First Game of 2011

We went to our first Gwinnett Braves (minor league team for Atlanta Braves) Friday night and it was full of super fun exciting events!
Here's me & Allie keeping warm in between her excessive pee-pee breaks.

Our seats are on the third row behind the home team dugout, but there were some open seats on the front row, so Zachary stood there. For most of the game, he was like this - hoping and begging for a ball.

Several were thrown to kids nearby, but he continued to patiently wait.

And then, in the 9th inning, his patience paid off. (Props to mommy for catching this shot with my super slow camera. I am so pumped!!) The catcher tossed it up to my sweet boy. Everyone around us had been routing for him to get a ball. You can see the guy to Zachary's right pointing down at him.
After he got it, the people around us started cheering for him and he got embarrassed and a little self-conscious. It was really cute.

He was so proud & excited! Isn't he the cutest kid ever?!

Injuries & a pub?

Allie ran into the dining room table today. She hit the edge of the table while running full speed. Her injury even shows where she initially slammed into the table, and then the 4 inches where her forehead dragged against the table as she tried to stop running.
Here's a picture that doesn't show how bad it was:

After the incident, I started thinking about her recent injuries and I noticed a trend.

Allie runs a lot. Allie runs fast. Allie turns to look behind her when she runs. Therefore, Allie runs into things a lot.

And she responds in a very predictable way almost every time.

Here's the sequence of events when Allie gets an injury:

1)"SMASH" (the sound of the impact)

2)Allie screams, starts jumping up & down while yelling.

3)Quickly realizing she's hurt, she runs full speed to find me.

4)Once I'm holding her, she opens her mouth wide and dramatically exclaims, "I hurt myself!!"

5)As I'm looking for blood all over & trying to assess where she is injured, she'll start squirming and gyrating while yelling (not really crying, still).

6)Once I figure out what happened (usually because Zachary explains it to me), I'll say, "You hit your head on the table?" and then she nods her head very expressively and buries it into my neck and actually starts crying.

7)After about 1 full minute of actual crying, she'll lift her head and say, "I need my bwankee!"

8)I will carry her while searching for the life-saving blankie and once I give it to her, she'll lay her head on it, suck her thumb, and be still for about a minute.

9)Then she usually requests to watch a specific scene from a movie. (Maybe this helps her get her mind off the injury? I'm not sure, but it's good coping nonetheless!) Today, it was a scene from the movie Tangled. What I love most about today's request is the uniqueness of this statement coming from a 3-year old who's feeling a little down:

"Mommy, I want to watch the part where they go to the pub."

Poor girl...


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Later that night, I was reading her a story before bed time. I kissed her forehead which made her cringe because the injury is still sore. I apologized and told her that I had forgotten about it. She pursed her lips together & said, "Mommy, my hurt will feel better if you read me one more book." Which, of course, I did.

I love this girl!

Easter 2011

We had a quiet Easter weekend at our house, just the 4 of us. Here are some pictures from our Saturday egg hunt and Sunday church-going.

We got Allie some stick-on earrings in her Easter basket. I love her with little earrings. So cute!

How many stuffed animals can my kids have? I don't know, but when they get this excited, I'll pay the $4 for more!

Zachary's decided he likes dry-fit sports shirts. I guess maybe the texture? Anyway, that's what he wanted to wear for his Easter shirt...I love that he wanted to wear his boots too.

...wrong "n" word

Zachary & Allie were looking at an animal book in the playroom and I overheard this conversation:

Allie: "Look at all those little pigs!"

Zachary: "Yea, and that one is their mommy."

Allie: "What are they doing?"

Zachary: "The babies are getting milk from their mommy. See those little things? They are called nostrils."

2 days, 3 kids

We had my niece Ari here for a few days and all three kids had a fun time together. My kids love her and dote on her big time. Ari loves them too. She just watches them, laughs at their silliness and claps when she sees them.
Here, we are playing animal Yahtzee. Ari joined the game and was very cooperative.

This was her face when it was no longer her turn. So cute!

Ari has just started walking and it is adorable. When she gets going, she gets super excited, scrunches her little shoulders up and holds her arms into her body like this first picture.
There was a lot of walking:

...a lot of pushing:

...and a lot of helping:

Even Zachary enjoyed watching her walk by herself. Here, he's scrunching his shoulders the same way she does when she walks. Love it!

Overall, I think the kids enjoyed having a fun little sister around for a few days. Although, I'm pretty sure they'd rather not share Mommy with anyone else in any kind of permanent way (ha!!).

Dogwood Festival

We trekked downtown to the Dogwood Festival, which turned out to be a fun day, but exhausting. The festival was so very very busy. Lines for everything and crowds of people moving very slowly. That made it a little less fun, but we all still had a great day!
Here are a few pictures from the day.

The kids being super goofy:
(*side note: Allie dresses herself now...we pick our fights with her and clothing fights at this stage are definitely not worth it...)

Allie runs SO cute...and she is super fast. I love watching her run:

Face painting:

Watching some international cultural dancing. Allie thought the ladies were actual princesses.

Parenthood

Recent conversation between us:

Todd: "Babe, you see these?" (shows me a few gold-colored coins) "...they are range tokens from the golf course. Not the kids' pirate gold doubloons. Just so you know."

Rebecca: "Oh, gosh, those looks a lot like the gold doubloons. Good thing you told me!"

The Accused

Allie has started a new little thing that is kinda funny.

When she's lost something or can't find a specific toy, she'll stop & think about it for a minute. And then say, "Mommy, I think baby Ari took it."

I have no idea why she thinks Ari "stole" her stuff, but it makes me laugh.

Super cool museum

While in Arizona, the weather was unusually cold and rainy. So Mimi came up with some great indoor activities for us to enjoy. We visited the Children's Museum of Phoenix, which was amazing. The whole place is full of neat imagination-promoting exhibits made of random household stuff (like forks & spoons, pool noodles, CDs & DVDs, old shoes, door knobs, etc.) The museum has its own photo gallery, which really shows you some of the neat creative stuff they designed out of recycled garbage for kids, but here are some pictures of the kids having a great time:

Arizona

We are visiting Mimi & Grandad in Arizona this weekend and took some cute family pictures today. We had a super fun & busy day today...more pictures to come.

Reading update

Zachary's been reading like a machine over the past few months. I'm so proud of him!! We've been going through the Bob books series for beginning readers. I'm a big fan of these books. There are awesome little flash cards in the box sets as well. The books are challenging but very do-able for a beginner. And since there are 10-12 books in each set, we can read through a box 2-3 times before he starts to memorize the books. Good stuff!!

Pirate Birthday Party!

We celebrated Zachary's 5th birthday today. He told me months ago he wanted a Pirate Party, so we've been working on some homemade pirate gear & brainstorming ideas! It was a super fun day. My friend made this awesome cake:

My sister Jenny made a bunch of fabulous food for us to enjoy.

This is a cute picture of the little siblings:

Looking at the treasure map on the treasure hunt:

Sweet little "Arrrrrr-i" the pirate: