Spring is coming!

It has been so nice outside the last couple of days! Annie is really looking forward to getting to wear her summer time clothes, and Tim is really looking forward to Annie not insisting on wearing summer clothes on top of winter clothes. She is often seen wearing pastel polka dot turtle necks under flowered sundresses with stripped orange and blue tights, and of course her ruby red slippers. (She really likes picking out her own clothes!)

Yesterday it was so warm that after dinner we got the bikes out and took a ride to the playground. The girls played great together, they are really becoming best friends. It was nice to see them like that, and also nice to not have to be the one entertaining Olivia...Annie took care of that by chasing her around, pretending to try and catch her. Seeing that also made me wonder if second born babies have a higher rate of accidents, mainly because we were watching Olivia climb up ladders and such and I know that with Annie we would have been right there waiting for her to fall down...hummm, I wonder if that is the reason Annie is so tentative about certain things but Olivia will just jump right in.

Today Tim and the girls went to check out the botanic gardens. A nice man was working on the vegetable garden and he let Annie plant a lettuce. It's the one right on the corner, so if you are ever there, and happen to see a lettuce plant flourishing on the corner of the garden, think of our green thumb, Ms. Annie.

I posted earlier that we had plans to take Olivia for her 2 year checkup. The night before, Annie spent a few minutes describing what was going to happen..."your going to get a shot, but don't worry it won't hurt. I'm not going to get a shot, cause I already got my shots...Olivia, if you are good at the doctors, then we'll both get a lollypop!" squeals of excitement from both girls at this. The best part was hearing Olivia repeat back everything Annie told her -"get a shot, not hurt, you get shot, good lollipop, yeah! The appointment went great...we walked into the lobby and the first thing we hear from Olivia is were is her lollipop? In the exam room...lollipop? Doctor shows up, can I have a lollipop? Well, basically the appointment went like this - Bav weighs almost 24 lbs (15%), she is 33.75 inches tall (30%), and has a 19.5 inch melon (95% - must be lots of brains in there)! She recognizes a kitty cat, a dog, a boy, and a horse, but not a bird. In her defense, the bird looked like a kindergartener drew it...She knows her body parts, and eats hamburger. The doctor was really impressed with that for some reason, and he was blown away when we told her that she can pretty much dress herself. So basically, yes, she is the world's cutest, smartest, and the most hamburger eating, dressing-ish 2 year old.

ps. Yes, she did get a lollipop...a pink one, yeah!

Happy Birthday!

Here is Olivia on her second birthday, March 19th. At least I think it was the 19th...could have been the 18th (I am horrible with dates and I have the 18th still stuck in my head since that was the date I was supposed to check into the hospital). Can you believe she is 2! and she is still the cutest baby ever, and still pretty petite, at least when compared to her big sis...don't tell anyone, but in the photo, Olivia is wearing the same dress that Annie wore on her first birthday!

We head for the doctor tomorrow for her yearly checkup, and just in time to show off her newly acquired bruises. Today she 1) fell out of the stroller and scrapped up her chin. 2) got her thumb crunched in the sliding door (thanks for that accident go out to Annie). and 3) dove head first of the couch.

Olivia has accomplished a lot in the last year...She's gotten a turn or two in on some skis (actually I think it might have been a total of 4 turns with the help of Dada) She is a great hiker and is constantly showing up Annie who would rather still be in the stroller. Actually, I'm surprised that she was even in the stroller this afternoon. She has an adorable(not) tendency to switch between being the most cutest adorable little toddler in the world and a devil-child. She is starting to talk up a storm and really enjoys cooking or mixing pancake batter or making smoothies. She will drop everything and run to the kitchen at the first mention of the possibility of smoothie making. She is still quite the independent Bav but is starting to enjoy spending more play-time (or is it beat-up-on-Annie-time) with her Annie. She still has her curly hair, big brown eyes, and our hearts wrapped around her pinky finger.

ps. Happy 30th Birthday Unkle John! I can't believe that you are finally older than me.

I'm scratchy...I'm scratchy

We have a confused baby in our house.

For the last few weeks we thought Olivia had really dry skin or something. Every once in a while she would start saying, I'm scratchy. I'd pick her up and rub her back, or Tim would put some extra lotion on. It wasn't until I noticed that she would only get this "scratchy" feeling if say, Bailey was trying to be friendly with her, or she was at the top of a really tall slide, or I had just lifted her up really high into the air...she always said she wanted to touch the ceiling, and then all of the sudden she would get scratchy whenever we tried. Now it doesn't take a Sherlock to figure out that she was actually trying to say, "I'm Scared!" Why she thought to use the word scratchy for this, we will never know...which reminds me of another misused Baby-O word...who says that a stool is a scoop? She had been saying "scoop, scoop" when she wanted you to move over and make room for her, but now she say, "I need my scoop"...and then runs into the bathroom to get her little step stool.

Beauty Queen Bav

Olivia was looking quite glamorous the other day...check out her fancy hairdo.

Ski Day!!

We took Annie to Copper Mountain last Sunday for her second ski lesson. We left the house at 6:30 AM, dropped Olivia off at a friends house and drove up for about 1-1/2 hours. We let Annie watch a DVD on the way. When we were about 20 minutes from the resort, Annie's movie ends and she looks around. She declares "We're in the mountains" which we had been for about the last 45 minutes. She follows this with "Where did Olivia go?" - as I said we dropped her off a while ago. Strangely, this oblivious to everything show happened a month previous when we took her skiing - the same two questions!!

Now on to skiing. Annie is not too adventurous yet. She still prefers us to hold her up while skiing but she will do 30 feet on her own with some convincing. We took her on her first ski lift, which I think she liked more than skiing. We may take her again, but I don't think we'll pay for another lesson this year. When we picked her up from her first lesson she was operating the lift - seriously, standing at the top of the magic carpet and pressing the stop button if anyone had trouble and high fiving each kid as they got off. This time she was making snow angels when we picked her up. All the other kids were skiing and ours is goofing off.

First Day of School!

This morning was Annie’s first day at Whee Preschool. We had checked out the school on a recommendation from our neighbor and attended an open house there 2 weeks ago. Annie fell in love with the place from the start and so it has been a hard 2 weeks to wait for her first day. This morning she got up, got dressed and picked out a show and tell to bring. Now Annie has gotten into the habit of picking out her own clothes, and usually I don’t mind what she picks out, but with the first day of school, I was hoping she would at least match. Note: Tim helped her get dressed, so I blame him for not steering her in the right direction…she picked out a white and orange paisley print top, a pink flower printed sleeveless dress, pink tights with purple polka dots, and red ruby slippers. When I saw her eating breakfast in this outfit…well…so I tried to convince her to at least change into solid pink tights and a solid pink top. I was running late so I left it up to Tim to do the convincing. Once at work I decided to look up the preschool calendar on their website, only to find that today was class picture day…Annie was going to be memorialized dressed like a clown/hippy/homeless toddler.

Annie was somewhat tentative when she first arrived. The school was pretty busy with parents running in and out. Her teachers explained to her that she needed to put her things into a basket, wash her hands and then she could play. She took her time, looking around... but Olivia jumped right in and started washing her hands and then ran off to play. Sorry Olivia, but this is Annie's class...

When I picked her up at 12:30, she was really excited to see me and it sounded like she had a great time. She wanted to show me everything that she did that day and did not want to leave. Her teacher Mrs. Silver told me that she was very pleased that Annie jumped right in and was very social and played very well with a few of the girls in the class.