Best Friends?

A conversation I overheard between Aidan and Austin...

Aidan: Austin, you're kind of mean.

Austin: Yeah, but I'm your best friend.

Aidan: Yeah, but you're still mean sometimes.

Anna

Anna is our little toddler now. She is walking so well and has some real speed on her when she goes down the hallway. She climbs up on our small trampoline that we keep in the breakfast area and loves to jump up and down. It is amazing to watch her swing back and forth as she gets on and off.

Anna is in love with Maddux and Tucker. We have to put Maddux out at dinner now because Anna has discovered how fun it is to feed Maddux. Maddux is no dumb dog, so he normally positions himself right under her seat. He knows she will eventually grow bored of eating. We usually have about a three to five minute window where we try to shovel as much food into her as we can. After that, she's too bored and starts playing with her food/feeding Maddux.


Anna can say quite a few words now. Last night, I discovered a new word she can say: pizza. Not sure what that says about how often I cook, but she says it perfectly nonetheless. :-o

She absolutely hates to have her hair tied back. Her "Pebbles" 'do normally doesn't last longer than about five minutes. If you tell her she looks pretty, she automatically reaches up to check to make sure that her hair isn't tied up. In most of her pictures, you'll see her eyes hanging in her face because of her refusal to keep any sort of hair tie or bow in her hair. Perhaps she'll be a tomboy. She certainly hits like a boy. One of the most common things I've had to say to her lately is, "Anna, no hitting."

In my defense, this Pebbles 'do is not some of my best work. I've gotten much better at it.

Last night, while I was getting Tylenol to give to Aidan (he has swimmer's ear), Anna walked down the hallway. I went to look to see where she was and found her in to the boys' room scaling up the side of Austin's bed to climb in bed with him. Luckily, she didn't wake him up. She's our little monkey, and we are constantly finding her on top of beds or in the pack 'n play where she has scaled the side of it. Anna is our little adventurer, and she fits in perfectly with her two rambunctious brothers!

Austin

Austin has made some great changes the last few months. The biggest report we have is a new development. He has learned to swim! We were giving him a few chances here at home to swim without his vest on in the two feet section of the pool, and he was doing really well with it. This past weekend, while we were in Peachtree City, the vest came off, and Austin never looked back. He was jumping off the diving board and swimming to Jared several feet away. I was so impressed! My goal was to have him swimming by himself by the end of the summer, so for him to be swimming already is amazing, especially because he has never taken a swim lesson. He puts his head down in the water and motors his little legs. I'm so proud of him!

During Aidan's school year, I got the opportunity to take Austin with me several times while I helped out in the classroom. The most recent was an ice cream party. Austin had a great time, and he feels so proud that all the "big kids" know his name.

Austin is ready for preschool to start. I've explained that he gets to pick out his own backpack, so he's really jazzed about that. Now that's he's coming out of his shell so much, I'm not as worried about the transition. Now I'm more worried about how much trouble he'll get into. One of his and Aidan's favorite things to quote is from Alvin and the Chipmunks, and they go around singing, "Dave likes to wear... dirty underwear." It's awesome. :-) Their big cut downs are calling each other "pee pee" and "poo poo." I'm counting my blessings that this is as bad as it gets right now. :-)

Austin is a speed demon on his bike, and I have to sprint to keep up with him. It's far too much exercise for me, so I might need to start thinking about taking the training wheels off soon. As quickly as he learned to swim, maybe I should give it a shot. :-)

We've been working on cutting and gluing and Austin writing his letters by himself. He is like a sponge, so it makes me feel terrible that I haven't been better about working with him. I think we'll "play" lots of school this summer to make sure he's mastered all of his pre-school skills by the time August comes. :-)

Aidan

Our nearly six year old is a Pre-K 4 graduate and will be starting Kindergarten in August (the first week if you can believe that!). He had such a great year at school. We absolutely loved that he was enrolled in a small school where everyone knew everyone. It was an expensive decision to decide for him to return for Kindergarten but one that we feel really good about. Unfortunately for Aidan, his best friend and his crush are both moving and won't be there next year. I'm sure Aidan will find replacements, though. :-)

Aidan's Pre-K 4 teacher, Mrs. Dawson

Aidan never ceases to amaze us with his intelligence and ability to learn new things so quickly. He is reading so well. He loves to sit and read books to us, and it is a rare thing when he encounters a word he needs help with. We'll spend the summer working on some upper level sight words. I want to take advantage of his hunger for knowledge while it lasts. :-)

We have only two tee ball games left this season. I think we're all sad to see them end, as it has been fun for our whole family to go to the games. Plus, it's one of the few sports that Aidan shows real enthusiasm for. Well, he shows enthusiasm for hitting. During the fielding part, it's most us yelling out to the field to get him to pay attention and stop playing in the dirt or trying to take the bases off. At one game, he was putting dirt in the holes of his batting helmet. At the time, he was sweaty, so all the dirt caked to his head. We did have a child sit down while playing third base, so at least Aidan hasn't done that... yet.

Grandma came to visit and got to see Aidan play one night.

This summer, we decided to join the country club so we could have the pool at our disposal. It's only 1.2 miles from home, so it has been wonderful. Aidan is completely swimming, so it is a big weight off our shoulders. His endurance has already gotten so much better. He's jumping off the diving board and diving down in 2-3 feet of water to retrieve diving sticks. It makes me so happy to see him swimming, and he absolutely loves it!

Aidan is such a great big brother to his little sister. We can always count on him to make her laugh. If she gets hurt, he normally comes running to do his part to help cheer her up. As you can tell by this picture, she's quite comfortable with him (and on him).

Beautiful weather is back!

Well, aside from the tornados that came through Mississippi yesterday, the weather has been gorgeous. Our grass is a beautiful shade of green, and all of our pretty landscaping is blooming (thank you to the previous owners for their only attractive contribution to this house). We've been spending a lot more time outdoors: bike rides, trips to the playground, practicing T-ball, yard work, and washing cars. Aidan's "buddy ball" is in full swing. For buddy ball, they first throw them three or four pitches. If they can't hit it after that, then they get to hit from the tee. In six at bats, Aidan has had to use the tee three times. The last game, he got two hits, so we're hoping it's a trend. :-) He absolutely loves to play, which is a big change from soccer! Austin loves going to watch the games play in the dirt with his friend, whose brother is also on the team.

Anna says, "Hi" to everyone we pass now. It's so sweet, and it garners her lots of attention, which she loves. :-)

Here are a few pictures from some of our recent outings.

Great slideshow video site

This is a short 30 second video. I'm going to join the site so I can make more. They're just so cute!

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Anna

I am sitting here struggling to come up with a title of today's blog. I overuse "Update" and feel like I am always apologizing or making excuses for how poorly I do at keeping up with my blog. I know I'm going to look back some day and be disappointed that I did not do a better job of updating what the children were up to.

With Anna being our third child, I'm emailing friends and family less about what she is doing, so I won't have emails to reference when I finally get around to doing her baby book. Hopefully, Anna won't mind that the entry related to her first time crawling will be something like "somewhere around eight or nine months." :-)

I can officially say that Anna is walking. On the day we left Peachtree City (April 5 for baby book purposes), Anna took several steps in a row (previously she had just been doing one at a time). She's been walking ever since. She has gotten up to about seven or eight steps in a row. The problem is that when she gets close to the spot where she wants to be, she just dives the rest of the way. That is pretty terrifying considering that most parts of our house are hardwood or tile. Anna is sort of an outdoors girl. She loves to be outside but hates the feeling of standing or sitting in the grass. If she has shoes on, she'll walk around the yard holding my hand, but she gets really upset if I try to sit her on her bottom on the grass. She absolutely loves being on the trampoline but can only play on it with Aidan. Austin just can't contain himself when she's on there. He thinks it's far too much fun to try to knock her over. Anna says hi, bye, Dada, and Mama very consistently. (As I type this, Aidan has just gotten up for the day, and Anna is furiously waving at him saying, "Hi. Hi.")