2 Years Ago

I am so in awe at how much my little family has changed in two short years. Ainsley is roughly at the same age Aubrey was in this picture. Well, she is currently two months older, but close enough. This picture also tells me I have a missing box of 2T clothes floating around. I must locate them!

A Little Me

The girls providing an opportunity to vacuum the couch

While I was doing dinner dishes tonight I observed the cutest thing. Queen Aubrey was sitting on the couch giving directions to Ainsley to organize the coffee table. I heard statements like "It's right in front of you Ainsley, I know you see it." and "You need to pick up five more things to be done." and "All the figurines too, Ainsley, they need to be in a basket."

Now the funny part is that Ainsley rarely picks up toys willingly. It is always a battle. But somehow, Aubrey got her to do it. Ainsley was even calling her "Your Highness." Dude. I was a little bit jealous at that part. Then I heard more, "Two more toys Ainsley and you can pick a treasure!" So Aubrey was bribing her... with bingo chips. Yup, that was the treasure! Aubrey was totally imitating all of my parent talk. Sheesh, nothing like a 4 year old parrot letting you know how you are performing your job. Luckily she was giving direction and offering incentives. That's good stuff! And don't worry. It's some sort of game so Ainsley has been the Queen too, just not while I was doing dishes.

Toddler Drama

Our little Ainsley is fighting hard for her rights.

... the right to suck her thumb.

... the right to use the potty for number one, but not number two.

... the right to leave her room continually after being put to bed.

... the right to sleep with Mommy and Daddy for a good portion of each night.

We are trying to fight back, really, we are. She is PERSISTENT and we are TIRED. The new saying in our home is "She won't always be two." April 20th cannot come quickly enough. We are anxious for the three year old version and praying that it resembles the sweet compliant girl we used to know. Sad side note. She has an "owie" on her favorite thumb and can't suck it currently. She is devastated and it does break my heart a little bit. At this point I would gladly have a thumb sucker if she would give up the other three vices.

Seriously?

Does life get any better than this???

Unexpected

So Ainsley flat out refused to have her picture taken. "I can't" translated "I won't" was on repeat. Her eyes swelled with tears, it was so sad. She told me she wanted me to take her picture with our camera. I am pretty sure picture places frown on this, for obvious reasons, but the photographer consented and let me take a few pictures of Ainsley. As long as I was snapping, she was smiling, and the real photographer got some great ones too. Here are my two out takes.
This one is actually really cute. If I was capable of thinking quickly, I would have actually zoomed my camera. I cropped this, so I am sure the quality would be grainy if I had a print made. Her crooked smile made a few of the shots, but there were several others that I fell in love with so I passed on those. Besides, I have 100's of that smile on my camera.

Geez!

This is Ainsley's current "smile for the camera" smile. It's so memorable that her CBS teachers have even commented on it. After nearly 2 years, I finally made an appointment to get portraits done, and this is her current smile. Lovely. Her bangs are a little crooked, she has a little scratch on her nose, and I have no idea what she will wear, but we're doing it. Finally. I hope it turns out well!

On the mend

All four of us are through the worst of whatever that was. It was a special kind of virus that just kept kicking us when we were down. Although we still have stuffy noses and lovely coughs, our voluntary quarantine is over. Wash you hands and take your vitamins, these germs are nasty that are going around.

Harvest Parade

Since Thursday was a snow day, Aubrey's pre-school had their Harvest Parade today. I hate that schools feel the need to call Halloween "Harvest" but that is a different post altogether. I'm pretty sure they ate cupcakes and then marched around in their costumes. I don't think they harvested much of anything. Thanksgiving may be a great opportunity to celebrate "Harvest" but I digress. Unfortunately, the director told me that Aubrey hit her wall about 15 minutes before the parade started. She seems to be back under the weather. She just wanted to go home and is now laying on the couch waiting for death.
I totally rocked the fairy hair today. I guess Halloween was my trial run, because I did way better today. And yes, this is Ainsley's costume, but I didn't want Aubrey wearing a full length dress to pre-school so she happily became everyone's favorite tinker fairy. And yea for me buying their costumes a little loose. There is plenty of room to grow into them which will provide hours and years of dress-up fun!
Here she is from the front. I love Halloween, err, I mean Harvest.

Mommy Brain

I had planned on making Butternut Squash Soup for dinner on Halloween, but I had neglected to buy heavy cream at the store so I made Tortellini Vegetable soup instead. Today I bought heavy cream so I could make my butternut squash soup, BUT, I used my stock making the Tortelini soup on Saturday. I guess we're having fish sticks instead...

Pumpkins

Colorado had several deep freezes this month and it really affected our pumpkins. If pumpkins freeze, they mold and turn to mush. I bought our pumpkin after the first freeze, but from an inside display at Walmart (that must have been outside during the freeze). So yeah, we went to carve our pumpkin yesterday and it was soft and moldy on the bottom. We figured burning a candle in a moldy gourd was a bad idea and threw it out. Here we were on Halloween with no pumpkin to carve.

Then I noticed the two very small pumpkins the girls got on our pre-school field trip to the pumpkin patch the day of the first freeze. They were about 6 and 8 inches tall. We crossed our fingers and went for it. Aubrey wanted a sad pumpkin, which looks kinda scared. Ainsley wanted an angry pumpkin. Although they refused to help scoop out the seeds, they enjoyed the activity. Carving small pumpkins is really fast which is great for a short attention spans, mine included.