A LATE milestone for Analese....

She got her first haircut today! Her hair has been really scraggly lately. It has been uneven and increasingly unmanageable. A month or two ago I had Lee lightly trim the ends. And he VERY lightly trimmed them. I think he did not want to mess it up or anything. I decided to take her to my old stylist (who is SUCH a treasure). I guess I should start with some before pics. Here is one that was taken a few days before we left. This is the natural state of her hair shortly after a bath. Wild!



Lately, all I can really do with her hair is put it in a ponytail. This is a pic of her ponytail today before we left for her hair appointment.



I took some iPhone photos of her at the hair appointment.





She did great! I think she enjoyed feeling pampered, and it helped that I told her she was getting "princess hair," of course.

Here are some after shots. Her hair had been in a ponytail, so I took these before I wet it to see how the curls would behave .





Then I wet it down to see the curls pop out! I thought it looked really cute. Now she can wear her hair down again. And Laura gave her the certificate along with a little ziploc containing a little lock of her hair. She was quite proud, as you can see.

Our Denver Trip so far

Coming back has totally felt like we were just here yesterday. Nothing has really changed here. It is comfortable and familiar, and as an added bonus, the weather is gorgeous this week with highs in the 70s the past couple of days. It was wonderful getting to attend our old church (where we are still members). We were able to go out to lunch with some friends after church. We sat and talked and had such a nice time. Saturday night was spent with some more friends. We had pizza, and Analese loved playing with her old buddy. Lee is working this week, but we are still having a very enjoyable time. Today we drove around where we used to live. We stopped in front of our old house (which has not changed, other than the trees that we lovingly had planted have grown). I asked Analese if she remembered the house and the cul-de-sac. She had a very blank look on her face, and I could tell that she had no recollection of it. It makes me a little sad that she can not share in the memories that we have. She is such a part of those memories. We brought her home from the hospital to that house. We played with the neighbor kids in that very cul-de-sac. She rode around in her Little Tikes car there. We went to the park where she had her first birthday party. Again, she has no recollection. Sigh....She was 26 month old when we moved to Texas. She is just now at the age where she is making permanent memories. Well, those were very good times, and I will continue to tell her stories. In the meantime, it is cute how she keeps saying, "When I was a baby in Colorado, I did [such and such]......"

Pre-Easter Home Festivities Part 2

The backyard Easter egg hunt!

Mariele did not quite get placing the eggs in the basket. She has quite a look of triumph for finding some eggs, though.




Notice the awesome trellis on the garden box.

Pre-Easter Home Festivities Part 1

This week our family is very busy preparing for our trip to Colorado. Since we will be in Colorado over Easter, I decided to take this week and do the pre-Easter festivities at home. Yesterday we made Easter eggs in our jammies.




See Analese's look of super-intense concentration as she places the funny face stickers on the eggs.




Mariele REALLY wanted to grab those eggs.





I dug the Easter baskets and the plastic eggs out of the closet for the girls to play with.



Stay tuned for Part 2: The backyard Easter egg hunt.

Of Smiling Stuffed Animals

We are a family of co-sleepers. Sometimes I wonder why exactly we have three bedrooms in our house. We would probably live just fine in a little one room cottage. Co-sleeping has its advantages and disadvantages. One disadvantage is that bedtime is always a little soft at our house, meaning we do not adhere to a strict bedtime. Tonight Mariele was extra tired since she had napped quite early in the day. Our poor baby is having a tough time trying to get all of her remaining teeth all at once. The lower right first molar surfaced today. She is miserable! She was sleeping in the bed and Analese was wiggling around in the crib that is sidecar to our bed (in the toddler daybed configuration). Her wiggling was getting to be a bit noisy and disruptive, and I was afraid that she was going to wake Mariele. So we picked her up and took her into her bedroom. We found out that she was truly frightened for us to leave the room. Lee asked her why she was so scared, and her response surprised me at first, but on second thought made a lot of sense to me. She said, "I'm scared because they are all smiling at me." Lee asked, "Who is smiling at you?" And Analese tearfully said, "All of the stuffed animals." We both said OHHHH - We totally get it! Lee and I were both spooked as young children by faces on toys in our rooms at night. When I was not much older than Analese, I threw my Raggedy Ann doll in the trash because it waved at me in the middle of the night. The mind can really play tricks when it is just on the verge of sleep. So I removed all of the stuffed animals off of the corner curio shelving unit and threw them out into the hallway (where tomorrow I will place them in a big garbage bag to donate them). She is not a bit attached to any of those stuffed animals. They have always just stayed on the shelves. She does not play with them or love them at all. I'm kind of glad to be freed to get rid of them actually. I am all about simplification and de-cluttering. The other thing that makes sense now is the one stuffed animal that has been her lovey all of these years, Bunny, really does not have much of a face. After removing the stuffed animals, I asked her if everything was OK now. She replied that one of the little people in her dollhouse was smiling at her. I turned the entire dollhouse around so that all she would see was the pretty exterior of the dollhouse. She also asked me to remove the plush growth charts. Hers is a smiling sunflower and Mariele's is a smiling lion. The large Elmo doll in the plush Elmo chair also left. Although I am keeping those. I will just have to find a different place for them. Mariele has actually been sitting in the Elmo chair some. It is cute and I will have to get a picture. I am glad to be able to even further de-clutter her room. The long-term plan is to have both girls sleeping in that room. I will be working on making it nice and Mariele-proof (read Havoc proof). I'm hoping that by the end of the year when Mariele is fully weaned, the girls can enjoy being in their nice room together. At least we made strides tonight in making the room a happy sleeping place. Even though she did ultimately end up back in our room in the crib!

Happy St. Patty's!

According to my aunt the genealogist, we do, indeed, have an Irish branch on our family tree, so we dug out the green hair bows today and stepped out in style.

Two out of the three of us had a happy St. Patrick's Day. Can you tell which ones?



The other one is still reeling from her shots yesterday. Plus the never-ending teething.



Analese danced pretty!

The fun of opening a package

We may be all well now, except Mariele had to get vaccinations today. Hopefully she will be OK.

The girls got a special Easter package in the mail from their buddy in Colorado. It contained a beautiful hand-knitted Easter washcloth for me and some pencils, erasers, stickers and hair accessories for them. Analese is always excited to open packages, especially when they have her name on them!






Also, I've been thinking lately. After having a second child, it is confirmed to me that the cutest age so far is definitely this period of time around 13 months old (up to 18+ months). They are still just babies, but they are meeting all the toddler milestones. All the first words are just adorable. The expressions and the pat-a-cake and peekaboo games. When Analese was this age, we were in a "babymoon" still. It was just me and her and all of her cuteness. Life is so much busier this time around with Mariele. Mariele and I cannot just retreat to our own little world very often, because I am also quite busy with Analese, who is on the brink of all kinds of intellectual discoveries lately. This 3.88 age (I pulled that number out of my hindquarters - I didn't really do the math) is a great age of discovery it seems. In the midst of all of the hectic pace of life, I do try to steal one-on-one moments with both of my girls. They really are precious moments when I can find them! I am trying to prioritize finding these moments. Time will not slow down for us, but maybe we can have life slow down a bit here and there.

Random "At my Wits End" Friday post

I'm dealing with the "fun" of two sick kiddos. They both had fever this morning at 4 a.m., and as an added bonus Mariele vomited breast milk all over me. So needless to say, I am a little tired today. One thing that has cheered me and semi-energized me has been this great chocolate banana cake that Carrie posted the recipe for a few days ago. I think I will make another one this afternoon, because I happen to have exactly two more ripe bananas.

My kiddos are not eating much today. I think they both have sore throats. Analese did eat some boiled egg this morning. She asked me where eggs come from. When I told her they come from a chicken, she looked at me like I had lost my mind and said, "You're kidding me!" At least I did not tell her that a chicken poops them out. That might be a little too much information for her to process right now.

Mariele's new word is "uh-oh" and she loves to play the uh-oh game. She will drop something on the floor and then say "uh-oh." And she will repeat this game incessantly. It is cute the way she says uh-oh. I could do without the repetitions, but she amuses herself, so I guess I should be glad.

I think we are finally done with the swing. Mariele has not wanted to nap in the swing for a week or so. I think she grew enough that the swing is no longer as comfortable as it once was. I sure did get HOURS (probably days or weeks if you add up the hours) of swing naps out of that swing. Maybe we will stick it up in the attic somewhere. I refuse to get rid of it until I complete menopause because that thing is a necessity if I were to, for some reason, have another baby.

Wednesday photos

for your viewing pleasure. Oh, and hubby just informed me he has left upper lobe pneumonia. He started antibiotics a couple of days ago, so hopefully he will get much better soon. Keep him in your prayers and thoughts.

A rainy day

Analese must be rain-weary already today, because she said, "Maybe some other year it will stop raining!" I am just loving the pictures that she draws on her magnetic drawing pad lately. This one really made me feel warm and fuzzy. I asked her to explain this picture to me and she said it is called "Mommy loves Analese." I'm in love with this piece of artwork!



The separate stratosphere technique has been working very well for my school time with Analese. Here is a BEFORE picture followed by the AFTER picture. I have to say that messes completely unnerve me and make me ballistic. This is the challenging part of toddler parenting to me. However, I allow the havoc and let it slide during Analese's school time. It keeps Mariele happy and occupied. Today's mess was really quite mild. Just an "F1" tornado today. It has been much worse than this before.

More gardening

I realize it has been an entire week since I blogged. It does not seem like that long. I guess the week went quickly. We've just been living life and anticipating warmer weather. The past couple of days have been very nice. We got out and did some more gardening. Our little gardens made it through the freezing, snowy weather that we had just last week. We covered them with plastic before the bad weather, and they made it through!

I have to say that gardening is therapeutic. I've never done it before, and now I really do love it! There is something "magical" about planting a seed and having it grow into a big, majestic plant or flower.

We did a little container gardening also. I planted lavender in this pot outside our breakfast nook windows. It smells great already!



We also put flower pots around the pool. One pot is mixed Texas wildflowers, one is Texas blue bonnets and the other is snapdragons!




Lee put trellis netting up behind the smaller garden box so that the snow peas would have a place to climb. Those snow peas really grow fast and we already have some baby snow peas! We also have a parsley plant in that box, and the arugula is sprouting. There are two squares of texas sweet onions too! And as I am blogging right now, Lee just completed the trellis structure, and it actually looks a lot more awesome now. I will get a picture of that next time.



The larger box by the fence has basil, red pepper, rosemary, tomatoes, strawberries and some other seeds planted.






And here is Analese with her new bubble blower.