Why am I so bad at this???

Why am I so bad at updating this blog?? I just completely keep forgetting I have it!

Annika wish wish wishs tonight.

A little Annika update: Since today is Friday, Annika and I went to the mall. We go to the mall every Friday for a MOPS playdate in the little playplace. It’s a great little play area and the kids love it. On the way to the mall, Annika asked, “Are we going to Friday?” I told her, “Yes. Yes we are.” I’m pretty sure she thinks that the playplace is the “mall.” After playing, we went up and had lunch with some friends. Grady is 3 and is just as sweet as can be. He announced that Annika was his best friend- to which Annika threw her arms in the air, and yelled “yay!”
After all that fun, we headed upstairs to the Macy’s shoe section for some mommy fun! I ended up leaving with 3 pairs of shoes. Woo! Annika and I had a blast. Well, she had a blast with the shoes. I had a blast watching her have fun. The salesclerks basically tried to steal her because she was so cute, and I had to strongarm my way out of the store with my daughter! She tried on every shoe she could find, and announced “Too big!” then handed them back to the clerks. She brought shoes for me to try on, she tried to get strangers to try on shoes. She showed off her tap-dancing moves. She found the little hiding spot behind the chairs and hid there for 15 minutes or so. In writing, it sounds like she was a maniac, but she really wasn’t. She was just as sweet as can be, and there wasn’t anyone else in the department, so the clerks were doting on her.

Tonight, I carried her out to the car to get something, and she freaked out because it was too dark, then suddenly noticed the stars and gasped, “It’s a starry starry night!” I think that she actually knew that was the title of the painting from Little Einstiens or maybe Doctor Who. Either way, she nailed it. The stars are amazing tonight. Annika made a wish that went like this.
“Wish wish wish tonight. Wish chocolate cake. And toys. And chocolate cake and frosting. And toys. And chocolate cake/frosting and strawberries. And toys. Wish wish wish. Yay!!”

Next time: Isabella

we're home....woot.

We made it home from our two weeks in Kansas, and we're only now finally recovered. Although I blame the trip exhaustion for the girls' behavior tonight at the ice cream social, and I stand by my right to do that. Plus, it was 100 degrees at 6 o'clock and they had no water at the outside event. Ack.

I have every intention of posting very funny and interesting stuff here soon. We'll see how that goes.

Stuff we do

There's a free lunch program at the parks here. I think it's a national program. I know they have it in Lawrence, too. It's a great idea, except... Except my kids won't eat any of the food. Any of it. Period. Bella think it tastes funny, and Annika just doesn't eat food. So, on that front, it's a bust, but we go anyway because almost all our friends go too. It's about 20 minutes away from our house, so we try to make it every couple of days.

Today we got there late. It was one of those days where I wasn't sure if we were going to go, and then the girls wanted to take their scooters, which meant finding helmets, and the sand toys, and the frisbee, and the, and the, and the. I opened the car to let the hot air out and somehow ended up locking my keys in the house, so I had to find a way in, look around, decided to go get the girls from the car because it was so hot, brought them in, immediately found the keys, and repack everyone up.
For some reason, every time I say it's time to go, Annika decides that means it's time to lie on the floor and be silly. Yesterday she hung off her little Dora chair and made "ooh ahh ooh ahh" noises, and today she threw herself on the floor and pretended to be a noodle. It's not a tantrum, it's just a funny quirk? I don't know what it is.
By the time we got there, only Miss A's family was left from our friends. Bella moaned around for a while, and then went to play frisbee. It immediately got stuck in the tree- in the exact spot as yesterday. The kids launched shoes at the frisbee, and then threw the frisbee to get the stuck shoes out, and then the shoes to get the frisbee out. They laughed and laughed. It kept them entertained for almost 45 minutes. It was so funny- just about everyone at the park got involved... Including the poor girl who had a few flip flops land on her head. She was tall enough to pull the tree branch down and shake the remaining items out. All of us short people cheered. I had tried to pull knch things down with the top of the scooter, but still wasn't tall enough. Annika usually sits under the play structure, in the shade, and quietly digs in the sand for the entire time we're there. I've never seen anything like it.

It's raining!

We've gotten 2/10 of an inch of precip. this year, so rain is a big deal. Coming from Kansas, where spring means rain, and thunderstorms, and tornado sirens going off, I had no idea that I would miss it so much. I really do. We all do. We'd only been here a little while when Isabella burst out, "IT'S TOO SUNNY! Why is it always sunny!?" You would think always sunny would be wonderful, right? It gets boring.
Spring in New Mexico means wind. The kind of wind we would equate with tornado weather, but no rain. It just blows sand. They cancelled the first 3 concerts in the park because of wind. How crazy is that?
So, this background might make you appreciate just how excited we were when the first drops started coming down. It sprinkled for about 5 minutes, but we were all jumping around in the backyard like idiots shouting "IT'S RAINING!!" We had dinner, went on a walk, and the rain came again! Isabella had this tiny little umbrella that she and Annika were trying to crouch under and Annika kept singing "Rain rain, go away," which made Isabella shriek, "No! Don't go away!" I don' t think she really wanted it to go away, she just doesn't know any other songs with the word "rain" in them.
We passed a little boy who had lost his lucky penny, and Bella decided that was what made it rain, which was really funny because everytime it would stop, she'd yell "I hope he loses his penny again!!"
So, it rained a total of 15 minutes, and there were 3 or 4 claps of thunder, and the Vermooten family went crazy. That's about par for the course, wouldn't you say?

Annnnnnnnnnnd to make things even more fun...

Isabella has a fever now, too. Boo. And I popped my hip out teaching hip hop class, so I'm hobbling around. And my nose is froze, and my tail's froze....

Another weekend, another fever

For the second weekend in a row, one of my babies has a fever. Last weekend, Isabella's fever was 103-104 most of the weekend. Today, Annika's fever is just over 102. Which means we're hanging out at home. Again. I really hope that it's just a one day thing, because I'm already still a little stir crazy still from last weekend!
Do you ever look at your kids and your heart just hurts with love? I'm amazed at how fast things go, and while I know that if Annika acted like a 3 year old forever, that would mean something was terribly wrong, but I just love them being little.
We went to Explora yesterday, which is the kids' science museum in Albuquerque. We bought a family pass a couple of months ago, which was a great deal because it pays for itself in just four visits. Annika insisted on wearing her monkey backpack with the leash, and it just cracks me up that she loves to wear that thing. If we had one of those for Isabella at that age? She probably would have found a way to burn it.
Isabella loves science and experiments and all that stuff. She and the neighbor boy prowl around the backyard, examining insects of all sorts and digging in the ground for fossils. Her favorite show is Fetch with Ruff Ruffman, which is a game show with kids and a cartoon dog. The dog sends them on all kind of adventures, most of which are learning excercises about physics, or lasers, cooking, or whatever. So, as you can imagine, Explora is right up her alley. Yesterday, she had the microscope out examing all kinds of dead bugs and particles, which somehow seguewayed into her holding a live stick bug while examing it with a magnifying glass. I was pretty freaked out by it. I certainly wasn't going to hold it, but she did, and emboldened by her sister, so did Annika! I wish I had it on camera. She kept giggling and saying that it tickled. Amazing, no?

Annika repeats the last few words of anything you say, which is pretty funny. She says it in this deep little voice, so it's like an echo around here all the time. She's such a precious little thing. Easy going, giggly, sweet. It's hard to remember that when she crosses her arms and pouts, that laughing is not the appropriate response. Making her do it again so that her dad can see? Even less appropriate. (Not that I've ever done that).

Cross your fingers that Annika is better tomorrow. I don't think I can face another day of All Dora, All Day.

A little P.S.

After dance class, we met David at Chick-fil-A for family night, and the girls played in their playplace for almost 2 hours. Annika even ate chicken nuggets! It was a June Miracle. She doesn't ever eat meat, and half the time I have to shove ice cream in her mouth to remind her she likes it. She's my little vegetarian. She'll eat an entire freezer bag of broccoli and half a can of green beans, but she'll never touch the meat. At McDonald's, I get two happy meals for the 3 of us. She eats the french fries and gets the toy, and I eat her chicken nuggets. However, Chick-fil-A nuggets are nothing like McDonald's. They appear to be actual chicken. They're fried in peanut oil, so I haven't had any, but they look good.
I wanted to go home a long time before we did, but Bella was playing a very complex game with some other kids, so I didn't make her leave until they did. We're exhausted.
Next time she complains that we never do anything fun, I'm going to remind her of the Day we Played and tell her to hush.

Yay! Look at me, I'm cool!

I remembered the password to my blogspot account, which is crucial to the next step of posting things! I'm really going to try to put pictures up. Or talk someone else into doing it.
Summer is fun. It's hot, but not humid, which means the mornings and evenings aren't too bad. You don't sweat and feel sticky all the time, which is nice, but hot is hot.

We've been going to the park every day for lunch with friends. Today we went to the park for two hours, went to McDonald's for 2 hours, and now we're going to dance class. David's going to be surprised when there's no dinner ready because we played too much today.

It's a bittersweet day. Annika has stopped calling Isabella "RaRa" and moved onto calling her Isabella. She says it so sweetly, with a little lisp, so it sounds like IsaBEYa, but I miss RaRa.

Annika calls the Disney Princesses 'Tatas'. WHY? Every time I say it, I'm afraid someone will overhear me asking where her Tatas are.

Annika likes to fake sneeze. It cracks me up.

Sick and tired of being sick and tired!

We, mostly me, have been sick a lot since we got here! I don't know why, but we've caught every possible bug out there. A couple weeks ago, I was so sick that I had to get 2 bags of fluid!~
This week, we all have a little bug again, not as bad as before, but Bella had to miss a couple days of school because of the 24 hour policy on fever/throw-up. She seems to be allergic to shopping at Wal-Mart and Target! 3 different times, she's randomly thrown up in the store. Her face gets really red and blah! I have no idea why, but we're trying to make an effort to keep her out of the stores!

The house is a mess and we've all watched more cartoons than you can shake a stick at, but hopefully, we're on the rebound! Yesterday, I sat down and cried because I was so tired of feeling worn-out and yucky! Poor David was met at the door with a sniffling wife and he turned out to have a sore throat! So please pray for us, we'd like to feel better!

Another day, another fundraiser

Isabella's school is having a book sale this week. Annika and I went in on Monday morning to volunteer, and I told Bella that we'd come back today to pick out a book or two... Of course, it turned in to much more than one or two books, which I could have predicted, but it's a FUNDRAISER! We got a couple of books off her teacher's wish list for the classroom- "Duck at the Door" and "Big Chickens..something or other."
I kept trying to steer Isabella towards cute books like "Splat the Cat" or "Skippyjon Jones" but she was determined to get treacly easy-to-read books about fairies or horses or fairy horses, so I let her, because I want her to enjoy what she's reading. Her reading has really come a long way lately. She has half an hour reading time with a special tutor every day at school. Since she's from a different district, they wanted her to get acclimated to the New Mexico way. A side note- We're really lucky to have her in this school. We researched New Mexico schools and specifically chose to move to Rio Rancho and then to the Enchanted Hills district because they are so good...which is unusual here in New Mexico, which is 49th in the country in education and 80% of 4th graders can't read proficiently! This is a big change from Lawrence, that's for sure!

Annika found a compilation of Dora stories and we had to have that! She really loves books and will sit quietly and look at them for a long time! We've already worn it out some because of all the repeated readings! Bella's able to read to her a little out of it, so it's fun for the whole family!

I'm so glad that my children are learning to love reading!

6 months later, here we are!

A lot has changed since I posted here in April. The Vermooten family has packed up the babies and headed out west. Specifically, New Mexico! Which is a lot different from Kansas. We're adjusting...slowly. We have visited no less than 3 pumpkin patches already this year, and let me tell you, we miss Schaake's!

Yesterday, we drove a little over an hour to Moriarty, NM, which seems to have two attractions. One, the national DWI memorial, and two, McCall's Pumpkin Patch Extravaganza. http://mccallpumpkinpatch.com
Okay, Annika's trying to stick her bottle in the electrical socket. and her toes.

There was so much to do, and the girls had so much fun! It was definitely worth the $10 admission price. They had a jumpy pillow, a petting zoo, a tractor ride to the pumpkin patch, duck races, (although they weren't as cool as the ones at the Galloping Grace pumpkin patch) plus the giant slide, the pedal karts, and bunnyville!
Unfortunately, there's nothing to stop the wind out there, since there are no trees in New Mexico, so the wind got bad. They were clocked at over 70 mph, which I think is pretty strong anywhere, but made them particularly bad.
Isabella made a new best friend, Olivia, and it turns out her mom is Dutch, just like David, so that was pretty cool.

Isabella was in a relay race today and wow! I am always amazed at how fast she is. I'm pretty fast too, but I had to be to catch that toddler.

Oh wow. Annika is so big. She's repeating Dora and Diego on tv in her tiny little voice. It kinda makes me sad. She's not a baby anymore.

It's been one of those crazy days where this is just par for the course.

Bella dropped part of her waffle and Annika got down, got the fork Bell dropped,sat down under Bell's chair and ate it. With the fork. She had her own plate.

Just saw how to train your dragon in 3D and whoa! It was awesome! 3D was intense! Bella kept reaching out to touch things.

Happy 6th Birthday to Isabella!. You rock girl!