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.

Then and now

Here are a couple of pictures we took at the zoo and the comparison from a year ago.

Ok, ao this proved alot harder than I thought because I have no idea how to format pictures on here other than my large and down the middle usual. So, basically you get the point, this years pictures on the left and last years on the right. And then just because he's cute...