Broken Computers and Old News

**I wrote this post a week ago, however our laptop has battery issues and turns off whenever it wants, which is often, and I acquired a virus on the desktop that my husband is in the process of fixing, hes wonderfully handy like that. So therefore its a little delayed in getting posted**


Mia is walking around the house begging for "ashy". She wants someone to play Ring Around the Rosie with her. I get seriously dizzy and nauseous when I play "ashy" but I get serious guilt complexes when I have to tell her no more than once or twice, so I play a couple of times and then convince her sister to play with her which normally ends up with Mia crying... its torture.

We celebrated christmas yesterday with my family. It was as fun as it usually is however a condensed version since the only night we were all free was a weeknight and we usually celebrate on a sunday all day!

Annie got a new baby doll dressed in riding clothes from my parents. She was so very excited and even received a change of clothes for her from Krissys family. She also received dress up shoes which she has been wanting and she got into bed with me this morning wearing the heels and carrying the baby who's name is "Cowboy Baby" (no there is no convincing her that it might be called Cowgirl) because she rides horses of course. She said "I'm so happy I opened a baby doll, I love my new baby doll". However tonight after trying to fall asleep for 30 min she was crying and I went to her room always ready for her creative complaint and tonight it was "I can't want to have a new baby doll for Jesus birthday, she is too hard she's hurting me!" I just told her we would lay her on the other side of her pillow and she could play with her during the day and snuggle with good old soft "Pink Baby" at bedtime :o)
The thing about "Cowboy" is that she has long hair, I openly admitted last night when the girls opened their dolls and immediately wanted their hair let down so they could play beauty shop with Elly's new hair-do kit that it was going to give me heart palpitations to watch their nice new shiny hair get frayed in a matter of minutes! However I stumbled across this little blessing tonight without ever even thinking about it. I tried it and it works!!!

Mia has been singing "up on the housetop" nonstop for the past 2 days. She walks up to me and declares at the top of her lungs "Ho Ho HO!" and expects me to sing the rest of the song so that she can sing ho, ho, ho again and pretend to snap when I say click, click, click :o)

Annie and I have conversations about having a "happy heart" quite often. Sometimes all I have to say is "Annie, have a happy heart" and Its my way of summarizing the frequent talks we have about doing everything without complaining and choosing joy in all circumstances, even when it may not be something she wants to do/hear. Before Christmas extravaganza even started I spoke with her about having a happy heart because she seems to struggle when she is around a crazy group of naturally selfish children.
However I thought it was an all time low when after nap (rarely a happy heart time of the day) she awoke to find that Elly and Porter had arrived and Grammy had baked a Birthday Cake for them to decorate complete with a manger scene cake topper! Port was handed Joseph, Elly got Mary and Annie got to put "My Jesus" on the cake. She was ecstatic as the video camera rolled until she was corrected by Elly saying in a confused tone and in the corrective eldest voice "He's not just your Jesus, he's every ones Jesus" to which they got bombarded with 3 mothers finding a teaching moment declaring all at once (very educational, I'm sure they were all ears) "that's right, Jesus was born for everyone" To which Annie responded with tears, flinging of her body and screaming "no, He's my Jesus!". Oh the fun parenting times. I guess I should probably break it to her that the moon is not just hers either.

Big Dreams

I dream big dreams like:

Being an amazing gift wrapper- which I am not. I LOVE to wrap presents, especially if they are in a nice box with square sides that are easy to do, then I get my creativity on with the bow making... until the bow flops and it ends up being a mediocre bow as far as bows go. I admitted to my husband that I am a gift wrapping novice and it saddens me as I hold up a combination of 2 gifts wrapped in identical adorable paper and tied nicely together with an almost cute bow, the design on the bottom package going horizontal, while the paper on the top package is wrapped vertical throwing the ENTIRE premium wrapped gift into a downward tailspin of disappointment. After consulting with my husband whether Santa wraps gifts or not (he didn't have the time, energy, desire, (?) to wrap ours when we were little and I never knew the difference) I ended up wrapping a certain gift in the same paper that I wrapped all the gifts under the tree in. I informed my husband that in years to come please remind me to wrap with a Santa specific paper.

Being an amazing mother who does fun activities with her children all day long- instead I see cute ideas and thing "i should do that" and then never do them because it seems too messy, or that Mia will ruin it, or I dont have the energy, etc. I have been feeling a little bit of cabin fever lately which is scary considering its only December! Anyway I had to meet my Dad at Sams yesterday to pick up some essentials and I decided that since we were out we would do some window shopping. I let Annie decide how many stores we would go to and how long we stayed in them. After coming home and having dinner all the while muttering, yelling, promising many threats and discipline scenarios that go on in a home with 2 toddlers I was putting Annie in bed and while going through her bedtime routine where she has to kiss my chin, mouth, nose, eyes, "ahh-bar-ows" forehead, ears and hair we were giggling a bunch and she threw her arms out and said while still giggling in a very soft voice "you are the best mommy ever" - yep, who needs fun activities?

Lately

Stupid tired on the way home from church. So I threw back a fully caffeinated 12 oz coke and headed off the the grocery store all. by. my. self! I was back home in under 45 min!

Haven't been to the grocery store in 2 weeks! I love when that is ok because we just finished off the milk yesterday and a dear friend gave me some fruit to last us until today when we could get to the store and those 2 items are my signal that its time to go stock up.

This morning however went something like this.
"Annie we don't have any milk, do you want just plain cereal and juice in your cup?"
"No...Ill have milk in my cereal"
"We don't have any milk for your cereal"
"Ill have it in my cup then"
"Ahhhhh! We don't have milk to put in a cup or in your bowl!"
"waaahhhhh, I don't want cereal then!" (after I have already poured it) "Ill have peanuts"
"You can't have peanuts how about some peanut butter crackers?"
"No ill have wheat thins"
Its sunday morning and we are supposed to leave in 45 min we just rolled out of bed and Daddy and Mia are still there, "you get wheat thins and last nights cup of juice for breakfast! You're welcome!"

Yesterday I worked and so I stole a few slow minutes of the day and snuck off to Triage to visit my good friend Allie. She is the one who did both of my girls deliveries and is on call for when this one decides to arrive as well. We grabbed the doppler and listened to the baby's heartbeat for a while, a fun perk when you work where I do :o) It was SO good to hear, especially because I have been feeling a ton better lately and so now there is nothing. at. all to make me feel pregnant, so its nice to have a fun little reminder that there is something growing in there :o)

I have 2 babies constantly growing out here as well. These two love to play dress up together!

Christmas Memories 2011 #3

Every time there is a lull in activity during the day Annie says "Lets make snow flakes!" She tried cutting some herself but she prefers to watch me cut and then unfold them for the unveiling and tape them to the window since tape is currently her obsession. Therefore I must say after 29 years of making snowflakes (ok maybe I didn't make them the first 6 years of my life) I have gotten pretty darn creative. These aint your basic snowflakes girls! Annie is always impressed so that is all I need, plus this Mama likes filling the hours and decorating the windows!

Christmas Memories 2011 #2

Today I decided that for the first time ever I would allow my children to make Christmas cookies all on their own, no expectations, no preconceived notions, no help whatsoever...mostly. Come on! They're only 1 & 3 years old! There was much spoon licking, much batter tasting, much flour on the floor and much fun. Especially that there was no refridgerating the dough, 8 min of baking, cooling while we made one batch of green icing and Mia was done with the process before we even said the word sprinkles which made Mama happy :o)

I am so sorry for the crappy photos, I just don't have time to care about picture quality when there is flour being flung :o)





Have I mentioned I am in love with a certain 3 year old???

Christmas Memories 2011 #1

Last night Joe surprised us by suggesting driving to look at Christmas Lights. I love that man :o) He also wanted to go to Festival of Lights at the Zoo because it was raining and there wouldn't be many people there... yeah I turned down that offer ;o)
Anyway, just some highlights for my own memory.

• We were a little surprised at how well Mia could see them and was impressed by them. We said "Mia can you see the pretty lights?" "Uhh Huh, ohhhhh!"
  
• Annie prefers the purple lights and to find Mary & Jofus at every house that has them.
  
• You can buy ANYTHING in the form of a Christmas lawn decor. One of our neighbors has a blow up trailer with Rudolph and elves hanging out the back window and the door pops open and Santa comes out! It is the most elaborate blowup lawn decoration I have ever seen and been impressed by. One person even had a light up hippopotamus! Turns out they DID get a Hippopotamus for Christmas!
• The man's house in Knollwood that was always the "piece de resistance" of my childhood Christmas light looking is still there and Alvin, Simon & Theodore are still dancing and singing away, however the Soldiers no longer march and it turns out his display isn't the most Gigantic thing in the entire world. Although I knew it would be to a 3 year old's eyes so I did my duty and got her out of the car and stood on the sidewalk in the drizzle and watched and listened and remembered when I was a small wonder. :o)

Family gathered for a Christmas photo shoot and I love these little girls dancing in the kitchen in their Christmas dresses and little girl tights :o)