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...

I'll be back soon

Here's a quick post about a few things I didn't want to forget about the kids right now.

*Jackson will constantly ask me to get something for him or tell me he can't carry something because he is "full of hands". I stopped correcting him after the first time because it reminds me that he is still little and I love it.

* Anna is so independent all I hear all day long is "Anna!!!"(the three exclamation points don't due it justice, she is serious!) and "Anna do". She recently went so far as to try to pat her own back and hum the song I sing to her the last two nights.

*Anna is obsessed with blue because she has learned to label that color consistently and now wants everything to be blue.

*Jackson is obsessed with the new found joy of playing Daddy's video game and we have used this to our advantage to use as a reinforcer for staying in his room quietly until 7. Our life has changed, enough said. If only Anna was into the XBox.

Ok, the computer is about to die and I am too lazy to go get the cord... that's all for now a real post, or many real posts to follow soon.

Finally some snow

We finally got some snow here in NC. It was actually some sleet, ice and snow. This of course caused everything to come to a grinding halt in the world of North Carolina. No church Sunday and no school Mon, AND Tues(high of 45 with rain that day) and of course a delay in the morning of Wed. Poor Jackson hasn't been to school in almost a week. We did have fun though playing in the snow and having a sleepover with Kaysha and Patrick overnight Friday night.

I love this picture because it reminds me of the one from last year when we had snow. If I knew how to link to that blog I would.Jackson flying down the driveway backwards on the fastest sled which was a heavy piece of plastic that covers a quilt or pillow when you buy it. That one was the best, other ones we tried were a box folded up and Anna liked the storage container.

Racing down the driveway... Jackson got a headstart.

Fun.

Anna: version 1.5

I meant to get this post done when Anna turned 18 months, but I'm still within the same month, so that's pretty good for me. Here are some things about Anna right now:

She has recently become obsessed with what she calls "baby, gorilla" which is one of those "Your Baby Can Read" movies that has words and objects and of course babies and gorillas. It is the first thing she has ever attended to on TV and I have to say I think it's awesome. Twenty minutes of no one hanging on your leg is priceless. She requests it the minute we: walk into the house, get her out of bed in the morning, touch the remote, or basically make eye contact. She claps her hands and runs over to her rocking chair to climb in as soon as we start to put it in.

She knows about 11 body parts and can say 8 of them. She loves labeling them on you and will not stop until she runs through the whole line of them on you.

She is obsessed with playing with spices and will shout for them as soon as I get the container out. Not really sure why, she just kind of holds them.

She loves hats, but really she loves skirts and the diaper covers that come with dresses as hats much better and has one or two on more days than not.
She loves to be naked and is getting better and better at getting all of her clothes off and this includes her diaper. She can no longer wear zip up jammies to bed. This all started about three weeks ago when we forgot to turn the heater down on her space heater when we put her to bed. I heard her cry around 4:30 and then being the attentive mother that I am I realized around 5:30 that she was still crying. I went in there and she said only "water". Poor girl, it was probably 95 degrees in there. I gave her a sippy which she downed, turned off her heater and then put her back to bed. It was still pretty warm in there but not horrible. She cried for about 10 minutes and then it was quiet. When she finally woke up at 8 I went in there and she was completely naked laying down. Poor girl had to strip down to avoid heatstroke, but impressive problem solving don't you think?
She loves to talk and labels everything. This is our conversation in the car,
"Mom, Mom, Mom" "What Anna" "baby" (she's holding a baby)
"Mom, Mama" "Yes Anna" "hat" ( the baby has a hat)
"mom" "what" "milk" (also has some milk)
"mom, mom, mooommm"
"What Anna" "hi", "Hi Anna" "hi"
It's cute 4 minutes in, not so much 40.

She has to kiss everyone at least twice before bed, even if they are not family or even if she doesn't know who they are.

She has discovered the thrill of the tattle and will run into the room to tell me "Mama, Jackson, head" or "Jackson, baby" ( he hit me on the head, he took my baby).

She has about 15 babies and stuffed animals and two blankets that she insist on sleeping with every night, I've had to slowly hid them because she was running out of places to sleep. They are all usually on the floor by the time we come get her.
She can say her name really well now and labels everyone just so she can say her name and get praised. She has also begun to use the term "Anna's" when she sees something she wants or wants to make sure no one else gets.

She is a big tease and will take a toy from Jackson and take off running because she loves nothing more than to be chased. (Preview for the future...?)

Anna LOVES to throw things away and will yell "away" at you if you try to throw her diaper, orange peel, or dryer lint away with out letting her do it

Shoes have been very important to Anna since she was little, she loves them and has very specific ideas in mind on what she should be wearing. These two are her current favorites, never worn matching, always one of each. These shoes are both size 2, she has freakishly small feet.
Anna loves wipes and will play with them forever, she will hold one the enitre time in Walmart wiping the cart. She also chased Patrick around the house last week because she spotted his runny nose, went and got a wipe and chased him around the house yelling "mose!" at him.

Anna told her first joke two weeks ago and was also one of her first two word spontaneous phrases, it went like this. Anna tooted and I said, "oh Anna that's stinky" She looked at me pointed and said "Mama, stinky" this of course got a big laugh from Mom and Jackson so then she proceeded to label Jackson and I as the culprits.

Ok, I know that is way more than anyone cared to read about my little Anna, but this way I will remember it all in 6 months when she is a completely different person.
She really is a doll and we just love our "Anna-goo" to pieces. She is nearly always smiling and still as easy going as she was a year ago. I can't believe my baby is becoming a toddler.

Christmas

Here is the it's almost too late to even post, post for Christmas. In my defense we switched internet providers and for some reason it will not let me upload pictures. Everytime I try it knocks me off and then I have to reconnect and try again and again one picture at a time... ok I feel my heartrate rising just writing about it. Hopefully this will be resolved soon, in the meantime, here are the pictures I could get to load.

Jackson's much anticipated green lightsaber and star wars jammies set to go with. He spends 3/4 of his life in jammies so this was a good gift to receive.

I love the true to life reaction of Anna opening her doll from Santa. As soon as she got the wrapping off she said "off" to get the box off. The baby has a bottle that makes sucking sounds and then cries when the bottle is taken off. She loves it and pats her saying "ahh" and telling us to "hug" her whenever she cries.

The tutu's I made were a big hit and she said"on" the minute she saw them. As soon as she had one on she cuddled her baby and kept insisting, "All done, eat" every time someone would open a present or give her one to open. She was done and wanted to get to her favorite pastime, eating.

It was a great day and so fun to have a Christmas morning with two kids who were excited to open gifts and get into the whole Santa part of Christmas. Jackson even set out carrots for the reindeer the night before and insisted that we not only set them outside, but in a bowl in the middle of the yard because,"The reindeer can't come inside and the sleigh won't be able to fit on the porch for the reindeer to reach the carrots". So true. Ahh, writing the blog makes me excited for next year already :)

Christmas cookies

Making Christmas cookies with the family. Now outdated pictures of us making cookies.
This picture is of Jackson's first cookie with a full go ahead on the sprinkles. After I "encouraged" him to use less sprinkles, or "killed Christmas" as Dustin put it by reigning in the sprinkle use, it was smooth sailing from there.