A Birthday Party with Grandma and Grandpa

Some friends of Grandma and Grandpa had a birthday party for their son and graciously invited Grandma and Grandpa to bring the girls with them. Jana LOVES trains right now, so this was a great trip for her.

We were told that at one point Kara was lulled to sleep by the motion of the train, but both girls had a wonderful time.

Smiley girl!

Grandma and Kara on the train

Jana (or at least the top of her head), Grandma, and Kara

Jana has a hat thing and apparently had fun wearing Grandpa's hat.

One was on the run...

And one refused to get out of the train.

Grandpa and two of his girls!

And this one cracks me up. Apparently Jana was tormenting this little guy. He had a ball and Jana wanted to play with it, so she chased him around. He did not know what to make of her, so I guess he was not too happy about being chased.

The things toddler say!

Jana is a crack up!

Dada has been working on getting Jana to pick her stories for bedtime a little faster. He now has her trained to get her stories by the count of ten. The other night, after witnessing this for the first time, I was so impressed and told Dada, "Yay Daddy. You're the man." Jana responded with "No, Mommy. Daddy's a boy!" Hee, hee.

Then this morning, I was putting clothes away in Jana's room and she decided that she needed to get Kara up. She barged into her room yelling, "Good morning Kara!" Then as I finished putting the laundry away, I hear Jana reading Kara stories. She read "Hi Blueberry", which she has memorized and then was teaching her Baby Signs. Oh make my heart melt!

Almost makes me forget about Jana hitting and kicking Kara all day. :-P

Kara is 16 months old!

This month has brought Kara closer to toddlerhood and further from babyhood. :-(

Kara's favorite thing to say is "Dada." She asks for him all the time. We are now starting to get "more" out of her. She also loves to say "Go Kara go!" Other than that, she's still keeping whatever that is going on in her little head, to herself.

She LOVES Jana's old swingset. Thank goodness we didn't sell it like we tried - Kara will spend an hour going up and down the slide and it's the perfect size for her.


She also LOVES our $.50 cozy coupe that we found at a garage sale. She knows how to open the door to it, but insists on climbing through the window.
Our little dare devil must be taking lessons from big sis!

Our little drama queen! I tried taking her out of the car since she was crying and it just made it worse. We have no idea why she's screaming in this pic, but - being the horrible parents we are - this picture just makes us laugh!

She just loves to play outside. She loves the sandbox and her water table, but if she plays in the water, we end up with no water in the table anymore. Any guesses as to where it ends up?

When inside, she adores the tigger plane and the computer. Daddy put Auntie Megy's old imac downstairs and we have a program that locks everything else out, but the girls can pound away on the keyboard, making numbers, letters, and shapes come up on the screen. They both love it.


She still puts everything in her mouth. Ugh! When does this stage end? She also loves to chew on my sunglasses. Her other favorite toy is this old prescription bottle filled with beans. Who knew that would be such a hit - she and Jana fight over it all the time. Hee, hee!



It's hard to see, but please notice the orange tomato squished into her hair. The girls were outside playing and Jana came running up to the door and yelled, "Mama, mama! I popped a 'mato on Kara's head!" Too funny.


Lastly, here is one of my favorite series of pics. This was a day at Grandma and Grandpa's house. I don't remember what Kara got in her hair, but it was pretty gooey - perfect for making a mohawk. She does have enough hair for one, but it all happens to be in the back.





Kara getting to know Cousin Lindsay. They are kindred spirits who finally got to meet last month. They share the same birthday and Kara has adopted one of Lindsay's old blankets as her favorite lovie.

Our first ER trip - and it wasn't Jana!

Those of you who know Jana - Little Miss no fear, dare devil, etc - will be shocked to know that she was not the recipient of our first ER trip.

No, it was Kara Mae!!!!!

Kara refuses to sit down in the tub - causing most of her baths to be about 2 minutes long. Tonight (within the two minute mark, by the way), Kara decides to stand up, loses her footing and falls face first into the side of the tub. I saw this happening, and could do nothing to stop it - that is the worst feeling ever. We get her face out of the water and bubbles to see what seemed like massive amounts of blood pouring out of her mouth. The poor kid, with shampoo still in her hair, gets hauled out of the tub and sat on the floor, where she proceeds to scream and drool and sputter blood all over herself. Since she is so generously opening her mouth for us, we see that there is a cut in the middle of the top of her tongue - the perfect size and shape of her bottom teeth. Ewwwww!

The pjs get put on in a hurry and we decide that a trip to the ER is in store for us. We realized that they will probably say that there is nothing that can be done, but I needed to hear that from someone else as there is what looks like a half inch long hole in my 16 month old's tongue!

Thank goodness for Mama's friend Ranada who drove us to the ER so Daddy could stay home with the tramatized Jana. (It was a scary sight for a mama, I can only imagine how terrifying it was for a 2 1/2 year old sharing the tub with Kara.)

Kara decided to scream for everyone in the ER, so they were very nice to us and we were actually in and out in well under an hour. The screaming started with them putting on her id bracelet. Seriously !?!?!?! She screamed for about 5 minutes - through the attempt to take her blood pressure - until we took off the bracelet and she was fine. She gave everyone that came anywhere near her the saddest, poutiest face I've ever seen! She also screamed at anyone who tried to touch her. It was a game though, because as soon as they backed off, she'd go back to giving the puppy dog eyes.

She was even nice enough to scream at the doctor; however, at least that made the exam easier because she was head back, mouth open, screaming at the top of her lungs.

We were right and there's nothing that can be done; it will heal nicely on its own in a few days. He was going to give us some drops to help reduce the chance of infection, but then saw the green snot and checked her ears. Sure enough! Another ear infection. Ugh!

While everyone thought she was the cutest thing ever, despite the screaming, and there being nothing that they can do for a tongue with a hole in it, we did leave with a prescription for amoxacillin for the ear infection! At least that will save me a trip to the pediatrician's office next week, right?

Jana's First Day of Preschool!

How did my little girl become so big?

Despite having quite a morning, she had a wonderful time at preschool.

She had a horrible time going to sleep on Monday night. She was up and down until almost midnight.

Then, she woke up at about 6:40 for the day (she usually wakes up between 8:30 and 9:00). Being so tired meant having a hard time with "helping me" make some banana bread. Ugh!

Then we had breakfast and did some painting while we waited for the banana bread and for Kara to wake up. Doesn't this one scream "Stop taking pictures of me, Mama!"

We played until it was time to go. She realized I had her backpack all packed, so she wore it around for about an hour before we left.

I went into the garage to put the dog into the kennel so we could leave and asked Jana to stay at the top of the steps. Despite my repeated requests to stay inside, she tried to walk down the stairs - backpack on, bear in one hand and blankie in the other. She took a header onto the cement floor from three steps up. You can barely see the bump on her forehead in this picture, but we had one sad little girl!

"Let's go Mama!"
All loaded up and ready to go.
Jana was very excited when we got there. Here she is with "pink bear" in front of the playground.

All ready to go in.
We went inside and Jana had a bit of a hard time when I went to leave, until they went outside and she ran for the swings.

She was only at school for just over an hour - to ease into it (okay, to ease Mama into it!). Mama did okay - no tears, but Kara fell apart when we got back into the car without Jana.

Kara and Mama ran some errands with some friends and then went back to pick up Jana and have lunch with friends.

When Mama went to get Jana, she happily announced that she "went pee pee on the potty at school!" Apparently, we're putting a bit too much emphasis on the celebration of pee pees in the potty. Even better was the little boy's response sitting next to her. "Yah, she did a good job. She went peepees in the potty, not peepees on the floor." Cracked me up!

Jana's 2 years and 7 months

A lot has been going on this month.

Jana was the flower girl in Auntie Meg and Uncle Sean's wedding. She's decided to be (mostly) potty trained. She picks up new words by the minute, it seems. Daddy went back to work. And Kara is trying to decide if she wants to walk - she can, but isn't sure she wants to. :-P All of this together has meant that our transition back into the school year has not been as smooth as I would have liked.

Jana is struggling with having "gentle" hands, feet, and head (ugh!). Kara's been very miserable with yet another round of green snot as well as what we think is teething due to the massive fountain of drool running down her face, so she's been rather needy. Jana's been very frustrated in not getting the one-on-one time that she had before when both Mommy and Daddy were home.

Jana has also decided to be mostly potty trained (still working on the poopies). She loves the fact that she's a big girl and is so proud to tell everyone when she's gone peepees on the potty. She even still cheers for Mama when she goes, which can be a bit awkward in busy public bathrooms.

Jana's newly discovered favorites this month are: Reese (the 9 year old two houses away, who has everything you could ever want for playing babies), feeding her "friends" (stuffed animals), picking tomatoes (not always ripe, unfortunately), and taking Maiya to the dog park (she even wanted to go today without Maiya).

She's picking up new words all the time - making us VERY conscious of what we say. This month we have "favorite", "interesting", and "I need ____ to go with it" (from If You Give a Mouse a Cookie). Things have also become "scary" this month. The one that is hard not to laugh at is when I say something like, "get off the table please" (in a dramatically corrective tone), I get "Mama, don't call me get off the table." Or "Mama, don't call me get down." She's become very sensitive this month emotionally, but we're still lacking any clue of how her actions can physically hurt someone. So when do they develop that? Soon, I hope.

We've had to add and remove toddler proofing items this month. The door handle lock had to come off her bedroom door now that we're potty training. While it's wonderful to have her potty trained, getting her to stay in her room at night is a challenge and the 3 am wanderings because "I need to go peepee on the potty, Mommy" (which is not true most of the time because the pull up is already wet and warm - ewww) makes the night short. We have also had to add a chain on the front door. Little miss too-smart-for-her-own-good figured out how to unlock the deadbolt and let herself out the front door. While all she wants to do is play with the neighborhood kids, Mama has panic-filled visions of Jana taking off; thus, we now have a chain on our front door.

Jana LOVES to read. We pretty much maintain our 25 book limit each week at the library. Her newest favorites are the Robert Munsch books (Mmm, cookie especially), the "Fancy Nancy's", the "Spot" books (haa, haa), the "If you give a ___, a ___" series, and almost anything Seuss. We found an obscure Seuss that I hadn't seen before, ever, and that is her new favorite. I'm going to have to find it somewhere, but it's a collection of 3 shorter stories called "I can lick 30 tigers today." She loves to have stories read to her and she's starting to memorize parts and recite them or "read" the stories on her own. Right now, we usually read a few stories when she wakes up in the morning, then 2 or 3 before nap, maybe a few after nap, maybe a few in the evening, and 2 or 3 before bead. Now you know why we've become avid library users. Phew!

Here are a whole bunch of new pictures for this month.

Of course, one of my favorites of all time.

Jana LOVES corn on the cob.

Jana feeding Cheetah - who has become one of Jana's most important and favorite "friends" after Anya (6 year old daughter of a friend) came to visit and she had a big stuffed Cheetah that was her special friend.

Jana is now obsessed with sitting on our kitchen stools.


"I wear my (daddy's) sunglasses at night. So I can, so I can..."

While Anya and Jacob were visiting, Jana learned many new games to play - including a lot of pretending. She now pretends to feed, cloth, change, snuggle, sooth when crying, and put her friends down for naps. Her favorite place to put them down for naps when downstairs is on the bottom shelf of the changing table, where we store the extra baby blankets. Apparently that's a cozy place to hang out.
And no, she doesn't wear pants very often these days! :-P

As a compromise between Jana's desire to dress herself and my need for her to be dressed in cute outfits, I have succumbed to buying gymboree on ebay. It's great though - when you have pieces from the same line, they all match, so she can dress herself and not look silly - most of the time. Here are a few of her favorite creations.

Woowee! That's a lot of pink.
Oh little sassy pants! We're going to have our hands full during the teenage years - holy cow!

Jana loves to wash her hands with Purell. She does it at the gym, so we're struggling to get her to use soap and water at home. But, here she is pretending to wash her hands as she rubs in the purell.

"Mama, don't call me 'get off the table.'"

Jana also found her halloween costume. Oh my, does she love it! She wore it to pick up the pizza with me on a 90 degree day. Everyone was called out from the back to look at her while we were at the pizza place because they thought she was so stinkin' cute. But, boy howdy was she a sweaty mess when I could finally convince her to take off the costume.

One day, after Kara went down for her nap and before Jana went down for hers, Jana and Mama made Daddy "a special treat." Rice Krispie treats with Chocolate chip cookies (I had to talk her down from the sprinkles). I'm not so sure that Daddy got that many of them, as Jana opted for those instead of her normal pottying rewards.



While, she's challenging at times and I'm pretty sure that quite often we're on the wrong side of that fine line between independent/strong female and brat - my baby girl, you're the best. I love being around you and miss you so much that I feel "lost" as you'd call it (out of sorts) when you're away from me. You have no idea how much I love that you insist on calling me to tell me that you went peepees on the potty if I'm not at home. I love to hear that sweet voice and love that we can now talk on the phone.

Auntie Meggy gets married!

Auntie Meggy (as Jana now calls her) has always been of very special importance to Jana. They share a middle name and Jana has always been particularly attached to her. Jana also has a strong attachment for Sean. So, it was wonderful that they asked Jana to be in their wedding as a flower girl. She was so excited.

The morning of the wedding, Jana stayed home with Daddy, Grammy, Papa, and Kara while Mama got ready for the wedding with Auntie Meg. She arrived just before pictures and we got her all dolled-up.

First job, the hair.
Nothing like trying to get a squirrelly toddler to hold still long enough to put her hair up and put a clip in.

Can you tell that she thinks she's pretty?


Next came the dress. Being a little nervous about keeping the dress white, we waited as long as possible to put the dress on...

but time came for pics with Auntie Meg - the beautiful bride.

Jana had practiced for weeks and was ready for "game day." Or so we thought. When we first started walking toward the aisle, she dropped her first handful of flowers - a bit early. Then another handful at the beginning of the isle. Despite much coaching and coaxing, she didn't drop any more flower pedals as we walked down the isle. She did, however, empty the basket when we got to our places in front.

She did pretty well during the ceremony. She bounced back and forth between Grammy and Papa, Grandma and Grandpa, Uncle David, and Mama and Dada (including a little trip to Grandma and Grandpa while they were "giving away" the bride. Oops!) (Please notice the flower pedals at our feet where Jana turned over her basket and dumped them out.)

She spotted some friends that she likes to play with and wanted to play with them during the ceremony, but other than that, she was very good.

Then it was off to take pictures and she certainly loved all the attention.


Jana posing with Papa.
We were even able to get some good pictures with Kara Mae.


Daddy, Mommy, and Kara after the ceremony.
Mama and Kara - all dressed and ready for the wedding.
Mama and Kara, cuddling to stay warm at the reception.

Grammy and Kara, enjoying their snuggle time together.
The beautiful Bride and Groom entering the reception.

Gramps with Kara

Gramps and the great-grand kids


The Father-Daughter dance.


Jana spotted Grandpa dancing with Meg and decided that she needed to dance with Grandpa too. After a slight fit when Mama wouldn't let her up on the dance floor, Jana got her dance with Grandpa.
It was a beautiful wedding and we're very happy for Auntie Meggy and Uncle Sean.