5

This cute little brown-haired, brown-eyed, smiling, bouncing baby girl is now 5! How did that happen?

We had a grand old day celebrating, and I think we were successful. What else can beat--
*balloons carpeting the family room when you wake up

*favorite breakfast served
*Dad working at home for the day
*lunch at Burger King--plus the actual off-the-menu kids' meal! No value chicken nuggets today!
*afternoon with a mom, brother, and a friend at Bouncing Bears, and then happy hour Sonic slushes
*playing outside with friends
*favorite dinner
*pink cake with Disney princesses on it
*presents!--including a Rapunzel doll, zhu zhu pet, and roller skates!

Wow, what more could a birthday girl need?

Happy 5th Birthday, Anna! Bring on the next year!

Me!

Mommy (to David): What's your name?

David: (no reply)

Mommy: Are you Anna?

David: No!

Mommy: Are you Mommy?

David: No

Mommy: Are you Daddy?

David: No

Mommy: Then who are you?

David: Me! (pointing to himself with a huge grin)

Yes, yes you are, cute little guy. I sure do love my little "me"!

What is it

that possesses cute little toddlers like this

to stick random stuff up their noses?
A very distraught David came up to me yesterday saying, "Owie, hurt!" That's when I found the small sponge paintbrush missing its tip.

After a quick peek up the offended nostril proved unfruitful, we resorted to more desperate measures, complete with mommy pinning the boy and daddy using a little pen-light to aid in a more thorough examination. Lo and behold, there WAS in fact something dark stuck way up in there. A very unpleasant procedure followed--including more pinning, attempted kicking and much screaming (I swear it was David, not me...), banishment of the ever-growing-wide-eyed big sister, and long-skinny-tweezers-removal-of-the-ugly-squished-piece-of-sponge-paint-brush.
We're all a little bit older, a little bit wiser, and a lot bit grossed out. And David keeps walking around repeating his lesson-learned-the-hard-way: "Nose, owie." Points to nostril, "No, up nose." That's right, cute little guy, remember that one.

What's with these 2 1/2 year-olds anyway? I think we've done this before--a little deja vous...
I guess we're 2 for 2 now.

"Thomas Hour"

a.k.a. "Witching Hour" for the kids. You know the time of day? Anywhere from 5:00-7:00 pm, depending on when Dad makes it home from work. You've given your all for the whole day, crossing things off your to-do list, feeding and changing the kids, playing and enjoying each others' company for at least a good portion of the day.But no matter how good a day it's been (or bad, because of course some days have very little of only good), there comes a time at the end of every day where we all start to go a little crazy. Or a lot crazy. The 5 pm itch, which quickly elevates to a pull-my-hair-out-if-you-whine-at-me-one-more-time-and-you'd-better-wait-til-your-dad-gets-home-and-no-you-may-not-have-one-more-cookie-because-it's-almost-time-for-dinner kind of nuts, if you will.
Our new solution? Thank you, Youtube Thomas the Tank Engine video clips! It is fast becoming a favorite time of the day. See those happy faces? There's no beating that at 6:05 while waiting for Dad to make it home. Even better is the fact that 4-year-old Anna can navigate the "recommended videos" with a mouse on her own, so they can watch clip after clip without my help. Makes that last 30 minutes much more blissful all around, and Dad gets greeted by happy smiles when he comes home. So how do you spend your "witching hour"? Do you have a brilliant bribe, err activity, that helps you through that last stretch of the day?

Already?

Is it really the end of May already? Wow, time is flying too quickly again and I've been neglecting my little blog here again. Just had to squeeze in one quick blog post so my blog archives show I posted at least ONCE this month! I'm pathetic, I know.

So I will say, Happy May! And leave you with a picture to show you we are well, life is good, and 2-year-old David is still having fun learning to undress to his diaper every time I turn around. Isn't it nice that some things never change? Sleep is calling, so I'll see you in June.

First Talk in Primary!

Anna got to give her very first talk in Primary at church 2 weeks ago. A quite considerable milestone when contrasted with the Primary Program last fall where she snuggled into her teacher's lap and hid her face from everyone. We decided to take advantage of the Easter season while preparing her little talk. She loved opening all of the little eggs and showing her little items in them. Anna did a great job, nerves and all, and said every word at the microphone, despite waiting for the requisite "Mommy Prompts" on each line. Oh well, I'll take it!

Proud mother that I am, I made her give her talk again sans the unneeded "Mommy Prompts" (possibly 3 or 4 times until we got the video acceptable...) at home for the camera and posterity's sake. Here is her sweet little Easter testimony.

"At Easter time you see pretty flowers.

At Easter time you fill your Easter baskets.

At Easter time you eat yummy candy.

At Easter time you paint Easter eggs.

At Easter time you think about Jesus and the empty tomb.

He was resurrected. I know He died for us.

I know He lives and loves us.

In the name of Jesus Christ, amen."

Swings!

We got lucky enough to find a swingset for our backyard a couple weeks ago! Being the kind, patient, ever-supportive husband and father he is, Dan got roped into driving to take down the swingset from someone's yard and bring it home to our yard and reassemble it for us. Thank you, freecycle. And thank you, random kind stranger-getting-rid-of-a-swingset. And thank you, Dan, for doing the work. The kids thank you. And I thank you for the freedom given me to send them out back to swing while I'm cooking, cleaning, or just in need of a kid-less moment. Swingsets are heaven!

For your enjoyment--this little video clip from earlier this evening had Anna and David giggling incessantly for the longest time while repeatedly watching:

"i" and "o"

"i" and "o" are the two letters that David surprised me by recognizing and naming while we were at the mall today! We were playing at the indoor mall playground, and I had stopped to have Anna name all the letters in the name of the mall printed on the wall--you know, being that good proactive mom trying to help her daughter get ready for kindergarten and all that good stuff. She was busy identifying "w" when David reached out, pointed to "i", and named it. Then the 3 different o's in the name too. He can't identify many colors or shapes yet, but his ABC's? He's got them! (Or at least starting to "get" them--I guess he pays attention a lot more than I realized.) Color me proud of this cute little guy!

April Fools!

Happy April Fools' Day!

Anna, David, and I had fun making spaghetti cupcakes to trick Dan tonight.

Then we had meatloaf cupcakes frosted with mashed potatoes. Tasty, but didn't turn out very realistic looking.

But the real kicker was my own private joke--jello in their juice glasses! Anna especially found it hilarious to be tricked when I said, "April Fools'!" to her after she tried to drink it. It's fun making these cute kids laugh!


It took David a little bit to figure out why his juice "won't work". He got over it pretty quickly, as jello is a huge favorite with him.
Dan had his own fun with his "juice"...
Hope you all had a fun April Fools' Day!

Nothing sweeter

From where I stand at this moment, there's nothing cuter and sweeter than 2 sleeping children at 2:45 in the afternoon. How I miss regular naptimes!

It's good to have a nice (sleeping!) reminder of what sweet little angels I have.

Go Texan!

March is Rodeo month in Houston, and Anna's preschool had their fun "Go Texan!" day to go right along with it. So, "Go Texan!" she did, as much as our limited supply at home allowed.

Poor little cowgirl had to make do with the tiny play hat she got at school as a party favor. I think we might need to buy our kids real cowboy/girl hats now that we are getting into the big-time school Texas-pride days. And I mean Texas Pride with a capital P. It's hard to live here and not feel it, native Texan or not.
Maybe by next year's rodeo celebration she'll be lucky enough to have a pair of boots too. What self-respecting cowgirl in TX doesn't have boots, anyway? I want some boots too. Heck, I'm fixin' to outfit the whole family--y'all should be proud! Does this mean we're putting down roots? 4 years in a couple months, wow time sure flies.

Bluebonnets, the Texas state flower, preschool-style!
And they did some panning for gold activity and Anna brought home her pieces of gold she found.
We love preschool!

Flower stems are fun

This was one of my favorite pastimes when I was little. I remember playing with my best childhood friend, picking dandelions or other "flowers", and then spending hours curling the stems. I had a fun walk down memory lane today watching Anna light up as I taught her how much fun these flower stems can be!

Items needed:

Dandelions, spring yard "flowers" (aka weeds)
An enthusiastic helper!Nice workspace where you can use a bowl of water--oh, and some paper towels are helpfulStep 1: Choose a flower with a nice long stemStep 2: Pinch off the flower head to remove from the stem.Step 3: Peel the stem in half lengthwise, starting at one end like so... peel all the way down so you have two pieces.Step 4: Put each piece of the stems in a bowl of water.Let them float around...Watch the magic for a while!Step 5: Remove from the bowl of water and let dry on a paper towel. Behold the beauty of curled flower stems! Despite the fact that they have no real useful purpose but to make you smile as you watch... Although, we were tempted to make a green picture with them for St. Patrick's Day this week. We may still do that tomorrow.

So tell me, did you like to curl stems of dandelions as a child? Or maybe you did more of another memory I have--pinching the head of a dandelion off while singing, "Mama had a baby and the head popped off!" Yeah, I think I'll hold off on teaching that one to Anna and David. But I'd be willing to bet they'll learn it from some other children, much the same way I learned it. Isn't it great that some things will never change?

Edited to add:
After I posted this I did a google search to see how popular this idea is and I found this blog post about it with actual dandelions.
Dandelion Curls
We don't have actual dandelions in our yard, so we had to made do with smaller stemmed weeds.

Every Little Girl

needs the thrill of picking flowers in her backyard.

And every mother needs a little girl to bring her bouquets of them to keep in a juice glass on the kitchen windowsill--just like she did for her mother when she was a little girl.