Inspired by my friend Jenny who took some adorable pictures of her daughter today, I thought, “Why in the world don’t I get the camera out more often and get my child outside and just start taking pictures?” Well, for one thing, it’s been insanely hot, and another, we’ve been insanely busy… but today worked out well on both accounts. Here’s my cutie:
This morning I decided Anna’s hair is long enough to try some pigtails. She likes it… she says “I have both hairs!” She looks so grown up. She’s also been chattering away pretty much nonstop this morning. Coincidence? Or maybe the pigtails give her some attitude!
This post is a couple of weeks late, but thus is life right now. :) On July 4, we finally got to meet our new niece, Kendall! She doesn’t live very far away, but for one reason or another it just hasn’t worked out for us to go see her. But my brother and his family were able to make it to Conway for a couple of days.
Anna was so sweet around the baby! She was very interested in her and always wanted to know where she was. She kissed her and patted her gently. She brought her toys. And she didn’t have any problem at all with David or me holding her. This is a good sign!
No, that wasn’t a self-commentary on my nearly-6-month-pregnant shape (this time!). Today is Cow Appreciation Day at Chick-fil-A, where if you dress like a cow, you get a free meal! Apparently it’s an annual event, and we just found out about it last year and participated for the first time this year. I think it will be a yearly family tradition.
Anna really got into the spirit of things and ate all SIX—that’s right, SIX—of her chicken nuggets! Gracious!
In just a little over a year, we’ve had to say goodbye to three dogs. First, we lost our precious Sasha to cancer. Then, we were fostering Russ through his heartworm treatment, and we lost him to distemper.
This past Thursday, we said goodbye to the third, but under a much different set of circumstances. Our foster dog Bailey found a new home up in New Jersey, so we went down to Little Rock to see him off on the P.E.T.S. transport that will deliver him and about a hundred other dogs from the South to their new homes in the Northeast, which they do every week. (They currently have an 8-week show on Animal Planet, airing on Saturday nights.)
It was hard to say goodbye and we will miss him greatly, but fostering all the way through to the send-off is rewarding as well. He arrived today, and his new mom wrote how much they adore him and how much sweeter he is than they ever could have imagined. She thanked us for loving him and taking care of him until he could be theirs. They have been counting down the days until he would arrive! Fostering definitely fills a need in the animal rescue world. We are honored to have been a part of Bailey’s story, and we hope to do it again in the future (after we have our own dog(s), according to David—he says he can’t do this again unless he has a dog to come home to!)
Here are few pics from send-off day:
Anna graduated! I’m so proud!
Ok, so it was from “Mother Goose on the Loose” story time at the library. Since she’s 2 now, she’s supposed to move up to “Toddler Time” for the next year. So after story time today, they held a little graduation ceremony complete with certificate and refreshments. (No graduation speaker, thankfully.) I’m sure the kids didn’t have a clue what it was all about, but there were lots of proud parents there!
Oh my goodness, could this child be any sweeter? I don’t think so! I know I’m a little biased, but she’s just the most precious thing ever. She smiles so much and is happy most of the time. She is smart and picks up on everything. She says “thank you” when we give her something and “bless you” when we sneeze (it comes out more like “ba-bash,” but that’s what she means). She tries to do so much for herself now, and we try to let her. Her verbal skills are developing, and she’s starting to communicate with us more and more that way (although she has understood us for a long time now). She sometimes sings along to her lullaby CD now—it started out as just random syllables sung in a sweet little voice, but lately the syllables are starting to resemble the actual words.
There’s a lot more I could say, but I’ll just leave you with some pictures from this afternoon.
It was a gorgeous day today (a fact that was apparent to the rest of central Arkansas as well), so we thought a great way to celebrate Anna’s birthday was for David to play hooky from work and take us to the zoo. It’s so great that he can take off and make up the hours whenever! Anna loved it so much she cried when we left, but I promised her we would come back. She did a few of her animal sounds, and a lot of the animals made “a mess” and needed “a bath” (see earlier post). She also enjoyed climbing on every single park bench when she was out of her stroller.
We had a little birthday party for her last night. Small and simple—just the grandparents, a taco dinner, balloons, a couple of presents, and cake. I’m SO thankful I’ve been feeling better the past couple of days; I was afraid I’d be too sick to enjoy the party. I “outsourced” the cake this time, and I’m glad I did because it was super cute (thanks, Mom!). Anna had fun being the center of attention, getting some new goodies, and eating her “ye-yow” (yellow) cake!
Anna, our late-talker, has been stringing 2 or 3 words together for several weeks now. One of the first instances I can recall was at dinner one night when she kept saying, over and over, “Mama eat!” and “Dada eat!” She was quite proud of her new accomplishment.
Lately, though, she’s also gained the ability to retell things that happened in the past. Her favorite right now is, “Dixie… a mess… Dixie… bath!” While Anna was at my parents’ house last week, their little dog Dixie, unbeknownst to my mom, started going after a crawdad in a patch of mud. Apparently she was just a horrible mess and had to be hosed off out on the deck. Anna thought it was hilarious. It’s fun to hear her tell her “story” over and over!
UPDATE: Ok, so we were at her weekly “Mother Goose” time at the library today. We got to the part where the teacher pulls various animals out of a bag and we practice our animal sounds. The dog just happens to look like a little Pomeranian (like Dixie). So now, instead of “woof woof”, my child says, “A mess! A mess!”
Comments(6)
