Video!

*Trying to get Elizabeth to show off her singing and counting..... Little ADD at the moment : )

May 2012!

 

Feels like the fourth quarter of a bball game... I am finishing up my 8th year teaching kindergarten at Hartville and am looking forward to a restful fun-filled summer.  I will be finished with my Masters at the end of September (god willing) and let me tell you, it's been kicking my butt lately!  I have tons of projects (so many that the last three days of school I'll be beginning and ending one : )  Then when summer starts I need to type up those projects into nice, neat, semi-intelligent papers of over 10 pages each!  So fun!  The bad thing is that I've learned so much through these projects but of course they want to see it all typed up and cited and resource after resource found with more data... BLA!  How about I just say 'yep, it went great....' I digress, enough about me!  Audie is getting ready to take his truck with Kirk on the Power Tour for 3 days.  He's worked so hard on his truck in between watching Elizabeth all day.  I leave for work at 7 and don't get home before 4.... He has her all day (except most weeks she goes to Aunt Kay's for a day).  He is the epitome of The World's Greatest Dad.  I just wish I could take his pain away. He has good days and he has bad terrible days.  So hard to see someone you love in so much pain with no way to make it better and no reassuring words of 'one day it will be better'.  He truly has nerves of steel.  I digress, enough about Audie!

Aunt Rachel (Elizabeth calls her "Happy" went to prom this year. She looked so great!

We are so blessed to have such a smart, caring, funny, opinionated, strong-willed, adorable 19 month old.  I can't believe she's closer to 2 than to 1!  EEK!   Seems like so many things have happened this month.  Let's see if I can remember them all:

Our biggest accomplishment is the ability to wear ponytails.  She can wear one on the top of her head (think flinstones)

 

She can also wear two little pigtails on the top.  She never had enough hair before to do either... Last month she could have but 'chose' not to.  This month she decided she's a big girl and can wear ponies! She calls herself 'ponygirl' and sings the song, too cute!

 Nathan had his 1st birthday party in early May.  The favors were canvas pieces that the kids got to paint and then we can hang up.  I decided to help on hers as I wanted it to be kept.  Funny thing was she was very content to keep her area clean and neat.  I have her canvas painting up on a shelf and she points to it each day and says "I did it" in a surprised/excited voice.  It's the little things.....  

 

I'm pretty sure E will roll her eyes at me one day when she sees pics of herself.  She wore a cute tutu to the party. (And for the record, she said 'how cute' when I put it on her!

                                               

This month has been filled with lots of playing outside (which has turned into a favorite saying 'baby play outside').  She'll take our shoes over to the door, or wear audie's shoes over to the door and bang on the door and say 'go play outside'.  She loves is obsessed with bubbles. I have to hide them at times because she's so distraught if we don't do them 24/7. Elizabeth loves her new sandbox and wants to play in it daily. 

 

  

*As you can see, Elizabeth is obsessed with both the iPad and the iPhone....

We had a wonderful Mother's Day.  Besides the fact that I got an iPad (yep, an iPad) we also got to see all of our moms.  Such wonderful people.  Elizabeth loves her Grandma, Grammy, Mi-Mi,Grandma Sue, and Nana.  Such a lucky girl to have so much love!  Elizabeth is already coming up with some good ideas for Daddy Day.  Can't decide yet, though......

 It's hard to even list all the things she's saying.  I wish I could just bottle her up because she's so adorable and I can't stand to miss a second.  She loves to say "oh bagoodness" (oh, my goodness), and "oh, boooooooooooy".  The thing she does the most right now is to narrate everything 'baby' or anyone else does.  For instance, here's what breakfast this morning sounded like "baby eatin.... momma eatin.... dadda scoopin...... baby dinkin water..... momma scoopin". She jabbers non-stop about whatever anyone or anything is doing.  If nothing is going on then she starts making up things (it's amazing to me that she can do that!).  She loves to put on a puppet show.  She'll take her two socks, put them on her hands and sing 'puppet show, puppet show' and bounce her hands/puppets around.  It's so adorable! 

Fun in the sprinkler with Nathan!

Elizabeth loves her Barbie Jeep.  She even drives around her cousins.  She wakes up in the morning yelling "BarbieJeep".

Elizabeth loves to sing and count.  She can count to 10 and is working on counting to 15.  She loves to count objects (2 horses) and loves to sing.  She especially loves to belt it out at the grocery store.  Must be good acoustics! Her favorite songs include: Rain rain go away, happy birthday, Barney song, Poneygirl, and ABCs (ABCDEFGQRSTUVWXXXXXXXXXXXXXYZ is how she sings it : ).

Elizabeth always makes us laugh.  She had me howling the other day.  She always says "hold you mommy" (meaning 'hold me, mom') but on this particular day she looked at the picture of grandpa behind her chair, stuck her hands out and said 'hold you, grandpa'.  I giggled at her and told her she was silly. That's all it took and she decided she needed to one up it....so she looked at the clock and said 'hold you, clock' the entire time with this big old grin on her face. I just lost it..... I couldn't quit laughing, which of course  made her list everything in the house that she wanted to have have her, including the table, potty, and broccoli! 

Elizabeth loves the ideal of the 'pooh pooh potty' as she calls it.  She's gone a few times, but she more so likes the idea than the actually using it!

We walked in the Memorial Day parade.  (Well, Elizabeth got pulled in a wagon : ) Of course we honored our favorite Ranger, Ben.

One of the best things Elizabeth says (besides 'i yuv momma') is when she points at Ben's picture and says 'Ben'.... or when she hugs the soldier I have in our Ben Bathroom and says 'i yuv you'.... when she points at my tattoo I ask her who it's for and she says "Ben".  I can't help but think of how lucky we are to live in a country where I can raise my wonderful, small, little family, and be safe with all the freedoms we can take for granted.....  As we pulled our wagons with our smiling babies down the narrow road to the cemetery I said a little thank you prayer for Ben and all the others who can't enjoy our simple lives.  I can only hope they know how much we appreciate all they've done for us.