Show me the Mommy 5 years ago!!

5 years ago I was pretty...expectant! I would be having a baby in about 36 hours! These pictures were actually taken about 3 weeks before I had Analese, but it is the last set of preggo pictures of me before I had her. WOW! I was huge! And I still had almost a month to grow even more! We are so excited for Analese's 5th birthday, and we are counting down. Her party is tomorrow!

Mariele's Photo Friday

Mariele started her day early as she wandered downstairs to find me at 5:45 a.m. I was engrossed in the Royal Wedding. She snuggled under the blanket and put her head on the bla-blo and went back to sleep pretty quickly. She is a cover thrower offer, so you see her leg has found it's way out of the blanket. Again, I know... enough with the sleeping kid pictures. Sorry, I can't help myself. And doesn't her leg look big in this picture? I mean, it's not a baby leg. It's a kid leg.


Later this morning, I had to drag us all away from the Royal Wedding coverage to get Analese to her play date and get Mariele to her gymnastics class. The gym director took this cute picture of her today. And she DID try to strip off that leotard during bubble time, but she only managed to get one arm out of it.


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Why a Leftie and a Righty really can't share a desk...

Their crayons keep clicking together. Mariele begs at least once per school day to get into the desk with Analese. If Analese is working on a worksheet that is not too brain intensive and she could handle distraction for a few minutes, I will let Mariele sit beside her. Really, how cute is that? They are both concentrating so hard on their coloring.

"Mommy, look me!"

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A look back....

to April 26, 2007. Analese was .9 years old (sniff sniff).



Today all of the soreness is in my shoulders and neck. I am feeling much better than yesterday, but still not quite perfect. It feels pretty great outside, so I might be doing an outside jog/walk later.

Exercise Woes and Randomness

This morning I woke up with a crazy stiff neck and painfully achy right shoulder. I slept so very deeply but oh, so wrong. After a three mile walk this evening, I am finally feeling somewhat better. I've regained a little range of motion, but I'm still quite uncomfortable. Where is a tube of icy hot when I need it? I'm adding that to my first aid supplies the next time I get to the store.

I was rocking the 30 Day Shred for the first 13 days. Then I seemed to lose my momentum. I've never exercised so hard in my life doing the shred plus trying to keep up with my mile challenge. You must remember, I am NOT an endurance athlete like some of my readers. I am just a regular little person trying to keep moderately fit. That being said, I've been pushing myself to the extreme lately (that is, extreme for me). So I am currently trying to strike a balance between maybe 3 runs a week and a few days of cross training. Exercise has been making me irritable lately, and my dear hubby has pointed out that perhaps I do not consume enough protein in my diet for an endurance athlete. He is probably right. I am a vegetarian and I'm certain that I get adequate protein for the moderate exercise course. But for Jillian Michaels plus 5Ks, I might just have to try to choke down an extra egg and veggie sausage patty on my breakfast plate. Just trying to work through it all. I want to end up shredded after all!

Here is a picture of Mariele
keeping herself occupied with a deck of polar bear cards while I was doing school with Analese this morning. Intelligent? Yes. A little OCD? Probably. It's in her genetics.


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Enjoying the chocolate bunnies

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Happy Easter Weekend from my family to yours!

The problem with this leotard is....

It comes off WAY too easily.



Case in point: This morning I could not find her little lilac and white leotard (that is decidedly more difficult for her to take off by herself) in the huge laundry pile, so I grabbed the little pink dance leotard to dress her in for gymnastics. At the end of class when the teacher was blowing bubbles on everyone's bellies, Mariele did not wish to be left out simply because she was wearing a one-piece leotard. Her method of solving this problem was just to strip it off. Right there in front of everybody!



After class, we came home and the girls decided to enjoy high tea out on the deck. They have this cute little tea set. You fill the teapot with ice water, and the tea cups change color to dark pink as you pour in the cold water. They were really getting hydrated on a hot day.

Easter Egg Day

We are nearing the end of our school year and we have free days to burn, so this morning the girls woke up to their Easter baskets filled with egg dye kits, color cups and confetti eggs. We took the morning and just had fun dyeing eggs.



After the eggs were dyed, I hid them along with a dozen of the confetti eggs. The girls had a great time hunting for the eggs. Then they enjoyed cracking confetti eggs on their heads. Mariele tried cracking real eggs on her face as well.




They enjoyed a little Easter egg snack after it was all said and done.





The whole day was about Easter eggs, because this afternoon their play date friends came over and hunted for the plastic eggs and the rest of the confetti eggs that I hid. Fun times.

Strange Night Happenings....

This morning I was awakened around 3:00 a.m. by coughing outside my bedroom door. I opened the door and was surprised to find Mariele sleeping on the floor with her bla-blow (pillow) and her ahwo (water). This was a first. Normally if she wakes at night, she finds her way to our room and into our bed. She knows she is welcome there, so I thought it was odd to find her sleeping on the floor. Lee said to just leave her there. He apparently did that same thing when he was a small child. I got back into my bed, but I could not sleep at all because I just thought it was strange that my child was sleeping on the floor outside of the bedrooms. I started worrying that she might be feverish, so I got up to check her forehead. She did not even wake up, and her forehead felt perfectly cool. So I grabbed a blanket out of the cabinet and placed it over her. She slept on. I didn't. I was awake from 3 until 5 just reading my Kindle book on my iPhone. I asked her later in the morning why she slept on the floor. She said something about "no loud dawdee floor." (no loud doggies on the floor). She must have either dreamed about loud doggies, or she could have heard the neighbors' little dogs barking. The girls would hear that from their room. Anyway....I'm tired. Hoping everyone sleeps on mattresses tonight. It just makes for a more restful night for me! But doesn't she look pretty angelic. I had to snap a quick pic at 4:01 a.m.

Show Me the Mommy!

Warning: Natural state (no, not naked). Post Stage 2 Jillian Michaels workout and shower. So thankful to be out on the porch in my bathrobe after the kiddos are in bed! So tired today. Can't wait to hit the pillow.

A look back....

We got a new cooktop today, and I love it! It is a 5 burner gas cooktop to replace the ancient 4 round burner gas cooktop that was there. There were multiple issues with the old cook top. I have not taken a beautiful, artistic photo of the new cooktop yet, although I really wanted to spend a lot of time alone with it. So here is a look back at Mariele two years ago on this date. What a little peanut!

Mischief...

When it has been unusually quiet for several minutes in my house, I go on a search for my girls. This evening I found Mariele underneath the school desk where the miscellaneous stickers are stored. Caught!



Analese is feeling much better today, and the rest of us seem to have been spared. Maybe my aggressive hand washing (of everyone) and quarantine of Analese while she was sick was effective. Knock on wood.....

Unexpected Pukiness...

First of all, something very strange happened yesterday evening. After dinner, we were all downstairs, but Analese soon disappeared. After a while, I went upstairs to check on her. It is not at all unusual for her to go upstairs to the schoolroom and get very involved in a craft lately. I thought that was probably what she was doing, so imagine my surprise when I found her in her bed under her covers wearing her nightgown at 6:00 p.m. I closed her blinds and left the room. She slept on until around 9:00. She was then awake for an hour or so before going back to sleep for the night. This morning she just picked at her breakfast. We got in the car and went to church. As we were getting out of the car in the church parking lot, Analese tossed all her cookies. The backseat of the car was a complete mess. So we came back home. Lee cleaned out the car, and I cleaned Analese up and put her to bed. She has since vomited two more times and had diarrhea once. So our Saturday plans which included church and getting together with friends for the evening got derailed by unexpected pukiness. I do feel lucky that we made it four years, eleven months and 2 weeks without a pukey illness. She did throw up on the plane last July due to motion sickness, but that does not count in this statistic.

And on a non-pukey note, we harvested the first squash out of our garden today! We've had a good yield of arugula and parsley so far also. Several other squash and some tomatoes are maturing. My basil is still growing.


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When are we going to....

Analese asks a lot of "When are we going to...." questions. She asks all of these questions with the assumption that it is "when" and not "if." Some of them are not too outrageous. Such as:

"When are we going ice-skating?"

"When are we going to see Hop in the movie theater?"

"When are we going to the beach?"

Some of these questions are a little more out there. Such as:

"When are we going to the playground that has The Wiggles?"

"When are you going to buy me a box that has a bunch of birds and spaces to put more birds?" Huh?

"When are we going to the place that has The Cat in the Hat?"

But the one that has taken the cake so far was asked of me this morning.

"When are we going to float in the air in a parachute after jumping out of an airplane? I think I would be good at that as long as I take parachute lessons first."

Ummmmm. Yeah.

She is having a growth spurt, both mental and physical. This is the second day in a row that she has completely and voluntarily gone to her room during quiet time (Mariele's nap time) to get in her bed and take a nap. Here she is getting her beauty rest.

Eager

Mariele increasingly wants to be involved during school time. Today she wanted to be in Sissy's desk with her. Listening to Analese explain to her little sister how to do subtraction was pretty cute. It won't be too many months before I will start Mariele in the Brain Quest workbook. Although, she has already picked up an amazing amount of knowledge for a 2 year old just from hanging around while big sister does school.


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Go 'way.

Lee had to work very late at the hospital tonight, so bedtime was all me. He has been putting them to bed, and it has been working out fabulously. Seems like if I am involved they just don't do as well. And Lee lacks a couple of anatomical parts that Mariele is still very fond of on me. We are very slowly but surely weaning. Maybe this is actually it! Anyway, I tucked them in at 8:00 and left the room. I did not lie down with them. Just a quick story, prayers, kisses and tuck in. Mariele fussed a bit at first, and left the room several times. Analese was tired and just wanted to earn her magnet and go to sleep. I even told Analese that I would give her two magnets if she would keep Mariele in there. I heard her try to coax Mariele into staying and snuggling with her. Didn't work. Analese said, "Sorry, Mommy. I tried." Anyway, I just kept taking Mariele back and putting her in the bed. She was saying "Blue eye ouchie!" I did check her eye and did not see anything wrong with it. She stopped fussing after I took her back to bed several times. I decided to head downstairs to shred. About halfway through the workout, I heard Mariele on the stairs. She just stayed at the bottom of the stairs. I could hear her doing jumping jacks and butt kicks. I totally ignored her and finished the workout. During the cool down, I could peripherally see her stretching out her hamstrings. It was actually kind of cute. When I reached for the remote to turn off the TV, I could hear her patter upstairs. When I made it to the top of the stairs, she ducked into their room real quick and closed the door so I wouldn't realize that she had been out of bed HA HA! She was fast asleep snuggled in next to sissy when I got out of the shower.

I think she will be a breeze to potty train, as long as Mars keeps making M&Ms. She always tells me when she needs to #2. She prefers a book and at least 10 minutes of total privacy. She was not all that happy about the photo intrusion here.


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More Sweet Sister Moments

My life is full of them lately, and I'm not complaining! Today they had gymnastics classes. Analese's class was first. Mariele was watching Analese through the glass window (standing on the table like a monkey, or ooh ah ah, as she calls it), and Analese decided to take a moment and come over to interact with her through the glass.

Analese sat by the wall in the gym during Mariele's class. She was working in an activity book doing connect the dots and coloring. Mariele was very involved doing all of the skills in her class. When it was time to go into closing circle after all of the balls were put away, Mariele realized that Analese was over by the wall under the window. Mariele ran over and put her arms around Analese giving her a big hug. There was a collective "AWWWWW" from everyone in the gym who witnessed this. It was totally a sweet sister moment.

Curly Q the Heart Stopper

My little Curly Q. She is quite the little firecracker. She loves to eat every meal outside. We are having lots of picnics lately. She almost sent me into cardiac arrest twice today. She and big sissy were out at the play set. I was in the kitchen. I looked out and she was standing on the very top rung of the rope ladder. I did not want to startle her, so I muttered a quick prayer and quickly made my way back there to coax her down. She came down quite expertly and safely. I headed back to the kitchen to tend to the loaf of bread in the oven. I guess I should have figured that she was going to do it again, but the next time I glanced out there, she had crawled across the entire beam that the monkey bars are attached to. She was above the monkey bars. The only possible way for her to get any higher would be to climb on the roof of the play set. And who knows, that may have been next. I told her that she was getting too high and not to do that anymore. Her response? "Go 'way! No look me." That's my Curly Q. The source of all my gray hairs.


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Easter Egg Hunt at The Little Gym

The Little Gym hosted an Easter egg hunt for members today. The girls had lots of fun making Easter bunny faces and doing all the various activities. Their favorite part was probably the popsicle, considering it was about 90 degrees out there.

Life on the back porch is sweet...

Mariele swimming!

Amazingly, Mariele is learning to swim at almost 27 months old. We are in the pool every day during the warm pool season, so it does give me more peace of mind when she becomes proficient at swimming. We are not quite to the point of chunking her into the big pool without her floatie vest, but she made some real progress in the hot tub last night.

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See who's reading the bedtime stories now...

Analese has been reading for a while now, but just recently I've noticed an increase in her fluency. She really likes to pick up a book and read for her own enjoyment now. Even better, she loves to have an audience, and Mariele fulfills that role perfectly. I found them on their bed right before bedtime tonight reading a couple of Analese's little readers. Mariele just loves to hear her sissy read.


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It's a hard life....

when you get to have a pool picnic.


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Porch rug!

And, ladies & gentlemen......here it is!



Now, if you will excuse me, I have to go read my kindle.

Staycation and rug fetishes

So we are on staycation this week. This pic was taken about noon today. They were catching rays out on the pool deck. Analese is still in her bath robe.



Later after Mariele's nap, we all fully dressed and went to dinner at Freebirds. Afterwards, we went rug shopping at Garden Ridge. I really think I have a rug fetish. Every time we buy a rug for our house, I just get giddy. The living room, the den, the foyer, the school room - I just loved buying those rugs! Today we found a large outdoor area rug for our screened in back porch. I think I love it too. I will have to take a picture in the daylight tomorrow. Our porch had become such a nice sitting area. My mother in law bought us all this great furniture for the porch last summer. In the fall we had the porch repaired and stained, and we rescreened it. I just love sitting out there now. Anyway, it was a successful shopping trip. Mariele was pretty impressed with all of the Easter bunnies that were on display.



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A look back....

April 3, 2007 - My beautiful baby Analese at 11 months old.

Today, she is so excited about her 5th birthday, which will happen in 28 days! She made a countdown chain to hang from her ceiling fan in her room.

Blue Bonnets Repeat

So remember the roped off blue bonnets that I blogged about a couple of weeks ago? Turns out the rope was there to keep people from trampling the blue bonnets before they were able to grow fully, and has since been removed. Last weekend, the blue bonnets were evidently in their prime. We checked today and they were kind of on their way out, but we got some good photos of the girls anyway. I stole the book idea from a friend who is a much better photographer than I am.