Hide and Seek

Hmmm....where have my children gone?

Noah hiding in the cabinet

And Anna's hiding there too

And sometimes she likes to take her blankets, elephant and baby with her too

Giddy Up

We have a riding horse that Noah got from Grammy when he was around 3. Anna got her own smaller riding horse for her first birthday, which she loves, but ever since she started climbing on everything she's started enjoying Noah's riding horse as well. Noah usually needed a little help getting on the horse even when he was 3, but Anna surprised us all a couple months ago when she climbed up on Noah's horse one day and started riding it all on her own. Now she climbs on and rides it all the time and sometimes they ride it together too.

Noah when he was 3 riding his horsey

Anna riding Noah's horsey

And stopping for a better picture

Riding together

Another shot riding together

Even Tigger enjoys the horsey. He hasn't learned how to ride it yet, but he loves to jump up on it and sit on it just like this quite often.

A video of Anna's ride

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Hmmm, should I start with the good, the bad, or the ugly? I guess I'll start with the good. First, here are some pictures of our sweet little princess. She's as cute as can be and does the sweetest things. She loves to sit on our bed and watch her favorite show with her blankets, baby,and elephant (he's under the blankets in the below picture) piled all around her and rub her baby's hair between her fingers. She falls asleep at night rubbing her baby's hair like that. As soon as she wakes up she has to bring her baby, blankets, and elephant along with her where ever she goes. She drags them along everywhere, and I just think it's so adorable because Noah was never like that. He never got attached to a blanket or stuffed animal.

She also loves to help Mommy. When I unload the dishwasher she always helps me by handing me the silverware to put away in the drawer. She even knows to go put her plate in the sink when she's done eating and does it everytime without being told. She just started doing it one day, and she'll put Noah's plate in the sink too if he's not fast enough. She helps me with the laundry too and climbs in the dryer and hands stuff out to me, and then tries to help me put it away too.

Today she even wanted to help me dust as well. I sprayed and she wiped around on the bookshelf with the dust cloth. What a good little helper she is already.

Okay, now for the bad. She's our little climber, in fact, I usually call her monkey because she loves to climb, and she has ever since she could walk at less than a year old. Actually, I think she started climbing before she could walk. She started off climbing onto our kitchen table and would scare me to death everytime she did it because I could just see her falling off on to the hard tile floor. She's now moved on to climbing up Noah's bunk bed in about 2 seconds flat, so we have to make sure Noah's bedroom door is always shut. She climbs up onto her changing table, so we have to keep her bedroom door shut, and she climbs up and gets in the bathroom sink as well, so we have to keep the bathroom door shut too. I just hope she doesn't learn how to open doors anytime soon. Below you can see pictures of two of the things she likes to climb on.

And now for the ugly. Her latest thing she loves to do is take all of her clothes including her diaper off. Sometimes she does this during the day when she's running around the house, but usually she does it in her crib either when she's supposed to be going to sleep or when she just woke up, which leaves a big mess in her crib. I end up washing her bedding at least once a day sometimes twice and even poor elephant and baby have to go in the wash. We've put her to bed at night, and then gone in to check on her right before we go to bed and found her sound asleep, completely naked, and her bed soaking wet, which means we have to wake her up, get her dressed, and change her bedding, and then of course she's not very happy about being woke up. The worst is when we go in to find her and her crib covered in poo as well as being soaking wet. In the below picture we had just gone in to get her up from her nap last Sunday. To the left of her in the picture is her diaper and onesie, and I edited it out because I didn't want to put a picture of that on my blog, but to the right of her in the picture was a smelly little present she had left for us in her crib. You can use your imagination. It's then that I wonder, what happened to my sweet, pretty little princess because that doesn't seem very princess like to me.

Fortunately as you can see by how many things I had listed under the good in this post the good far outweighs the bad, and she'll always be our little princess. At least I know that this phase won't last forever and this too shall pass. I just hope it's soon.

Arron's Birthday

Today was Arron's birthday. I felt much better for his birthday than I did mine, so I had a much better time. We went to Red Robin for dinner, which was really good. They have great burgers, and Anna really enjoyed eating the ketchup. She likes to take french fries dip them in ketchup and just lick the ketchup off of them over and over again. Eventually she does eat the french fry though, and then she had some cantaloupe too which she also tried dipping in the ketchup once or twice. After dinner we headed home and gave Daddy his presents and then had some cake.

Giving Daddy his cards and presents

Watching Daddy open his presents

Anna's always chewing on a present

The birthday cake

Helping Daddy blow out his candles. Anna even blew one out, the first candle she's ever blown out. She's ready for her second birthday now.

Labor Day

On Labor Day we went to Broadway at the Beach to let the kids ride a few rides. It was Anna's first time, and she seemed to enjoy all the rides she went on except the carousel. You'd think she would've liked that one best, but instead she kept trying to get off her horse and hold onto me.

Noah looks very determined

Anna's first ride

Noah on the ferris wheel

Anna and Daddy on the ferris wheel

Noah getting ready for take off

Anna and me on the train with Noah driving

Anna holding on for dear life on the carousel

But Noah's enjoying it