Favorite Photo Friday - B

B is for Beta

Ian's beta fish ever so creatively named Beta has been with us for a year and a half. The thing he wanted most for Santa to bring him in 2006 was a fish so good ol' Santa brought him. How ever did he keep all that water from spilling?



B is also for Bunnies

The first picture is from 2006 as well, it's all Ian's neighborhood friends after we made bunny masks for an Easter activity. Ian is the one in the chair with the khaki pants on. The second picture is Ana modeling a hat that was kindly made for her by a friend of Mimi's (Greg's mum). I can't remember why she was so upset, it wasn't the hat though, really!

and lastly,
B is for Bloom

which is what my rose bush did for the first time in two years this year. It bloomed the year we moved in, then I couldn't figure out why it just wouldn't bloom again. Well after some research, I learned that it is the type where the flowers bloom on the last years growth. Well I'd been cutting the bushes back every spring so there was nothing for the flowers to grow on, duh! I was so excited to see them bloom this year, there must be 100 beautiful roses on it! Anyone know what I do now? It's getting very tall and I'm not sure exactly how to take care of it!

Okay, Who Taught the Baby How to Undress Herself?!

Seriously. Whoever you are, you are lucky all she had this morning was a pee pee diaper, 'cause if it were a poopy one hanging by a thread from one side, hovering above her pants, which were pulled down around her ankles when I walked into her room this morning you would be in a whole lot of trouble!

Can Somebody Please Tell Me Why...

the ear piercing smoke detector that went off at 1:11 this morning failed to wake either of my children?

HOWEVER...

The sound of Greg unscrewing said alarm to inspect why it was going off for no apparent reason woke Ms. Ana out of her dead sleep requiring 25 minutes of rocking to convince her she was still sleepy? Arrgh!!

Which leads me to another question; how many of you knew that some types of smoke detectors contain a radioactive substance?! We were very freaked to see the radioactive warning label when we were trying to figure out why the alarm had gone off. It of course prompted a thorough early morning internet search which led me to discover that there are two types of smoke detectors; "ionization" and "photoelectric". The "ionization" type contains Americium 241, a radioactive substance that is supposedly safe to be around. Still creeps me out though!

Anyways, after a thorough inspection of the house, we could not figure out why the alarm went off and we eventually made ourselves go back to sleep. Some of us sooner than others (Greg)!

Favorite Photo Friday

I've seen lots of other blogs do "Favorite Photo Friday", and I keep wanting to start but I have a problem with picking pictures. So I thought I'd steal a little idea from the blog of a friend of mine (thanks Amanda!) and start doing them alphabetically. I'm going to try my hardest to dig up photos you haven't seen before but don't hold me to it! So today obviously is "Favorite Photo Friday - A".

A is for Ana:

This picture was taken the day she figured out her walker. She promptly started getting into the cupboards and drawers after this picture was taken. The rest is chaotic history.



A is also for Apple:

This was Ian's first ever kindergarten field trip, apple picking! Probably the last time I saw him eat an apple like that!



I took this one in May along with her 10 month pictures...

My Little Graduate

Yes, the time has finally come for me to accept the fact that my baby will be going to 1st grade in the fall. I guess I can't keep him in kindergarten forever now can I? I am so very thankful that we decided to have him do kindergarten again this year, for so many reasons. I can definitely see that he is ready to take on a full day of school now whereas in the fall I don't know if we could have said that. He has come so far not only academically, but socially as well. I have absolutely seen an improvement in the way he interacts with his peers, and though he still lets his impatience show sometimes, he has those moments where I'm just taken aback by how he has matured over this last year. He just adores his teacher and in some strange twist of fate, she happened to be a woman both Greg and I knew when we were in high school. She is a simply amazing teacher and both he and I both wish she could teach him every year! She has just the right amount of structure in her classroom while letting my "out of the box" thinker develop his own thought processes. We are so happy he had his first public school experience in her class! Ian has been pretty blue these past couple weeks as we have counted down to the end of school only because he isn't going to see Mrs. Schreiber every day. So Kathy if you are reading this, we are so very thankful for you, you better still be teaching kindergarten when Ana enters school!

Okay, onto graduation pictures! He looked so handsome in that cap for the whole 3 minutes it remained on his head!

As soon as they started singing the first song ("Energy" by Laurie Berkner) the little boy behind him kept knocking his hat forward with the arm movements. Ian turned around and growled at him, and told him to stop it before locking eyes with me in the first row as I mouthed "Calm down, it's okay!" and hoped for the best! That's when the cap became a memory, he was very sure to hang onto his tassel though, he loved the tassel!

They went through their "Alphabet of favorite Kindergarten moments" and Ian got to carry the "P" poster across. The kids were getting pretty fidgety by now, but they hung in there!

Ian getting his diploma! He's holding the tassel up because he thought his teacher was going to take it away from him, she explained that she just wanted to shake his hand and we heard him say "Oh, okay".

The picture below is Ian with his beloved Mrs. Schreiber. Today was his actual last day of school and he had several moments where he'd get a really sad look on his face and say "I'm sad, you know why" and I'd reply "Mrs. Schreiber?" and he'd say "Yes..." He misses her so much already! It's going to be a long summer! Mrs. Schreiber assured him that they will see each other again and that maybe next year when he is a first grader he can come in to read to the new kindergarten class. He thought that was pretty cool, and so do I! We have yet to get through the video, but we'll post a snippet when I get a chance. So that's all for now folks! Summer vacation here we come!!

Where in the World is Ian?

Seems as though I've been neglecting this blog quite a bit of late, and when I do blog, it's largely about Ana. Let's face it, babies change so much and do so many new things so fast, there's always lots of things to talk about. But lots of things have actually been going on in the life of our little Ian as well, and there were some cute little blog worthy things that I meant to post just never got the chance to. So here's a parade of Ian in case you were wondering where the heck he had disappeared to! He's been busy!

He started doing his own hair. This particular time he unbeknownst to me got hold of the pomade from the bathroom, scooped himself a good handful and smeared it in his hair. There were huge gobs of the stuff just sitting in lumps on his head. He was pretty proud of himself though!

He got to pelt mumma with silly string on Mother's Day:

He had a spring concert at school (the second picture is quite possibly one of my favorites of all time!):

He's been playing baseball for the Mets. The second picture is how he spent the majority of the season. He loved being catcher because he thought you could just kneel down and relax, I don't think he's going to want to do baseball again next year.

He got to touch a real live lobster at Odiorne Point and learned how the fishermen band the lobster's claws when they are caught while my friend Irene and her family were here visiting:

He got to hang with his pal Ella, they won't both fit in that chair much longer!:

He took a liking to hanging out with his buddies in Milo's kennel. I swear I had nothing to do with this, though the idea is pretty tempting!

He had his third piano recital and played two songs this time; "All My Friends" and "The Bells of Great Britain". One of the songs he got to use the sustain pedal which was very exciting for him. The day after his recital at his final lesson for the semester he moved into a new level, he was so happy! We're taking the lessons down to every other week this summer but will be going back to them every week in the fall. I really hope he continues to want to take lessons, I'm so proud that he's sticking with something even though it's still torture trying to get him to practice!



He composed a piano piece for me. He loves to fiddle with sounds on the piano (more so than practicing what he's supposed to be practicing, which is a pain, but I love that he's creating his own sounds!) and often he'll incorporate snippets of current lessons in his pieces. This one is called "The Duet", and has echoes of the last piece in his old book and the first piece of his new book mixed with some original Ianisms. I love that he loves music!



Well, I think that's it for now. Tomorrow morning he'll be graduating from Kindergarten (for the second but last time, sniff sniff!) so be on the lookout for more from our boy!

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there! Between my dad, Greg's dad and Greg himself, we have a very diverse, yet wonderful assortment of dad's here. We had a nice father's day this year, I hope Greg would agree. We started the day with one of Greg's favorite breakfasts, a ham and cheese omelet roll up after which Greg and Ian whisked themselves off to Chunky's to enjoy a movie together just father and son (Kung Fu Panda, they both seemed to really enjoy it). Ana and I stayed home and did some cleaning as I didn't think Ana would tolerate the movie theater very well! When they got home, we made our way over to my mum and dad's where we gorged ourselves on american chop suey, baked macaroni and cheese, salad and one of my mum's extra special desserts.

As an aside, my mum is famous for her food concoctions, especially when it comes to desserts. She's the one who will go to Friendlies and order a peanut butter cup sundae with mint chocolate chip ice cream and caramel sauce. She's just a fan of many different flavors and has no qualms about mixing them. So she tells us her ice cream cake concoction is crushed up cookies, chocolate chip ice cream, carrot cake ice cream (what?), whipped cream, and caramel sauce. So I decide to give it a try even though the carrot cake ice cream sounded a pretty strange addition. My sister and I took simultaneous bites and both looked at each other with the same confused expression. I seemed to be tasting orange somewhere in the mix. "Um, mum what kind of cookies did you use?" "orange, pineapple and chocolate". "So, there's chocolate cookie, chocolate chip ice cream, carrot cake ice cream, whipped cream, caramel sauce and orange and pineapple cookies all mixed together here?" Talk about overstepping the flavor combination line! Anyways, we all had a good laugh at my poor mum's expense as she served herself up a second bowl. As long as it's flavors she likes, they can be mixed any way!

We didn't actually see Greg's dad on Father's Day because we spent the day before with them where we presented his birthday/father's day gift from us, Greg's mum and his brothers; a trip to Alaska to visit Greg's brother Ed. He was very touched, so much so that he turned his back to us and we could tell by the way he was talking he was fighting back tears. Now I've been part of this family for quite some time. Greg and I started dating 16 years ago and I have never seen this man cry. It was really something to witness. Anyways, we had a really nice day and Greg especially enjoyed his "Amazing Dad" DVD that his mum bought for Ian and Ana to give him. Ian is enjoying it too, he's watched it about 9 times already. Now if we could just get Greg to stop parading around the house announcing "Amazing Dad" every time he enters the room or flushes the toilet, well that would be something now wouldn't it?!

All kidding aside Greg, you really are an "Amazing Dad".
Thanks for all you do for our family, we love you so much!

Consider This Your Warning...

Get yourself an estimate at Ian's car wash!

"I'm going to have a car wash to earn some money to buy more Bakugans! Can I wash your car mumma?"

"Well, how much will it cost me?"

"$100.00"

"That's a mighty expensive car wash Ian, don't you think?"

"Why, how much does a car wash usually cost?"

"Well, at the gas station you can get your car washed for about $5.00"

"Okay, then I'll charge $5.00, but if you want a really good one, or if your car is big it will be $100.00 okay?"

Eleven Months Old!

I just can't believe that in just one month Ana will be a year old! She's just blossoming! She's full of personality, and really seems to be happy. It truly feels like she's been with us forever! Each month that she's been home I look back to the beginning of that month and am just amazed at how good I thought our bond was and how much better it is at the end of the month. It just keeps getting better and better! She uses "ma ma" and "da da" and even says "bra ra" which we are convinced is "brother". She's clapping, and waving, and crawling up a storm and yesterday she put both of her hands up on the side of a laundry basket and looked like she was going to pull herself up. She's taking leaps and bounds! She is just an absolute joy, and I thank God every day that she's ours!