Christmas Cookies....in September...

The other night Anna decided we needed to bake some Christmas cookies.  It actually slowly evolved to this.  I've made the mistake of putting all of the baking items in the pantry on a shelf that's at eye-level for Anna.  I think I might bake cookies with her a little too frequently.  She actually pulled all of the ingredients for chocolate chip cookies out the other night (Minus the salt and eggs...I was super impressed!) all by herself.  That's crazy for a 4-year-old...right?  

So...She noticed the container of all of the different sprinkles on the baking shelf a couple of weeks ago, and begged and begged to use them.  So, I let her put sprinkles on pudding and stuff, but I guess she's gotten bored with that.  So, then she decided she wanted to make a cake with sprinkles, but I told her cookies would be better...and pretty soon it was Christmas cookies.  And as we were working on them she decided that if we made Christmas cookies, Santa would come that night and "bring her presents!"  Oh good grief... 

Look at her....so certain Santa's on his way....After I told her for like the hundredth time that Santa only likes cold weather, she started to get the gist that he was going to be a no-show for now.

So, I frosted and she sprinkled...can you tell?

Not that they look bad here or anything, but they were actually super pretty when I shook off the mounds of sprinkles...should have taken a picture of them...  "/

Santa may not have shown up to eat them, but Anna, Josh, Granny, and I managed to devour the cookies in no time.  :)

Picture time with Meredith!

Today Meredith made her first tripod (she barely got herself sitting up kind of on one hip with one arm down and the other held out for balance)...but by the time I ran to grab the camera and got back to her, she was back on her tummy.  She has yet to do it again.  In all honesty, it wasn't a fabulous tripod, but it was still a tripod.  Next thing you know she'll be sitting up and crawling off.  "/

I figured since I had the camera out I may as well try to get some happy baby pics.  I was just snapping away and playing with the lighting and turning her this way and that...and before I knew it I'd taken nearly 90 photos!  Good grief...that takes forever to sort through!  

I had a hard time picking my favorites.  

I never realized how much she sticks her tongue out!  

Haha!  She's just straight up sticking her tongue out at me! 

There we go!  No tongue.  

Yep...Little Miss Meredith is just a happy girl...  

Haha!  Yeah right.  Look at that temper tantrum!  She was basically saying "Stop taking pictures already and feed me!!!"

I really think she's going to start crawling soon!  She's been doing the rocking thing for a few weeks now, and I can just see her itching to get across the room to where Anna and Wallace are sometimes.  :)  

I can't believe how big she's gotten already.  I have a "Meredith" folder with all of the pics I've taken of just her...So, as I drag these photos that I took today onto the website I am looking at the ones Josh took at the hospital the day she was born...  It really seems like I just had her yesterday...how is she already this big???  

A toy room!

So, the new house has a bonus space upstairs that, for now, is the kids' toy room.  I was against the thought of putting their toys up there when we first moved in.  There's an entry room that Josh and I have no clue what to do with, so I thought it would be better to have them all there where the kids would be on the ground floor.  But...I'm beginning to love the upstairs toy room a lot.  I can just throw all of the toys up there when they start taking over the living room and not feel the least bit stressed about them being completely unorganized and strewn everywhere.  :)  And I can hear the kids up there playing and peek in on them occasionally.  Really it's sort of Wallace's toy room right now.  Anna doesn't go up there nearly as much as him.  She's all into electronics and Netflix now a days.  She'll go up there for some Lego time, but that's about it lately.  

When we first were moving in, Wallace was still pretty unsettled.  He wasn't sleeping well (at all) in his bedroom, and he was so cranky and tired.  But every now and then I'd walk up stairs and find him asleep on the floor surrounded by his toys.  Guess he was finding comfort in the familiarity of all the toys he'd been missing for those two months.  He's since gotten used to his bedroom, and I never find him asleep up there anymore...until today!  

Nothing really beats how cute your kids are when they are sleeping.  :)

Except maybe when they are so tired that they fall asleep mid-play, holding their favorite toy, with their butt up in the air!

First Day of School 2014

So, I know that everyone else shared their back to school pics last week, but my kids' school always starts a week late.  Is that just a preschool thing?  I don't know, whatever...all I know is it makes for easy last minute back to school shopping.  Things may be severely picked over, but it is all on super duper sale!  Love that!

Today was Anna's first day of her last year at her preschool.  Next year is kindergarten.  "/  This was Wallace's first year at the school.  They only take kids that are between 2 and 5, and it's pretty much just a mothers' day out schedule, which is just perfect for my Mom.  Now she can get some stuff done around the house and get to know Meredith...  ;)

I've already shared this with a few people today, but drop off this morning was an experience.  This was the first year Josh didn't go with me, so I wasn't able to get any pics at the school because it was just too much with 2 kids, but I got some at my mom's house when I was dropping Meredith off.  

Anna was her usual first-day-of-school self.  She let go of my hand at the door to her classroom and didn't look back.  I made eye contact with her teacher who basically gave me a "what the heck?? O-kay..." kind of look.  I've gotten that same look 3 years in a row now.  Anna has been such a breeze when it comes to going to school.  She's just always so excited about it.  In fact my Mom has complained to me before that Anna will cry when she picks her up!  Conversely, her teachers always tell me how nice it is to have a smiling face every day.  :)  

She really is a rock star!

So, we're always pretty excited to drop Anna off for her first day, and so we typically are the first or second parents there.  When I went into the little kid building to drop Wallace off this morning I was a little later than normal because we'd dropped Anna off first (I thought Wallace would see this and maybe get a little excited about his class).  

Anyway...I got to his classroom and there were already a handful of kids there...most were sitting by the teacher trying to hold it all together while she read a book, but one was walking around bawling!!!  How sad!  Wallace has a tendency to cry when he loses sight of us, so I've been concerned he might be the bawling child for a while now.  I handed him off to the co-teacher, and she quickly set to entertaining him with some toys while I snuck out.  When I peeked through the 2-way mirror he seemed fine.  Here's where it got interesting....  As I walked down the hall to leave all I could hear were children crying!!!!  We've always been in and out so fast with Anna that we never knew this was happening!  As I passed the 3-year-old class that Anna was in last year there was a little boy hammering his fists on the door wailing for his mommy....  I saw Anna's old teacher and was like "is this normal?"  She assured me it was.  "/  What a crappy day for all of them.  

This week is all short days, so my Mom picks them up literally 3 hours after I drop them off, so by lunchtime I got a report.  Anna loved it, as expected.  :)  But Wallace cried the whole day....except when they took them outside to play on the playground.  What a bummer...Really praying he pulls it together and starts enjoying his time there...

He wouldn't really pose for me this morning, but Anna held him in place for a second.

He gave Meredith a kiss though!

Got a pretty good pic of my Mom too!  

A couple actually!  :)

And Anna kind of showed off her fancy nail polish.  Rainbow is always her request, but today she came home from school, and I guess some mom got overzealous, and a girl had a crown or something on her nails....ugh...I'm going to have to buy a how-to book or something.

Swim School!

We decided to put the kids in swim school!  Anna's taken to the water like a fish, and Wallace scares the crap out of me because he pretty much sucks at swimming, but for whatever reason he's not super scared of the water, which just totally freaks me out.  "/  Anyway, one of Josh's friends recommended a nearby swim school, and I was really impressed with them!  Because it was a slow day at the swim school Anna got a one on one class, which made for a great first lesson.  Josh handled Wallace in the baby and me class.  I am such a poor swimmer myself, I am honestly concerned that my timidness in the water will just rub off on him.  

I've had a lot of time to contemplate why I never really took to water and swimming, and I think I've finally figured out what went wrong...  I blame my vision.  My whole life when I've been in a pool I've either been blind because I had to take my glasses off or my glasses got covered in water...or I've been blind because I had to take my contacts out...or I've been shielding my eyes from other people splashing because hard contact lenses and water just don't mix at all.  For a while in college I attempted wearing goggles...call me vain, but they left imprints around my eyes for hours after I was done swimming.  Whatever...enough about me and my issues with water...let me show off my super cute kiddos and tell you all about their classes today!!!

Waiting for her class to start was just excruciating for Anna.  Wallace's started 15 minutes ahead of hers, and she was like "Am I going to get to swim???"  "When do I get to swim??"  Oh, and as I was snapping away, I heard her say to another little girl "that's my Mom."  And it wasn't an excited and proud "That's my Mom!!"...it was almost more like 'yeah...that weird lady over there with the camera...she's with me..."

Wallace was totally weirded out by his swim shorts, so Josh was trying to distract him by swinging him around until his class started.  We usually let him play in our pool naked, so the swim diaper was strange for him at first.

So, I know this is totally out of focus (stupid camera focusing on the pool depth numbers...), but you can see how excited he was!!!  They slowly get them wet for like 10 minutes, and then pretty soon they're all laughing and excited.  Oh...and on a side note, I was surprised to see that the majority of the parents in this class were men!  A serious departure from tumbling and many other toddler activities that I've heard about from other moms.

And this might look like torture, but they have the parents dunk them, and the kids come up pretty shocked, but excited and happy every time!  I was watching Anna for part of Wallace's class since they overlapped, but Josh assured me he didn't cry once.

Anna was sooooo ready for her class to start!  

Her teacher was awesome with her, and I think I've figured out the trick to feeling good about your kids' abilities in anything...start them one level too low!  I didn't do this on purpose.  When I called in and talked to them about where Anna and Wallace were when it came to swimming, the girl I spoke to suggested the preschool 2 class...Anna tested out of it today!  She got to stand on a podium and ring a bell!  She was so excited, and so was I!  And the teacher had her diving for rings at the end of the class!  I didn't know she could do that!  

So...other than that, I've been trying to get a picture of all 3 of my kids together, but I'm not having much luck....

Wallace is such a pill when it comes to this.  

I swear he knows what I'm trying to do....

This would have worked if I hadn't had the aperture wide open...but the room was dim...  Look at that face...he knows what he's doing!

Whatever....Anna likes to pose with Meredith, so I guess I'll have to just be happy my girls take pics together.  :)

Oh...and Wallace's tag sucking has gotten crazy out of control lately...  I googled it, and I guess it's somewhat common.  Similar to having a pacifier.  He'll grow out of it...right?  Not going to go to college sucking on tags I'm sure...