Payless

Anna has been in need of white dress shoes for several weeks now, and I finally got up the courage to take both kids to Payless this morning. Payless is like heaven to Anna. She gets to take off her shoes and she loves to run up and down the aisles, pulling shoes off the shelf. She doesn't really love trying on shoes. We found some shoes for her pretty quickly, but I also had to spend a few minutes feeding Evie. So of course, while I was stuck in one place, Anna decided to run through the store. Finally Evie was content and drifting off to sleep in her car seat and I had put all the shoes we weren't buying back on the shelf. But in the midst of all that chaos, we lost one of Anna's shoes. I couldn't find it anywhere, so I worried that Anna had stuck it in a backpack or on some shelf somewhere. I kept asking her where she put her other shoe and she would lead me around the store. The one employee in the store was unfortunate enough to ask me if she could help me find anything and so I enlisted her in the search for Anna's shoe. After twenty minutes of searching, the employee asked if I had checked Evie's car seat. I had checked her car seat twice, but not too thoroughly since I didn't want to wake her up. I checked again and there under Evie's bum was Anna's shoe. I guess I'm the perfect example of a harried mother.

This afternoon both Anna and Evie were nice enough to take long naps, giving me two hours all to myself. It was almost more time than I knew what to do with, but I managed to get a lot of house work done. I even got around to vacuuming, which doesn't happen often enough in our house. By the time I started vacuuming, Anna was awake, but she chose to stay in her room while I vacuumed since she's not a fan of the vacuum cleaner. When I turned the vacuum off, she called out, "All done?" It's so fun to have a two year old.

Hide Away

A few weeks ago, I heard Anna crying after her nap and I went into her room to get her, but when I opened her door, she wasn't in her bed. I panicked. Then I heard another wail and discovered her under her bed. She's done this a few times now and it's becoming clear to me that she has no problem getting under the bed, but a hard time getting out. One day I think she took her nap under her bed and then started crying when she felt stuck. Even though this has happened several times, my heart always stops for just a second when I walk into her room and see that her bed is empty.

Sim Toot

A few days ago Anna announced, "poop!" and then passed gas.

Me: "Poop or toot?"

Anna: "Toot! Sim toot! Sim toot!"

Me: "What? Oh, Swim Suit?"

Anna: "Yeah!"

***

We have a book about birth moms called Never, Never, Never Will She Stop Loving You. The book is written to Annie's boy, explaining all the choices Annie made during her pregnancy that show that she loves him and that's why she placed him for adoption. The last page reads, "She loved you before you were born. She loves you now. Never, never, never will she stop loving you." I've read it to Anna a few times, but it's not one of her favorites yet, so I didn't think she was paying attention. But yesterday morning she found it in Evie's room (Evie will let me read whatever I want to her, unlike Anna) and Anna decided to "read" it to Evie. She sat down by Evie and said, "Eber, eber eber, Evie." So I guess she was paying attention to some of it.

No One Mourns the Wicked

When it comes to the scriptures, Anna knows that nearly every verse begins with "And it came to pass" and she also fixates on the word wicked. If we mention wicked people, she always says, "wicked?" with a little head bob. So a few nights ago we were talking about wicked people and after the "wicked?" and a head bob, Dan says to Anna, "Is Daddy wicked?"

She immediately replies, "No, Mommy wicked." And then after some time to consider, she also adds, "Evie wicked." So maybe what she meant to say is that we're wicked awesome.

Tulip Festival 2010

I have decided that the Tulip Festival at the Thanksgiving Point Gardens is a family tradition. I'm not sure if Dan knows that, but he's been a good sport about going with us the past two years. We've had a lot of nasty weather lately, including sleet and snow, but the Saturday we were able to go was perfect. My only complaint was that there weren't quite enough tulips in bloom. The Bloomometer was only at 65%.

Anna didn't want to hold still for a family photo.

We brought the double stroller, but Anna just wanted to run around and she ran almost the entire time we were there. So we weren't at all surprised that she went down for her nap easily. But when she woke up, she was pretty cranky and we quickly discovered that she had a fever of 101 degrees. We gave her some medicine and that seemed to relax her. But at 5 a.m. the next morning she woke up crying and was running a fever of 104.

Of course we panicked and called the on call doctor. She was so nice though, which is part of the reason why I go to that office. She told me that as long as Anna wasn't listless and didn't seem dehydrated, that we could wait and just take her into the instacare doctor rather than run her into the emergency room. I asked her how I could tell if she was listless or not since it was five in the morning, but she told me to just go talk to her and I'd probably be able to tell.

So I asked Anna how she was doing and she said, "Caillou hurt. Strawberry." There's another Caillou episode where he falls on a strawberry and it looks like he has a bloody knee, but it's only a strawberry. Anyway, after that little exchange, I knew she was fine. Dan said, "Are you sure? Maybe she's hallucinating." But I have that conversation with Anna on almost a daily basis, so I was pretty sure. On a side note, she now refers to the scrapes on her knees as strawberries.

Later that morning I took Anna to the Instacare but since she didn't have any other symptoms, he just sent us home and told us to keep her on Motrin. On our way home she started to complain that something hurt and I was excited because maybe it would help us figure out why she had such a high fever. So I asked her what hurt and Anna said, "finger, slide." On Friday she had scraped her finger on Cami's slide. For the next few days while she was still running a fever, Anna would often say, "Hurt. Finger. Slide." It looked like just a little scratch to me, but I guess it was painful to her.

At any rate, her fever finally broke on Thursday, but it still took her a day to get back all her energy. I guess it was just a virus that's going around, but we're glad that she's feeling better and that her finger no longer hurts.

Snapshots of Late April

Doesn't this look like a happy bunch? I think everyone had just woken up, except that Evie's dressed for the day, so I guess she was being taken care of. Anna still loves to hold Evie.

When I propped Evie up on these pillows, she started leaning forward like she either wanted to do some crunches or she wanted to sit up. I'm thinking she might be a little faster at hitting her milestones than Anna was, but only time will tell.

Evie sucking on Dan's thumb.

She looks like a different kid when her hair isn't sticking up. I took these photos right after washing her hair and while it was still wet. Personally, I think she's always cute, but I kind of like her hair when it sticks up.

What?

Yesterday morning, I asked Anna, "Do you want to come lay down by Evie and get your diaper changed?" No response. Like most kids her age, Anna's not a fan of the diaper change. So I repeated myself and asked again. She raised her hand to her ear and said in a sing song voice, "What? I didn't hear you." Then because we laughed at her, she said it twice more and then put her hand on her forehead and laughed too.

If I want to know if she can hear me, all I have to do is ask her if she wants some candy and then suddenly she's all ears.