Birthday Beat

I'm exhausted from celebrating Anna's birthday for about 5 days in a row now. (I can't help it, I love birthdays and especially when it's my baby's :) So here's your post for the night because I promised it. I'm heading to bed and you can get some more pictures tomorrow. They're definitely cute ones, so I'm sure you'll be on the edge of your seat ;)

Happy 2nd Birthday Anna!!!!
Enjoy the slide show from Anna's friends birthday party. I know there are a ton of pictures, but that's the nostalgic mommy in me. More to come later....

(I know this post is coming in after midnight, but in my defense I was upstairs baking Anna's birthday cake and I didn't want to leave it to burn. You probably aren't up reading it right now anyway.)

Snuggly Buggly Cuddly Megan

I always tell Megan that she's my favorite baby...under the age of one :) She has the absolute sweetest personality. She is so snuggly and cuddly. It took me 5 months to quit sleeping in the same room with her because I love our middle-of-the-night quiet Mommy and Meg snuggle time. She snuggles all day too although I can't enjoy it as much because I don't have her all to myself.

She has this great little move where she puts her hand up around your neck and plays with your hair. She will do this the whole time you hold her. When she is tired she will wrap both arms around your neck and gently play with your back or start holding your cheeks. It is SOOO sweet! I love that baby so much. I can't believe she will already be 6 months tomorrow (yes, I know, really today since it's after midnight). She also has a smile that will melt you. Our sweet little Maggie Moo....so wonderful....

This is Megan's trademark move. It looks like we just happened to catch her while her hand was on the back of Daddy's head, but really she will rub you for the entire time you hold her.Again it looks like her arms are randomly around me, but she's really hugging me and then she'll alternate with a cheek hold and then back to a hug. One Sunday before Church. We (I) love to put the girls in their pretty little dresses on SundaysWe're working on sitting up. Megan hasn't quite mastered it, but she's still happy trying. When she falls over she usually feels better because she'd rather be rolling everywhere. She's been doing that since three months and has been army crawling that whole time too.

Megan started eating solids. I have to say that I haven't been so good at consistency. Here she is with sweet potatoes. (You can hear in the background why it's been hard to feed her "food" everyday.)

Anna's Birthday Party at the Park

I have been telling Anna about her birthday party at the park for about a month now. She knew that she would be playing at the park one day with all her friends and that she was going to eat muffins there. However, who knows how much she really understood. She pretended to be excited every time that I asked her about it and she was especially excited about it this morning and when we pulled into the parking lot. Then we sang Happy Birthday....she absolutely hated that part. Poor little Anna burst into tears and was so upset. I think she was just embarassed to have all the attention on her and had no idea how to react. It was quite sweet though. Mommy got to comfort her and make her feel all better.


My little baby girl is almost two! I can't believe it! We had such an amazing morning and we are so thankful that so many of Anna's friends could come join us. Thanks for making our celebration so special! (Check back tomorrow for a slide show)

I know. You thought I wasn't going to post by midnight, but here I am!

Could We Get Any More American?

I really love doing family things and I especially love it when the weather's nice. Last night we had a truly all American night. We headed down the road- (Yes, we only had to drive about 2 miles. It's the closest we can go for a fun night out.) to the county fairgrounds in our beautiful city called Independence, Kentucky with our two children, pushing our stroller, wearing a backpack. We watched the 4H horse show and the Demolition Derby, saw goats, cows, sheep, rode the sack slide and played some good ole carnival games, while eating ice cream and slushies. Don't you just love America?

And the only way to get more American-Fairish would have been to enter the girls in the baby beauty pageant. It's on Saturday so I guess we still have time.

Sweet Words from Anna

One of the greatest things about being a mommy is watching your children grow. I love watching them learn the world around them and just explode in knowledge and excitement for the "tricks" they learn. Megan is still in the really sweet stage of just learning what things feel and smell like and is forever smiley with happiness of her innocent world. It is amazing to watch Anna understand concepts, make connections, and ultimately feel so proud of herself for achieving something new.

Today Anna, Megan and I went to the zoo. We were sitting in the children's zoo and Anna discovered some turtles beyond a wall over by the playground. I had no idea they were there, but sure enough, her little voice saying "Mommy, tuh-uls" proved to be correct. So I took her over and sat on the wall with her to watch them. There were three: big, medium and small. The two bigger ones kept following each other in small circles. I was talking to Anna about it and she was watching intently. We kept talking about how they were playing together and chasing each other.

All of a sudden I was trying to figure out what she was saying..."woe, sash, fall down". How cute it was when I figured out she was singing Ring-Around-the-Rosies! Oh my, my daughter was the cutest darn thing in the whole zoo at that moment! I knew no one would appreciate it as much as her proud mommy, but I ended up sharing it with the girl standing next to me anyway. "Isn't it so sweet! She thinks the turtles are playing Ring-Around-the-Rosies! Did you hear her singing?!" The girl politely concurred. One might say that the girl could care less, but I'm going to disagree. She had two boys. Surely she doesn't get to experience too many cute moments. I have two adorable little girls. I would know. Ha, ha- just kidding to all of you with little boys. I'm sure they're sweet too =)

One more cute "conversation" for the record....

The other morning I went in to get Anna out of bed. I was wearing a Bengals shirt. Pounding her fist in the air, she got all excited with trembling body and shouted "ooo-day!" That's right, my daughter is a proud Bengals fan. She can't wait for them to get back on the turf in a few weeks. The funniest part of this whole thing was that she probably has not heard us say "Who-Dey" in months yet she still knows it. (She probably didn't hear it much during the season either...)

Anna at 2 months and at this year's Super Bowl.

Happy Birth Week Anna!!!

In honor of Anna's birth week and because I like when Matthew and Kasey do this, I'm going to make a post every day for the next week. I know, it's crazy and very unexpected. I bet you're even thinking right now that there's no way I'll hold up my end of the deal. Well, I'm going to try really hard. So here it goes!

Our Summer Days

Here are some fun shots of some of our favorite things to do this summer...

So our neighborhood finally built the pool after 5 years. This is how we travel up there. Surprisingly, Anna doesn't ask to go too much. It's impossible for me to go by myself during the day so we have to wait for Matt to come home.When we want to swim during the day, we set up in the plastic pool on the deck. Here's where Megan hangs out.Here's where she hangs if we actually make it to the big pool.We spend many days at the zoo. Sometimes with friends, other times by ourselves. This particular day was spent with Becky and Charlotte before they left for Texas. Megan and Anna (yes, in their matching outfits) telling Charlotte not to leave us. When it's too hot, we just head down to the aquarium. This day was spent with Uncle Jonathan. The city of Independence has some great free family nights in the summer. Here's Anna getting ready to watch the Mad Cap Puppet Theater show a few weeks ago. She was actually pretty scared so we ended up sitting at the top of the hill you see behind her. It was really funny. Is that bad that we laughed while she cried?Of course we celebrated the Fourth of July in our red, white, and blue. This was the point in the night when Anna was happy. As soon at the "firetrucks" came, she was literally scared frozen. She would not move. She clung to Matt with her eyes open, frozen in the same position for about 25 minutes. Megan could care less and got to see a nice display.

What would summer be without the park. We spend MANY days on the swings and slides at various parks around Northern KY. It has been a little hobby of mine to seek out the best swingsets in the area. My definition of best: an enclosed area where Anna can't run too far away from me, a swingset that is pretty much closed in all the way around with not too many open areas for her to fall off, and somewhere with shade. All of these requirements are of course because Megan is either in the stroller or strapped to me. Here is Anna on a park "function" (not "date" because she's with a boy) with her friend Ethan.

This day was so funny. I walked into Anna's room to wake her up so we could go to our stroller workout class. She was wearing her 'bur-tay take' pjs which simply have cupcakes on them. She cried pretty hard when I took off the little 'dress' and started crying "No, mommy! Bur-day take! Bur-day take!" I said, "Do you really want to wear your pajamas to class? Do you think Ethan and Mia want to see your pjs?" She replied with a deep head nod and the word "sigh" which is the affirmative or the word yes. When I put the bur-day takes back on over her clothes, she got so excited and had the biggest smile on her face.

My decision to let Anna win her first clothing battle was well worth it. She was so happy AND she definitely looked too cute! Everyone thought she was quite goofy looking at the park that day for class but she was happy.

Our Summer Vacations
With two under two, who wants to travel? I'm talking about with the kids. So this summer, Cumberland for Memorial Day and South Bend for Myla's first birthday were all we could handle. The trip to Cumberland was pretty uneventful. Megan slept all but the last 30 minutes and Anna had her first experience with a DVD player in the car so that kept her attention for 3 hours.

South Bend, on the other hand, normally takes about 4 1/2 hours to get to. For us, it took about 6. We left at noon planning to have Anna take her nap on the road. Big mistake. 2 1/2 hours into it, we had to make an emergency stop at a park to let her burn off energy and hopefully fall asleep. 45 minutes later, it worked. So if you're ever traveling to South Bend and need to stop with the kids, there's a great little swingset behind the church next to Lisa's Pie Shop on Route 31 right before Kokomo. Enjoy the slideshow!