Making it last

Little known fact...Easter actually lasts about three weeks long. It has nothing to do with a persons religious bent per se, but is more like a snowball effect. Or in this case, avalanche. Most holidays are this way when you have kids of a certain age, and I'm embracing it as best as I can while covertly throwing handfuls of candy away whenever I can get away with it. In this case, Anna had three Easter egg hunts, three baskets, and multiple candy comas. Her preschool had their amazing annual hunt at a local residence. I could be mistaken, but I think the owners are actually on the short list for sainthood. Don't quote me on that, but regardless, they are kind and generous to a fault. Plus, their house is beautiful! The kids do the bunny hop, go on a scavenger hunt for goodies, and have treats with the Easter bunny.

Next was our home celebration.  We colored easter eggs on Saturday afternoon and only sacrificed a couple in the process.  It was a good year.  I told Anna that we would stick them in the fridge and the E.B. (Easter Bunny) would get them out and hide them in the yard for her to find.  I set the alarm for 6am to...ahem...ensure the EB had made it.  At 5:55 Anna came crawling into our room asking to snuggle with us.  Plan B ensued.  I got up to...ahem...make breakfast.  I happened to mention to Anna that while I was in the fridge I noticed our eggs were not there.  Her eyebrows shot upward about 6 inches.  She had a wildly good time searching for eggs and thought it was extra sweet that the E.B. had picked a daffodil to put in her basket.  She got an awesome hand puppet that looks like 3 baby birds in a nest.

Next was my family Easter celebration.  We headed down to see my parents for our annual tradition.  My Mom must have started cooking on Tuesday to have prepared this much food.  It was.....sorry, I think I went into a food coma just reminiscing about it....wonderful.  The kids colored eggs and did another egg hunt, and played and played and played.



We had a wonderful time, but needless to say, I'm glad Memorial Day isn't a candy-centered holiday.  It will be a nice change.

The End

St. Patrick's Day

As is our annual tradition, Anna went with Mom to work on St. Patrick's Day morning and then on to catch our town's awesome downtown parade.  We had lunch and then headed out into the overcast (but dry!) day.  You can see Anna enjoyed her hot dog.  We stuck out the first hour of the 2-hour long parade, (some years it has been up to 3 hours long!)  long enough to see the bagpipers, horses, fire trucks, numerous floats and classic cars, AND the Capital City Crushers, our girls' roller derby team.  We had a super time!

Dragon Bites

Tonight while doing our bedtime stories, Anna was playing the part of princess to my prince (I always have to be the prince -- AND she makes me talk in a deep voice.  She's very particular about that, so if I break character, she's all over me about it!)  Suddenly said she had an owie on her arm.  There was honest concern in my voice when I asked her what happened, until she told me, "Dragon bite."  I tried to kiss it to make it better, but apparently my magic isn't powerful enough.  "So, what does cure a dragon bite?" you ask.  Barbie band-aids.

Like a fish to water...Anna takes to the stage.

It's been a month since I last posted.  At this stage, Anna is so very active, and interactive, by the time she's in bed, I'm too exhausted to do much of anything.  Ironically, tonight I am posting because I have insomnia.  Seemed like something I could get done.

Anna has had a really busy month. We just finished her 8-week drama class at the local civic theatre. She loved it, so we will plan on enrolling her again sometime. Probably in the fall. The play was, "The Minstrels of Bremen." Anna was one of the narrators and had two lines, "By and by they met a cat," and, "The four friends crept up to the house window." She was brilliant, of course. I was concerned that she may see the audience and become bashful, but I soon knew I had nothing to fear. As the narrators crossed the stage during the opening scene, Anna leapt across the stage in her best ballerina form while the others simply walked. During the curtain call, she practiced her pirouette. This after just three ballet lessons, but I'll get to that later. Anna had a big cheering section in the audience, and we presented her with a couple of pink roses afterward. We were all incredibly proud of her. I figure anything we can do at this stage to make her comfortable speaking and being in front of people, the easier it may be for her as she grows up. The theatre did that for me, and I hope she will enjoy and benefit from it as well.

A few weeks ago we also enrolled Anna in ballet.  Right now it's just a "creative dance" class, and she's really, really, really enjoying it.  (See huge grin in photo to the right.) She'd been begging me to go to ballet for months, so the timing seemed right.  Her friend, Rebecca, who is 3 months older than Anna, also goes to the same conservatory.  Her first recital will be in June at the local Performing Arts Center.  They will have costumes and the whole shebang, which I know will put Anna over the moon.  We might even have to sedate her.  Just kidding.  Again, this is another activity I can really get behind.  She already loves to dance, and I think the coordination building, the grace and body awareness, the athleticism, all that is simply a good thing.  We try to keep her in just one activity at a time because we all need our down time and I honestly don't want to be one of those parents who over-schedules their kid in an attempt to live vicariously through them.  Believe me,  I've seen them in the parent waiting room at the ballet studio.  Yikes!  I think it's important to have a life and an identity separate from your child.  Anyway...  every day is an adventure and we're having a great time hanging out with this awesome, amazing and hilarious little girl.  You all should be so lucky (wink).

A Very Long Engagement

Anna is engaged.  

I know this will come as a big surprise to many of you, as it was certainly a surprise for us.  But honestly, it was seeming pretty inevitable.  They have been dating now for over 3-1/2 years now.  His name is Ethan, and I must say that he is handsome, chivalrous, kind, and highly intelligent, although he does still live at home with his mother.  He is also an older man, almost 7 months her senior.  They met when Anna was 4 months old and he was almost 1-year old.  They started off as friends, which is certainly a great way to begin a  relationship.  This morning Ethan spoke to his mother on the way to school.  He told her he was going to marry Anna and that she would be his wife.  Hannah (his Mom) told him that they were too young for marriage, but that Anna could be his girlfriend.  Ethan was insistent that his wish was to make Anna his wife.  When they arrived at preschool, I had already dropped Anna off, so sadly I missed the proposal.  While Hannah signed him in, Ethan went up to Anna and asked her to marry him.  He then ran up to his mother and excitedly told her, "She said 'Yes'!"  We're encouraging the kids to wait, to at least finish college.  In the meantime, I'm posting some pictures of the two of them taken last Sunday at Chuck-E-Cheese at a mutual friend's 5th birthday party.  

Don't they make a cute couple?

You must bemember this

Tonight Anna was doing some improvisation for an audience of stuffed animals on her bed.  About 15 minutes into a monologue, she began saying, "Bemember not to do that... Bemember what you need to do... Bemember..."  You get the point.  So, Mom has this thing about language.  I don't mean that I'm some perfect-schmerfect Nazi grammarian and spelling bee champion (and let's not even speak of my sloppy punctuation), but I think it's important to be able to speak the King's English and I simply cannot tolerate when people encourage mispronunciations and/or baby talk with children.  I think it's cruel to the baby...and everyone else within earshot.  While I think Anna's mispronunciations are quite cute, I still feel compelled to make sure she understands how the word should be spoken, obviously as a solid stepping stone into reading and writing.  (I know.  I'm taking this way too seriously.)  Example: Anna has a book called "I Ain't Gonna Paint No More."  I admit that it's fun in a singsong kind of way, but every time I have to read it out loud it's like a gut punch.  Psst -- don't tell Anna, but I usually correct a few words when I read it, just so it's not quite SO BAD.  So, I gently tell her the correct way to say the word "remember".  "'R', Honey.  Not 'B'."  (Insert loud toddler protest here.)  "I WANT to say it that way, Mom!  I don't want to say RE-bember!"  So, I'm backing off.  Much like I've temporarily given over to the fact that she calls her coat cubby at school a covey.  And just like I'm ignoring that every doll, stuffed animal and picture she draws is currently named Barbie.  She knows what it is, what it's supposed to be; yet in her own way she is expressing her independence and creativity.  Who am I to squash those qualities?

The Benny Stories

Meet Benny.

Benny came to us via the North Pole at Christmastime.  He is named in honor of our friends' orange cat....Benny.  He's a rather dramatic cat, we've found, putting on all sorts of theatrics every evening at bedtime, often interacting with the neighborhood finger puppets.  Our bedtime routine with Anna is ever evolving, but this is the age of Benny.

Something extraordinary happened the other night...to Benny.
He discovered a magical wishing egg.

Inside the egg was an ordinary looking glob of purple play-dough.










BUT, when you whisper a wish into the egg, the play-dough
magically transforms into your wish!








For example, Anna, having recently lost her snowman
to the warming temperatures, wished for a snowman.

Voila!




The magic egg is now in high demand, and after several nights the play-dough is getting a little dry,
but we're having fun while the magic lasts.


Being the parent of a toddler is the best job in the world, don't you think?