Happy Birthday to our sweet Anna Catherine! I can’t believe it’s been two years since she entered the world. We did a low-key celebration this year since we were just back from our trip to the cabin. Anna was thrilled to have a yummy dinner, cupcakes, and presents! She is starting to understand what this birthday thing is all about and it was so cute to watch her enjoy the celebration.

Here are some pictures from Thursday. Happy Birthday, sweet Anna Boo!

Enjoying meatloaf for dinner. We also had pizza since that’s Max’s favorite thing to have for a birthday.

Cupcake time! She managed to blow out both candles by herself. The frosting was her favorite part.

I realized today as we were doing family pictures for Anna’s second birthday that I never posted the ones we did in early April to celebrate Max turning four! We took them a few weeks late since we were in Florida and then had his party. Kudos to Justine for getting great shots despite the fact that it was really cold out and (unknown to us at the time) Anna was nursing a double ear infection. And thank you to Woodland Meadows Farm for letting us use their location for photos!

Dear Maxwell,

When you started school you were three, and now you are four. You have grown so much! Here is a picture of you on the first day, and one on the last day:

On the last day your school sent home a binder with some of your drawings from the year. Mostly they are lines and swirls, but here’s one from June of a house. The description from you made me smile. I can just see you telling Ms. Megan it’s a house and her asking whose house it is. Then you explain to her that you don’t know whose house it is because you can’t see inside. I love the way your mind works!

Here are a few more pictures from your last day.

You had an ice cream party for the last day of school. You were excited to have a cone with sprinkles on it!

We took some pictures of you with Ms. Megan. I’m so glad you had a teacher you love.

Of course we had to take one with silly faces too!

We were very lucky to have my cousin Shani here visiting this week. The kids loved having her here and she is missed already! She and I always say we wish we could make our cities closer together so it would be easier to visit more often. The time went so fast, come back soon, Shani! Max enjoyed ordering Shani around in typical four year-old fashion. One night we were sitting down to dinner and Shani was joking with Max about something, just being silly. After a minute Max looked at her and said, “Maybe you should just eat your dinner.” No beating around the bush there.

I have a few pictures from Shani’s visit but first will share a couple from Maxwell’s last preschool field trip of the year–a ride on a school bus! We met up with his classmates and teachers at a local park and then took a ride in the bus. Max told me he didn’t want the bus to go too fast, thankfully we weren’t anywhere near highway speeds, so that request was met. Emmeline sat with us and Angel and my mom stayed at the park with the little girls.

The ever-popular “funny face” picture:

Fun times with Shani!

I’m not sure what’s going on here…claws maybe?

Max wanted to make funny faces as usual, Anna didn’t do it right away…

But then she proceeded to stick her tongue out and didn’t want to stop, causing much hilarity:

Love you, Shani!

A friend was teasing me the other day that it’s still Mother’s Day on my blog. Since Father’s Day is around the corner, I better get another post up here in between! This one is just some assorted fun we had in May. There are pictures from a walk and picnic in the park that I did with the kids, a get together with some friends for Jeff’s birthday, and a few randoms thrown in. It was really fun to do Jeff’s birthday with Max this year. The highlight for Max was definitely the food, but he was pretty excited about the birthday in general too. About a week beforehand Maxwell told Jeff, “Daddy, your birthday is next Saturday, I’m so excited!” Just as Jeff was feeling touched, Max followed up with, “Because we get to have pizza!”

Pictures from our walk through the woods and picnic in the park:

And a couple from another park visit. Max recently mastered climbing the “oval ladder” and is very proud of himself:

Anna loves the big kid swing:

Eric, Angel, Emmeline and Penelope came over for dinner on Jeff’s birthday. The weather was great so we played out in the yard for quite awhile:

Then some inside playing after dinner. The big kids read books:

Meanwhile, we looked over to see the little girls trying on each other’s shoes:

Jeff blowing out the birthday candle:

And opening presents, with Max’s eager assistance:

And finally, a typical moment in Anna’s day: Wearing jammies with her brother’s shoes, sitting in the doll stroller:

I’ve been a mother for four years now, and I’m not sure I know any more about how to be a good one than I did when I was pregnant with Max. Just when you master one challenge, something new crops up to stump you. Not to mention that whole two kids dynamic. But the awesome thing is, those ever-changing challenges are blown out of the water by the new and amazing things we get to witness and be a part of. It’s a miracle when my babies start to smile, then laugh, then roll over, sit up, crawl and walk. And it’s just as awe-inspiring to see toddlers persevering to learn a new skill, or preschoolers engaging in hilariously creative imaginary play. I love the way Anna calls herself “Nana” and repeats her name with increasing urgency when she wants something. I love when Max uses his whole body to tell me a story. I love when they read the Sandra Boynton “Fifteen Animals” book together at nap time and Max recites it from memory with Anna saying “Bob” at the appropriate time. I am so blessed to be a Mama to these two amazing people.

My mom’s name is Mama
My mom is 25 years old
My mom weighs 61 pounds
My mom’s job is to work
My mom’s favorite food is pizza
My mom laughs when I do silly dancing
My mom always says “I love you, Max.”
My mom’s favorite color is blue
My mom cooks the best food
If my mom had time, she would love to snuggle me (just for the record, I do snuggle him!)
My mom and I like to play
I love my mom because she loves me

Here are the pictures. Anna wanted to sit in the chair all by herself:

I can’t remember what we were talking about, but it was clearly very important:

We convinced Anna to join us briefly, by letting her hold onto the planter dish:

Then we decided to take a few out by the fence, but we had to pause to inspect a snail:

Me and my babies:

And a couple randoms that I like:

Last weekend we traveled to visit Greg and Leah and the girls. It’s about a four hour drive and the kids did great. We broke up the trip with a stop for lunch which helped a lot. Anna did cry for a good portion of the trip each way, but not the whole drive, so I’ll count that as a win. Max watched “Blue’s Clues” for much of the drive so he was all set. We were lucky to have a gorgeous sunny weekend on both sides of the mountains, so the drive was beautiful and good weather awaited us when we returned home Sunday. Greg and Leah were wonderful hosts as always, cooking us lots of delicious food, plying us with home-roasted coffee, and just being great company.

I love watching Elizabeth and Emma with Max and Anna. The little kids adore the big girls and the feeling is mutual. Lizzy and Emma are so wonderful with them, very patient and willing to be ordered around according to a four year-old’s whim. There’s a great park in their neighborhood so we walked there a few times. They also took us to a really cool local park with a huge wooden climbing structure, lots of slides, swings, a sandbox…I don’t think we even got to all of it! I think Max’s favorite activity was playing upstairs with Lizzy and Emma in their rooms. Anna couldn’t get enough of Alex the cat and would follow him around trying to pet him. She was also a huge fan of Greg’s homemade carne asada, she put away at least one adult’s share. I can’t blame her, it was delicious. The time went far too fast as always and we are already dreaming of a return trip!

Max’s preschool recently took a field trip to the local fire and police stations. I was able to go with him, which he thought was pretty cool. He asked me several times if I would stay with him the whole time. Eric brought Emmeline and Max liked having her there too. We started with a tour of the police station and then the kids got to sit in the police car and talk with the officers. Then it was next door to the fire station, where they learned about safety and then we went outside to check out an assortment of first response vehicles–a couple different fire trucks, an ambulance, even a fire boat. I didn’t recognize any EMT’s, thought maybe I’d see one of the ones who almost delivered Anna. In between the fire station and police station is a small field with a healthy dandelion population. Max loves blowing the seeds, so we spent some time doing that to close out the visit.

Here’s Max with his teacher, Miss Megan. He will really miss her when school ends for the summer. Yesterday he told me, “I’m so excited to see Miss Megan tomorrow!”

Making a silly face

Last week Sunday night we were just about to sit down to dinner and the kids were playing. Max tripped and fell and his upper lip met the windowsill. The result was a deep cut (through to the other side), some blood, and one very unhappy boy. We decided he needed to be seen right away. Jeff stayed home with Anna so she could eat and go to bed, and Maxwell and I headed to an urgent care clinic operated by Children’s Hospital. The folks at the clinic were fabulous and I would go there again in a heartbeat. The doctor took a look at the cut and said she wasn’t sure if they could close it with glue or if it would need stitches. My heart sank when she asked, “When was the last time he had anything to eat or drink?” because I know there’s only one reason they ask that question, and it involves anesthesia. She said if the glue wasn’t feasible they would have to send us down to Children’s Hospital for sedation and stitches. Thankfully once they got it cleaned out they decided glue should work. Of course Max didn’t love the process, but he was very brave. I sang to him and counted out loud to distract him, which seemed to help. At one point while we were waiting he said to me, “Mama, I love you, but I do NOT love my owie.” Sweet boy.

Here’s a picture of Max the day after. You can see that it didn’t slow him down at all!

For Christmas I received a gift certificate for a mini session with photographer Stacy Jacobsen. One of the options was at a cupcake spot. Since cupcakes are one of Max’s very favorite things (and Anna is a big fan too!), that seemed perfect. The kids had a great time and cute pictures resulted:

Answering “How old are you?”