A Visit to Farm Country

In June I took my girls and Anna's friend Avery to Farm Country at Thanksgiving Point. In May, Avery was hit by a car in  our Church parking lot. It happened after our ward was reorganized and we were moved to a new ward, so weren't there when it happened. The incident was very traumatic for her parents who saw it happen, but for the most part Avery was okay. She had a skull fracture though, which is why she's wearing a bike helmet in these photos, so that her head would be protected if she fell down.

June 6

I was so impressed by these two and their willingness to feed the goats. At first they just scrounged for extra feed on the ground, but eventually I bought them some feed. Anna has always been braver than I am--she'll pick up worms and roly-polies.

Avery couldn't ride the horses, so we all went on a wagon ride instead. Whenever we went over a bump or when Avery took off her helmet during the ride, I wondered if that had been such a great idea, but we made it through unscathed and without any falls.

Afterwards, I lured them out of Farm Country with a bag of popcorn that we ate on the grass outside.

First Day of Gymnastics

This year, instead of having Anna take dance, I decided to have her try gymnastics. Originally my plan was for her to take gymnastics over the summer and then pick between dance and gymnastics in the fall, but the summer slipped away and I never got her enrolled in gymnastics. Luckily for Evie and I, they have a Mom and Me class for toddlers at the same time as Anna's class, so this time Evie isn't stuck just watching and I'm not stuck trying to entertain her during Anna's class. Yesterday was the first day, so I took a picture of them in their leotards. Evie is wearing Anna's leotard from last year.

For the first twenty minutes of the class, I really started to wonder whether I was wasting my money for the Mom and Me class because it seemed a little advanced for Evie. Her group started on the floor and they had set up a little rotation of stations. At the first station, Evie was supposed to stand on a star, place her hands on handprints on a mat, and then I was supposed to lift her feet over the mat to teach her how to do a cartwheel. Placing her hands on the handprints while staying standing, was a little complicated for Evie. Then they had a soft wedge that Evie was supposed to do a somersault on. She's been doing somersaults since the beginning of the summer, but when she got on that wedge, she thought it was a slide, so it was pretty hard to convince her to do a somersault down it. There was also a spot for doing donkey kicks, and that went about as well as the cartwheel station.

After the floor, we moved to another part of the gym where the kids were supposed to jump on a spring board (I guess that's what it's called) and land on a little target and then raise their arms in the air with a ta-da before moving onto another area where they jumped through some hoops lying on the ground and then ended with a series of donkey kicks. Since Evie is still learning how to jump, I was just glad that she could run in a straight line to the spring board, even if she couldn't really jump on it.

Once we got to the beam, she actually did much better. She wouldn't walk on the beam without holding onto my finger, but she did pretty well and seemed to enjoy it. The teacher had her walk sideways on the taller beam and was impressed that Evie could walk sideways in both directions on the beam. She said it suggests that Evie's very coordinated--something I've suspected myself.

We ended on the bars. Evie got to jump on a little trampoline, which made her laugh. She also got to hold onto a bar, walk up the wall (with my help), and flip over the bar. She actually really liked flipping over the bar. I think that was probably one of her favorite parts of the class.

While trying to help Evie, I tried to see what Anna was up to in her class since she was in the same gym, just on a different station. I missed most of the first part of her class, but got to see her trying the cartwheels. Her teacher also let them jump on a giant blue mat, that seemed to be pretty bouncy and Anna clearly loved that. Next she had them jump off what I guess I'd call a vault. It was a long ways to jump down, but Anna seemed to be a good sport about it. I asked her later what was her favorite part and she said jumping on the big blue thing. I also asked her what was the scariest part of gymnastics and she didn't know how to answer that. So I asked her if any of it was scary and she said no. In the end, I think we all had a fun time.

August Update

Anna

Anna continues to be our little tape recorder, and I have to chuckle at the phrases she collects from us. I never realized that I said "sweetie" so much until I heard Anna saying it to Evie. And when she says it, her voice gets all high pitched: "Hey sweetie! How are you?" Sometimes when Evie cries, Anna will say to her, "You're not mad." It's something Dan says to Anna to get her to smile when she's giving us crusty looks. At Anna's age, we can usually get her to smile again by telling her that we can see a smile trying to get out, but when Anna says it to Evie, Evie's usually genuinely upset and no where near a smile. Then there are the times when Anna will playfully hit me or jump on her dad and when we complain say, "You're okay." Maybe I should take a lesson from this different perspective and stop saying that to my kids when they trip. 

The other day when Evie woke up from her nap, I told Anna she could go into her room. Over the intercom, I heard Anna say, "Hey Evie, do you remember me? I'm Anna." I thought to myself, "She only took a nap, Anna. I'm pretty sure she remembers you." She's said it to Evie at least one other time too and I'm not sure where she picked this one up. My guess is that it has something to do with our recent ward reorganization. In May, the stake took families from three different wards to make a new ward, pulling us out of our old ward. We even meet in a different building now. So I wonder if maybe some of the nursery leaders have been talking about remembering each other since everyone is getting to know each other.

Sacrament meeting this past Sunday was pretty rough with Anna. Dan's parents have been visiting and she seems to be a little more hyper around them. As we walked into the chapel, she screamed out, "Grandpa and Sandy!" I was just glad we were early. After that there was lots of screaming and acting out and many long visits to the foyer. At one point, another mother came and sat down by us with her baby. Anna stared at him for awhile and then muttered angrily, "Cal needs to be at Benji's house." At first I didn't understand what she was saying and then I realized that she thought the baby sitting next to us belonged to our friends who just moved to Texas and she thought he needed to be returned to his family. 

Evie

In July Evie got to start going to nursery. She's been a little more clingy lately, even around my family, so I wasn't sure how she would handle nursery. The first Sunday, I walked with her towards the nursery, prepared to stay with her for a little bit, but as soon as she saw their little kitchen, she let go of my hand and ran into the nursery. She never even looked back. A few weeks later I substituted in her nursery class and I think I was in there a full twenty minutes before she even noticed. So Evie loves nursery and I love that she loves nursery. Having the last two hours to myself makes Church so much easier.

Evie has discovered princesses and loves to say Cinderella, only it sounds like "Lella." Anna has a Cinderella dress that Evie likes to put on when she's not wearing Anna's recital outfit. The Cinderella dress is several sizes too big though and so Evie usually ends up walking on the skirt and slipping around on our hard wood floor. I bought some princess sippy cups the other day. Unfortunately they don't work very well, but Evie will often point at the cupboard and say, "Lella!"

Recently she's been doing some mountaineering, especially in Anna's room. She likes to climb up on Anna's little rocking chair and from there she can climb on top of Anna's dresser or Anna's toy shelf. I've also caught her on top of our computer desk too. I've started moving the chair away from the desk when I'm not using the computer because she loves to climb up on top of the desk. Two weeks ago I was busily making peanut butter balls for a Relief Society activity and Evie was playing quietly in my room. Because I was dipping the balls in chocolate, I sent Anna in to check on her twice and both times Anna said she was just playing. When I had a chance, I went in to check on Evie and found her standing on our desk, behind the monitor, punching buttons on the phone, which was saying, "Your call cannot be completed as dialed. . . ." 

Even though Evie is much more adventurous than Anna, she seems to be a little more sensitive than Anna. Last Wednesday I was braiding Anna's hair when Evie started to tear a page in one of our Books of Mormon. I didn't want to let go of Anna's hair, so I yelled, "No, no, no Evie!" She stopped, looked at me for one long moment, and then her face crumpled and she started to wail. She cried and cried, even after I picked her up and tried to console her. Later that same day, she was hitting one of Anna's friends on the back. Again, I showed some lazy parenting, and rather than walk across the yard to stop her, I just called out to her to stop. Once again, she gave me that long stare before bursting into tears. She hasn't done it as much since and I don't know if it's because I've been better about not yelling no or if all the tears were just because she was having a hard day. I have noticed that she says "no" and "stop" a lot more these days.

These two are also becoming partners in crime in their quest to learn initiative. Whenever they go down to the basement together, they get into trouble, and yet I still let them do it. One time they started dropping bottles of Gatorade off the top of the stairs. Yesterday I found cans of soup in Evie's closet. About a month ago, while I was busy signing the both up for gymnastics, they were busy in the basement. I heard some suspicious paper rustling noises and went downstairs to check on them. They had unrolled several feet of wrapping paper. I really wanted to scream at them, but then Evie did a somersault on the paper and I could hear Anna's voice from earlier that day saying, "Mom you always yell at me." So I decided to take a picture instead.

I have to admit that a few hours later I wasn't as patient when they both kept picking my green tomatoes. Taking them out into the backyard also always results in a mess. Evie still doesn't know the difference between red and green and it's almost impossible to stop her picking strawberries or tomatoes. And the hose almost always ends up in the dirt (we have a lot of empty flower beds in the backyard) and the girls covered in mud. Maybe I'll just start stripping them down to their diapers before we go outside so that I don't have to do so much laundry. 

Family Photos

In the spring, Dan's mom, Sandy, sent the girls some dresses. Anna's came with a matching doll's dress. I decided to dress the girls in their dresses for our neighbor's baptism on June 4 and afterwards took some photos of the girls.

Evie didn't want to sit still for the photos. I'd sit her next to Anna and then try to snap a photo before she got up, without much success.

Then Anna got bored too, and it was all over.

It was easier to take a photo of both girls when Dad was holding on to them, and then a friend offered to take a picture of our entire family.

Recital Photos

Along with Anna's dance recital back in May, the studio had a professional photographer take some photos of the all the dancers. Personally I think the photos are a little scary with that bright pink on the black background, but I still paid for the CD of negatives because I think Anna is cute in all of them even if she does look a bit like a deer in headlights. And, I guess I should have known to put makeup on Anna, but the thought didn't even occur to me. Maybe the problem isn't with the costume or the photos, but with me. I'm not sure I'm cut out for this dance class stuff.

Snapshots in May 2011

Evie rocking some pigtails.

Before the tulips were all gone, we went back to the tulip festival one more time with my mom.

It was a warm day, so Grandma taught my kids how to splash in the fountain.

Anna's last practice before her dance recital.

Easter Sunday

Sunday morning, they are still eating easter candy and they are still hyper. It looks like Evie is also still drooling.

I wanted to take pictures of them in their Easter dresses before Church, but as usual, we were running late, so I just snapped a quick photo and then planned to try to get more pictures after Church.

But then, on the way home from Church, Evie fell asleep. So I took some photos with Anna and by the time Evie woke up, I had already changed Anna out of her Easter dress, so it didn't quite work out to get pictures of them together after Church.

Easter Saturday

The Easter Bunny came to our house early Saturday morning. I think he hid a few eggs along with the easter baskets and Anna was great about helping Evie find some of the eggs.

Admiring each other's bunny ears. They seemed to be a hit!

Just like Anna when she was this age, Evie started stuffing candy in her mouth.

She had so many chocolate peanut butter eggs in her mouth that she couldn't even chew them. She could only suck on them and then while climbing on Dan, she started to drool.

When she started drooling, I decided to intervene and pull some of the candy out of her mouth.

She wasn't happy about loosing some of her candy. Both kids were pretty hyper all day long, which is another good reason for the Easter Bunny to drop off the baskets on Saturday morning instead of Sunday. Dan and I are thinking about putting in a request for granola bars and carrots for next year's Easter baskets.