What Fun We Are Having

At the park with Clarkie

Warming up with Clarkie after the Park

At the park with Thad

Ponytails!

New outfits (I made that!)

(I did not make that one)

Hanging out with Daddy.

Exploring Christmas

Anna was only 10 months old last Christmas, she couldn't walk or talk, open presents or drink Egg Nog. This Christmas she is very aware of what is going on and it is fun to see her examine it all and try to put it in context.
She has figured out the basic concept of "Christmas Tree" - It has lights (!) and shiny balls (!) that are really hard for her to put back as she removes them.
She has found that under the tree are "Presents" - These are boxes in assorted sizes that are disguised. (Hopefully she won't figure out that it is paper because that will lead to some crayola-ed presents)
The "Santa" idea is too hard to explain, though she did watch the Dr. Seuss original "Grinch who stole Christmas" (also too hard to explain).
"Baby Jesus" will have to be explained at some point, although I'm not sure the purpose because she can barely identify pictures of adult Jesus, much less his role in life.

Hopefully if we keep telling her that she can't open presents until "Christmas" she will get excited enough to enjoy it when it comes.
What else should I teach her about Christmas?

Erntedankfest

This is the best Thanksgiving miracle I could possibly share with you.
courtesy Marci mayhem

Tooth brushing

I know I must really be tired when I accidentally use Anna's toothpaste to brush my teeth.




I know I must be really really tired when I accidentally use Anna's toothbrush to brush my teeth.




Good night.

1458 points

Anna won 1458 points today for being the best child ever.
Let me break it down for you:

65 points for barely putting up with leaving for the Primary program rehearsal with a pancake in her hand. (she could have been better, but she wore her jammies so it was cute)

197 points for quietly watching 2 episodes of Little Einsteins in her high chair while I taped the bathroom for painting. (it was not hard to convince her)

320 points for sleeping while Ben and I painted the primer coat in the bathroom.

211 points for watching Ice Age while we finished the 2nd coat.

498 points for playing quietly with her toys in the kitchen without breaking anything, falling off anything or getting into anything while we did touch ups and cleaned up. (and for not trying to help)

66 points for knowing the word "around" and running circles around us when we collapsed on the bed.

101 points for being generally adorable, managing to not get paint on herself and yelling for me by name in several episodes of the day.

Nope

Instead of screaming "Noooo!" in the midst of tantrums, Anna screams "Nooope!"
Just picture it, it will brighten your day.

Just a Heads Up

If Anna starts yelling at you a word that is somewhere between "All done" "Again" and "Outside" what she is trying to say is "Einstein" - meaning "Little Einsteins" (not to be confused with "baby einstein") a disney show that she watches on my computer. But don't think she'll stop at asking. She will pick up your laptop and haul it down the hall to you, maybe dropping it a few times to accentuate her point.

just a heads up.

Halloween Hoohah

Here are our puckins.

Here is our minnie mouse.

We are not halloween people.

Apple technology

Daddy's phone from Apple

Anna's phone from an apple.

(she is literally saying "hewwo? Gamma?")

Gerbies

Ben came home from the grocery store with these today. Red Gerbera Daisies, "gerbies". My wedding bouquet was red gerbies. We tried in vain to keep a plant alive in our earlier apartments though blossoms were few and far between, eventually we put it out of its misery. Hopefully this one will at least make it through the winter so we can feel perpetually in spring.

Recipes That Don't Work - Flour special

This isn't so much about a failed cooking attempt, sorry to mislead. But since it was cooking related, I thought it might fly (and get some of my readership back).

How To Discover Flour in 9 easy steps.
When Anna saw me making pancake mix, I knew it was only a matter of time before I had to introduce her to flour. So on pizza night, I gave her a small pile of flour next to where I was kneading and let her figure it out.

1st - she just clawed around in it (I love her little finger prints/claw marks)
2nd - she threw it up into the air
3rd - she looked at me funny when I couldn't get the camera to take the picture I wanted.
4th - she started drawing in it, and drawing and drawing. (She did it with this kind of intensity) 5th - she wiped away her drawing to see what else she could get flour on.
6th - I asked to see her pretty face.
7th - she showed it to me.
8th - she got up on the table so her pants could play in the flour
9th - daddy came home and made us clean it up

I hope you all learned something very valuable. Anna learned about flour and what pizza dough tastes like (her favorite part was trying to pinch off pieces to eat)
Thank you,
Goodnight.

Monday again

I told Ben last night, "I don't know what we're going to do tomorrow, but I will try to make it blog worthy."

So here we are. We didn't really do anything blogworthy I'm afraid, Anna was napping for most of the day. Literally like 3.5 hours. But then we ate some good ol' mac and cheese and went to the Library and park. Anna was pretty nervous about going to a new park, especially while there were some bigger kids running around, but in reality we were pretty lucky to encounter so few people at one of the busier parks in the city. Now we are chilling, she's getting some good playtime in with some toys (learning about the intricacies of snap beads).

We went to some halloween parties this weekend which necessitated our first babysitting adventures (outside the family, meaning money exchanged hands) it was pretty nerve wracking for me. Anna didn't seem to mind as long as she could watch Ice Age every night of her life.



So this is a video we took today to fill time and...

this is a video from her awkward early toddler days when she had a bad haircut and a very goofy toothed smile.

Field Trip

Today is Monday and it totally snuck up on me. I had no plans, no errands, no chores (probably). So I decided to take Anna on a field trip up to Payson Lakes. I had dreams of finding beautiful golden aspens lining the road, but we were about a month late for that. It was still beautiful, especially a little lower on the mountain, but we went straight for the lakes and walked around a bit then had a picnic dinner with the chipmunks. We saw a lot of deer, a few on our walk, most on the drive down - some were hanging out at the campground looking at us like - "hey we got here first, this is our spot."

there's a deer at the end of the path

So happy to throw rocks

Why my toddler is the cutest

Admittedly, she has some bad habits. Like waking up too early, screaming for fun and throwing food on the ground. But we are working on it. For instance, I got pretty tired of wiping up the floor around her high chair after every meal, so I told her that it was on her now to clean it up and throw the food in the garbage. And she did it. And she continues to do it. Tonight was pretty bad, there was rice involved. I didn't think she would bother with the rice, just get the naan in the garbage and run off, but she patiently went back and forth between the garbage and her high chair, one grain at a time. Ben and I were tickled.

Furthermore, as halftime and bedtime approached simultaneously tonight, I asked her to clean up some of her toys. (a very generic request with little to no actual direction) She walked over to a Lambie that hadn't been moved or played with, nudged it, then went back to sliding down daddy's legs. Thanks Anna!

And that is why my toddler is the cutest.

Random

So we are in Boston, staying with Ben's mom who has been very generous and we are very grateful and having a great time.

Here's the random part.
Last night Ben and I watched "State of Play" about a journalist working for the 'Washington Globe' (not a real newspaper) who solves a crime.
Anna sleeps in a pack and play at the end of our bed in the guest room. Around midnight I got up and woke her up. Which woke Ben up. I told him I couldn't find the pacifier to get Anna to stop crying. So he turned on the light and found it under the chair. Now I couldn't put her back in the pack and play because we were right there and she would just cry until we either left the room or let her sleep with me in the bed. So she and I cuddled up and Ben was, unfortunately, sent to the couch.
So you might be asking yourself, "Why did Toni wake her up in the first place?"
here's my answer. "I'm not quite sure"
It could be because I had a dream that she was the editor for the 'People' section of the Washington Globe and was getting paid either too much or too little, and for that reason, I had to wake her up.
But that answer doesn't make sense, does it?

No, it doesn't.

OkBye

Shoe

(from the bedroom) "Who's shoes are these?"

"Oh, those are mine"

"Since when?"

"Since today at Target when Anna hid behind a tree and I had to walk through a pit of gravel, only to find that cleverly hidden amongst the gravel was an enormous wad of bright red chewing gum, which I tried to wipe off using the top of my other shoe which obviously only led me to spread the gum all over both shoes, at which point I decided that these shoes were the pits anyway and the universe finally pushed me into buying a new pair of shoes. Immediately."

ugh

Follow up: As soon as I had successfully wiped gum all over both my shoes, I placed Anna in a shopping cart just outside the store. Little did I know that for no justifiable or explained reason, the automatic doors were broken. If you haven't seen someone try to open heavy doors while pushing or pulling a large stroller or shopping cart, you should know that it is extremely awkward and aggravating. Especially when you know there is bright red gum all over your shoes.
Then I walked around the store, sticking with each step.

I don't like shoe shopping much - hence the reason these last shoes have been around well before Anna and have the distinct look of potatoes - I hate the possibility that for the first 3-4 days, new shoes may kill your feet. They don't have your arch perfectly ground into them or give in just the right ways. Additionally, I somehow always end up thinking about it in the fall, when the winter snows are just around the corner, and the memory of wet feet makes all fashionable shoes look silly. It's such a frustrating thought that I just give my old shoes a pep talk to get them through another month. And up until now, it has worked.

In the end however, the new converse I bought aren't too bad, although they did rub the back of my heels a bit (someone tell me this is temporary!) and I only had to look for 2 hours to find a store that sold recipe cards. Additionally, Anna had refused to eat lunch and was thus an extreme fussbudget for the entire, frustrating, gum-ridden adventure.

It's Politics people.

My tweet from earlier today: I am outraged that schools and PTA's refused to show Obama's speech. Can we really be that polarized? He is the elected President, right?

The Tribune article that got me started (please notice the misspelled 2nd word)

My GChat Conversation with Ben later on:

Husben: i re-tweeted your tweet

i liked it a lot

me: thanks

I just talked to the kids coming back from elementary school - they didn't watch it

What do people think he is going to make ridiculous socialist statements without thinking of the consequences?

Husben: apparently

what's stupid is that you don't talk to kids about policy, you talk to them about values. and liberals and conservatives do have the same values at heart, they just disagree on how to bring those values to pass.
me: yeah, and these are exactly the kinds of speeches that president's should be giving - addressing the entire nation of young people to encourage them to do their best

would this happen to any other president?

ALSO - he released the text of the speech on MONDAY so that parents and teachers would know there was nothing bad in it

ARG
Husben: and what if he did say something to forward the liberal agenda? wouldn't this give parents an opportunity to discuss the future of the nation with their kids?

me: Then some 5th graders told me "it's ok if you voted for Obama, it doesn't make you a bad person
me: and I totally agree with your point about values. What conservative doesn't want their kid to learn about working hard and staying in school?

In Summation: When the President addresses the nation, it's a lot like General Conference. He might introduce a new way of looking at things, but he has to keep it pretty vague to catch everyone who's watching and retain his approval ratings. So he can't really fly off the handle in those situations.

A new one

I have now twice seen a new kitty in our backyard, s/he is not one of the regulars.

What is so attractive about my house that makes every cat in the neighborhood want to poop there?

Time to bust out the moth balls.

Anna's Tiger only eats Toes

Is there anything else in this world that is better than a cold glass of apple juice?


I'm pretty sure there isn't.

18 Months

This Anna is 18 months old now.
She is a big girl.


Stats: 20 lbs (!) 3rd percentile
height - 31.3" 37th percentile
head - 18" 27th percentile

fun facts:

• As I sat down to write this post, a blue crayon fell out of the couch. She loves to draw and color (especially on my coffee table) and does it all with great concentration and zeal.
• She is learning to say so many words. Yesterday, I sat on the bed folding laundry, she sidled up next to me, patted the bed and for the first time said "bed". Then she looked at me very knowingly until she got a hug. Today it is "belt" because she loves to play with Ben's belt while he gets dressed and "bum" because she was walking around with some diaper rash cream mimicking putting it on her lips like chapstick. I told her it was for her bum and pointed to her diaper. She spent the next 3 minutes shouting "BUM" and unfortunately pointing to the front of her diaper because I didn't think it would really stick. Hopefully we have remedied the situation.

• She loves to put little things away. I converted an old wipes box into a "Magic Box" she put stickers all over it and colored it some. She pushes the little button to make the top pop open then puts her crayons inside. Then she tells me it's "tuck" and I open it so she can get the "cayns" out, and then we start over again. Yesterday she sat at the table for 20 minutes putting small paperclips in a paperclip holder with a magnet around the rim. In and out.
• Today she said "me maos" (Mickey Mouse) instead of "gika" so she got to watch a "show". but when it came down to it, she picked a Pooh Bear episode over Mickey Mouse Playhouse. Go figure.
  
• It turns out that "Gika" means a lot more than I thought. At first it referred only to Mickey Mouse, but she has been using it for just about anything that she doesn't know the word for. We will work on eliminating it from her vocab over time.

• Every time she hangs out with her cousin Lincoln (6 months older) she learns at least one new word.
• I really like hanging out with her everyday. It is amazing how much she picks up from observing the world. Plus she's just stinking adorable.
• I have way too many pictures of her reaching out for the camera.
  

no subject

We played with toys downstairs without turning on the TV!

No matter what, this day will be counted a success.

Midsummer Photo Dump

I have no excuse for being such a bad blogger. I can haz forgiveness?

Here is a quick rundown of probably the least important (but most camera-handy) things we have done in the last month or so.
(in no particular order, i'm too lazy)

Coloring up a storm!

helping mommy can apricots (not)

Canning apricots

Watching Mickey Mouse. (Gika? Schow?)

Finding our pockets, acting casual.

Big sucker from Uncle Dave. So messy.

Looking precocious in a poorly homemade dress (yeah, that's all you get to see)

Come chill out with us, k?