Teeeeeeth

I keep waiting for Jacob to get guilted in to posting again, but apparently waiting isn't enough. I've got to do some active guilt-ing to get him to do it. We've got a little bit of catch up to do (not too much, thankfully).

Anyway, last weekend Annie was not her usual happy self and Monday morning I woke up and found the culprit: her first tooth, almost breaking through. And on Tuesday the tooth was through the gums and she was back to her regular happy self.

Fuzzy tooth picture:

She's getting another one coming in right next to it, but I'm not sure that it's broken through yet, though it's real close. Luckily she's not really fussy with this one.

And one last quick picture of Annie's morning hair:

No complaints here

For all of Jake's attempts to exempt himself from future blog posting responsibilities, he failed miserably. I have to say, he did an excellent job, and maybe he should become the official Campbell family blogger. :) Especially since I am such a slacker in that department lately.

Most of the time pictures push me to post something on the blog. Since we hardly ever print out hard copies of our pictures, the blog book we do every year is the only printout of pictures we have, so if I want a hard copy of a picture, I have to post it on the blog, which will in time be printed in our blog book. Jake did a great job at getting caught up on the pictures. There is one last picture, then I'll feel completely caught up. Rachel, ready and excited for her dance class:
A couple of weeks ago Rachel started a dance class through the parks and rec department. She loves it. I took her to a dance recital a few weeks ago that her friend was in (we were planning on doing that dance class, but I forgot to sign up until it was too late) and since then she's been talking about going to her own dance class, so I signed her up. It's a ballet and creative dance class, and she has a ball. Her favorite thing so far is the rainbow scarf dance they do at the end of every class, which involves her holding a rainbow scarf and running around waving it.

Blog Catch Up

Colette told me that I needed to help out with keeping the blog up to date. Thus far, whenever I have posted, she has felt compelled (OCD style) to "revise" my posts. If you care to comment on how long you think it will take before she edits this one, feel free. As Bill Cosby would say "Fathers are the geniuses of the house because only a person as intelligent as we could fake such stupidity. Think about your father: He doesn't know where anything is. You ask him to do something, he messes it up and your mother sends you: 'Go down and see what your father's doing before he blows up the house.' He's a genius at work because he doesn't want to do it, and he knows someone will be coming soon to stop him."

Colette insists that I must post pictures when I am blogging. I was just going to make all y'all use yer imaginations. "If I must, I must." -- Mary Poppins

Annie has reached an important developmental milestone: she can suck on her toes!

Annie has also achieved another important milestone: mobility. This little girl can roll and roll and roll. She can also army scoot and rotate herself. In the picture below Annie started out at the head of the blanket, by the frogs.
We can't leave Annie unattended anymore. The little stinker usually does most of her rolling after you leave the room :) She'll do a token roll or two while you're around to entertain her, but once she decides she's on her own, she takes off rolling.

Colette left Annie on our bedroom floor to brush her teeth, do her make up and whatever. When she was done Annie had rolled as far South as she could, got stopped by the wall and fell asleep.
Rachel noticed Annie sleeping there and decided Annie needed a stuffed animal to help her sleep better (Rachel sleeps with 2-12 stuffed animals when she goes to bed at night). Rachel put the rabbit with the broken leg (known as "Femur") on top of Annie to help her sleep.

Rachel is very self motivated. Here she is making her own peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Mommy was not in the kitchen when this adventure in food preparation began, but she allowed it to continue when she discovered it.

Here are some cute pictures of Annie "peeking" out from behind different objects.



One night when Colette was putting Annie to bed, she started reading a story to her and Rachel decided to join in the fun. I discovered the three of them and I had to take a picture of the lovely ladies in my life. Looking at this picture makes me smile. Aren't they beautiful? I'm one lucky guy!

This weekend was General Conference. We spent some time with Colette's parents. Between sessions, Grandma showed Rachel a new toy for keeping cool. It's a sprinkler fountain of sorts that will spit out little balls and balance them on a steady stream of water. Rachel was enthralled.
Kudos to Colette for the cool action shot. Conference was a spiritual feast (as always). It always feels like a vacation weekend to me, because we spend so much time with family.

Tonight, I was singing a song from the movie Mary Poppins: "I Love to Laugh". Rachel asked what I was singing, so I looked for a clip of it on the web. Rachel and I watched it together.
Rachel is wearing a crocheted hat that actually belongs to Annie, but Annie was asleep at this point in the evening and so she wasn't around to take it back.

Sisters

Rachel is a big help with Annie. Annie is generally a happy kid, but usually right around dinner time, when I need my hands free to make dinner, she is not happy unless I am holding her. Or if Rachel is entertaining her.

Rachel can make Annie laugh like no one else can. And Rachel loves doing it. It's so fun to see the sisters begin to interact. And it's nice to have a helper around to entertain the baby so I don't always have to be the entertainment.
Also, note Rachel's hair--she wanted her hair done just like Annie's. Annie's hair is long enough that it gets in her eyes unless I do something about it, so most days she gets a ponytail right on top of her head since it's the easiest thing to do. Rachel was disappointed that all her hair didn't stick straight up like Annie's, but I guess it was close enough.

Four months

Annie turned 4 months old on February 29th. . . . Or would have if that day existed this year. The next day, Feb. 30th (March 2) she rolled over. And a week later she could scoot forward to get a toy. Granted it takes her 10 minutes to move a 12 inches, but it is forward movement. And it scares me a little. I don't need a mobile 4 month old. I'm more than happy to wait until she's 1 or even 2 years old before she starts moving around and getting into everything.
Anyway, Annie had her 4 month check up last Thursday and all went well, though she wasn't particularly fond of the shots. She weighs in at 14 lbs 8 oz (62%) and 25.5 inches (84%). That is exactly the same as Rachel was at her 4 month check up.

Annie has tried some rice cereal a few times...
and LOVES it. She can't get enough.
When I get the spoon anywhere near range she grabs my fingers or spoon or whatever she can hold to pull the food into her mouth.

Annie continues to be a happy, laughing girl:

She also loves anything with a screen.

"Whatchoo want? I'm emailing Grandma."

Rachel is getting to be a bit happier and more cooperative lately. She loves her little stuffed animal friends.
We've started a movie night tradition on Fridays and Rachel looks forward to it all week. Last week we made it into a special camp-in movie night complete with tent and sleeping on the floor of the living room.
Such fun.

wishing

Rachel sat at her little table today eating a cupcake. After she had finished licking all the icing off the top of the cupcake she sat there pretending it was her birthday. She closed her eyes and said,"I wish I can have my very own puppy someday." Then blew on the cupcake like she was blowing out a candle. Very cute. She is so in to pretending everything these days. She calls me grandma half the time and tells me she's visiting with her 3 or 4 or 5 kids.
The other day she got out her paints and a coloring book and spent a good 15 minutes painting a "surprise." She kept telling me to close my eyes and that I couldn't peek because she was making a surprise for me. And she would run in to check that my eyes were, indeed, closed. I was cooking dinner at the time. She finally asked, "Are your eyes closed? Even when you're cooking?" So she caught on, I guess, that I wasn't completely following directions. After she finished painting my surprise, she came and showed it to me, and then proceeded to tell me that I had to paint her a surprise. When I sat down to paint she came and checked on her "surprise" every minute or two, and instructed me on which colors to use or not to use. Glad I could make her a surprise. :)
These times of her being cute help balance out the exasperating part of having a 3-year-old. Now that she's got language down pat, she pretends that she can't speak, or she talks in a little baby voice that is so annoying. She pretends to be a baby and wants to be carried all over, or wants to be wherever Annie is, whether it's on her play mat, in her Bumbo seat or her high chair and gets mad when I tell her I won't move Annie so she can be there because Annie only has a few toys she knows how to play with and Rachel has tons. Her stubbornness and having fits when she doesn't get her way and her ability to make huge messes while disobeying every rule in the house sometimes gets to me. But I try to remind myself she's learning and she won't be this age forever (thank goodness) and I should enjoy it. And I'm trying. :)

Snow!

Guess what we woke up to on Sunday morning:
Snow! And plenty of it. At least in Tucson terms, it was plenty of snow. If we're lucky we might get one snow fall each year. And this year we were lucky. Jake went down the street to the desert and took some pictures of the desert covered in white:

Very pretty. Of course, by 10:30 when I left to go to church it was all melted already. But that's just the kind of snow we like--sticks around long enough to play in, and by later that afternoon a light sweater keeps you comfortable.
We got our fun in that morning. Rachel wanted to rush right out into the snow, but we prevailed upon her to put on shoes at least, and a little extra layers than just her pjs.Her first experience making a snow angel:
Here's the little snowwoman we built.

Jake helped build another one, too, and by the time we got home from church they were melted. Rachel was a little disappointed, but then we reminded her of the snowman song that she had never really seen in practice before: "in the sun he melted, melted, melted...small, small, small."
Rachel also got a chance to have a (kind of) real snowball fight. Notice the action shot (you can see the snowball in flight, just about hitting Jake):
When our home teachers came over that night they asked Rachel if she played in the snow. Her reply: "I hit Dad with a snowball in the BUM!" followed by giggles. It was a nice surprise to wake up to. And it was nice to be back in short sleeves today.