Soccer Annie

I know soccer isn't about the clothes...but wouldn't it be nice if it was? She looks so cute in her running skirt and pink socks!

Saturday is her first game, which overlaps a little with Charlie's game.  I think I'm ready for a soccer ball bumper sticker for my van, I'm earning it for sure this season!

Ballerina Annie

Annie took a little intro to ballet class this spring and I'm hooked! Hooked on seeing her in her darling outfit! Next time though I think we need to sign her up with a real studio so we get the whole recital and recital costume experience too.  That would really make me happy.

because she can

Today I think instead of putting my sweatshirt on a hook in my room like my MOM ASKED ME TO I'll just hang it in the bathroom where the hand towel usually goes. Because I'm Annie and I do super weird stuff all the time for no reason whatsoever.

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Today I woke up to my alarm. The alarm was set so I could get up for my run before the kids woke up. As I laid in bed I thought of a million reasons why I should skip it and stay in my nice warm bed. Running is hard and sleeping is easy. It's super easy to remind myself of that almost every morning.

This morning's self talk was a little different. Getting up for a run was nothing compared to what I was doing 4 years ago on this day. My alarm 4 years ago was set even earlier and it was set so I wouldn't be late for my appointment at the hospital to have a human child sliced out of my abdomen. Sounds a little awful but it had a very happy ending.

Below, Sweet Human Child, later known as Annie Jane.

This spunky little kid has been the greatest gift and has made every day since she got here so interesting and fun. I do take the time to yell at her every. single. day. for various reasons. Sometimes I think she's made it her life mission to make me totally crazy. But for the most part she's pretty frickin' great and I can't imagine her being any other way.
Happy Birthday to my sweet little Meatballer, Pumpkin Pants, Poop Scooter, Mister Sister, Missy Miss! Couldn't imagine life without you!

Annie's Party

Annie's never had a 'home' party with friends (such a grand statement...she's only actually had 1 party ever with friends so I should really say that differently) so when she insisted that's what we do this year I had a hard time saying no. She must have gotten me on a day when I had already told her no to a billion other things.

So yesterday we had a house packed with 12 kids and about 15 adults and holy moly it was loud and crazy. We made it a cooking party and let the kids decorate their own cupcakes and make their own pizzas. Surprisingly nothing really went wrong with this ridiculous plan. Who'd have thought 12 3 - 6 year olds could pull this off?




They also got to decorate their own aprons and chef hats. A few of the kids totally got into this. The rest were more into just playing with Charlie and Annie's toys. Next time maybe I'll skip the activities and just let them go nuts with the toys. Oh wait, there will be no next time, home parties are so much work!

Oh and I was so frazzled by the end that I totally forgot to take a group picture of all the kiddos in their aprons and hats! Fail.

Annie = too small for a backpack

In June Annie is going to start at North Wall where Charlie currently goes 3 days a week. They'll both be going 2 days a week through the summer. She had her preview day on Monday and I told her if she did well at school I'd buy her a backpack. In April, at Wal-Mart, they only sell 1 size, really huge.

She needs it big though. I'm going to have to pack lots of spare outfits, she's not really comfortable using other people's bathrooms. She was at school for 2.25 hours on Monday and peed her pants. So if you figure she'll be there about 7 hours a day when she really starts she'll need 3-4 outfits a day. Hence the giant backpack.

Here's to potty training!

my birthday girl

She had such a great day. Opening gifts.Breakfast with all 5 of her grandparents.

A party at Mobius with her cousin, brother, and school friends.
I totally love this picture. These two have grown to be such good buddies.
Shot of the annual doll cake.
Playing at Mobius.

Thanks everyone who helped this special little girl celebrate her big 3.0!

Check out what I wasted my night making:

Cake Pops!

Turns out they're a ton of work. I even cheated by not making the cake (crumbling it, forming it into balls, chilling it, etc), I used store bought doughnut holes instead. I thought I was being so smart but it was still super labor intensive and frustrating to make them look good. I should really photograph the reject pile, then maybe you'd feel my pain.

As the husband pointed out though it was self inflicted pain. I could have spent $5 and gone out and bought store bought cupcakes for Annie's class tomorrow. Instead I wanted to spend about $8 and 1 1/2 hours and make something much smaller and not any cooler.

I love learning lessons.

Guess who's almost 3?!

I've become the most horrible blogger lately. I think it has to do with a number of factors. A new system at work that doesn't allow me to use my work computer for personal gain, my iPhone that I can't blog from but can do lots of other fun stuff with, the fact that I've been doing this for almost 5 years and am getting tired of my own typed version of my voice.

HOWEVER.

Both kids have birthdays coming up so I gotta get this thing going again. I'm planning great cakes for both of them that will surely need blog appearances. I'm considering really telling the world how insanely smart they are and listing their accomplishments to date. I should probably put together some kind of montage of their past birthdays for the blog. Lots to do, lots to do.

First things first though. Isn't the New Bambino of old growing in to a super cute little girl? She might be chock full of sass and attitude but at least we've got cute on our side.

Mad Annie.

Mad Annie is an Annie we see quite a bit of these days. Yesterday she hulked out in a whole new way though. We were at the post office and she didn't want to come in with me. The last time I left a child in the car it was Charlie and I was just running 10 steps away to the ATM. I came back to the car to find 2 ladies peering in my windows saying loudly (and judgementally) THERE'S A BABY IN HERE! Never again.

So yesterday after Annie was a total turd in the post office I strapped her in to her car seat kicking and screaming so we could go get Charlie from school. She was so mad at me that she couldn't look at me anymore, even the natural sunlight was pissing her off.

So she stretched her hat over her eyes, put her hood up, and passed out.

She stayed asleep while I carried her in to Charlie's classroom to get him. She stayed asleep while I put her back in her car seat. And she stayed asleep while I carried her from the car to the couch.

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When she finally woke up she pulled a serious Dr. Jekyll move and was cute and charming and no longer evil.

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Love that crazy little girl.

I take that back.

Those days were so great! Look how sweet she was!

This project is going to take forever. She's only 3 months old here. I have 2 years and 4 months left. Double ugh.

I know what I don't miss.

Baby under the big top and toddler on the lap. There's a lot to miss about having a little baby to snuggle with...there's a lot not to miss too though.

There's nothing to read into this silly post. Our office is going through a system conversion and I've been told my laptop is being wiped clean to I'm backing up everything I want to save (which would be pictures from the beginning of time until now).

As I go through the billion pictures I've saved on my work computer (hope no one from the office still reads this) I'm sure I'll be finding more gems that make me smile that I'll have to post along the way.

Random Fun

Check Annie out in the caboose kicking back with her arms up. She's so dang cool. Or maybe she just sat back there so she could give me a big wave as she went by.

Check out how cool she is here. This kid is 1 of a kind in my mind.

Or maybe all 2 year olds dance to their own beat. Either way she makes me laugh every stinkin' day.

Oh and if I have to keep a straight face one more time while she talks about 'Sleeping Booty' I'm not sure what I'm going to do.

OMG she takes me there sometimes.

Story about Annie I feel like sharing today.

Yesterday we had a very brief window to cram a nap into. We got home from playing at my mom's house around 1:30 and needed to leave for Charlie's swim lessons at 3:30. So we got home, I changed Annie's diaper (because yes, we're 100% back to diapers, I failed), and put her to bed.

I set Charlie up for some down-time with a movie on my bed and headed to the kitchen/living room to catch up on some dishes and laundry.

I could hear Annie making ruckus in her room so I told her if she can't calm down she'd have to sleep with me on the couch. About a minute later the ruckus got louder and since she can't totally be trusted in her room (she tends to pull down curtains and break ottomans) I took her to the couch. I laid down with her and wrapped her arms around herself like a straight jacket so she couldn't hit me, because that's her new fun trick that I love slash constantly will myself not to hit her back.

After about 10 minutes of her thrashing around and listening to her chant that she wants her Grandma I gave up and put her back in her room.

I decided that letting her destroy her room and our house was a genius plan so I went downstairs to attempt to do some work.

An hour later I went upstairs since now it was time to get ready for swim lessons. I found her sitting on top of her changing table, hair was totally wild, wearing dirty running shoes with no socks (a pet peeve of mine), reading a pamphlet she found from the hospital about...wait for it...Shaken Baby Syndrome. Right on the cover it says "Frustration. It's normal. Have a plan. Never Shake A Baby."

It's like she knew she was about to get shook. Believe me, I wanted to shake her. This is so inappropriate for the Internet so I will say that for the record I'm kidding, I would never shake her. Lock her in her room for an hour yes, but shake her probably not.

In the middle of my total frustrated mommy moment she did make me smile though when she said 'I'm not going to nap, I'm reading my mail.'

the many faces of Annie Ring

Today Annie said over breakfast: My name is Annie Ring but people call me Annie. Yes Annie, that's how it works, don't know where you learned that but yes, that's how it goes.

Thought I'd share that and then share some random pictures I just found on my camera. This is all the same kid I swear.

Currently this kid is upstairs crying in her portable crib. She's been downgraded from the toddler bed. Basically we got rid of the pacifier (which I could have sworn she was on board with? now I know she was just playing along...she's very much not on board with being paci free but it's too late...they went out with last week's trash) and now the child does not sleep. We set up the portable crib so she'd be contained because somehow no paci = the need to cry and thump on the door ALL NIGHT.

Seriously.

I can hardly believe she likes the furry slippers the Easter Bunny brought her. The girl won't wear a frickin' sweater if it's too soft or fuzzy but big crazy/hairy boots? Yes please.
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Of course she has to pair them with hand me down boy jammies to make the look her own. Oh well. Still cute.

Miss Annie is 2.

On Saturday we had a mellow little party for Miss Annie. We just invited the grandparents and her aunts/uncles/cousins so that we could keep it small and there wouldn't be even a slim chance that she wouldn't be the center of attention. Turns out our little Annie loves to perform and loves all eyes on her.

This is the kids putting on a concert for us after dinner. I'm pretty sure they're singing 3 different songs at the same time.

A quick encore before going to bed.

Thanks everyone who came! I know she really enjoyed her special day!

pretty pretty

I went on a business trip last week and when I came back Grandma Cheryl had trained Annie to leave a rubber band in her hair. We've been working on this since her first hair sprouted so this is major. Best part is after a couple hours if the rubber band falls out the hair stays standing.

Did I mention my pretty little baby is going to be 2 on Saturday? Wowzers.

Annie's new uniform.

Yellow boots.

All week she's been bringing me the yellow boots whenever I say 'go get your shoes'. She comes back saying 'boots, boots, boots'. She's so hard to argue with I've just been giving in.

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Her other latest quirk is the robotic dog (in top picture). She needs to take naps with him, bring him in the car, and today (my favorite) she insisted on bringing him into Jump 'n' Party. He just sat in the cubby with her boots for an hour so I'm not sure what the point was but I couldn't get her out of the car without him so I went along with it.

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Toddlers are crazy.

18 months strong.

Annie had her 18-month check up yesterday. Here are the results:

weight: 24 lbs (45th percentile)

height: 33 in (85th percentile)

head: 18.5 (63rd percentile)

The doctor said she looks healthy and awesome in every way (more my words than hers but whatev). She was a bit concerned about Annie's distaste for anything meat related. Her diet of fruit, noodles and milk apparently isn't that good. I kept it to myself that she also has a healthy dose of fruit snacks everyday too, I didn't think that would help our case.

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The doctor did a finger prick so she could run some tests to see if she's got enough iron in her (related to the no-meat-concern). Annie immediately pulled the band-aid off so we both got to walk out with blood all over our shirts. Awesome.

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So according to the percentile chart Miss Annie is getting tall! Perfect since the man who thinks he's her father is also tall (phew)!