The Not-Just-About-Annie Post

Well, it's official--Annie is cute and we're in love. Everyone except Evan, that is. Sam has taken to calling her "Nannie" which sounds a little nasal and isn't my favorite nickname, but we'll see if it sticks. Racoony didn't stick as Evan's nickname for too long. Here is a picture of Annie, whom I've begun calling "Miss Girl" because the other pet names that were coming out of my mouth were Bubba and Buddy and the like...I had to retrain myself.
Here's her cute nursery...sorry boys, you didn't get your own "nursery" when each of you were babies, you just got a corner of Mom and Dad's room because we were in one bedroom apartments when you were born.

I like hanging out in Annie's room...it is so new and fresh and girly (though the boys still choose it as their favorite wrestle spot so there are always fresh grubby footprints on the walls, and they are not respectful of the proper positioning of throw pillows).

I think I ended my last post with Jeremy's family's visit. The last day they were here, Jeremy took his dad and the boys to watch the Cardinals practice--that's kind of a big deal here in this "small" town. I guess it's good for business...but not good for driving downtown with all the tourists going the wrong way on one way streets and creeping around going 15 mph. My parents didn't even get to go to their favorite BBQ restaurant due to avoiding the tourists.
My kids had a lot of fun with my parents, and I think we wore them out!
Jeremy went on his mountain bike trip to Whistler and managed to not break any major body or bike parts.
Sam and I planted corn and sunflower seeds together in the garden earlier this summer. I kind of gave up on the garden after Annie was born, but my dad gave it lots of TLC while he was here and the corn actually grew ears (that sounds weird)and the sunflowers bloomed. Here's a pic of them and of Sam enjoying his own organic corn on the cob...he didn't seem to care that the corn was only a few inches long.

On the day of the enormous corn harvest, we saw Annie sleeping like this:
Not comfortable, but still cute.

Sam and Evan have finally become good playmates--I think mostly out of necessity. I feel bad about having less time to actually play with them, but feel good about them liking each other and learning to entertain themselves. Here we are in a rare moment together playing superheros and the mommy fairy (my cape was Annie's nursing cover).


I've been feeling a little emotional at times lately...go figure. One was a sweet moment when Sam got all dressed to walk to the library with Grandpa. They left together, Sam looking like this:
and a little while later I decided to go to the store. As I was driving down the street, I saw a man and a cute little boy walking hand in hand and I admired how cute and sweet they looked, and then realized in my rearview mirror that it was my guys! I got a little choked up and proud.

This weekend, I took the boys to an Arts and Music Festible (that's how Sam says it) downtown and the boys bypassed the bounce houses and free candy to stand in line for balloon animals. Almost an hour later, we were still in the line (the lady behind me was offering to pay $40 for a balloon animal at that point) but Sam and Evan would not be deterred from the mission of getting a balloon. We finally got to the front and the boys got matching balloon swords. I lectured them about NOT BREAKING or LOSING them because we WERE NOT going to stand in that line again. A few minutes later, Evan tripped and fell down, popping his balloon. His cry, "It bwoken, it bwoken" was enough to make me almost lose it...I hate being the mommy in those moments! I was sad enough to almost agree to get in line again, but Samuel gave me his balloon for safe keeping and somehow, it popped. Though sad, I was relieved because now they were even and I could just promise to give them balloons at home or something. Luckily, they got distracted by fencing with their sucker sticks
(sound effect: "Ching, ching, (drool), ching, ching, chang") and hula hoops.

Then, silly mommy had the idea the next night of going to Lake Mary. The kids would probably have been fine just hanging out at home, but I think I wanted to prove that I could still go on an outing and be relaxed with 3 kids now. We took ice cream in a cooler and watched the sun set into the smoke from a forest fire. The boys decided to go into the water and each lost a croc (shoe) in the mud on the bottom. I threatened, "I'm not coming out there to find them!" and then caved in and went digging in the mud because I couldn't bear to lose their favorite shoes (that only cost $3 each). I found one of Evan's, but Sam's was too far gone. I felt like crying over those silly shoes because the boys loved them so much, even though they weren't upset themselves. I kept craning my head to look back at the lake as we drove away, hoping it would have floated to the surface. I even woke up the next morning and started thinking about driving back out there...all for a silly imitation croc. Some day I will feel normal again, right?


Well, I hope to post more often, but this was the first real chance I had to sit down and think. And I think I did pretty good for typing most of this with only one hand!