she is saying all kinds of other things. Her current favorite "toys" are little noses saline spray, plain brown bottle nipples, a broken breastpump tubing, a little einsteins book, and an actual fisher price table top with the legs removed so she doesn't pull to stand on it and face plant forward, oh and any electrical cord. She is a good sleeper and generally all smiles, especially if mommy is around. She is crawling everywhere and starting to pull to stand. She is loads of fun and I can't believe how fast this is going!!! Nine months from now she will be this whole little person.

A Day in the Life of Jackson

One day a couple of weeks ago Jackson was in true Jackson form. There's really no other way to describe it. It was like moving from one train wreck to the next. Some days he is the sweetest most well behaved child who listens and takes a nap and plays by himself and with his sister and doesn't get into anything. Then there are days like this day...

Jackson does not nap every day so when he can't fall asleep I tell him he can have quiet play time in his room until____ o'clock.(fill in the highest number that I think I can get away with).On this particular day he was tired but had fought me and fought me to go to sleep, he wouldn't stay in his room, etc.. So finally after putting back into his room way to many times to count (and only yelling once) he gave up and stayed in there for "quiet time". When I finally heard something crash I opened the door and just stared. When I asked Jackson what on earth he was thinking he answered with out an ounce of guilt "It's my sand." Perplexed I asked what he was talking about and that we do not clear everything off of every shelf in our room. The reply I got was "but, Mom I'm Sandman and this is my sand, see..." and he proceeded to whirl about the room throwing things to illustrate his point. For those of you who do not get the reference there is a scene in Spiderman 3 where sandman is created and whirls around in a container of some sort of radioactive type sand. He had seen this scene a couple of times about a year ago, what could I do but laugh without looking to encouraging and take pictures.

So then follows the one hour standoff to pick up the last 25 items on his own after I cleaned up most of the rest by myself (which by the way I later found that night that he had just stashed in the closet and told me he had put away). I then try to find ways to occupy his time while I cook dinner. I came up with a car wash for his cars on the back porch with a small tuperware container with bubbles and scrub brushes. When I looked out on the back prch this is what I saw.

(the car was not strategically placed but, does it's job. Hopefully no one will find these too offensive, I'm sure he'll appreciate these phots in 10 years)


So to top off the day as I put him in the bath I started to burn dinner and set off the smoke alarm which freaked out the kids. But we recovered with a jam session after dinner minus the burnt rice.