Annie turns 2!

On Monday Annie turned 2, but we celebrated a couple of days early on Saturday, and for all she knew, that was her birthday. That morning Rachel and Annie "helped" me bake the chocolate cake. Once it was in the oven they were happy to take over the dish clean-up duty. Since we just had one spatula in use, they each got one side to lick.

Their help with the chocolate cake made them feel fulfilled enough to leave the rest of the baking to me. In peace. :)

For Annie's birthday we were just doing a family party with Grandma and Grandpa Knight, and the cousins coming over, so we didn't do much by way of party planning. But since Annie has been into Minnie Mouse lately, and since that was her Halloween costume, too, I decided to make a Minnie Mouse cake and have the party theme be Minnie Mouse, as far as we took the theme (which was basically just the cake and a few homemade decorations). Rachel took it one step further and dressed up in what she calls her Minnie Mouse dress, then spent a good part of the day telling me about how she escaped from Disneyland just to come visit my daughter and help her have a happy birthday.

After the girls helped me with the chocolate cake, I made a yellow cake for the ears and cupcakes. It was fun to decorate, though the ears could have been a little bigger for the actual cake. Oh well. Turned out good enough for Annie.

We grilled shishkabobs and hot dogs for dinner. We love the fall not-so-hot weather!

Present time!

Apparently we should have had Annie open Grandma and Grandpa's present last. After she saw the play food we had a hard time convincing her to open anything else.

Then it was cake time. Before:

After: (love the look of excitement on Annie's face)

And of course after cake, the messy-faced girls headed back to play with the loot Annie had raked in.

Rachel had a hard time letting Annie be the birthday girl some of the time. It's hard when someone else gets all the attention and all the presents. Lucky for Rachel, Annie is easily distracted so she hardly noticed when Rachel would take over her birthday balloon or one of her presents.

As for Annie at age 2... She is talking in complete-ish sentences most of the time. But since she's started speaking more clearly and in complete sentences, she's also started doing a lot of nonsensical jibber jabber. It's kind of funny. She has a few favorite stuffed animals, her teddy bear, her new moose that she got for her b-day from the grandparents in Alaska, and her rabbit. When she can find her rabbit she'll say "Mine yabbit go?" And frogs say "yibbit! yibbit!" Love it.

Annie loves making Ryan cry by 1. stealing whatever toy he is playing with, 2. hitting him with whatever toy she is playing with, or 3. kicking him if there is not a toy around to take from him or hit him with.  After he's crying she'll tell me "Make her happy!" (She doesn't have her/him straight all the time yet.) I'm not sure if she's telling me she knows she's supposed to make him happy and what she just did was wrong, or if she means that now that he is crying she'll try to make him happy. Maybe it's easier to make a crying kid happy. One day I may be able to leave the two of them alone together in a room. But not yet.

Annie likes copying Rachel and playing with her more and more. She also knows how to push Rachel's buttons really well. And I thought the middle child was supposed to be the peacemaker. Hmmm. Maybe she'll grow in to that role.

Annie LOVES Rachel's bed. She begs to sleep in her bed every nap time and bedtime. At nap time she stays in the bed and sleeps really well, partly because she really loves her binky and blanket, which she is only allowed to have when she's sleeping. At bedtime, when we've let her try sleeping in Rachel's bed she's lasted about 10 minutes, then she's up walking around telling me "All done now! I'm awake!" So she sleeps in her crib at night. She has figured out how to climb in to her crib, using Rachel's bed as a stool, but luckily she has yet to figure out how to climb out of her crib.

At her check up this week Annie weighed in at almost 26 lbs. (40%) and 35 inches (80%) which puts her at a BMI at the 11th percentile. Tall and skinny. And her head circumference is the 97th percentile. I'm glad I don't have to try to birth this 2-year-old.

All in all, we're happy to have Annie in our home. She's a full blown 2-year-old now, both officially, and in temperament (though she's been one in temperament for a while now). Thankfully 2-year-olds were made extra cute to balance the extra moodiness that comes at that age. Though I think Annie, in general, throws less tantrums than Rachel did at this age. I'm not sure if that's part of her personality, or some of the parenting skillz we've picked up along the way that we didn't have yet with Rachel. Sometimes not being the experimental kid pays off. Sorry, Rachel. :) And happy birthday, Annie!!!!

A Tiger

Colette purchased a tiger costume for Ryan. He makes a cute tiger.

Here are some photographs of Ryan playing with two of his favorite "toys": the bathroom scale and the bathroom doorstop.  Ryan likes the scale because when you touch it red lights flash.

Ryan likes the doorstop because of the wonderful noise it makes sometimes: boing.  Before the boing:

After the boing:

 

Halloween Prep: Costumes and Pumpkins

October is here and so we are in the midst of Halloween prep.

This probably won't be Ryan's costume, but Rachel thought it was a good look for Ryan.

Since Rachel was changing her mind 5+ times a day as to what she wanted to be for Halloween, I decided to take her shopping to get her costume and stop her flip flopping. She found what she deemed to be the PERFECT costume: a pink witch. Costumes in Annie's size were slim pickings, so we were just going to have her wear her giraffe pajamas and be a giraffe, but at Target I took one last look and they had a Minnie Mouse costume, and since Annie loves Minnie Mouse so much and I plan on making a Minnie Mouse birthday cake for her at the end of the month, I got it for her. Now she can be Minnie Mouse while she eats Minnie Mouse at her party. :) They both, of course, had to model their costumes. Cuties.

Yesterday we went to the pumpkin patch at Buckelew farms to let the girls pick pumpkins and to enjoy some time together as a family.  We arrived about 10 minutes before the farm opened for business and so we had to entertain ourselves for a little while.  Here are some shots of Annie and Rachel doing pilot and co-pilot duties.

The girls were excited to be in the pumpkin patch.

Ryan is always happy to be outside.

Annie found a big pumpkin and decided to take it for a ride.

Rachel was gung-ho to pick the biggest pumpkin she could find until Jake proclaimed that the girls could pick whatever pumpkin they liked as long as they could carry it themselves.

Here are some shots of us on the "hay ride" back to pay for our pumpkins.

The farm had a place set up for portraits and a kind gentleman took a picture of our family.  Rachel is holding her "ghost pumpkin" and Ryan is holding Annie's pumpkin.

The farm had lots of other places for taking pictures.

The farm also had a petting zoo and free animal snacks.  Annie was a little skittish around the animals.

There was also a mountain of hay bails to climb on: a playground made out of hay.

All in all it was a fun Saturday morning adventure although it threw off everyones nap schedule later in the day.  On the way home we stopped at Eegees for some lunch.

Funny things they say

 
Kids are always saying funny things. I haven't been that great about keeping track of them, but recently there were a few really good ones I've got to record.

Out of the blue....
Rachel: How old will I be when Annie is 8?
Me: 11
R: What about when Annie is 11?
Me: Then you'll be 14.
R: Then I'll be old enough to be a mom!!!
Me: Um, no. That's still a little young. Maybe when you're 20ish.... Are you excited to be a mom?
R: Yeah! Then I can tell my kids what to do and teach them to choose the right!
Rachel often talks about being a mom and really looks forward to it. It's fun to see. Today she told me that she was almost as tall as Marie, and Marie is a mom, so soon she can be a mom, too. She's 4. I think she'd better wait a little. :)

Saturday we were watching General Conference and during one of the songs it showed the man playing the organ. From the angle of the camera you couldn't see that there were actually two men playing the organ, but shortly a third arm, then a 4th arm came into view, so I joked with Rachel a little.
Me: Look, Rachel! That guy has 3 arms! No, 4 arms!
R: No he doesn't! Everyone has 2 arms.
Me: Not that guy. Maybe he's special and has an extra arm or two.
R: No! We're all made like Jesus!
Smart girl. Good to see that some of the teachings are sinking in.

Since my brother's kids came out at the beginning of September Annie has been so happy to have McKenzie (2 1/2) around, but has been kind of mean to Peyton (15 months). She would push her down for no reason if she was near. She has gotten better and is nice to Peyton sometimes now. (Though in general she's a big bully and likes to make both Rachel and Ryan cry a little too much.) Yesterday we were getting ready to go in to my parents' house for lunch and the afternoon session of conference, and I told Annie we had to get her shoes on so we could go see Grandma and Grandpa.
Annie: And Kenzie and Peyton! Make her happy!
Me: Do you like to make Peyton happy?
A: Yes.
Me: Are you going to push Peyton down?
A: No. Make her happy!
Me: Are you going to share with Peyton?
A: No. Make her cry!
Well, at least she's honest.

Messy and dirty

The other day after I had swept and mopped again, the kitchen floor was disgusting by the end of the day, and I commented to Jacob on it. He said something about our kids being messy. I had to correct him. Our kids are dirty. And they make our house dirty. And messy. But especially dirty. Messy I can deal with. You just pick up the toys and paper and crayons. Dirty requires more time and effort. And by far, Annie is the dirtiest and messiest of all the kids at the moment.

She can make a mess with chocolate.

 

 

With markers (and this is a mild example of some of her marker shenanigans).

 

 

And with paint. Yes, that is paint, not blood and gore.

You can't see how she got both of her arms covered in paint, too. Besides getting my shirt, the table, chair, and everything she touched between the table and the bathtub, including the bathtub covered in paint. She was not happy to be stopped in her mess-making and threw a good long tantrum while being cleaned up, and afterwards.

Funny Kids

Ryan is getting himself into all sorts of trouble now that he is a master army crawler. He heads straight for the bathroom whenever he gets a chance, and we try to keep the door closed because if he gets into the bathroom the first thing he heads for is Annie's little potty. The good news is Annie has used the potty for #2 five times in the last several days by her request. The bad news is Ryan wants to play with that potty. We try to keep him out. :) He does manage to get himself stuck in other places. 

 

Rachel decided to make a pretend beach one day after she saw the idea on Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood. The tan blanket is the sand, the blue blanket is the water, the papers have sea shells on them, and she is holding a paper that she drew a cup of lemonade on.

 

Showing off her lemonade:

 

The other night the girls got on their matching PJs then got goofy. 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course they had a hard time calming down for bed, but that's not completely out of the ordinary in our house.