Success!

Yesterday was a rewarding day. Annie and James were both pretty good all day. Even when Annie had little (normal) obedience issues, she fixed them pretty quickly.

But family night really made my day. We did a lesson about the importance of scriptures. After it was over, she was thumbing through the story book version of the New Testament and found a picture, pointed to it, and said, "That is Jesus Christ. He died for the people." So sweet!!! She's remembering what we're telling her. I know she doesn't fully understand what that means yet, but it was so great to know that she's learning it. Then for a little while after that she kept finding "Nephi" and giving little talks and closing, "in the name of Jesus Christ, amen". It really made me so happy.

James also loved family night. It's pretty cute how content he is when he is laying right in the middle of all of us. I really think it's his favorite thing. I think he feels like he is really a part of everything. It's been so fun for me to see recently how much Annie loves to include him in everything and how he relishes that. He adores her.

One other cute story, just because I don't want to forget it: Annie has become quite observant at church. I didn't know it until the other day when we had some friends over and she told me she wanted to bless the sacrament. (I should insert right here that I wish I'd handled this a little differently so she didn't imitate a sacred ordinance, but I didn't want her to get mad and have her have negative associations with the Sacrament.) She proceeded to get out a white wipe, lay it on the table, kneel down and say a (real) prayer, move the wipe as if uncovering the bread, pass pretend bread out, go back and move the wipe like she was covering the water and repeat the process. I had no idea she'd paid such close attention. Even though I wished I'd help her understand the Sacrament is too sacred to do pretend games about it, I'm proud of her for watching so intently.

Wave your little hand and whisper "so long, dearie"!

I feel like I'm about to say "So long, dearie" to the world. My worst fears are coming true: James naps from about 10 to 12 or 12:30, Annie goes down at 1 or 1:30, and James naps again sometime between 2 and 4. I will never see anyone again!!! I will never shop, visit teach, go to music time, play at a park, or leave my house again! And I will never have a free minute to myself again!

I know I'm being dramatic, but I just can't figure out a good napping schedule. Are there any suggestions out there from moms who have had one child on a 2 nap schedule and another child on a 1 nap schedule?

Despite these worries, isn't this the cutest picture in the world? James is learning to sit all by himself for 3 to 5 minutes at a time. :)

(I have a friend who used to make a lot of her posts song titles and make people guess the song. Does anyone know the song of this title?)

Happy Anniversary to Us!

It's been 4 years today since I made the best decision of my life! I love you Brad! Here's us 4 years ago in Mexico!

little things

Since my last post was so negative, I feel I owe it to my children to document a day where they made me so happy. I felt like both of them were full of cute things all day.

Annie and I played outside together for a long time. In a rare moment for a Whipple Park playground, there were no other kids on the playground, so it was just us. She loved playing with just me. It was really fun. She would poke her head through little holes and tell me she could see me. She invited me to "visit" her in "rocking chair swing". We ate a LOT of pretend chocolate chips. Probably my two favorite parts of the day with her were when she played with the spices and with the pens. She got out a whole bunch of spices and then had one spice say to the other spice, "Are you going to be a nice sharing girl today? You're such a good sharing girl!" And then with the pens she had a similar conversation where one pen said to the other, "Can you play so nicely with your friends? We don't hit our friends." It was cracking me up.

James was also so cute today! He had a great nap and woke up so pleasant. Tonight after Annie was asleep, I put him on the floor next to me to roll around. I was feeling so tired, so I was hoping he'd play contentedly by himself. However, about one minute later I opened my eyes and there he was RIGHT next to my face with the biggest grin on his face. He looked like he'd just won the Price is Right Showcase because he'd made it all the way over to me. I played with him for a little while and he laughed and laughed. I think he is going to need Brad to roughhouse with him a lot as he gets older - he already loves physical play. He thinks it's the funniest thing in the world when I pull a shirt over his head and it gets stuck. He loves being tickled. He likes to roll around on the floor. Also, he's learning to sit up. He can sit by himself for very short amounts of time already. It's pretty cute. He's also making lots of crawling type motions with his legs, which makes me nervous. I love the sitting stage; crawling is not my favorite.

I love my kids! I think they are the best kids in the world!

Possibly the most ridiculous battle(s) of my life

So the blogosphere is getting this little rant because my husband is in class and my mom lives in Brazil. My apologies, but if I don't write it down and laugh about it, I'm very likely to yell at my wonderful child and I'd rather not do that.

All morning long, Annie and I have been having irrational battles. The first occurred when she wouldn't eat her oatmeal that was "too hot". I had made the oatmeal an hour and a half earlier. It had been cooling off ever since. I tried several rational approaches - "Feel it with your finger", "My oatmeal is not too hot", "It's been out for over an hour". Then the irrational approaches (something about stooping to a 2-year olds level) - "I'll blow on it and it won't be hot anymore", "I put it in the fridge, so it's not hot", "Wait 20 seconds and it will be cool, and then you can eat it". All of these conversations happened minutes apart as she cried and cried. After a long and frustrating morning of this we had to leave to our appointment (sans breakfast). When the appointment didn't go quite as planned, we came home quickly and started the battle again. Finally, I gave up on the oatmeal and ate it myself and made her some cinnamon toast. Despite telling me this was what she wanted (except for the part where I ate her oatmeal), this caused another slough of meltdowns. This time I couldn't even follow the nonsensical requests. By this point we had to turn around and go back for another appointment. In the parking lot she all of the sudden stopped and began yelling that she didn't want me to eat her oatmeal, she wanted me to simultaneously put it in the fridge and dump it out.

We got home again and she happily played in a puddle for a little while (by FAR the best part of the day for all of us at this point), but then it was lunchtime. I thought I'd successfully navigated all the requests I knew were coming (taking the yogurt lid off by herself, helping to make the toast, and facilitating her putting the cinnamon on by herself), but little did I know I'd made a crucial mistake: I brought the cinnamon from the counter to the table instead of letting her do it. She then spent 30 minutes crying and begging for me to take the cinnamon from the table back to the counter.

***Important caveat: Our pediatrician told us not to let our 2-year old get something by crying. We are trying really hard to either avoid the battle entirely or not give in. Ergo, I spent 30 minutes of my life trying to tell her she could take the cinnamon back herself and then bring it over or she could just put it on her toasts at the table. Finally, my pediatrician's advice got run over by my daughter's iron will and I put the cinnamon back on the counter. Only to have her insist that I hadn't put butter on the toast . . . You get the idea.

Any ideas for dealing with irrational toddlers? (You can't suggest going inactive and skipping our 1-4 church meeting for the next 5 months, even though I'm fairly certain no nap yesterday had something to do with it.) I'm heading off to the fray again. Wish me luck!

Stony Brook State Park

We're still capitalizing on Brad's temporary break from school and research, so we headed to Stony Brook State Park yesterday. It was a totally delightful trip.

I noticed on this excursion that several of the state parks here have very similar landscapes. There are gorges with sedimentary rock (I think - it's layered at least) with trees all around. It's really beautiful.

Stony Brook was really fun too because the brook was tame enough that we could let Annie walk in the water for a lot of it. She LOVED it! We had so much fun exploring together. I loved seeing her delight in discovering our world. We found several tadpoles and chased them, and then we saw a stranded caterpillar on a rock in the middle of the brook. We rescued it by getting it to crawl on a leaf and putting it on the ground. Annie thought it was great! James loved it too. He likes nothing better than being close to one of his parents in the Bjorn and facing out so that he can see the world. I feel so grateful to have such great kids!

Photo dump time:

Not sure this is appropriate

But I'm going to post it anyway because it's too funny not to.

During my shower this morning, I left Annie downstairs listening to a story. However, when I emerged from the shower, she was right there to greet me. As I was about to get dressed she looked at me and said, "Mommy, I like your bottom! It's so cute!" So now I have it on good authority that I have a cute bottom.

I thought I'd dispense with the pictures this post. :)