The Pack Rat

This morning Annie was begging me to play with her and her dollhouse. I looked around and realized that pretty much every single toy she has was randomly scattered around the house. Since I really didn't want to pick them all up by myself, I think I came up with the biggest idea pretty much since the Tooth Fairy...let me tell you all about it. Apparently once you turn 3, but it could be 2...okay, once you turn 2, the Pack Rat starts coming to your house and he really likes toys. If he sees a toy that you haven't put away, he assumes, as any good pack rat would, that you don't really want that toy so he takes it home with him. I told this story to Annie and she looked around with fear in her eyes, and jumped up onto the couch and onto my lap. So I quickly added, well don't worry...he only comes at night when you are sleeping. Still some fear there, and I started to worry that maybe she would be too scared of the Pack Rat to go to bed, so I added that he was a nice Pack Rat..like Bailey. Okay she calmed down a bit, but just to add a little extra incentive, I told her that if he does come...and you never know when he will find the time to come...if he does come and see that all of your toys are put away, he might (added might because I've learned that you always need a little loophole in everything!) he just might leave you a little treat. Bingo! She jumped up and said "We gotta put our toys away, we don't want the Pack Rat to take them!" So a little over 5 minutes later every toy was in it's place...or at least someplace out of site which was fine with me! But it didn't stop there...now she is upstairs sweeping the kitchen floors...awesome! What's next....maybe the Dish Washer Genie who takes plates if they don't go into the dishwasher after dinner? I wonder if Tim would fall for that one...I wonder...

Happy Birthday to Olivia!

Olivia is finally 1 year old! Well not finally...it seemed like the last year passed by in a flash. But we celebrated last Saturday anyways with some friends and a special guest, Nana! who incidentally fell victim to Frontiers latest overbooking ploy...

Anyways, back to the Birthday Girl! Walking, blabbering, imitating everything we do, girl. What a sweet cutie pie. We had barely put the cake in front of her and she dove right in for the frosting. That cake was totally awesome by the way...and I'm a little ticked that Tim finished it off all by himself, what an oink-er! The bunny did originally have a nose, but it caught on fire once we lit the candle...oops! Olivia seemed to think the whole thing was made of frosting so I dug out a little cake for her, but same as Annie, I think she is a frosting lover, she when back to licking the frosting. She is also an outdoor lover too. She'll stand by the back porch door and beg to be let out, and if you go out for a second without her...watch out, your about to see the dark side of 'Bavie. I'm looking forward to the summer so she can really see what the outdoors hold for her, swimming, hiking, camping...flowers! She got a bouquet of roses from one of our neighbors for her birthday and I've been trying to show her how to smell them, but she just leans in and looks at them.

Here is a photo of Annie giving Olivia her Birthday present. She decided to be nice to her for the day and also threw in a personally guided tour of the backyard.

Where a Momma can be a Kid!

Ever since the first time we drove past the Chucky Cheese down by the mall, I have been begging Tim to go there with me. That was before we even had kids. Now that we actually have kids, I have the perfect cover for going there! So finally after years of begging to go, we finally met our friends Madelyn and Audry there for dinner and a little Friday night entertainment. So we walk in and Annie makes a beeline for the maze of tunnels that are suspended from the ceiling. As usual she begs me to go with her, but usually there are signs saying "no one over 12 who has a real job and knows how to tie their own shoes...blah, blah, blah". But this time the sign actually said I could go up there! After a few contortions of my back trying to get up the tower which was made for kids under 12, we finally made it to the tunnel maze and I have to say...it was awesome....a little dirty and gross...but awesome. We crawled around in there for what seemed like an hour. Every so often a kid would ask me if I was allowed to be in there, kinda like I had broken a sacred barrier or something, and then the next kid would ask if I knew how to get out of the maze. Anyways, eventually we found our way out and just in time for our pizza and sodas. After dinner we started on a quest to winning enough tickets from the games to get a temporary tattoo from the prize bar which wasn't exactly easy since Annie isn't exactly the worlds best skee ball player. Olivia was having a great time in the toddler area. She could climb up the steps of the little play house they had set up and then go down the slide all by herself! Really this amazes me for some reason. Probably because I want her to be a cute little baby for ever. Anyways, no matter what Tim tells you, the evening was totally awesome and totally cheap too. Only 20 bucks for pizza and drinks for everyone and enough tokens to keep (2) - 3 year olds and (1) - 32 year old happy!

Annie - Budding Penguin Authority

The other day the girls and I were over at a friends house for a jewelry party. Annie was excited about it for one because she likes jewelry and because it was a girl's only party. I think this confused her because she was happy that it was only girls, but then she kept saying, “I hope Patrick is there”. Once we got there and checked out the jewelry, Annie dug into a box of toys and found a board game about a bunch of different animals. She was looking through the game pieces and found one with a picture of a penguin. Not just an ordinary penguin…this one is called a Macaroni Penguin. She kept telling me this, and I kept ignoring her because I thought she was just talking nonsense...I mean what do macaroni and penguins have in common? So after a few times telling me what kind of penguin it was, I finally looked at what she had and read the title on the card…yes!, it was a Macaroni Penguin! Can you imagine my amazement? I’ve never even heard anyone say Macaroni and Penguin in the same sentence! So, Annie is apparently a genius in the penguin arena. And she is teaching others about it too. I told this story at work…and today one of my coworkers told me that thanks to Annie and her penguin knowledge, she got the $2000 Jeopardy question right last night!

Ps. Olivia is working on her brain powers too. This morning she couldn’t get the buttons on the clock radio to make any noise so she grabbed my hand and started to push the buttons with my finger. I was surprised by that too. Last night she was playing peek-a-boo with herself...super cute!

11 Months!

One more month, or should I say just a few more weeks until Olivia's big first birthday! This month she has almost exploded with new skills. She has learned that almost everything has a place to go - and mainly that place is in my mouth. She will share her food with you, as long as you let her put it into your mouth. She knows that glasses go on your face and it is so cute to watch her try to put them onto her face. She also has a facination over wrapping things around her neck. It's weird, but I've watched her countless times, she'll find a scarf, or play necklace, or powercord or whatever and she'll drap it over her shoulders and then drap it again and again and again, around her neck, under her arms, etc, until she is all tangled up in it. She also loves putting smaller toys into bigger holding spots. She is flummoxed by her toy ball popper...the object of that game is to let the balls pop up out of the hole, but she insists on putting the balls back into the hole...silly baby. She is in love with sitting on things, her toy bouncy horse, kid sized chairs, boxes...you name it, she will try to climb up and sit on it...unless it is her car seat, that she wants nothing to do with...me either, she's starting to get pretty heavy and I'm getting tired of hauling that thing around. She loves to help Daddy do dishwasher duties, her specialty is in the unpacking arena. If she ever hears the clatter of dishes or the washer being opened, she will drop whatever she is doing and make a beeline for the kitchen. She is also a big fan of reorganizing the pantry and pots and pans cabinet. It is actually somewhat helpful. She always seems to pull something out of the back of the pantry that I forgot was in there, so we end up having it for dinner. She's all about pointing while saying "dat" which I translate for her to mean "Hey you with the walking legs and the tallness going on...take me over to that whatchamacallit, I'd like to check it out, please!" She definitely has the "all done" baby sign down pat too, what a smartie! She's got 4 teeth and thankfully has only bitten me once with them. She has developed the bad habit of grinding those 4 teeth together, annoying? yes. But the first and last time I told her not to do that she laughed at me and I don't want to make it into a big joke like the bashing the head into the back of the highchair gag...Did I mention that? She thinks that is hilarious and will do it all the time if the urge to be 'funny' strikes her.

Today she walked all the way across the floor of her classroom carrying a book! She's only done about 5 steps at the most at home and I think it is because we carry her a lot more here at home than her teachers do. Well I guess that should be in next months post, but I will probably forget about it if I don't mention it right now!
Other than that...let's see...hair still curly, eyes still brown (but with a little blue/green ring around the outside...hang in there green!) poundage = 19 (I only know this due to a trip to the doc last week for an ear infection)

If you'd like to see my progress on her scrapbook, checkout this link...
http://picasaweb.google.com/ReyneeandTim/OliviaSScrapbook#

Valentines Day Massacre...

Here is sweet Lil' Liblear in her cutie-pie valentines day outfit (knitted by Grandma Nuetzel!) posing for her cutie-pie Valentines Day card which I forgot to post. All was going well until the "Valentine Strangler" showed up in her matching sweater, a most cunning disguise, to claim her latest victim.