Birthday Girl!

Unbelievably, Anna turned 4 today!!!!  She is such a sweet and special girl.  Here's how she is now:

She is obsessed with Octonauts.  Luckily, I happen to enjoy the show too.  It is, however, a British show (despite being on Disney Jr), so all the "merchandise" is very difficult to find and is pretty much all overseas!

Some other favorites of hers: "reading" books (she can actually memorize entire books and recite them!  It's quite good), doing puzzles (this is quite a talent of hers), balloons, and playing games.  She got a Minnie matching game for Christmas that she plays every single day.  Out of all the times I've played with her, I have won exactly ONCE.  She also loves learning about science-related things, like the solar system.

She has been loving preschool and has fit in very well there.  That makes both of us happy!  She is smart and excels in math.  She can count to 100 with just a little bit of help!  She also learned how to work zippers and is starting to get buttons as well!

My little Anna Banana will always hold a huge part of my heart, and I'm so proud of her.  We had a great day today, despite not really being able to go anywhere because of the bitter cold.  Happy Birthday to my little angel!

Welcome Jimmy!

We are so happy to have a new member of our family!  We've been hoping Jimmy would come into our lives for quite some time now, and it's amazing that the day finally came... albeit 3 days late!  We celebrated Bobby's birthday, and I decided that I would try a few last-ditch attempts at going into labor.  I ended up walking about 6 miles throughout the day, and then we ordered some greasy pizza from Brando's for dinner (pepperoni and bacon!)  Sure enough, around 11 pm I got some clues that labor would be starting soon... so there was no chance of me getting any decent sleep!  I got all our Christmas presents packed up and tried to get any last-minute things ready to go, but there were intermittent contractions keeping me from resting.  Around 5 am the contractions starting becoming more "real" (I had tons of fake contractions before then), so I took a shower and got Tim up too... we dropped off Abbey, dropped off Anna, and just a couple hours later Jimmy was born!  He's a big boy too!  8 lbs 15 oz, 21 1/4 in long!  He's an eating machine too, but luckily for me he had absolutely no latching issues.  He has been eating basically every 1-2 hrs, no matter what the time of day (yaaaay)... luckily now that we've gotten to the 1 month point, things are settling down a bit.  He can sometimes give me a 3-hr stretch between feedings, so that's good.  And he loves his Bubby and Bobby, which is great!! 

Anna has been a fantastic big sister.  She loves to hold him, read to him, sing to him, and even just talk to him.  She's also a great help to her mommy.  She always picks out his outfits and helps with the diaper changes, and if I ask her to bring me something like my glass of water, she is more than willing to do so.  She also hasn't asked if we can give him back yet, so I'm wondering if she understands that he's here to stay!

We're a very blessed family.  What wonderful children!!

It's Beginning to Look...

Christmas time is here!  Our little baby will be arriving sometime this month, which is just amazing!  Today we helped pick out Bubby and Bobby's tree (and then decorated it, of course), then we picked out our own tree!  It's always fun walking over to the Y, picking out just the right one, and then walking it home!  We seemed to find a really good one this year too; a Douglas that's got to be about 8 feet tall, and it's nice and dense and very fragrant!  Anna was quite happy with it and very excited.  Unfortunately, time just always ends up running out.  Daddy got the lights on, but of course it takes a while, so we didn't get the chance to put the ornaments on yet.  Anna was disappointed, but she did at least get to help me wrap some of the presents to put under the tree.  She's very good at helping with the tape!  I gave her a few scraps of wrapping paper to practice cutting, although she would have rather helped cut the real thing!  I said no to that though, since I'm a mean mommy! 

Anna has found a new favorite Christmas song this year.  For the last 2 years it has been Jingle Bells, but now it's Deck the Halls.  Not only does she love listening to it, but she sings it repeatedly - and she knows all three verses! 

She has been busy practicing her songs for her very first Christmas program at school, which very unfortunately happens to be scheduled for the 20th.  I really hope I will be able to see it!  She will be singing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star; Away in a Manger, and possibly We Wish You a Merry Christmas (although she might just be singing that one herself for fun; it's tough to tell). 

This year's Christmas season is very special, of course, and we're already having a wonderful time!

Smart Banana

The time has just flown by, and we've all been so busy the past few months with a million different things.  Anna is just loving school, and she is excelling at it too.  I had a conference with Miss Kochan not too long ago, and she raved about what a wonderful girl Anna is (not that I didn't already know, but it's great to hear it from someone objective!).  She is just so smart, especially when it comes to numbers; with just a little help, she can even count all the way to 100!  She did a math problem this morning too.  I was about to take a shower, and I told her to pick out some books to read with Daddy.  She picked out 3 Christmas books and said she'd pick out 2 regular books.  I asked her how many that made total.  Anna thought about it for a couple seconds and said, "Five!"  It was pretty amazing, I must say.  She's done that before too, but I've never seen her work out the problem in her head like that.  Her 1:1 counting skills are incredible as well.  I hope the novelty of school doesn't wear off anytime soon, because I must say that I do love how much she enjoys it!

Time for School

Unbelievably, today is the first day of school for Anna.  She's going M-W-F from 8-11 am.  This is the first time that she's ever spent away from family!  It was quite an emotional morning for me, that's for sure.  I've been quite nervous about how she would handle it and if she would be okay being around so many other kids.  When I dropped her off this morning at St. Leonard, I was practically pushed away from her, the teachers didn't introduce themselves, and I felt like it didn't start off at all the way it should have!  Luckily Anna was so fascinated seeing new toys and other fun things all around her that she didn't seem to mind.  I went to school to work and try and keep my mind off of her (which didn't work!), and then I nervously went to go pick her up.  She walked out in the little class line with her backpack on, and she saw me right away and gave me a delighted, "Hi!"  My heart skipped at how happy she sounded, and then she ran over to me and gave me a nice hug and told me a little about what she did.  Being 3, she was a bit sketchy on details, and it was difficult for me to tell how certain things she was talking about actually happened, but here are the basics:  she said that she got to color, play with blocks (she said she built a tall tower and something else - I can't remember what, but it was something she's never built with blocks before), play with play-dough ("It was blue!"), sing songs, and have a snack ("It was crackers, and I had them on a green plate!").  I asked her if they sung any songs she knew, and she said they sang Old MacDonald and some other ones she didn't know.  She said that she wanted to play with the doll house, but the teacher told her that she had to go sit down.  I asked her if she followed the directions, and she said yes.  She said that she was nice to everyone, and that made me happy!  I'm glad things seemed to go so well for her, and I hope she can continue to have these fun kind of days! 

Crab Apple River

Anna's imagination is finally starting to take off!  When Santa got her a kitchen for Christmas, and then she didn't seem to have much interest in it, I got a little concerned.  When is she going to start pretending.  I've noticed more and more this summer that she gets caught up in making stories up involving her friends/toys and finally that kitchen is getting some good use!  Her favorite thing to make is soup (it started out being normal, but now she's adding things like oranges, onions, ketchup, and mustard).  Sometimes she adds popcorn!  In any case, I'm very glad it seems to be happening now.

Her most recent dive into imagination concerns the sand bebow across the street.  One day a while back she had lots of fun helping some other kids make a big river using the sand and water.  Then she got very interested in burying crab apples so that the animals could dig them up.  So now she's combined the two interests, and she's made something that she calls "crab apple river."  She gathers as many crab apples as she can, puts them in the river, then fills it up with water.  She also occasionally says that the crab apples are taking a bath, which is pretty cute too.  I can't wait to hear what she comes up with next; now that school is starting she'll probably get all sorts of new ideas!

Santa's Village

Apparently about 2 years ago Santa's Village reopened to the public after being closed for a number of years.  They just did an article about it in the newspaper, and it made me think that Anna (being the roller coaster and ride enthusiast that she is) would probably have a blast.  Today was supposed to be another beautiful day, and it's nearing the end of summer for all of us, so I suggested that we go.  What a great idea!  We got there around 11:00 with Auntie Carrie, and it was nonstop fun for the next 5 hours!  Auntie Nanu met us there too.  We started on the carousel, then Anna rode a bunch of other things, like the balloons, Kiddie Whip, cars, dragon coaster, tilt-a-whirl, mini ferris wheel, etc etc etc.  There actually wasn't a single thing in the whole park that she couldn't ride!  And she kept wanting to go on everything again!  I got to ride the old-fashioned cars, and they also had a really cool fire engine ride, where they drive you over to a little "burning" house, and the kids get to use little hoses to put out the fire!  A very neat idea and lots of fun too!  On top of all that, there were also several areas that had some very cool animals to see.  There was a free-flight parakeet building where Anna got to feed them (and touch them).  There was also a petting zoo, complete with pony rides, and then there was a horse-drawn sleigh ride that took us around a reindeer paddock!  When we finally forced Anna to leave the park, she was exhausted but didn't want to go!  I can't blame her at all.  Even though she wasn't born when the place was built, it was like it was made just for her!  I have a feeling we'll be back again...