Punchline

Overheard today:

Elizabeth: "Hey, Anna, let's tell knock-knock jokes!"
Anna: "Okay."
E: "Knock-knock"
A: "Who's dere?"
E: "Banana."
A: "Banana who?"
E: "Banana water I'm going away."
A: (laughing)
E: "Did you like that joke? I made it up."
A: "Yeah. An' I made it down."

Alchemy

We made some heart-shaped crayons for Elizabeth to give to her friends for Valentine's Day. I think we'd better attach a note explaining what they are; when I handed one to Anna she immediately asked, "Can I eat this?" I must admit, the brown ones do look pretty tasty.

2009: An alphabetical summary

I feel bad that our blog was a little neglected last year. We have early church this year, so I'm looking forward to spending Sunday afternoons keeping the blog nice and current (as much for us as for you guys. This blog has become my primary form of "record-keeping" for our family.) Anyway, I thought I'd do a recap of 2009 to bring this up to speed. . .and so I could post a bunch of pics I meant to share but never got around to posting:

A is for Annalise. She turned 2 this past summer, and she's got the whole toddler thing down pat. She's our little clown, loving to pull funny faces and act out (especially at dinner) in an attempt to get us to laugh.


Anna loves to "read" her books, sing to herself as she puts together puzzles, and narrate the escapades of her stuffed animals in stuffy-nosed but still adorable falsetto. One of the funniest exchanges I've had with her this year is as follows:
Anna: "Mommy, abbo tees."
Me: "What? What do you want?"
Anna: "Abbo tees!"
Me: (still clueless) "Uhhh, can you show me?"
Anna: (pointing at the refrigerator) "Abbo TEES, Mommy! Abbo TEES!"
Me: (racking my brain for some food that sounds remotely like "abbo tees") "Umm, apples? You want some apple, uh, T's?")
Anna: (sobbing) "ABBO TEES!! ABBO TEES!!"
Me: (light bulb goes on) "Ohhhhh. . .cheese? 'How about cheese?' "
Anna: (relieved, yet mildly disgusted by my idiocy) "Yeah! Abbo tees."


B is for basement. We kept plugging away at the basement overhaul through the year. By the end of 2009, demolition was just about finished. I'm hoping that we'll be ready to put away the sledgehammer and pick up a framing gun soon.

C is for cousins. We love the cousins, all. . .hold on, gotta add them up. . .seventeen of them. When the newest cousin (Jay and Lisa's baby Ella) joined the crew this summer, we got to have her big brother and sister, Madi and Jordan, sleep over. We had a fabulous time partying with the kiddos:

D is for dentist. At our last visit, we found out that our little Anna Boo's teeth are basically rotting out of her head. Okay, minor exaggeration. But she does have quite a few cavities. Enough that I'm pretty sure I can add the "Poor Hygiene" patch to my Bad Mom merit badge sash.

E is for Elizabeth. She's growing by leaps and bounds. She loves going to preschool, inviting friends over for playdates, and going to ballet:

She's also a super little reader and writer--she reads anything and everything these days, from a stack of picture books to the back of the cereal box. . .and we never know when we'll come across a little note that she's written:

(She taped this to our bathroom door, in reference to a family joke. I always call the girls "my chickens". Put a couple of chickens into a tub of hot water, and what do you get? Chicken soup, of course.)

I've really enjoyed Elizabeth this past year--this is a wonderful age, if only for the great conversations you can have with kids at this age. Here's a recap of a conversation I had with her awhile ago:
Elizabeth: "I loooove chocolate ice cream! I love it more than ANYTHING."
Me: "Oh, so do you love chocolate ice cream more than. . .me?"
Elizabeth: (pause) "No. . .I just love you. . .the same as I love chocolate ice cream."
(I'm comparing that conversation with this one and trying to decide. . .am I pulling ahead or falling behind? Is chocolate ice cream more or less than "a hundred"?)
F is for finger paint, that staple of art projects for the 2-and-under crowd that, by cruel coincidence of nature, has a texture and consistency nearly identical to pudding:



G is for graduation. In June, Elizabeth's preschool held a graduation ceremony to congratulate the kids on surviving the rigors of their first year of preschool. Say what you will, but they did look pretty cute in their mortarboards.

H is for Holly. Somewhere between grocery-shopping and laundry, I did manage to get a few other things done. . .I even ran my first 5K!

I is for ice. It was a hot, hot summer, and we indulged in more than a few sno-cones. (Has anyone ever actually eaten an entire sno-cone? My girls just suck them dry of the syrup, like sticky little vampires, then leave the rest to fuse into a tasteless and inedible ball of ice.)

J is for Jared. When he's not hard at work on base, you can find him at home operating a variety of heavy machinery:

K is for Khaki Shade, the color we chose to paint the upstairs. And it only took me three months and seven sample swatches to pick. We painted the living room/kitchen/hallways/stairwell. And the ceiling. Two coats. Plus primer. Don't forget the baseboards. And the eight doorways. And the crown molding. Whew! Before we painted, Jared redid all the electrical outlets in the living room, patched up the ceiling, and put in recessed lights in the living room and new light fixtures in the kitchen--once we got it all painted, the upstairs started to look pretty darn good!
L is for laundry. I just realized that I did about 300 loads of laundry in 2009. Somewhere around load #195, I had a flash of inspiration: just let the girls wear their swimsuits 24/7 and have them run through the sprinklers when they get dirty. Synergy, my friends. Synergy.


M is for marriage. We celebrated our seventh anniversary in July of 2009. Jared was out of town on business, and I'm sure we intended to go out to celebrate once he got home, but I'm now realizing that we never did get around to it. That sounds about right for us--to be totally honest, we're both pretty happy spending a quiet evening together at home. But honey, if you're reading this, just because I admitted to that doesn't give you carte blanche to forget Valentine's Day. ;)

N is for nursery. Jared and I served for the better part of 2009 as the nursery leaders in our ward. We were released a few months ago, and while I was really, really looking forward to getting to go back to Relief Society, I'm rather missing those little monkeys. All 15 of them.

O is for October, so I can post gratuitous Halloween pictures.


P is for princesses. At Elizabeth's request, for her 5th birthday we had a "princess party", complete with the classic Barbie-in-a-cake cake.Don't ask what's up with the skirt. I was just glad to get it done before the guests start arriving.


Q is for quiet. . .or rather, the lack thereof. Now that Anna can say more than "goggy" (doggy) and "dit" (binky), the girls keep up a near-constant stream of conversation with each other, with me, with their toys. . .

R is for retaining wall. Jared spent the better part of the summer and fall putting in a stone retaining wall in our backyard. At the risk of sounding the fool and stating the obvious, rocks are really, really heavy. Thank goodness for the Frankentractor (see "T is for. . .") and for strong in-laws.

S is for is for sisterhood. It's been so interesting to watch the girls' relationship develop as they grow older. I'll admit, this past year was MUCH harder than the previous in terms of sibling relations. Anna is no longer content to just be a "prop" in Elizabeth's play world; she's got very definite opinions of what she wants to do. That's been hard for Elizabeth, who ALSO has very definite opinions of how she wants things to go. And Anna is old enough now to know just how to push her sister's buttons--and takes great delight in doing so. About half of the time they play beautifully together, and it's simply heartwarming to watch. They'll make up games to play together, Elizabeth will read stories to Anna, Anna will wrap her arms around Elizabeth for a big hug. . .Then there's the other half of the time, when I find myself wishing for a couple of extra-large dog crates with locking doors. Ahhh, sisterhood.




T is for tractor. Jared built a frame so he could add the backhoe attachment to the back of the tractor--once that was done, he was more eager than ever to start digging up the backyard. All in the name of progress, he assures me.




U is for umbrellas. The girls love their umbrellas, and all spring/summer/fall they waited impatiently for it to RAIN so they could get them out:



V is for vegetable garden. We succeeded in growing a pretty decent crop of tomatoes and zucchini. The cherry tomatoes, especially, were a big hit with the girls. I also tried my hand at a few other things, including broccoli. But judging by our yard, broccoli is second only to tulips as the favorite meal of the local deer.

W is for William, our baby boy whom we lost in February. We know only a little more about why we lost him (I had a large subchorionic hematoma and the beginnings of an infection; either or both of these things could have broken my water and sent me into labor), but that doesn't matter much to me anymore. What matters is that we love him and miss him dearly, and that I feel fortunate for the brief time we did have with him.

X is for Xmas. We went to Elizabeth's preschool program, where Santa made a surprise visit. Anna was thoroughly nonplussed.

We took a trip downtown to see the Christmas lights. The girls think Trax is just one step from Disneyland in terms of awesomeness.

I found a cute Christmas dress for Elizabeth at the thrift store and got a wild hair to make a coordinating dress for Anna:

Elizabeth got to be Mary to Jordan's Joseph in this year's nativity. Anna was a Wise (wo)Man, who thought Baby Jesus would rather have a puzzle than a box of "frankincense". As usual, the paparazzi was out in full force:

After three years of asking, Elizabeth got a rocking horse for Christmas!




Y is for Yellowstone. Hey, wait, I actually managed to blog about that, didn't I? Yay, me!

(I don't think I included this photo in the original Yellowstone post. Random cute puppy snoozing at the Yellowstone lodge, waiting for his owner to return. . .)

Z is for zoo. Z is always for zoo, but did we actually go to the zoo in 2009? Ummm. . .wait, yes, we DID! Excellent. (Z is, uh, also for zero, the number of decent pictures I got of the girls on said trip to the zoo.)

There you have it--our 2009 in a nutshell. A big, wordy nutshell with a few megabytes worth of photos. :)

If You Give Your Husband A Backhoe . .

. . .he's going to want to landscape the backyard. First he'll build a retaining wall.

While he's building the wall, he'll uncover the electrical conduit that goes to the site of his future workshop, and he'll have to dig a deeper trench to bury it below the wall.

When he starts digging the trench, he'll realize he wants to have water in his workshop too, so he'll dig another trench back to the house, to lay the pipes.

Once he reaches the house, he'll need to drill a hole through the foundation to put the pipe through.

When the hole is drilled and the pipe is through, he'll need to frame out the wall to cover up the pipe

After he frames out the wall, it'll need to be drywalled and mudded.

The new wall will look so nice that he'll want to re-do all the other walls and the ceiling in the basement, too.

But before he can finish the ceiling, he needs to finish re-wiring the basement.

Re-wiring the basement will end up being the final straw that causes his wife to lose what remains of her patience and decide they should just tear down the house and start from scratch.

And chances are, if you let her tear down the house. . .she's going to need a backhoe to do it.

Q & A (& Q & A & Q & A. . .)

Sometimes I feel woefully underqualified to be the parent of a preschooler. You'd think a degree in early childhood education would be plenty. It's not:

Conversation 1
Elizabeth: Mommy, what do mommy horses do?
Me: They walk around and eat grass and neigh. . .just horse stuff.
E: No, I mean, how do they make baby horses?
Me: Well, the baby horse grows in the mommy's tummy, and then when it's ready to be born it comes out.
E: I know, but where does it come out?

I should've majored in animal husbandry.

Conversation 2
(We're driving home from the store where Elizabeth saw some candy she wanted to buy, and I'm explaining how much it costs.)
Me: You know what a penny is, right? Well, a penny is worth one cent.
Elizabeth: What's a cent?
Me: It's one penny. One penny is the same thing as one cent. A dollar bill is worth 100 pennies, or 100 cents.
E: Well, where do dollar bills come from? Does the bank make them?

No, wait, make that economics. . .

(Conversation 2 continued)
Me: No, honey, the bank doesn't make money. The government does.
E: What's the government?
Me: It's the people who take care of the country. Like the president.
E: What's a president? Does the president make the money?

. . .with a minor in political science.

Conversation 3
Me: Here, put some Purell on your hands before you eat that.
Elizabeth: It kills the germs, huh?
Me: Yes, it does.
E: How does it kill the germs?
Chemistry and microbiology might have helped, too.

I've decided I'm going to start outsourcing my job. Next time you see our number on your Caller ID, you can expect to hear Elizabeth on the line with a question (or ten) for you.

Tooth Fairy

One night last week, Elizabeth was taking a bath--as usual, she was making up elaborate stories about her toy frogs and rubber duck and narrating their adventures out loud. I was in my bedroom and heard her say, "Whoa! My teeth are loose!" I figured it must have been one of the frogs "talking", but a minute later she dashed into my room and excitedly showed me--her two bottom front teeth were indeed loose!

After a couple of days of wiggling and checking and endless questions about the Tooth Fairy ("What does she do with the teeth? How does she get to my room? Does she have an alarm clock that tells her when my tooth falls out?"), the tooth on the left was extremely loose. On Saturday morning Elizabeth bravely said she was ready to pull it out, so we tied a little lasso of thread around it, she gave a good tug. . .and changed her mind because that first tug kind of hurt.

That afternoon after lunch, I gave Elizabeth an ice cream bar and sent her out to the porch to eat it. A few minutes later she ran inside, tooth in hand (and chocolate all over her face). She said she had been finishing up her ice cream bar when she felt something hard, so she spit everything out and voila: there was her tooth!

Bedtime was particularly exciting that night. Books about losing teeth, another volley of questions about the Tooth Fairy, and finally the placing of the tooth under the pillow. The next morning Elizabeth was thrilled to find the Sacajawea dollar the Tooth Fairy left behind. (The coin went straight into her "scooter box"--just seven more teeth and she should have enough money to buy that scooter!)

Love, Preschooler Style

This afternoon I was driving around town with the girls, and Elizabeth started telling me about which park was her favorite:

Elizabeth: "I really love B____ Park. I love it from the bottom of my carseat to the top."

Me: "Do you? How about Anna? How much do you love her?"

Elizabeth: (pauses) "I love Anna from the road up to the sky."

Me: "Wow, that's a lot! How about Daddy and me?"

Elizabeth: (pauses again) "I can't show how much I love Daddy and you. I just love you one hundred!"