Hula Hooping

April 30, 2013

Lily decided she wanted to learn to hula hoop, and really started to get the hang of it! 

Mother’s Day Performance

Lily’s class hosted a Mother’s Day “tea” on the Thursday before Mother’s Day.  They served us lunch, gave us dyed coffee filter corsages, and handprint bags they had made.  Lily had been spontaneously rehearsing her song and poem for the performance at home for the week or two prior, so it wasn’t a surprise to me that they were going to perform.  Unfortunately, Lily wasn’t in the mood to participate that day, so I sadly didn’t get an in-class video of her singing with her friends.  However, she did give me a personal performance 3 days later on Mother’s Day.  This is one take, without having rehearsed it at all since the Thursday before. 

OMG, melt my heart.  I will treasure this forever.

Assorted May Pictures

Because it was such a nice day, we decided to break out the pool.  And leave it inside.  And put a blanket inside and turn it into a bird nest for my two little chickadees.  And watch Doc McStuffins in it.  What…isn’t that how you swim? 

Hey, at least Lily’s hair stayed dry!

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Lily drew some Mother’s Day pictures for her grandmothers this year, and although her drawing skills are certainly getting better all the time, it was a little hard to understand her vision just by looking at the finished product.  I had her explain each one and videoed the explanation to e-mail to the recipient so that they would understand that her random scribblings were actually planned out.  It was so funny, because she would ask me before each one what the person liked, and after my thoughtful explanation of each person’s preferences she proceeded to draw her favorite thing to draw – ponds.

For Mimi (Michael’s mom), we had:

A person and a duck pond with a duck in it. Upon completion of her drawing she joked that the duck looked more like a baby sock than a duck.

Grandmom’s (my mom) got:

From left to right we have a person “with crazy hair,” a tree, and a duck pond with a rather impressive duck for Lily’s usual skill set.  You can see Lily’s name, but the random gibberish right above that is where Lily got bested by writing G’s and decided that Grandmom could figure out what it said well enough.

For Nana (my stepmom), we have:

That’s a Christmas tree with a star ornament, another ornament, presents underneath, and a star on top.  There’s a sun, and the swirly stuff is wind where it’s sunny in our town but windy in our friend Landon’s town Chicago (playgroup friend who moved there in January).  The pond looks to contain a dead ladybug, but it’s actually supposed to be a sailboat with the sticks being passengers and cargo.

She may not be the best artist in the world, but she’s already approaching my abysmal skill level, so let’s just say she doesn’t have much of a model to learn from.  I do love watching her imagination at work.

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So, this isn’t a great picture, but it reminds me of the night we went out to dinner with the kids, and Emma reminded us of the depths of her obsession with babies.  Yes, she clearly enjoyed the part of the Oreo ice cream sandwich Lily kindly shared with her, but more notably, she creeped out a family at the table next to us by pointing at their little girl (who was probably about 12-14 months) and shouting, “BAAAY-BEEE! BAAY-BEEE! BAAAAAAY-BEEEEEEEEEEE! Hi! Hi! Baby!” throughout dinner.  Once they left, she creeped on a one and a half year old across the restaurant, as that was the next closest to being a baby. AWKWARD, Em.  Awkward.

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Also random – Lily reminded me to day that Emma is also obsessed with cats.  How did I forget this?!?   Now you know.  And knowing is half the battle.

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Emma watching a movie is hilarious.  She watches Lily’s TV shows without much to say, but when it’s a movie, she really seems to want to understand the plot.  She really has no clue what’s going on, so it’s a lot of shouting about “uh-oh” and “baby!!!!” as seems to be applicable.  Toy Story 3 was especially notable for its highs and lows with lots of joyous, “BABY!  BABY!  BABY!” when Big Baby was on screen, and legitimate tears whenever he wasn’t.

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On May 1st, when we went to a place called Creating Artists for Tomorrow with friends Ana & Logan and Lexie & Wyatt.  It’s a great place where the kids can paint anything except the windows.  Literally.  They can paint the walls, the trees, the outside of the house, the stairs…anything goes.  Lily and her friends had a blast painting a tree outside, and I had less of a blast doing my deep breathing as she and Emma got paint all over their shoes, faces, hair, etc.  I don’t think I’m cut out for this kind of place, but the kids clearly are.  Fortunately, I was able to hide my angst, and the girls had a great time.  :-) 

Oops – thought we got it all!

The girls were both so sad to leave when the place closed at lunch time, so I promised they could play with more shaving cream when they got home (it was one of the activities set out for kids to play with).  Fortunately, Daddy had extra, so they had a blast in the tub. 

While they were in the tub, we somehow got to singing, and here is Emma’s attempt to help me sing Happy Birthday. 

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Finally, that night Emma go to stay up a little later than Lily did for whatever reason, and I selfishly tried to use the 1-on-1 time to talk distractedly to Emma while getting some laundry folded.  She had other ideas, however, as she brought me Lily’s tutu and demanded I put it on over her pajamas, and then took me by the hand, pulled me into her room, pushed me until I sat down, selected a book, closed the door, said “back, back, back” (as she backed up and sat on my lap – this is what she always says when she sits on laps), handed me the book, and told me emphatically, “book!  book!” 

Well, I couldn’t refuse her, and we read many books that night.  It just cracked me up because even though she can’t string together complex sentences, she sure can get her point across.  She loves to read, but is actually very picky about books.  She’ll bring us 3 or 4 at a time, and then settle in our laps for some reading.  Once we start, though, she often rejects most of her original selections until she finds the perfect one, and gets so mad if you don’t move on after she has changed her mind about a book. She’s an opinionated little miss!

Not-so-Tiny Dancer

Well, she’s still pretty tiny to us, but ***spoiler alert for 4-year-old well child check stats***, she’s sort of tall for her age. 

SHOCKING, I KNOW.

In any case, here are some photos I snapped at home earlier in May on our way out the door to dance class (forgive the lack of shoes). Again, we have to take one silly, one smiling picture.  This month, Lily has started to FINALLY agree to have pigtails, apparently because another girl at gymnastics had them.  Wouldn’t you know it, the day she wants to wear pigtails just like her friend, the girl switches to braids.  So, we’re up to three hairstyles now, and as long as we’ve waited for her hair to grow, I think it’s just soooooo cute. 

As far as her dancing goes, it’s hard for you to appreciate it without video (I’ll hopefully get some up before too long), but her dancing has been going the way her learning to skip went.  She’s much more interested in the precision of the skill than the art of it.  She is very interested in watching what she’s supposed to be doing, but will freeze when trying to figure it out so it’s a mix of frozen and correct steps.  Many of the other girls just bee-bop along doing SOMETHING when they don’t know what to do, and don’t seem all that hung up on the steps, but you can tell that Lily is really concentrating and trying to get the routine down.  I don’t know if dancing will be her “thing” in the long run, but I sure love to watch her dance. 

Frilly Lily

After resisting wearing dresses all fall and winter, Lily is suddenly in a phase where she wants to wear dresses and skirts that are “the fluffiest of all!”  Considering she also loves pink and flamingos, this outfit was a home run.  She was proud to show it off at our friend Wyatt’s second birthday party on 5/11/13.

Rainbow spit-up

Well, I probably should change that title before you get too scared, but that’s how we talked Lily into wearing her “school shirt” at the beginning of the school year (they have to wear it once a week on the day they go to chapel).  She said she didn’t like it, so we told her it was a funny shirt because it looks like a rainbow spit up all over her.

Umm…somehow we thought that would make the shirt more appealing, and in our defense it did work. 

Lily has gotten much pickier in the past year about what she wears, and her opinions can be frustrating if I’ve already cut the tags of something she has decided she doesn’t like.  I thought we’d have another couple of years before she would care so much, but I was wrong!  In any case, these are just some pics from last Tuesday (I’m working in reverse order right now – the pool pics were from Wednesday 5/15/13 – I forgot to mention that). The white balance is all wonky b/c they were indoors and I was playing with the camera and BLAH BLAH BLAH YOU DON’T CARE AND I KNOW THAT AND I STILL CAN’T STOP APOLOGIZING FOR IT.  :-)  This is another good illustration of Lily’s insistence on a mixture of straightforward smiles and silliness.  She’s a nut!

Pool.

I blew it up.

They played.

Enjoy.

 

Obviously Emma was more cooperative for pictures than Lily was, but oh well.  Also note Lily’s dry hair. 

Later that night Lily was all on board for taking a bath in the pool (this also explains why half of the pictures have Emma all red-necked out in just a swim diaper).

How crazy! 

What fun! 

Mommy of the year right here, folks! 

Oh…

I wanted her to get her hair wet in the pool? 

Just like she would in the bathtub? 

Just like she does EVERY NIGHT? 

She quickly went from happy to screaming bloody murder in the backyard.  In all seriousness, I was concerned the neighbors were going to come running.

So, that was fun. 

Emma  had a blast, though.

The end.