Thursday, January 29, 2009

Jana's 2nd haircut

Jana got her second hair cut ever last night. I've been trying to convince her for over a month that she should get her hair cut, but she adamantly disagreed. So, Daddy got his hair cut last night and "Jim the Barber" (a family friend) snuck Jana in for a quick trim. He LOVES cutting kids' hair and Jana gets so excited to see him. Jim has now cut 4 generations of Daddy's family's hair.

So here is Jana's scraggly mop before the haircut. While we love long hair on her, she's constantly trying to get it out of her face and getting all kinds of stuff in it and hates when I try to comb out the knots.

Jana being silly during the haircut.

Today, I tried to get some pictures of her new haircut... and Jana decided that she did not want to have her picture taken. While you can't get a good look at her cute new hair, I wanted to share the side of Jana that most people don't see. The Stinker!


And after about 10 shots just like this, her enthusiasm faded....

And I managed to slip in this shot. Not that flattering of a shot, but at least you can see the new do.

And then I snuck in another shot while Jana and Kara were brushing their teeth before naptime.

Oh my silly girls!

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Kara Mae is 20 months old!

Oh my sweet girl! You are growing into such a toddler: the fits are impressive, your new phrases are priceless, and your desire to climb on all things is unending.

Kara still runs hot and cold - happiest baby you've ever seen and then a screaming, sobbing wreck. It can be over anything: Mama closing the door to the bathroom for privacy, Jana stealing a toy, or for our inability to understand what she wants. It'll change so quickly and then back again.



Her little personality is flourishing. She LOVES Maiya (our dog), but even though she can say the M sound, she prefers her name for the dog: "Why-ya!" Oh does she adore this dog!


She is finally getting some hair. It's actually long enough now to put the top half of her hair into "Chinchilla ears" as Jana calls them. Here's the stinkface at breakfast with some amazing morning hair.
Goofy girl - amazing morning hair!

Fingerpainting with a little dinner.

Smily girl!

While being a mama's girl, she LOVES her daddy. She especially likes to where her "at" (hat) and match Daddy. There's nothing better than suiting up for game day and watchin' the Hawks with Daddy.

This month Kara started running and is trying to jump. She doesn't really leave her feet, but bounces - especially fun on Jana's bed.

Kara's new words/phrases this month:
"Hi Nay-na" (Hi Jana)
"Oh doggy"
"Ungy" (Hungry)
"mo pees" (More please)
"Mo pees jush" (More please juice)
"Uppees" (Up please)
"Tuh-toe" (turtle)
"lellow" (yellow)

She'll try to repeat most sounds/words/phrases that you try, so she's constantly surprising us.

She loves books right now. She brings books to us all day long and snuggles in to read books with us at night.

She's quite funny when we go to Jana's school. Kara will head right over to the rug and sit down like she's ready for circle time, or she'll go sit in one of the chairs at the tables. Jana doesn't want me to leave, but Kara's ready for school now. :-)

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

NOOOO! How can Jana be turning 3 next month?!?!?!

I'm in complete awe that our little preemie is almost 3. I am not understanding how that little, tiny girl can be this big. Here's our little sassy pants licking the spoon while wearing Auntie "Princess" Kaley's hat.

Jana managed to get into Kaley's purse and put on some lip gloss - all over her face. Then we realized that it was a lip gloss that had a plumper in it. This was her face many hours later (I wish we had a good shot of it early on because the color had faded by this time). And people laugh at us because we're so cautious about potential allergies. Can we say over-active immune system, anyone? Click on the pictures so you can see the close up - it really was that glorious! At bedtime she kept saying, "I don't feel very good." Gee, I wonder why!


I have to admit that she's becoming a bit of a sassy pants. She has made us very aware of the things that we say... apparently too often. "You don't talk to me that way." (I'm still not sure that came from us, though). "I don't like it when you do that" (if only I could capture the tone in her voice as well). My favorite, though, (and very hard not to laugh hysterically when she does this) is when she gets up from the table while we're eating to go wander around. "Jana, we sit down while we eat." "Okay, Mommy." Plop, she sits right down the floor where she standing. Grrr! The first couple of times she did this and I'd get annoyed, she'd respond with, "You said we sit while we're eating, and I'm sitting." Little stinker! And we wonder why we often forget that she's only two!

She's recently decided that she wants a party with friends... which has sent us scrambling. It's funny how friends are becoming more important these days. But she still says (most days) that Kara is her best friend. Ahh. Too adorable. Some moments they get along great and have a blast playing together, but on the others Kara can't do anything right according to Jana. This series of pictures cracks me up. We can never get a picture of both of them looking good. Kara was in the recliner and Jana decided that she needed to join her. It was quite funny.
And on those days that Kara can do no right by Jana, we have many toy issues. Like this day when she laid down insider her tent so that Kara couldn't come in with her.

After a summer of "attempting" to do Parent-Tot swim lessons with the girls, Jana is finally taking swim lessons - taught by someone other than Mama. She's doing really well, listens to her teacher, but isn't so sure about the rambunctious boys in her class. She seems to have a great time, loves the teacher, and gives us a count of how many times the boys were in timeout each day. Hee, hee!

She still LOVES to read books. She has most of them memorized at this point, especially "Chicka Chicka Boom Boom."


Jana's an absolute riot these days. The things she thinks up are hilarious!

Auntie Kaley tried to get Jana to say 'Kaley's the super bomb.' Jana's response: "I'm just too busy right now?"

We didn't teach her how to do this, but since the edition of People Magazine with Barrack Obama on the cover, when she sees a picture of him, she'll say:" That's Barrack Obama." Now she'll say: "That's Barack Obama. He's the resident." Hee, hee. I'm sure he'd love to know that a 2 year old has decided that he's a resident, not president. But after a few days, when quoting her while on the phone with Grammie, I hear from the back seat, "Esscuse me, Mommy. Barrack Obama isn't the resident. He's the Pah-resident. It's president, Mama, not resident."

I put Kara's hair half up, in little knobby piggy tails on top of her head. Jana sees Kara and says, "Mama, Sissy's got Chinchilla ears." Ha. And actually they do look very similar to the animated chinchillas on one of her Diego shows (although we can't remember the last time we've watched a Diego).

Tonight as we were snuggling before bed: "Mama, your my best friend ever."

We've had issues with Jana staying in bed at sleepy time. So, now if she gets out of bed, she loses one of these, of her choice: binkie, "square blankie" (the newest of her adopted blankets - she has 3), or her favorite "friends": Carebear, Pink Bear, or Sissy's duck (yes, it truly is Kara's duck that Jana stole, but Kara could care less.). We keep going until she stops getting out of bed. The other night all that was left in bed was her pillow, her comforter, warm blanket, and her binkie, and her of course. The next morning, when she got up, she had a very stern message for me: "Mama, don't you ever take my blankie or friends away from me, again. That was not a good choice."

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Christmas #2

Due to Grammy feeling under the weather, we had to postpone Christmas round 2 for a week, but the girls didn't know the difference. They were very excited to see them and to open some presents.

The girls have LOVED making forts in the house, so Grammy and Papa bought them (each) a new tent. Oh man, these have been a hit.

Here they are opening them.
Daddy helping Jana while "Gapa" helps Kara.

And once they were built, it was playtime!

Jana decided to store the rest of her presents in hers while Kara just wanted to sit in hers.
Are you surprised we have sharing issues? Hoarding presents.

Jana was so excited, she took a time out for some "snuggles" with Grammy to say thank you.

Then came the present of all presents.
While we knew this would be a hit, we had no idea it was going to be the "Red Ryder BB gun" of all presents.
Her doggy vet kit! Oh my! This thing has to sleep next to her in bed most night. But she loves to take care of her animals! Hee, hee.

Thank you Grammy and Papa for a wonderful "second Christmas".

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Christmas

This year was interesting with the weather, but despite the snow and ice, we had a wonderful holiday.

After a snowy weekend at Grammy and Papa's, including a breakfast with Santa, we headed home for Christmas Eve and day with the E. clan.

Santa was very good to us this year!

Kara LOVES her firetruck! (Yay for no more fights over the plane.)

Who knew that the hit of all the presents were the backpacks. Hee, hee!

Then we headed to Grandma and Grandpa's house for some breakfast and more present opening with the Aunts and Uncles... and of course "Baby Cousin Ari."

Uncle Sean did an amazing job of building Jana her Marble Race, which she played with for the rest of the day.

That's some concentration.

Jana was such a busy girl on Christmas day. She skipped her nap, where as Kara slept most of the day away after so much excitement and so many people to entertain.

With so much to do, Jana didn't crash until we headed home... and boy was she out. I guess that's the sign of a great Christmas.

Seriously, where do we live?

I think Mother Nature mistook us for a place that actually gets snow. I mean, seriously, this is Oregon! What, do you think we have plows? We actually saw someone in their John Deere plowing. Gotta love small towns!

This is what we came home to, after the snow from the first set of pictures. We had something like 8 inches fall in one day. After snow, rain that turned into a layer of ice, and then a huge dumping of snow, we had 13" of snow.


Somewhere under there is our hedge that is at least one step height above our driveway.

Here is the lovely path that my wonderful husband shoveled for us. I don't know if you can see beyond our driveway, but he even shoveled our sidewalk... the only bare pavement visible for a week.

Thirteen inches at least in the backyard. Too bad we couldn't really play back there - watch out for landmines! Ewwww!

And finally a picture of our tree in the front yard - one of the few trees that didn't have serious damage in our neighborhood.