Some Winter pics. Plz excuse the screwy formatting

Anna lying on the couch with her Mommy.  Just a note, they don't sleep like that.  It's not particularly safe or comfortable.  It was just a cute moment with my two favorite people.

BLOCK TOWERS!

More block towers, try not to notice the lack of trim in the background.  All remodeling projects were halted two years ago when...well, you know.

Anna, surveying her surroundings on a snowy day from inside her little plastic playhouse.

...and playing in the snow.  She would walk around making tracks and shuffling her feet in the snow all day, if nobody stopped her and brought her inside

Well, the two year old has decided to boycott bedtime and naptime this week.  Tammy and I have prevailed in most cases, but it has been a tough battle, especially at night.  Anna has said some of the cutest things this week, but I'm having trouble remembering any of them because of the lack of sleep.  This is the age when a lot of parents give in and let their kids sleep in Mommy and Daddy's bed.  We have no plans on joining those people in their collective bedtime discomfort.  Anna is going to keep sleeping in her own bed. 

In the meantime, Anna and I went to a thing at my office this week called "Agent Appreciation Day," where they give all us realtors some free food, a few pats on the back, and some awards.  It's a long-winded and dull even for a two year old (though I was having a decent time), so we didn't stay for the whole thing.  She was a little overwhelmed by so many talkative strangers in one room.  We sat next to Anna's favorite person at the office, our friend Monica, and her husband Dave.  Anna LOVES Monica and looks forward to seeing her every time we go to the office, but she doesn't know Dave very well. 

I sat her down in the chair between myself and Dave and got ready to give her the lunch I brought for her (yellow rice, broccoli, and dice ham, three of her favorite things in a bowl to make up for taking her to something positively boring for a two year old).  But when Dave turned, smiled, and said hi to her in a kind voice, Anna's response was one of shear terror.  She took one look at her situation and in an instant, it started:
----------------the silent cry---------------------
mouth open, eyes almost closed, red face, tears just starting, and the quiet before a big scream.  It's the scared, separation anxiety-ridden cry she gave the first time I tried to leave her with her grandparents for an hour, the first time she realized a stranger was holding her, and both times she has been subjected to the sitting on santa's lap ritual before Christmas. 
Needless to say, I spent most of the remainder of the even holding her. 

Quote of the day

A few minutes ago, I told Anna we were going to go for a ride and look at another old house.  She looked at me, smiled and said happily, "It's a be a disaster?"  I don't actually know if it was a question or a statement, but almost everything she says sounds kind of like a question. 
The kid used to think disaster was some kind of fun, exciting word (She used to say, "Mama loves you, Dada loves you, Grandma loves you [etc], disaster loves you").  Apparently, she still feels that way. 

Birthday party odds and ends

Well, we survived Anna's second birthday.  Throughout the week and on Saturday, Tammy made the icing and baked two cakes to end up with the cool Elmo cake in the picture.  I might share her super delicious icing recipe later, except the only person who follows this blog thus far is Tammy.

I stayed up late Saturday night cooking two crock pots full of chicken breasts and thighs in broth for the chicken and noodles the next day.  I boiled the frozen noodles Sunday morning after I got done thickening up the broth with cornstarch.  We were just finishing it up as people started to arrive.  I got tons of compliments, so either my family and friends really liked my chicken noodles, or they are tremendously talented at bending the truth. 

The big issue wasn't so much, whether or not we could feed a whole slew of people, it was more about where the heck all of them would sit.  Our house is small, and inviting Tammy's parents, 5 or 6 close friends, and my immediate family added up to 32 invitees counting the kids (We ended up with 24). 

We have two couches in the living room, so the two longest walls are taken up with furniture that seats a total of 6 people. 

The party was at 12:30
10:30 - I was pulling apart and de-boning chicken while I thickened up the broth into a gravy like consistency for the chicken and noodles

11:30 - Boiling noodles and asking Tammy to keep an eye on them so I could go get some of the plastic lawn chairs from outside that were frozen to the ground from the ice/snow storm that hadn't melted away in two weeks.  One of the chairs did not survive.

11:45 - I was knocking the ice of some more lawn chairs to bring inside and wiping them all down with towels.  Checked on the noodles, still boiling. 

12:00 - There was still not enough room, so as expected, the dining room table had to go.  Tammy and I moved it into the hallway.  I rolled it down to the spare bedroom where I had to quickly unscrew and  disassemble it to fit it through the doorway.  It would've been a nice time to have a full charge on my cordless drill.  Checked on the noodles, still boiling. 

12:10 - More chairs, this time from the garage, no melting snow or ice : ) 
Noodles, blah blah

12:15 - The noodles were boiling over.  Tammy to the rescue.  
Two more chairs from outside, snow, ice, towel, blah blah. I raced out and moved our cars out of the way. 

12:20 - The noodles are done.  We strain one pan, and Tammy's parents arrive.  I strain the other pan and mix them all into the crock pots, and my mom and Bob arrive. 

12:30 - Hung up the happy birthday sign and started greeting the barrage of family and friends, my favorite part.  Thankfully, no one was getting stuck in the snow and ice in our driveway. 

12:40 - It's a party.  Anna was so happy.  Last year, she was intimidated by the big crowd of people, and maybe a little on edge from missing her nap.  She was much happier this year, and we scheduled it before her nap, to avoid the same problem all over again.  

Birthday Week

So I asked Anna what she wanted for her birthday.  At first, she just named things she got for Christmas.  She said she wanted letters, a little house, big heavy house, with "peoples inside," and she wanted to close doors.  I asked again, and she said she wanted presents.  We settled on sand, a shovel, and a bucket.  She told me several times that she wanted a bucket, so I guess I ought to get her another bucket.

At least a bucket is a realistic gift.  On Monday, she wanted a tail, on Tuesday, she wanted her Mommy to have a tail, and yesterday, she wanted a mustache and a tail.  She started out with "Anna have a tail?," and moved on yesterday to "Anna get a tail?"  She was very disappointed about both her and her Mommy's lack of tails or the potential to acquire them.  She was very upset about the lack of tails.  When she's older and wants to wear makeup and talk to boys, I can't wait to tell her she used to wish she had a mustache and a tail.  In the meantime, I need to come up with a couple of toys to go along with that bucket.   

I'd also like to find her some kind of clock that she can't easily break.  She loves clocks.  She talks about them, stops and studies them, and cries, yest cries, when we leave the aisle with all the clocks at the store.  I don't know if a toy clock will do, but it might be my only choice.  But with just a few days til her birthday, and serious issues about space and seating for my family at her little party, I guess I'll just get the bucket and a couple toys. 

This is my little girl, Anna Rose, who at a little over a year old, could identify her colors just well enough to demand green and yellow everything, who asks what EVERYTHING is by saying "right there?," and who seems to believe that every word of the day on Sesame Street means "party," whether it's arachnid, octagon, unanimous, or about anything else she's too young to understand but not too young to say.

She desperately wants to know her ABC's, even though it's just too hard for her to learn them yet.  She can tell you what a multitude of animals "say," as well as a race car, which says "vroom."  She tries to count, she tries to sweep, she tries to change the channel,   figure out the baby monitor, say "hi, how are you today?," to everyone on the phone unless prompted to do so, and she's gotten pretty handy with Daddy's iPhone.  She thinks she's a grown up and all the other toddlers are either babies or kids.

In a few days, Anna will be 2 years old.  The first two years have gone by like a police chase.  I have forgotten more amazing little moments in the last 23 and 3/4 months than I had in almost 29 years before that. Lack of sleep almost certainly played a part.  But now, hopefully, I can start keeping track a little better and share some of the fun our family has along the way.