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!!