Big Dreams

I have stories galore for you this week. I'm going to start with Hannah this week. Hannah's class at daycare goes to the muscle room once in a while. This room is a padded room that has some climbing toys and riding toys in it. It is in the center of the building and is very large. Laura's class goes there at least once a day, especially in the winter to burn off energy. There are several rooms that border this room, and one of them is the dance room. It has mirrors and ballet bars in it. One day last week, Hannah's class was in the muscle room, and Laura's class was in the dance room. Well the dance room has a window into the muscle room. Hannah was playing and spotted her sister in the dance room. She crawled over to the window, pulled herself up, and was knocking at the window, calling to her sister. Laura saw her and waved. Is that not so cute??! One of the things that I regret about having my kids in daycare is that they have limited time together. I reflect on my childhood, and Ellen and I played together all the time. We played House and Barbies and outside in the sandbox and tons of other games. Laura and Hannah get very little time to play together. They may get an hour in the evenings and the weekends. But we are often busy on the weekends. I think this is kind of sad.

On to some Laura funnies. One morning Laura was waking up, and she was still partially in dreamland. She said to me, " Mommy, I have your dishwasher magazine. Not the clothes washing kind, the sink kind." I'm not sure what kind of dream she was having, but apparently she was thinking about cleaning. So that's good in my book!

This year, one of Laura's friends at school moved to Ireland. Well of course Laura has no concept of the location of Ireland. She just knows that her friend is not at school anymore. She also talks regularly about going to kindergarten. She is very excited about this, but she really has no concept of what kindergarten will be like either. She tells me the other day, "Mommy, when I'm five, I'm going to go to kindergarten AND Ireland." I just told her OK. Don't want to dash a kids dreams, right?

Laura reminds me constantly that she is big. It is often accompanied by a comment about Hannah being tiny. Well last week, we were having pizza one night. Laura usually will not eat pizza. We have to order her bread sticks. She typically does not like pizza. On this particular night, I was bathing the kids while we waited for the pizza to arrive. As I was drying Laura off, she tells me that she is big now, so she's going to eat pizza. I was excited and told her that was great that she was big now. Did that mean she could sleep in her own bed? (Laura has not slept in her own bed since Hannah was born.) Laura gave me a worried look; her mind was racing. She said well...I'm not that big. She held up her hand, and said I'm only this big. I have to be this big, and she stretched her arm as far as she could, to sleep in my room. I told her OK, and she gave me a relieved look. They're only young once.

We were driving home one day this week, and Laura asked me what are houses that stick together. I didn't know what she was talking about. I thought she was asking about what sticks on houses. So I thought she was asking about the siding or the windows or something. Well it turns out that Matt and her had had a conversation earlier in the week. She said that condominiums are houses that stick together. Oh, well, I learned something. She also said that big huge houses are mansions. She pointed out what she thought was a mansion as we passed a neighborhood. (It really was just a normal house.) But it's interesting what a huge house is to her right now.

Another development in the Adams house this week is that Matt and his brother, Alan, did our backsplash in the kitchen. Yay!! It looks great. Laura helped a little too. It was nice to get that project done, since we re-did our kitchen almost two years ago. We could never make a decision about what kind of tile we wanted. Well we finally just pulled the trigger and chose some. Onto the next project. There is always something to be done in our house. Laura really enjoyed the week because she got to see Alan, Jayne, and Josh a lot. Hannah had fun too.

Hannah actually had a rough week sleeping this week. She was up at least twice every single night until last night. The worst was Tuesday night. She was awake from 11pm to 3am. It was painful! I think she has a little cold or allergies, and she is cutting teeth. Poor thing. She is a trooper though and is happy most of the time. She finally slept through the night last night. She is probably exhausted from the week! Here's to more sleep this week!

Here are few pictures of the week. One is of Hannah and her cousin, Josh. Laura is on the floor in Aunt Jaynie's lap. Another is of Laura with her art desk. She is just like Daddy!

Teacher

"Mommy, time to potty!" "No, Laura, I'm watching the Buckeyes." "Mommy get over here right now!" "I'll be over in a minute." "Daddy, time to potty." "I'm watching the game, Laura." "Daddy, you need to come here right now."

This was the commentary for us during the Buckeye Basketball game today. She was not really trying to get us to go to the bathroom. She was playing "Teacher" at daycare. The teacher will sit on a little chair next to the potty and call each child over. And then she will mark on her clip board their status, whether they were successful. So of course, Laura had her pink chair over by our bathroom, and she was holding her note pad. During commercial, when I went to sit on the potty, she gave me a sticker. Woohoo! Laura has been very into playing Teacher and Mommy.

She got a doll this week that has a little high chair with it. Guess where she placed her baby's high chair? Right next to Hannah's high chair. There have been a couple of mornings this week when she almost missed her own breakfast because she spends most of her time feeding her baby in the morning. She is a good mommy. She feeds her baby in the morning, again in the evening and puts her to bed at night too. She changes her diaper several times throughout the day too.

Both girls had a big day on Saturday. We went to St. John Arena to watch our cousin, Lauren, play in the NCAA tournament. Uncle Marty brought Laura some pom poms. She cheered and had a wonderful time. She was especially enthralled at the half time dancers. They were a group of elementary aged kids dressed in colorful and sparkly dresses doing Irish dances. Laura loved it!! Papa was getting ready to take her down to the concession area, but Laura looked at Grammie and said "Sit down, Grammie." Although, BG lost the game, we had a great time visiting with the family. Hannah slept through some of the game. But she was patient through the whole thing.

One of the most fun things to watch is Laura and Hannah play hide and go seek. Laura will hide behind the ottoman/toybox and call for Hannah. Hannah will crawl over and pull herself up on the toybox and try to see her sister. Laura will then pop up and screech, and then Hannah screeches and laughs too. Then Laura rushes to hide behind the couch or under the table. When she calls Hannah's name, Hannah crawls as fast as she can to find Laura. When she finds her, they both screech and laugh. It is the most sweet scene ever. I could watch it forever.

One evening this week, I was laying on the couch, and Laura was "doctoring" me, which means she was playing with her doctor kit and using on me. I was telling Dr. Laura about my ailments, and Hannah handed her an instrument. I asked her if this was Nurse Hannah, and Laura said yep. I said, "Where is your mommy?" She said, "I don't have a mommy." I said, "ohhhh..." (I didn't' take offense to this since I was playing the role of patient.) I said, is Daddy, Nurse Daddy. (Daddy was sitting in the recliner watching TV.) Laura replies to me, "No, he's just TV Daddy." So funny!

No evening is ever dull at our house. There is always a new pretend game to play or art project or dress up time or dance with click clock shoes. I never want these years to end. Although, our weeks are grueling and we are often tired, I loved every minute that we get with the girls, and I know this time will be gone before we know it.

Another fun thing we did this week is that we got the girls Easter dresses! It was so fun. Laura's is of course pink. Shocker. Hannah's is the same dress as Laura's except it is blue with a butterfly print. And they got little white shoes to match. I can't wait to dress them up and take pictures!

Here are a few pictures from the week. One is of Laura posing with her princesses. As you know, she loves to play princess!

Little Laura and Little Hannah have been busy the last couple of weeks. So I have a lot to tell you. I will start with last weekend. Laura was supposed to have a sleepover with Papa. Well, that got canceled. As it turned out my dad was sick all week with the flu, and he still wasn't feeling well by the weekend. I had to tell Laura that her papa was not coming, but good news, Grammie could still make it and have a sleepover with her. She was disappointed but happy that she still had someone coming to play with her. Her first comment to me was, "Mom, you made Papa sick." She wholly blamed me that her papa could not come!! She reminded me several times throughout the evening Friday night that it was my fault that her papa could not come see her.

So Grammie came down on Saturday afternoon, and Aunt Ellen joined us for an enjoyable day. Laura proceeded to play "school school" with us. She was of course the teacher, and we were her students. She also had all of her stuff animals lined up against the couch as students too. She started her instruction by conducting circle time in which she clapped her hands together and on her knees and sang "Hello, how are you? Hello, how are you, Mommy? What's your favorite color animal?" And she proceeded through all of her pupils. This took a considerable amount of time. If anyone interrupted her or stood up, Laura promptly reprimanded her and put her on the quiet square. She would return to the quiet square after a few minutes and ask, "Are you ready to make good choices?" Aunt Ellen landed on the quiet square several times during that episode! After circle time she ready us a story, and then the day was over. Thank goodness for the short day. She was rough!

Hannah has been busy in the last couple of weeks too. She is growing by leaps and bounds, although she is considerably smaller than her sister was at this age. She is a good 5lbs smaller. But she is still in the 50's and 60's percentages for height and weight. So basically she's average, but in our family, she'll be small! She is literally all over the place. She and Laura love to play together and chase each other around. Hannah crawls after Laura at amazing speeds. She also loves to pull herself up on the couch and move up and down and around that way too. She has an awesome sweet personality. She is so laid back and happy. Yesterday she had her one year dr appointment, and she was the lucky recipient of four vaccinations. Plus they pricked her toe to check her hemoglobin. She cried a lot at the appointment, but I dropped her off at daycare. And she had an excellent day. They said she was happy and talked and played contently all day. But that shouldn't surprise me; that's just Hannah's nature. Her nature also includes a love to eat. We have not found any food she doesn't like. It's hilarious. Matt and I cannot snack without her seeing and wanting a bite, even if she just ate something. But I suppose she gets this honestly!

Onto another Laura story. We were on the way home from daycare one day during the week, and Laura had her cell phone up to her ear. She was just talking away. She said, "Dina, you need to go to the Infants. " Dina is a teacher at her school. I realized that she was pretending to be the assistant principal, Holly. I tried to tell Laura something in the middle of the conversation, and she firmly replied, "Mom, don't talk to me. I'm on the phone!" I guess I learned my lesson.

Laura is still very much into playing "mommy" with her dolls. She has a favorite one right now that goes to school with her and that she puts to bed each night. Now, she doesn't let me in her bedroom at night while she gives her baby a bottle before she puts it in its crib for the night. She refers to the baby as "Baby Nana." And she turns on the baby monitor (it's our old one) before she leaves the room each night. What a good mommy!