Church

Annabell talking on her phone...

Josh with his daughter Briana with her cute smile!

Annabell at church talking to her friend Gracelyn.


Well we woke today around 9:05am. I can't believe I slept that long. Annabell went to bed late once again because we had a church function, so that could of helped her sleep more. Once up we started our Monday routine. I sat her down and got her milk and we both sat for a minute while waking up. I then text my neighbor and asked if she wanted to go walk. She called me immediately and asked why I text her, because it was Sunday and they were at church! I don't know why I was thinking it was Monday. I was just about to call Brad and ask him how his work day was going! ha. So needless to say, off to the races we went. I rushed getting ready for church (we were about 15 minutes late). I threw Annabell into an adorable dress and then out the door we went. I took her to the nursery where she cried because she hadn't even had breakfast but they were kind enough to feed her. And then into the service I went. Then I found out that I was going on stage last minute because a video we recorded in the week about prayer wasn't working. So disheveled looking we went on stage and talked. Ha. All I could say to the congregation was if I knew I was going up on stage I would of done my hair! ha. Anyways, Annabell inquisitiveness and rapid learning is really blown me away lately. I was watching a small groups kid's on Thursday and as our neighbor came to our house to drop off his daughter and Annabell yelled out "Bekah" as she walked in, which is our neighbor's daughter's name. The dad couldn't believe she said it! It was too cute. She also now signs for "please". She loves to shake her head and mouth the word yes when we ask her if she wants something. She also has started to become independent and clingy at the same time. She has always been independent, she will roam around the church from place to place, or follow the big kids around and start playing with them. But now if she is tired at all and I take her to the nursery or she is with daddy and sees me she will yell out " Mooooooooommmmmmmmmmyyyyyyy!" and start to cry. Which is warming to me but also hard because I want to comfort her but I know it isn't something I want her to develop too much, because I want her to do well with babysitters and Sunday school etc...which she does as soon as I'm gone or if she is NOT tired.

She also has been eating with utensils very well lately. She even is good about carrying around a cup of food or drink, although she waddles when she walks so a lot of the water spills.

I just remembered, she also does a "Miss Piggy" face which is hilarious. I will try to get it on video tonight. Love y'all!

Here is a very bumpy video of me trying to hide from Annabell so she will walk to me and stop playing in the hall way at church.

Bubbles and Gymnastics

Today I took Annabell to a gymnasium that has a 0-5 years open play from 10:30am-11:30am. She absolutely loved it. She ran across the trampolines with the bigger kids and would fall down and let the older kids bounce her while she laughed. She would throw herself onto the soft mats and went down the slide which was pretty fast, in the pre-k area. It was such a good work out for her that I would like to take her more often. She did begin to get sleepy around 11am since it was about an hour after her normal nap time.

She has been really enjoying bath time lately, well she always has but she has been really enjoying playing with the water. She now blows bubbles in the water and "swims" on her belly. I took some video of her blowing bubbles but she wouldn't swim while I was recording, she was too into putting her letters and numbers into her water bucket. That is a favorite pastime as well.

She has a red puffy left eye today, it looks like she could have a sty. I'm not sure though since I've never had one. Say a prayer that it goes away on it's own so I don't have to take her to the doctor, or if you have any suggestions let me know. I'll try to post a picture of it later. Love y'all! I'm having difficulty posting the video so I'll try later.

Long Days

Well I don't believe Annabell has gone to bed before 8pm for about 4 days in a row. This is very late for her especially since her naps have been short lived do to so much running around. This has made for a very tired baby girl. Her little eyes get rings of red around them when she's tired, and sometimes dark circles like her daddy's when he is tired. She doesn't sleep very well in the car so she seems to wait until we get to where ever we are staying and then she is so tired that she asks to go to bed. It was 9pm before she got to go to sleep tonight. So when we got home we skipped bath time and put her into some pajamas (complements of Rebekkah, neighbor) and down she went. She is learning so much lately! I can hardly keep up with all she is learning. She learned the sign language for book, although it would be hard for a stranger to notice it. Mommy can tell it a mile away though. She also said Ba-By tonight at Briana. Big pop was my witness though, he even called it out first that she said it. She is becoming so gentle with babies, she is much calmer around her cousin Briana. We were at G-ma's and Big Pops tonight for G-ma's birthday dinner (let's just say too tired moms with no idea how to cook sea food were cooking and apparently I think a family of 7 needs the amount that you have on thanksgiving...too much, ha ha... Adie I know you know what I'm talking about! ha ha). Anyways, she was around Briana a lot today and the only time we had to caution her was when she wasn't paying attention to B while playing. For example she was trying to pick up a little chair and move it, but she would try and move it over B's head....a bit scary. But besides that she is doing much better which makes me excited about how well she will do with her brother. Well here are some pictures of her ready for bed...love y'all!

So funny

Annabell truly has her fathers personality traits! She is so funny. Always running around trying to make people laugh. Or if she hears someone laughing she will start to laugh (fake) and try to keep them laughing. It is such a good quality, I hope she holds on to it. Today was a weird day schedule wise. She woke up about an hour earlier than normal, and then I had to keep her from napping so she could go to our bible study next door. She was tired before it even started so needless to say she wasn't a happy little girl during the study. She did become a little more at ease after most the kids left and it was just her and Bekkah playing. We danced for a while to some really cute kids music and then went home. She was then overly tired so she woke up during nap a few times but I kept her in her crib until I was rested from mine. I know, I felt horrible because she took a 3 hour nap! ugh...but it was the only nap she had that day, and I had to rest, I too was tired from waking early.

Our Alumnus (proper word??), Milligan, sent us a shirt when we announced Annabell's birth. It was adorable but too big until recently. She wore it today, and I was actually really proud that she had it on! She was too cute running around with her pony tail and T-shirt. Speaking of which our 5 year reunion is coming up! OH MY! I am SO upset that we won't be able to go, but it is for a great reason, the birth of our son! I think I'm most upset because there is going to be an alumni soccer game vs. the current team! We might kick their butts, they'll out run us but we learned dirty tricks from Garvilla! hahaha...all my old team mates that read this should get a kick out of that memory! Ha! Well here is a video of Annabell using her spoon this morning, she actually was using it much better before I started taping, that's what motivated me to get the camera, she was even scooping the yogurt, but she became fascinated with her fingers shortly after the taping began. Love y'all! Oh p.s. She said "done" today, which was exciting to hear.

Hugs...Yes...and Shower...

(Sleepy baby with her binki and "dolly" which are used for napping and bedtime, she loves rubbing the silk tag on the "dolly's" butt)

Annabell has really been expressing her own personality lately through her expressions, laughter, and actions. She walks around the house always happy and I am truly amazed that she can ALWAYS find something to get into. It's worse when I have the house clean and all of her toys put up, because then she starts looking for new and interesting things, which she usually finds, and are typically off limits. Her listening and obeying has really developed, I was going to say improved but she is just learning how to do it, so I guess I have nothing to compare it to. Today I had a baby shower given by G-ma and Deena. It was wonderful! There was a beautiful blue diaper cake there with lots of little goodies likes spoons, powder, etc. Annabell thought it was so neat to pull the goodies off. So I would say, Annabell don't touch and then put it back. She would proceed to listen and put the spoon back...everyone was so impressed and then she would go to the next item. So she is listening, but she thinks that once she has obeyed she can proceed to touch it again since she already obeyed. It's pretty funny, but I'm trying hard not to let her see me laugh. That is a huge task for me, because she is just like her daddy, she LOVES to be silly and make people laugh. So she will put a sock in her mouth and run around like a doggy and stick her jaw out to show me she picked up the sock like a doggy. It is so incredibly cute and funny, but I don't want her putting those things in her mouth so I will try hard to tell her not to do it while keeping my composure. She looked adorable today. She received some wonderful hand-me-downs from our neighbor's little girl Rebekkah. I put her in a "frilly" dress for the first time since she was a baby and absolutely adored it. She would sway and rub her hands over the frill. She seemed to feel extra special in her dress. When we arrived to the shower she climbed up on a chair and sat for about 20 minutes all on her own. Everyone wanted to know how I got a 1 year old to behave like that, but their guess was as good as mine! ha. She didn't get much of a nap so when we got home she took a two hour nap and then we went to the park. I should have known better then to let her play in the dress. She couldn't climb a thing because the dress was so long. So I ended up tucking it in the back of her diaper. Her favorite past time at the park lately has been the slide. She had NEVER gone down the slide willingly until last week. I really believe it was because the video she watched of her cousin sliding down the slide. She watched that with me in aw, and then the next day we went to the park, and while climbing on the jungle gym she came across the slide and sat down in front of it and looked at me (this was a big slide too, taller than i am), I ran down the stares and stood at the bottom, and she pushed herself down! It was adorable! She was laughing and so happy. She then tried to climb up the slide and do it again. We played on it for several minutes until I got tired of putting her back at the top. So now it's one of her fav. past times when we go.
She had a playdate with her friend Mason the other day. They were so funny together. Annabell now LOVES to give hugs and kisses. The hugs are her putting her head down on the person and saying "awwww" and then the kisses are all open mouth and sloppy. She even stuck her tongue out and licked brad the other day, it was funny. Well when Mason came over he ran over and hugged her and it knocked her down, so she began to cry, but got over it quickly. So later she got excited and ran over and began to hug Mason and knocked him over and he began to cry. She also had a great pony tail in that day that almost lasted 20 minutes, I was so excited that her hair is almost long enough to stay. It actually is long enough but since she throws her head on the couch to pull her self up it falls quickly. Here are some pictures of my hard work..ha..


And last but not least she is officially nodding her head yes. She did it the other day when I asked her if she wanted something but I was convinced it was probably a fluke accident. But today she clearly told me yes when she wanted to do a few things. I love that she understands so much now! She is also becoming really good at pointing out people in pictures and things in books...elmo and birds are favorites of hers! Well I think that is all for now even though I'm sure I have forgotten plenty! Love y'all!

pretend

Just wanted to quickly note that Annabell started today to pretend for the first time (atleast the first time i have noticed). She was walking around with a lid that looks like a bowl and a pen and stirring her pretend food. She then would put it to her mouth as if she was eating it and then she came to me and started to feed it to me too! TOO CUTE!

Library

Today we went to the Library for the 2nd time ever. They have an all ages story time at 9:30 am every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. It was great. Annabell loves going to the library! They even have a little door that the kids can go through when the lady opens up the class room. I love that she is in a structured setting. They read 2 stories, sing songs, and today they even played musical instruments. Annabell sat well for a while and then wanted her milk, which mom totally forgot, so I had to distract her a little. We returned our first set of books which went over well with Annabell, and picked up 3 more. Although she preferred the sesame street books she already has. So hopefully these new books will peak her interest a little more. By the time we got home she was ready to crash. I couldn't find my camera to take pictures of the Library event. She goes with her two friends, Abigail and Bekkah. They are both older by about a year and a half so she tries to copy what they are doing. One of the librarians seemed happy to see us go! ah. But I find it hard to believe that she expects 2 2 year olds and a one year old to whisper after story time and playing with musical instruments. We also have been at the park a lot as normal. I took some video of her playing, and her getting ready to go on our daily walk (i'll have to post it later, it's being difficult!). Lately I haven't been able to walk (this week) as much do to some pain. I am hoping that it will go away soon, or my doctor tells me some magical answer that I haven't thought of, but I have the feeling I'll have this pain for the rest of the pregnancy. Oh well, it has been an absolutely great pregnancy so far. I shouldn't complain that i finally feel something. Speaking of the pregnancy, Annabell is starting to hear the word "brother" and "bubbi" a lot. We are trying to get her use to his room and his clothes, etc. She seems to be doing great. I'm sure the big hurdle will come when I can't play a lot for the first two weeks. Hopefully she will have a lot of play dates then so other kids can help her run out her energy. Love y'all!