A little particular

Anna Kate has been showing us a lot more of her little personality lately, which has been lots of fun, but a bit more work, too! She has been making it quite clear that she knows exactly how things are supposed to be and if they are not that way, she will let you know! Here are a few of her little quirks lately:

~She has to hold a toy in the car, and it's always either her shovel (which she calls a "shhhhh") or her purse which she just points to and says "uh-huh uh-huh".
~Whenever she goes to sleep for naps or nighttime, she has to have not one, but two pacifiers. She keeps one in her mouth and one in her hand and switches them every 10 seconds or so until she falls asleep. Not sure why...maybe she likes them cold, I don't know.
~Also to go to sleep, she likes to be wrapped up in one of her two favorite blankets (either the pink one from Great Grandma Burgin, or the green/yellow one from Great Grannie that used to be Luke's). But she wants to be wrapped up with both feet sticking out. Why you ask? So that she can stick her feet out of the crib. And heaven forbid you put her to bed with socks on.
~Daddy has to read Goodnight Moon to her before she goes to bed at night or she will not get in the bed. Sometimes if we get home late from church or something we try to skip this step. Oh no. She will say "Moon Moon" adamantly until it happens.
~She has started to want to do everything herself, especially when it comes to eating. We have started letting her use her own fork and spoon to feed herself, so now if we ever try to feed her, she will have nothing of it. She's about 75% accurate on her own now though!
~She has to have cheese every day. Cheddar cheese. At least once. And she knows...if she didn't get it for lunch, she better have her "Ch Ch Ch" for snack.
~All toys and large numbers of household items get placed in the oven in her kitchen set. You can't find the remote? Check the oven. Mommy's hairbrush? Yep, oven.

I'm sure there are more that I'm not thinking of right now, but I hope you enjoyed that little glimpse into our little girl's personality!

Animal Sounds

Anna Kate has been working really hard on learning her animal sounds and is really doing a great job! With the help of "The Very Busy Spider" and the "Farm Song" (which we read and sing multiple times a day!), she can now do 6 or 7 sounds pretty well. Here is a video so you can see for yourself.

Swan Lake

Yesterday a group of us who all met at our library's baby storytime went to a beautiful park about 30 minutes away called Swan Lake and Iris Gardens. What a neat place! As the name suggests, there is a beautiful lake complete with lots of swans, geese, ducks and turtles, as well as lovely purple irises everywhere. They also have a couple great playgrounds and picnic areas. The lake has a walking path all the way around which we didn't attempt since none of us brought our strollers (and between all of us there were 2 two-year-olds, 5 one-year-olds, and two babies on the way!), but we would love to take Luke back there to do it! Here are some pictures to show you how much the babies LOVED the wildlife in the lake!

Look what I found, Mom!

Most of the kids...couldn't get them all in one place at one time!


They must have all heard Alice's mom tell her not to climb over the fence (see above!) because they all started to turn to look back at their mommies!


Anna Kate loves flowers...especially smelling them. Although I'm not sure if she's breathing in or out through her nose when she "smells"...


She also likes to "sneak up" on things. Here she is sneaking up on some unsuspecting ducks.

I sure love these special times with my sweet little girl!

Our musical prodigy!

Ok, well, maybe not quite, but Anna Kate sure does love to listen to, dance to, and create music! A few weeks ago she found my old recorder from when I taught elementary music and I showed her how it worked. It took her a few days to figure out the right way to blow into it (if you just blow the way you might blow out birthday candles, nothing happens), but she has it down pat now! Here's a video...we're going to work on the fingers next!

A special Mother's Day

What a wonderful Mother's Day we had yesterday! The only thing that would have made it better would have been to actually be with our own mothers and grandmothers! Anna Kate and I of course had such a special time with my grandma out in Oregon just a few weeks ago, and we are headed to Bolivia in 2 weeks and will get to spend time with my mom then. And we just spent Thursday and Friday with Luke's Mom and Grannie. So while we didn't get to see them all yesterday, I guess we are just celebrating Mother's Month!

Back to yesterday, Luke and Anna Kate surprised me with breakfast in bed (a yummy cinnamon roll and orange juice!), a sweet card, a bouquet of flowers, and my big gift...an Ergo baby carrier! Pictures to come...but let's just say that Anna Kate and I (and Daddy too!) LOVE it!

We had a great morning at church, where Anna Kate made me two more gifts, one in Sunday School and one in Children's Church. She was also in the video that the children's ministry did for Mother's Day...she didn't say much, but she sure smiled and looked cute!



After church we came home and Luke made a wonderful meal, and then after naps (for all of us!) we headed to the park to take some Mother's Day pictures.

Anna Kate is quite a loving little girl.

Kissing mommy


Kissing mommy's cheek


Kissing the baby

Words can't describe how much I love this little girl who made me a mama and how grateful I am that God is blessing our family with another precious baby in just five short months!

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day 2011!

Well, we just had a nice Mother's Day dinner with some fillets, homemade bread, corn on the cob, salad and sparkling grape juice...and now Patty is asleep on the couch so I thought it would be a good time to hijack her blog to post for Mother's Day.

Patty is a fantastic mother to Anna Kate is so many ways. It has been evident this past year that while Patty doesn't have a full-time paid job outside our home, she does have a full-time job. Off the top of my head, here are just some of the things she does in a typical week:

• Take Anna Kate to library story time
• Read probably six dozen stories to Anna Kate
• Try to sooth an irritable baby girl whose molars are starting to poke through
• Get up in the middle of the night once or twice to sooth the teeth pain away
• Clean the house several times
  
• Do 15 loads of laundry (they add up with cloth diapers!)
• Fold and put away all 15 loads of a laundry
• Practice and play in our church's praise band
  
• Go shopping for all our groceries
• Cook dinner almost every night
• Teach Sunday school for our middle school students
• Help with music for our student ministry on Wednesday nights
• Teach Anna Kate songs about the Christian faith
• Bring my lunch to me when I forget it! (which happens more often than I would like to admit)
• Help with our youth activities
• Take Anna Kate to the park on an almost daily basis
• Try to teach and discipline Anna Kate in the way that she should act and behave
  

And all of this, while 17 weeks pregnant! I know there are a ton more that I will think about after I finish this post, but the list is truly overwhelming. Needless to say, Anna Kate and I are very grateful to have such a wonderful woman in our life. Thank you, Patty, and Happy Mother's Day!