Today

Our kids were kind of driving us crazy today (fighting, crying, no nap for Jane and over tired parents, etc) but for a few minutes this afternoon, we had some fun. Last week too Colin was dancing with an umbrella so we showed him the scene from "Singin' in the Rain". Colin has some serious moves.






Jane had her magic hat on and off. It is her Frosty hat. We still spend a fair bit of time marching and singing "Frosty the Snowman."







This is what happens when Jane sleeps in rag curlers. Pretty cute. Although this was after she smeared several handfuls of Eucerin loction on her head a couple days earlier. Guess how many hair washes it takes to make hair not greasy after lots of Eucerin loction? About 8-10 washes, including washing with Dawn dishwashing soap.



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This post could also be called how Ann's trip to Italy was 30-40% ruined. Ok, 40% is a bit dramatic, as is the word "ruined" but my trip was very disrupted.

So, not to be too graphic but we as we were preparing for Christmas and leaving for Rome on December 26th, I was waiting for my monthly feminine time. It seemed a couple days late, which I thought meant it was just waiting to arrive the day of travel (to make that day of travel extra fun!) It is not like me to be late so we wondered. On Christmas Eve after our festivities, Brian ran out to Walgreens in the last 10 minutes they were open to get a special little test. And very, very quickly, the test was positive. I was in shock (and still am a bit) as this is not quite the timing we had hoped for. I very selfishly hoped to NEVER be pregnant through the late summer. Additionally with a few life details, this endeavor definitely will be a bit of a challenge. We are excited nonetheless and lucky to grow our family. We even got a peek at the little one this last week. (All three of my pregnancies have seen little embryos who do not like to cooperate with the midwife and give fetal heart tones in early pregnancy. Our midwife now has an ultrasound machine in her office so when the little one was playing hide and go seek, she tricked him or her and we got to peek at the little wiggle worm. The baby was doing flips and we got to see hands, feet, and a backbone{all good signs}).
So, I suppose babies come when they want to at times. We very much were hoping for a baby by the end of next year so we are just a few months ahead of schedule. I will be 13 weeks soon, so the baby gets to be classified as a fetus and not an embryo, yay! I have been way sicker than with either Jane or Colin, which is hard when there are 2 kids to care for. I have felt like a very lame mom with next to zero energy. Funny how growing our family makes me feel like a bad mom. I hope to feel better and better soon, before I feel really gross again. Oh well, what are we to do? It is the year of the Rabbit, which is both Brian and my zodiac sign. Fun that we get to have a Rabbit child, and guess makes sense that we would be pregnant, knowing rabbits.

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We had Colin wait until his actual birthday for our gifts. I had not really thought about how kids bring gifts too when you throw a party so Colin got a lot of birthday loot! I always think we will not over do it, but we always do. Such fun though to celebrate Colin!
He has been very excited about Bakugans. We don't totally understand. (We might not be intended to understand.)
And one of the Bakugan's open, to Colin's extreme delight.

I expanded our vintage Little People collection, which I admit was a little present for me too. Colin was happy to have a son for his favorite little person, Greener as he has named him. They really are such great toys, I love that they require some imagination.
Got a Little People tow truck, and more pieces to the Main Street set we already had.

Since Nana got Colin a big Automoblox for Christmas, we added to his set too. They are lovely toys. We have quite a little collection now.

Nana got Colin a sparkler 5 for his cake, very exciting!! As part of getting over jet lag in Italy, a couple times I sent Colin to bed with some index cards to make his own birthday plans. It was really cute because I could hear Colin discussing plans with Jane for quite awhile. Anyway, one of his plans was to have fireworks for his birthday so Nana pulled it off!

The cake was a Triple Chocolate Mousse cake by Cooks Illustrated, although he hoped for the Castle Cake from his Dora and Diego cookbook. (He told us too late the day before his birthday after all the shopping had been done.) He was still delighted (and the cake was quite amazing). Brian wants someone to make this cake for his birthday but it seems way too many steps for me. I may not be up to much by the time Brian's birthday comes around, we shall see.

Party Day

Last Saturday we had a fun little friend party for Colin's preschool class and a couple friends. Brian made Colin this lovely pinata.

We decorated some cookies. Luckily this little guy had the good sense to not eat his entire creation.


Colin was so happy and excited all day, well, all weekend!
We used the ax we brought from Poland to break the pinata. It was very effective.
(from Christmas 2009, I just love this photo of Colin and his ax. So little boy to me.)
And pinata chaos. It was a little crazy as we had 9 kids to keep entertained, but they all had a great time. I can't believe Colin is 5!!! He is such a dear little boy most of the time and is really growing up to be a nice kid.
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I am very behind on blogging, the jet lag has been pretty brutal and at home there are all these things to do instead of blog, so hard! But today is the first of 4 days of the Colin birthday extravaganza! Well, not so much of an extravaganza, but today was his little school party where we got to bring in cupcakes. He got this birthday crown, which sadly gave him a paper cut on his nose. Tomorrow we will have a special McDonald's lunch with his local little girl cousins, party for school friends on Saturday, then on Sunday (his actual birthday) we will have a little family dinner, including a sparkler for his cake. Good times. And Brian and I to get ready for his birthday this week went to Toys R Us for the first time in our 5 years of parenting. Maybe we should have held out since we had done so well without Toys R Us, but he really, really wanted some Bakugon things. We thought we should look at some instead of ordering on-line. What have we done? I am glad our kids do not know of that place yet, wow, I kind of never want to go there with my children.
Since Jane did not get a preschool cupcake, I let her eat the sprinkles out of the container I took them in. It kept her busy for at least 30 minutes, which is always nice.
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