Two Years Old

Our little Emma is two!  She is getting older by the second.  It's crazy to watch her develop.  She is growing into a hilarious, amazing, strong, stubborn toddler.  Every time she does something new, I just want time to slow down.  But alas, I have no control over that, and here she is two years old already.  I will blink and she will be five.

She had a fun birthday.  We had a little party for her down at Grandma Jane's last weekend.  Matt made corned beef, and we had Reubens and cupcakes.  Michael put a candle on each cupcake, and when he brought them over to her to blow out, she was scared of them.  Her sisters happily obliged!  The girls got to play outside.  They played keep-away, blew bubbles and played at the playground.  It was a fun day.

On her actual birthday, we took her to Target to pick out a present.  We thought for sure she would pick out something Frozen, but their selection was limited.  And she was not really interested.  She ended up getting a highchair for her babydolls.  She loves to play babies, so it was perfect.  Then we went to IHOP for dinner. We had not made it to the new IHOP near us since it has opened last year.  I was not really impressed, although my food was quite good.  The kids had pancakes of course, and gobbled them like a pack of wolves.  I think the atmosphere just disappointed me.  It might just be west-siied! It was a nice birthday for Emma though.

Her most favorite thing on the planet right now is Frozen.  We downloaded it on itunes a few weeks ago, and Emma watches it non-stop.  She LOVES it.  She sings the songs, "Go, Go.  It Go." ("Let it Go")  Or " Ba noman?"("Do You Wanna Build A Snow Man?") She has to have a little tulle dress on at all times and she dances constantly.  Her dancing is usually either running fast back in forth and tossing her head dramatically or swinging her arm back dramatically and twirling.  It's so cute.

She calls these jammies her "Dora's", even though they have Kai Lan on them.  Oh well.

Her language is exploding too.  She tries any word and speaks in sentences, as long as you can understand toddler.  She just came up to me as I'm typing this and said, "ma titi, wat here."  Translation is: my tootsie (foot) is right here.  She wanted to show me a scratch on her foot.  Now she's sitting beside me picking her nose.  Lovely.

Laura and Hannah have had a good month too.  Hannah is finally excelling in her class at school.  She is getting stickers and prizes every week for her progress.  She is exceptionally good at puzzles.  That's interesting to me.  I really can't express why, but it makes me wonder what she will be when she grows up.  Laura participated in the Invention Convention.  To our knowledge she was the only Kindergartner that did it, and she told us that she placed first.  Either way, she really enjoyed it, and I think it was a good experience for her.  She of course invented something art-related; it was called "The Drawing Thinker".  It was an idea generator for thinking of a picture to draw.

Well, who's ready for spring?  The weather needs to stay warm!  This family is totally ready.  The kids want to play outside, and Matt and I are ready to do outdoor things too.  We have walked around the yard, planning landscaping projects and plantings for the year.   The kids want to get bikes out of the shed, but I am waiting until the snow is gone.  Once the bikes come out, the van can no longer be parked in the garage for the summer.  And we can move the trampoline back to the garage too.  We have been taking walks when the weather has been mild.  Emma loves to ride in the stroller, and the girls like to walk or ride their scooter.

Toy management - anybody want to share how they deal with the overflowing, ongoing stream of toys that flood their house?  As you may remember, I instituted the toy closet last fall, and it has mostly been a success.  I left a bin or two empty at that time so that we would have room for Christmas toys.  So at this point, our living room really is not overwhelmed with toys at this point.  We do have a kitchen set and a princess castle in there, but the art desk as been moved to the basement.  Well, this week, I took one more step and cleaned all of the toys out of the kids' room and brought them downstairs.  So there are a few more things down here now, but most of it I fit into the toy closet.  But WOW has that changed their room.  (I also cleaned out their closet, which is awesome!)  The clutter is gone!  I should have done this a long time ago.  Despite the weight lifted feeling it gives me, I still have too many toys.  For example we have a boat load of stuffed animals.  What do you do with all of the stuffed animals?  I'll just continue to clean out/donate and hope to keep up with the clutter.

Have a good week and let's hope the cold weather stays away!

Extra pic :)

It's March

It's March!  And the snow storm seems to have missed us for the most part.  So spring can start any minute.  I think all of Ohio and the Midwest for that matter is happy to say Asta LaVista to this crappy winter.  Even the kids are sick of it.  When Matt told the kids that he had a surprise for them, Hannah asked if it was Spring.  They want to be able to go outside and play without freezing.

In other news, Downton is over, so that's depressing.  And Lent is about to begin.  Anybody have any good ideas for sacrifice and self betterment?  I had a blast last weekend with my college girlfriends.  I haven't seen a couple of them for about two years, so it was an awesome evening.   We talked about just about everything from kids, to work, to TV, to families to, to old stories - great evening.  Unfortunately we of course did not snap any pictures.  We all carry around iPhones and no pictures.  Pathetic.  Oh well.

I have tons of kids' development, milestone type updates.  I'll start with a quote from Hannah when she woke up yesterday.  "Mom are you babysitting us today?"  Me: "No, Hannah it's Saturday.  I'm your mom.  You live here."  That really makes me feel like mother of the year.  Despite my kids' seemingly lack of knowledge about the days of the week or of their home base, they seem to be doing very well.  Hannah is picking up her letter recognition now.  She had a slow start to the year, but seems to finally have some momentum.  She is gaining confidence too, which is even better in my book.  She is mimicking things that I say, which is funny usually.  For instance when something happens that frustrates her, she says, " Are you kidding me?"  And she tells us everything is disgusting that she doesn't like including me.  When she's mad at me she will stomp her feet and yell, "Mom, you are disgusting."  or "Mommy, you are gross!"  I usually just want to laugh, but it only makes it worse when she's angry.  Other favorites of Hannah's are Barbies and puzzles, and she is quite good at them.

The girls recently saw Frozen in the movie theatre with Matt, and they loved it.  Hannah got a Frozen costume from my sister for her birthday that she wears sometimes.  But more than anything, she and Laura have been singing Let It Go non stop.  Laura said that she and her friends sing it at school.  I would love to be a fly on the wall for that!  Laura and Hannah pull up videos on you tube in multiple languages and listen to it.  They are obsessed.  So don't you know that I had that song in my head all week at work.  Lovely.  Well, it became available for download on iTunes this week, and Matt got it for them Friday night.  They were SO excited.  They have probably watched it four times this weekend.  Laura knows most of the words and will talk along with some parts.  I think they like this movie more than Tangled, which was probably tops for a long time in this household.  So begins a new era in the Adams' household.  Out with Rapunzel and in with Elsa and Anna.

Laura is doing great developmentally too.  She loves kindergarten.  She can read now and can write some too, although she still much prefers to draw.  She told Matt this morning that she wants to be an Illustrator.  I just looked at him.  Maybe a scientific illustrator, right?  We shall see.  She is growing by leaps and bounds.  She ate four eggs for dinner one night this week!  Crazy.  She is also becoming such a little girl.  She loves the iPad.  (Really all of the girls do.)  But Laura likes to do things more by herself.  She is getting less and less into toys - scary.  She wants to sleep by herself now too.  Hannah is a little too cuddly for her.  We are thinking about putting bunk beds in their room so she can have her own bed.  And Emma will want to be in there soon enough, so she and Hannah can sleep together.

Little Emma is exploding verbally.  She is saying new words and sentences every day.  Sometimes I can't quite make it out because she still pronounces things like a toddler, but usually I can put clues together.  She's so dramatic too.  She dances often whenever she hears any music, from the toy on the fridge, from the TV, church, wherever.  And she raises her head and sticks out her chin and tries to move slow and dramatic.  It's hilarious.  She is also extremely strong willed and somewhat of a protector of her sisters.  Whenever I am scolding Hannah, she will come and hit me and say "No mommy!"   Thankfully with the explosion of verbal development the biting seems to be subsiding.  We have had a couple of incident reports at school, but they are getting fewer and further between.  The last one was actually for scratching and not biting, which I can deal with since I can just cut her nails.  She is recovering from an ear infection right now.  We have had our share of doctor appointments this winter.  I think we have seen the pediatrician way more than in past years.  Most of our sicknesses have been viruses.  But again, it's March!  So we will hope we are almost done with all of this crap for the winter.  Emma is also a crazy climbing toddler.  I may have mentioned that in a previous post, but she is my first to be a climber.  She climbs everything constantly!  It's just a ball of fun.  (You may detect some sarcasm.)  She still loves her baby dolls.  They are still her toy of choice.  She tows one or two around all the time.  Her diet these days is primarily her "muck" and her "nucks".  (milk and snacks which are her fruit snacks).  She also is at the stage that she doesn't like when her sisters or any other child sits on our lap or we hold them.  She will respond sharply with, "Ma daddy!"  And then shove them out of the way.  She steals the kids' toys, and they yell, "Mom, Emma took my xyz!" I think "Really, the 1 year old is stealing from the 6 year old?  Does this happen in other households?"

We went to my Grandma's 80th birthday last night.  We had a great time, and the kids had a blast!  Anytime they are aloud to run freely with other kids and eat and drink whatever they want, they are in heaven.  That pretty much described last night.  They ran freely with my cousins' kids, ate junk food at will, and my aunt had juice boxes for them.  Could anything be better?  Maybe, but they are unaware of better things at this point in life.  (Ha ha ha.....evil laugh.)

Until next time, a few pictures.