"Why is it always all about Anna?"

This is a draft that I wrote in November so that I could be ahead of the game and post it on Decemeber 1st. Ahh, so much for good intentions. Here is the post anyway....



This is the unfortunate comment that I heard Jackson mutter yesterday and sadly it's somewhat accurate these days. Anna has discovered the joy of being classically two years old and she loves everything about it. Don't get me wrong I love this girl to pieces but I never experienced anything like this with Jackson. Anna is definately a bit of a drama queen. Here are some examples of what Anna has been up to lately:



Anna is constantly torturing Jackson and her favorite game is to take a toy from him and run for her life, this is followed by screaming and very dramatic tattling about how Jackson tackled her and took her toy. I have seen it too many times to be fooled.



As much as she is always torturing Jackson Anna loves him to pieces and her world falls apart if he won't play with her or do what she wants him to do (fortunate for her he is very easy going and will most likely give in and do what she wants to do). Lately she has taken to calling him Jack which Jackson does not appreciate. This has resulted in her using it nearly all of the time now. "Come on Jack", "Let's go Jack" "Jack where are you?" all followed with Jackson saying "Don't call me Jack, my name is Jackson".



Anna has her sweet moments and has not wanted to play by herself. She uses the sweetest face possible while asking "Mommy you want to come play with me?" If I hesitate she immediately follows with " Come on Mom. I'll hold your hand." and the very irresistible, "Come on honey, come on."



Anna's favorite things to play with are her many Minnie Mouse figures and her cupcake and tea set. We have a minimum of three birthday parties a day around here.



Anna is nearly always naked at home. I chase her around throughout the day making her wear at least underwear. When I asked her today where her clothes were she said "I not telling, I no like clothes." When I asked her why she said, "I no like underwear I like to be naked".



Anna figured out on her own how to use her little potty as a stool and climb up on the big potty to go. The fact that I no longer have to clean out a gross little potty ten times a day is awesome. Anna is big about her privacy and if I try to check on her she will tell me to "Go away" and will climb down to shut the door on me.



Yesterday Anna climbed into the bottom of the round part of one of our bar stools and said, "Look I'm a Anna pie"



Some popular Anna phrases:

"I ALREADY did" (caps are necessary to the phrase)

"You no help me I do it by myself."

"I need my Minnie"

also not really a phrase but hours straight of only meowing and pointing with what look like paws as she crawls around pretending to be cat. This is a bit of a problem at church and Walmart.

She will now comment on her own "There are no kitties at church?" when we walk in.

"Anna crying".... followed by the explanation of why she was crying



This leads into the most maddening thing that Anna has been doing the last week which is not sleeping. Anna had strep a little over a week ago and so naturally every time she cried I went in and cuddled her or got her water, etc... Well after two days of this Anna decided there was no reason to sleep in her crib when she could be cuddling on the couch. I was undecided how much was learned behavior and how much was something internal still bothering her until two days ago when I asked her if she was going to take a good nap for mommy and she thought for a moment and then said, "No, Anna going to cry alot" to which I ignored and she followed up with "Anna no like to sleep in my crib I want to cuddle with Mom". Time for an intervention. Two days of no going in after she was laid down and she slept through the night last night.

Another One Bites the Dust

Please listen to this entire song. Then listen to it again. One more time. This is what my entire trip dropping Jackson off to school and back sounds like.

He heard this song on the radio one day and loved it. Kurt in a moment of unknowing foolishness told him that he owned the CD. This has resulted in a Queen obsession from both of my children. Jackson is specifically obsessed with this song and wants it on repeat. He asks with real concern who is dropping him off and picking him up at school this morning and would act heartbroken if I was not taking him. This did great things for my Mommy ego until the day I did not have the CD in my car and he had no intrest in me or my vehicle. Anna out of sheer desperation to listen to something else while in the car has begun to request "Rock You" and "Bicycle" when she can't take Another One Bites the Dust one more time. There really is nothing funnier than hearing your two year old sing the lyrics and sound effects to Bicycle and Another One Bites the Dust. I'm not sure how long this will last but I guess I should be glad it's not the Wheels on the Bus or the Itsy Bitsy Spider on repeat.

First Day of School

I just took a look at the blog, then hit refresh because surely my last post was not really in August. Yep. Surely it was. I also happened to notice in one of those August post I promised to be better this fall. It's technically still fall so I'm not a liar yet. Here's the beginning of the five or six posts I've been meaning to write which should redeem me and remove me from liar status.



Here are some pictures from the first day of Kindergarten for Jackson...

He did great and only Mommy cried.

I thought I'd at least get a few tears from Anna, who just went straight to the baby and waved goodbye like we were old news.

Post number one. Done. I promise to make the others better, it's a start right?

Goodbye summer...

Looking through all of these pictures has gotten me overwhelmed. I realized I haven't posted our trip home, our family vacation and many more. I think I might be done updating. Here's one last look at summer. If you've noticed a theme,yes, Jackson is always in his pajamas. He loves them. Even when sunbathing.

Anna's B-day

The quick pictorial run down of Anna's birthday. I placed the boring pictures of my party prep first so that you will have to look to get the pics of Anna. Lots of prep for 4 family member guests. Still worth it though. The candy bar...
yummy cupcakes and super yummy strawberry shortcake cake.
I thought the biggest hit would be the swim baby, but it really has been the cupcakes and the 5.00 walmart tea set which if you have not seen it and have a girl from the age of 2-8 you should really check out. It's very cute and porcelin and has polka dots and is seriously five dollars. Regular price. Not on sale. Ok, there's my tea set plug, even Jackson gets in on the tea parties.

The night before Kindergarten

It's not a good sign if Mom is crying the night before Kindergarten starts, but it's who I am, I can't help it. I read today that there are two different back to school moms. The ones who do a dance of freedom in their empty house and the ones who make up fake dentist appointments and pick their kids up early because they miss their kids so much. I'm definitely the latter. I just wanted to write a quick note to you Jackson to tell you how much I love you and that I can't believe our five years at home together have gone by already. I know you will do great in school and will love to learn and make a whole new set of friends. I love how sensitive and cuddly you still are and hope that it never changes. I love that you still want the same nigh-night songs that I have sang to you since you were born and that you beg for twenty more seconds of cuddling nearly every night. I love how silly you are and that you love to tell secrets that are 80% of the time telling me you have to go potty or something else completely non-secret related like the following from last month: "Put your bathing suit on and take a hot shower," "Wrap a towel around a pine tree," and "wrap your hair around your face." I love that you make instant friends everywhere you go. I love being your mom and am happy and sad that I have to now share you with a whole new world. You'll still always be my baby boy.

Yes. I took a picture of my son laying in his bed the last night before he was officially a Kindergatener. I already admitted to being that mom. I'm not apologizing again.

So I took the summer off...

Apparently I don't blog in the summer. I have no idea where the summer went but I know we did a bunch of fun things. Here follows the quick lame version of bunches of pictures and events. More to follow in the next few days. I promise to be better this fall.

Homemade finger paints

At some point this summer we made homemade finger paints and the kids went to town on the back porch. I really have no idea when. I'm going to say Julyish...

We started out on paper which became a full on fingerpaint body massage...

which landed them carried directly into here...

End of the summer beach trip

My friend Jen and I decided to forsake all sanity and take all of our kids together to the beach last weekend and stay overnight in a hotel with all of the kids piled in. It actually went amazingly well with the only bummer being my children's inability to sleep in. Anna was up bright and early at 5:45 but it was one day so we survived. And considering Anna slept in the living room area with us we had to go to bed by 10:30, which hasn't happened in about 3 months for me, so I was well rested. We cheaped out and brought all of our food only spending 5.00 on ice cream for the kids. It was definitely worth the 120.00 it cost us both for two days of beach fun.

Burying your kids in the sand is fun. I'm serious. This was almost the best part of the trip for me, I'm not sure why...

Fourth of July

Here are some pictures from the fourth of July. We love our simple fourth of July's which include root beer floats and then playing on the golf course until dark and watching fireworks.

And of course plenty of cherries while watching fireworks.

Jackson being Jackson

Have you ever seen such a cute picture in your life? Jackson was made to be an oldest sibling and most days he just loves Anna to pieces. He really is very tolerant of her seeing as she tortures him and he is never the instigator.

When it snowed in February Jackson and I went for a walk at 11 pm by ourselves and it was so fun. We took pictures of our footprints and walked until Jackson said, "Mom, how long are we going to walk, I'm cold, let's turn around."

Every time I look at this picture I giggle. He is such a goofy kid. Still sporting the red hat.

Jackson loves for us to take pictures together, or to be in pictures at all. He has recently begun prompting me to take pictures of cute moments.

* Jackson was on Spring Break this week and we had so much fun hanging out this week. On Monday I took him to see How to Train a Dragon and then out for ice cream. It was so fun as usually Daddy gets to do all of the fun stuff with him.

* Jackson is just so 5 lately, and I don't really know how else to phrase it. Most of what he says these days makes me stare at him and try to figure out how he suddenly got so old.

* Jackson told me the other day that he doesn't want to get any older, that he doesn't want to grow up. It went like this. "Mom, I don't want to get any bigger, I just want to stay like this."

"Why don't you want to get any bigger?" "Because, I just want to stay like this... well, maybe five, yeah just stay at five, well, I guess six. yeah just six not any bigger." Trust me, if I could make that happen I would. He has repeated the request a couple of times this week.

*Jackson and Daddy have weekly sleepovers and Jackson can stay up later than Daddy every time. He loves it and knows the countdown until the day they are having one all week.

*Jackson came home almost crying twice last week from school, the first time was because a kid wouldn't accept his apology for an accidental hit during soccer and the second because the same kid who is his best friend at school told him he " wasn't in love with him". This caused Jackson many tears about the fact that his friend was not in love with him and that they weren't friends anymore. All was resolved the next day when it was as nothing had happened. Jackson is so kind-hearted and sensitive, I shutter at the thought of Kindergarten. I have an almost physical anxiety attack nearly every other day at the thought of Kindergarten night on April 27th.

Anna being Anna

Here are some recent pictures of Anna. Anna loves to paint and asks to do it by saying "color, milk".Anna's first taste of "ice cream" (It's soy but it still counts). She liked it but didn't seem to think it was anything special.

It's hard to tell but she has on three tu-tu's here and a pair of fairy wings.

Another favorite combo: reindeer antlers, shiny Chinese paints, and fairy wings.

Loved this picture as it captured the look she gives when excited about something. It's usually reserved for when we are putting the "animal" DVD in which is the new obsession, but this picture was taken at the zoo when she saw a turtle swim by.

Looking pretty after church. She better be glad she is pretty, she is a nightmare in church lately, often requesting timeout. Darn, what do you do with that. Not so effective.

Comfy in a laundry basket watching "Animal!" which is the Old McDonald baby einstein.

Looking good in her new five dollar Wal-Mart summer dress. Sometimes it's actually worth it to go to Wal-Mart.

Some other Anna updates include:

* She loves Mickey Mouse diapers(night time) over Elmo and gets so excited to put them on at night.

* She has taken to calling me Monique and even when I ignore her and prompt her to say mom or mama she will say it and then tack on "Nique" or "Moknee" as soon as I respond.

*She loves to tease Jackson to get him to chase her and will swipe toys and take off to get the game going then get scared by Jackson being mad and run for one of us.

* She has discovered the word no, but says it like "Mo". She says it with force then gets shy and kind of nervous and does a specific nervous face she usually reserves for unfamiliar people who try to talk to her. She looks up every few seconds to see if you are still looking at her.

*She is in the habit of asking for her morning banana but doesn't really want it so she peels the whole thing takes a bite and throws it on the living room rug. Daddy loves this.

*She is combining lots of words into cute little sentences and uses no fillers of jabber piecing together with only words she knows.

* We played in a new big beach ball sprinkler this week and she came running crying telling me she got milk in her eye. I told her it was water and not milk, she turned around looked at it and said "oh" and stopped crying immediately.

* We got a little baby set from a friend that has a high chair attached to a little changing station and pretend bath. It came with a little diaper bag full of food and bottles. She played with it for about 4 hours the first day and just loves it. She loves her babies more than anything and feeds them and comforts and kisses them.

*Our conversations usually end every night when I am laying her down, with her asking to go for a walk in the stroller and take her baby. "Walk, mama, stroller, baby" I always tell her we will try tomorrow and when it was raining alot she would then respond "raining?" and I would tell her yes or no. Usually now I say we will try tomorrow. Tonight I told her yes Anna, we did today. She was quiet for a minute and then said "Morrow."

Easter

It should say Easter that almost was. I guess the kids don't know the difference, but our easter was lame. I started throwing up Sat. late afternoon and continued until about midnight. Needless to say, the fun easter egg scavenger hunt to find your basket was replaced by a basket hidden in the oven and fireplace.




Anna's expression says it all. Why do we eat these things? They really aren't good. She looked grossed out every time she took a bite, yet every few minutes she would try another. She ended up eating the heads off of the whole row.
We canceled dinner and I still have a huge ham in my fridge. Daddy still took them to a easter egg hunt at the resort complete with a giant Easter Bunny.

Am I the only one who finds this "tradition" bizzare? I don't know if I ever actively believed in the Easter Bunny but I had a conversation with my husband this year about being surprised that people tell their children that this giant bunny was bringing them their baskets. Kurt said my childhood made him sad (due to the very logical thinking, not holiday parental neglect),and he asked me what I thought he did. I replied that I thought he was just kind of the mascot of Easter. I mean really doesn't that make more sense? He is a giant life sized bunny with weird huge eyes and a bizzare get up that usually contains somesort of bowtie or suspenders.

Really? Who started this?
My kids are way too trusting and loved him up. Patrick gave the appropriate response.
Anyway, that was kind of a tangent but here are the kids looking cute.

They ame home with at least one hundred eggs filled with assorted cheap candy and fillers. These items were sorted and are still sitting above our fridge.

And this picture is from the Friday before Easter when Jackson came home from school and took a nap. I laughed so hard I could hardly quietly take a picture.