Week's worth of blog

Well another week slipped by with no updates. Sorry for those of you who actually come here to see what's going on. As you all know already, I do a terrible job of staying current, so here's the last week's worth of our life.

Work is going better and I think we had a good week last week. Now that 8 days have passed, I really don't remember it being really great or really bad! We went to gymnastics last Monday night - that was good. Hannah loved hopping down the tumbling track! I really don't remember much about Tuesday and Wednesday. Thursday, we had our first try at a neighborhood girl babysitter. It worked out great, except for when I first left - Hanna cried. Then Tony stopped home to change after work, which kept the crying going, but she was fine shortly after. Tony went to a concert and I had dinner with the other managers from work, so it was just a little over 3 hours. The girl's name is Gloria and she's 15. She does a great job with the other neighborhood kids and now Hannah's old enough that I thought I'd try it. Best part - she's only $3.00 an hour (per kid)!!! I couldn't beleive it!! What a bargain! I think we'll be using her again for sure! Friday we just had pizza at home and Dawn came over to visit for a little bit.

Saturday, I made banana pancakes for breakfast. That's becoming a big favorite around here, besides, we need a break from waffles!! I cleaned the house and did laundry and after Hannah's nap, we went to Anna's 4th birthday party. They always have a costume party for her birthday and so Hannah got to dress up:

She loves being Cinderella! There were many other princesses there - 2 Snow White's, Little Mermaid and one other Cinderella. Hannah had a meltdown during presents because she watched for as long as she could, but then couldn't take it anymore because she wanted to open presents! Tough lesson I guess! She's quite anxious for her birthday to come now!

Saturday night, Tony stayed home with Hannah while I went to play cards. I ended up placing 3rd this week! Finally - it was nice to do well and win a little money!

Sunday, we woke up and went to breakfast and then to Church. I did my grocery shopping and we had dinner outside on the deck. What a great weather weekend it was!! So nice to get to eat outside one last time, the only catch was it started getting dark as we finished!

Another noteworthy item was that I finished Hannah's quilt during Desparate Housewives!! It's officially DONE! But, no pictures!!! I'm saving it for a surprise for everyone to see for Christmas! I like it and I sure hope Hannah loves it!

Last night was a rough one. For some reason, I didn't sleep that great and then Hannah woke up crying around 4:00. I guess she had a bad dream, so I comforted her for a little and went back to bed. Just as I was falling back to sleep, she yelled out "NO" and started crying again. I went back in there and she said, "I have to go potty, Mommy". Did I mention we stopped using Pull-up's at bedtime a couple weeks ago?? Well, she had already wet the bed. So I took her potty and then stripped and changed her bed. We were all very awake by then (4:30) and she screamed not to go back to bed. I was going to try to be tough and make her go to bed, but she seemed really scared and just wanted to go to our bed, so I gave it....I sure hope that wasn't the wrong move that I will regret! She has never slept in our bed - ever, but she did at least sleep the rest of the night - glad someone did!!!

Tonight was gymnastics again. They practiced flipping around the uneven bars - she didn't like tha so well. She was afraid to go upside down. She did great with everything else though and is improving each week with taking direction and listening. I think this is going to be so good for her and she really loves it!

Pumpkin time of year

Well, fall is really here. It's been really cool outside and we've really enjoyed the great sleeping weather - especially since I'm less stressed this past week and can actually SLEEP!! And oh, how great it feels to get a good, solid night sleep and wake up feeling rested! So anyway, I had to (reluctantly) turn the furnace on Saturday morning....it was pretty nippy in the house!

I went into work for a little bit on Saturday morning to try to do some catching up. I got home and tried to find a new place to go for dinner. We got showered and then headed out.

First, we stopped to get Hannah a pumpkin! She saw them the other day and asked Tony if she could go get one, so we went to have her pick out her own pumpkin this year!





She cried when we got in the car because she wanted ALL of them! We had to explain how you don't get everything you want - that was a fun lesson!

We went down to Tremont to dinner at a place called Solkolowski's. It was on Rachel Ray's Tasty Travels. It was served cafeteria style, which we didn't expect, but the food was really home cooked and very good. We got home and hung out.

Hannah got to wear her new Dora jammies and she loves her new princess slippers!


I worked on Hannah's quilt until about 12:30 and called it a night.

We got up Sunday and had breakfast and then I went shopping. We had a neighborhood girl, Gloria, come over to visit for a few minutes because she's going to babysit for us this week. So crazy having a young girl come babysit!! It'll be so nice though having someone so close - and she's only $3.00 an hour for one kid!!!! Can't beat that!

I finished quilting Hannah's quilt and sewed the binding on while she napped. Now I just have to hand stitch the binding on and it'll be FINISHED!!! It turned out pretty good - there's a few things I don't like about it, but she'll love it!

We had burgers on the grill for dinner and after dinner, Hannah said, "Daddy, thank you for cooking dinner!" She's just the coolest kid! She is very polite - always says please, thank you and excuse me! So cool. She's really getting into the Spanish words for things - she knows many colors now.

Anyway, back to work tomorrow. Gymnastics after work and then pretty much normal stuff until Thursday - I have dinner with the other managers from work and Tony's got a concert. That's why Gloria's coming over to babysit.

That's about it!!

Why

This was an actual (almost verbatim) conversation in the car tonight!

Hannah: Mommy, blue is azul and red is rojo

Me: Very good, how do you say green in Spanish?

Hannah: I don't know

Me: It's verde

Hannah: I don't want to say that

Me: Why not?

Hannah: Because I don't want to

Me: Buy why?

Hannah: Because I don't know how to say that green

Me: It's verde

Hannah: I don't want to say it

Me: How come?

Hannah: Because I don't want to

Me: Why?

Hannah: Mommy, why do you keep saying why too many times?

Me: (After a thunderous laughter) Welcome to my world Miss Hannah!!!

She is a card, I tell you! And then tonight after dinner, she was watching Cinderella like this:

The lei and the feather covered princess shoes! She's just playing the part, I guess!

By the way, work is going MUCH better this week so far...I may have gotten some sanity back!

Hannah gets the gold!

Big News!!

Hannah started gymnastics tonight!!! She's been talking about "Nastics" ever since the Olympics. She enjoys doing summersaults and so I looked into a gym and she started tonight. She LOVED it!! She's in a parent/child class for now, but she did really well for her first night. There's a lot of kids and so much going on in the gym with the other classes. She had a tough time listening to all the directions, but she did all the activities pretty well. And she just loved jumping on the bouncy floor and mats.

Here she is when we first got there and were waiting for class to begin.

And here we are on our way into class.

Here's Hannah doing rolls forward and backward on the ball....we had to turn her around because at first she was facing the mirror and was having a hard time "walking with her hands" because she was watching herself in the mirror!!

And then she walked on the beam. They have one on the floor that she mastered and then she learned how to mount and walk across a little higher one with some help.

And then she jumped off the spring board

Hopping on one foot gave her quite a bit of trouble. She will need to practice that a lot more!

And then she did some donkey kicks, which she did right away on her own, and then was helped into a handstand.

I think she's really going to enjoy it. On the way there tonight, she said, "mommy, I'm being excited!" And then when it was over, she said, "I want to do it again!" The gym is really busy and I hope she starts paying closer attention to actually take some direction - in time of course - it was the first night!! Anyway, this is what we will now be doing on Monday nights!! I'm on the lookout for a leotard that actually fits her too! The smallest one I could find is a 4T so her butt hung out of it all night - well her panties did anyway!

The Actress

Oh, how I wish we lived in Hollywood! Hannah would so be my meal ticket!!!

Today when I picked her up from daycare, they were waiting outside on the front porch for me. I was standing and talking to Val and Destiny, so Hannah was running around the driveway. She tripped over her feet and fell and skinned her knees. I knew as I watched her slide across the cement that there was going to be theatrics, so I stood there waiting for it to come out. And OUT it did!!!

She stood up, looked at her knees and opened the floodgates. I hugged and consoled her and took a quick look and discovered two skinned knees - the right one with a little blood, the left one with just a few skin cells shaved off. Nothing too tragic for most. Not my Hannah though! Oh, how we thought a trip to the hospital might be in order, gosh, and maybe even surgery! I placed a band-aid on the right knee and helped her limp to her car seat and strapped her in. On the drive home, she kept hold over both knees and every few minutes would let out a whimper and a cry and even forced a few more tears. She was telling me, that her knees "were very ouchy". She even told me how "the tears keep falling out of her eyes". She pleaded for me to put some cream on them and "make them feel better". I had to stop and get gas, so our normal 10 minute ride home turned into about 20 minutes by the time we got home. So this meant almost 30 minutes had lapsed since the injury occurred. Well, she could hardly walk when we got out of the car. I managed to assist her hobbling up the front steps and into the house. That's when she fell helplessly to the floor and continued to hug her knees.



We made our way upstairs to the bathroom to administer the first aid. After a little cream (neosporin), a new band-aid, and a couple more kisses, things seemed to improve a bit.



She still had quite a bit of trouble walking, so I carried her down to the chair and gave her a boo boo bunny.


Ah, finally, she was feeling better. Until a few minutes ago when she got her jammies on. She had to relive the terrible accident as she pulled her jammies up over the injury. It even hurt to change her shirt. Oh, the poor thing!!

Anyone know a good agent? I think I need to sign her up for a movie role!!

So anyway, on to other news. Val has a new preschool curriculum for the kids. They learn all about number and letters and all the Spanish for the stuff they're going over. They learn more than the recognition of the number and letter, but also the meaning - like picking out "4 blocks", not just the number 4. They're also learning the difference between capital and lower case letters and how to write both. So yesterday, they told hananh to go get 4 blocks. She walks over to the blocks and picks them up one at a time and says, "uno, dos, tres, quatro" and brings them back. They didn't ask her to do it in Spanish, but she did. So I had to ask if she could do it in English too?! They looked at me funny and said of course she could! I just had to make sure that I was still going to be able to communicate with her and they weren't teaching her stuff that she was only comprehending in Spanish!!! Anyway, the program is really cool and she's learning so much more and is doing really well with it! They're working on letter D and number 4 and "all about me" which is body parts and facial expressions and emotions.

Here is her ditto today with her D's - pretty good writing for 2-1/2!! She does need to work on coloring though.

And her are her ears!! (this was during the "poor hurt me" saga - hence the snot and sad face)



And one more funny thing about her. Last night, she wanted to see the moon before she went to bed. We looked out each of the windows upstairs, but couldn't find it. I finally told her, "Hannah, I think it's just too cloudy or else the moon is on the other side of the house". She said (in these exact words), "no Mommy, actually, the moon is sleeping". Actually??? I didn't know she knew that word and how to use it!! She's something else!!!