After a Cold, Gray, Dreary Winter...

This time of year, I am sick and tired of winter, of rain, of mushy gravel in front of the house, and of brown yucky looking grass. I really, really want spring to arrive! I want long & sunny days, green grass, and the smell of dirt. About this time of year, I start getting those spring flower catalogs in the mail. I thumb though them and think "Oh, this year I'm gonna get some of that, buy some of those, and maybe try a little of this or that in my gardens!" I start dreaming about digging in the dirt and how great my yard & gardens are going to look THIS year.

Then, I remember how much I HATE to garden. Its not so much the gardens that I have a problem with - although I have a massive amount of garden that I inherited when I purchased the house - its the weeding, the mulching, the weeding, the planting, and the weeding that I hate so much! Every year, I vow that I am going to do more because there is a part of me that likes it while I am out there and I like the way the yard & gardens look when they actually look good (ie. no weeds, fresh mulch, and flowers that are happy). Last year, the gardens went all to heck because I just couldn't take Holly outside and get any gardening done at the same time and I practically melted when I tried to go out in the hot sun of midday during her naps. Maybe this year she is old enough to "help" or at least entertain herself a little while I dig around in the dirt.

I don't want to get my hopes up too high or set up unrealistic expectations (ie. Darla's gardens!), but I am hoping to get some of the weeds that are still there from last spring pulled and plant at least some pretty annuals to make it look nicer this year.

Completely unrelated to gardening and spring are some new, cute pictures of Holly! Van braided Holly's hair the other night and when I saw her I was shocked to see that her hair is actually long enough to braid! So, the next day, I put her hair in braids. And they stayed in all day long! Here is one of Holly's semi-posed cheesy smiles. Usually in her super-posed cheesy smiles her eyes are completely smushed together and she looks like Elvis with her lip curled up on one end. This is better than those!

Holly has been spending more time playing with her baby doll that she got from Santa (aka Penny) for Christmas.

She loves to feed her, dance with her, and rock her to sleep. She thinks its hysterical to give the baby her binkie, cover her up with the blanket and make her go night night. Sometimes, the baby must have done something really bad because Holly is telling her "NO! Don't do that!" and then on and on about whatever she's telling poor little baby! Sheesh! I wouldn't want Holly to be my Mama!

Holly had her first dentist appointment last week. The dentist and the assistant were both so, so nice! Its a pediatric dentist's office, so there is nothing but fun, fun stuff in the huge waiting room, tv screens above each of the dental chairs, one common room where all the kids are seen at once, lots of books, fish tanks, toys, etc.

They pretty much just wanted to look at Holly's teeth, see how many she has, and know how often we brush her teeth. They stressed that she could just lie back in my lap and that getting in to the chair was NOT on their agenda at all! However, Holly sat and checked things out for a while, saw that the big kids were all sitting in the other three chairs and wanted to sit in hers too. She even tried to lean the chair back from its upright position, so the assistant put it back and she crawled right up!

Both the assistant and the dentist were shocked! She stayed right there with me sitting next to her when the dentist counted her teeth. Here is Holly showing everyone how to brush teeth properly...or at least chew on the toothbrush until the bristles are all flattened.

Holly got to watch two Little People videos tonight. This is how much she loves to watch videos! She was dancing every time the Little People song came on.
A while ago, I bought one of those "leash" backpacks - ok, I know there's a better, more PC name for them, but I don't know what it is - for Holly. I haven't actually used it yet, but I haul it around in the car so that I have it if I ever need it. Holly loves the pig, and has recently decided that it makes a great toy in the car. She hugs him, talks to him, clicks the clips together, pinches her fingers in the clips, swings the "tail" around, and generally entertains herself for an extended period of time with the pig! You can tell how happy this little critter makes her, even if I never end up using it for its intended purpose.
I'm guessing I will use it at some point. This weekend, I just saw a lady with three kids and their monkey, dog, and rabbit (I think) backpacks on at the mall. It looked more like those pictures you see of one person trying to walk a herd of dogs with their leashes all tangled up and each dog trying to go a different direction, but it was working for her and made me feel like I shouldn't feel like a bad mama when I actually get around to having my own kid on a leash at the mall! Better than the bad mom who loses her kid at the mall, right?

Happy Valentine's Day!

I've been trying to teach Holly how to say Valentine's so that she can say Happy Valentine's Day, but that is quite a mouthful! She just shortens it to Happy Day, which she picked up at daycare and says a lot anyway.

Last weekend we were at my parents house and Holly spent some time doing a little math. Just kidding! But she did play with the abacus that Nana & Pop Pop have there. Since Pop Pop was a math teacher, I am sure that he hopes she will be a whiz like him and not mathematically challenged like her Mama!
Here is what Holly does to entertain herself when I am on the computer. She loves to draw, but her access to pencils & pens has been severely limited. I am super paranoid about her writing all over stuff and that I won't be able to get it off, so she only gets to use them under close supervision!

Last night we had a late night out! We went to watch our high school boys & girls basketball teams at the Bi-County tournament in Colfax. Holly loved to hear the bands play and did a lot of cheering for them to show her appreciation.

Some people wonder how it is that Holly can be so good sitting at all the basketball and volleyball games that we go to in a school year. I have several different strategies to help out: ALWAYS take food, let her sit with other people who are her favorites - like Jenna, Blake, or anyone else who wants to hold her, be prepared to let her make up her own toys and leave her alone with them, make sure to have binkie & bunny with us. Last home game that we went to, she spent about 30 minutes trying to tie her shoes. It was so amusing!

Last week, I bought Holly a couple of Valentine's Day presents. One of them was a Dora the Explorer book about Valentine's Day. The other was this cute balloon. She loves balloons. Here she was this afternoon playing with it.

After dinner, Holly and I made sugar cookies (ok, the break apart and put them on the pan kind!) for a special Valentine's Day treat. She wanted to eat the dough and not put them on the tray at all. A kid after my own heart! Here was her reaction when I told her she couldn't do that.

Yes, folks, she DOES cry and throw tantrums every so often! She was pretty mad that I wouldn't change my mind and the crying didn't work, so she thought she would throw her little heart toy in protest....right onto the pan of cookies.

Once we put the cookies in the oven, Holly was pretty much back to her happy self. She had to check on the progress several times in the 16 minutes it took them to cook.

Not bad looking for child assisted cookies! They tasted great, too! Van especially liked them because she said they are not as sweet as the thick, soft kind with sprinkles and icing and lots of preservatives that you get from the grocery store bakery.

Holly thought they were pretty tasty, too! She sat on the couch and had milk & cookies while she watched a little bull riding on television.

She really liked the peppermint sprinkles that we put on them. I was hesitant to do that because I wasn't sure if she would like them or not, but I guess peppermint is an acceptable flavor for her. Either that, or the yumminess of the cookies outweighed the peppermint flavor.

It was a low-key, uneventful Valentine's Day for us, but we had a good time. It reminded me of the Valentine's Day that my parents took us all to a hotel to spend the night when I was little. We swam in the pool, they put chocolates on my pillow before bedtime, and I left my stuffed bear there when we checked out. No worries! I have great parents and we went back, found housekeeping, and rescued my precious bear! Those are the kinds of memories that I hope I can make with Holly on special occasions like today.

Happy #%th Birthday!

I really try to keep my birthday inconspicuous and under the radar. This year, however, Van asked me what I was doing home when she got up to go to school. I told her that I always take my birthday off of work and do something that I want to do. This year was no exception. I took Holly to daycare, came home, and cleaned my office/sewing room. It was a complete pig sty before and I could hardly think when I was in there. Cleaning it and getting everything organized was cathartic in a lot of ways!

Since Van didn't know it was my birthday before I told her, she and a friend went to the store at lunch and brought me a Cyrus O'Leary's Sour Cream Lemon pie for my birthday! I promptly crossed "bake birthday cake" off of my to do list for the day. :-) They had put those crunchy, sugar decorations all over the pie and it tasted very delicious!
Then, I went to lunch at the Blue Bike with a couple of friends. We had a great time and it was a perfectly lovely birthday. One of the best in recent years, as a matter of fact!

Yesterday, we were able to get the entire family together for a birthday dinner. I decided to go to Red Lobster. I like the food, but its really a drag that they don't accept reservations for larger parties. We had to wait an hour and a half. Fortunately, they have the lobster tanks right out front to entertain the children! Holly found all those lobster exceptionally fascinating!

She spent most of the wait time looking in from the side, down from the top, and up from her level. I think she would have crawled into the tank itself if we had let her! Watching her was entertainment enough for the rest of us, and many of the other people who were waiting for a table.

Fortunately, she's not old enough to understand that when I had lobster for dinner, it may very well have been one of those little critters in the tank that she was admiring.

Holly dug out her apron that Nana gave her for Christmas and wanted it on the other day. She may be a baker in the future! Or at least be able to scare up a decent meal for herself without having to resort to top ramen or something. Ok, Superbowl kickoff is about to happen, so I've got to go!

Chinese New Year

After ice skating a couple of weeks ago, we went to Coeur d'Alene and met my parents for the Chinese New Year celebration that was put together by a local group. There were crafts of all kinds for both younger and older kids. I had planned for Holly to wear her Chinese outfit that we got in Taiwan, but she had outgrown it three days before. So, she didn't look nearly as cute as all the other kids running around in their traditional outfits. But she had a lot of fun! Nana helped her make a Chinse lantern. I was paranoid that she was going to get green marker all over her white outfit, so I had to go do something else!
They put sparkly little heart and star stickers all over the lantern.

Holly had to dig through and find exactly the right ones to put on her lantern.

After working long and hard, her masterpiece was complete. Ta! Da! She shows it off to us proudly!

The CNY celebration was really nice. They had great cake and showed a slide show of all the kids and where they were born. I hadn't told my parents about it, so they were really surprised with the "Taiwan" slide came up and then Holly's picture followed! And being the sap I am, I almost started tearing up just because I loved the picture and the fact that I have Holly in my life. I hope that happiness and good fortune find us all this new year of the ox!

A Little Behind

I've been meaning to post for a while...do I start all my new posts with that statement? Or do I just think it every time?

Holly slept HORRIBLY for about a week in January. She was waking up every hour or hour and a half throughout the night every night for about four or five days. If you know me at all, you know that this made me really grouchy because I love my sleep! Finally, I figured out that she was teething and must have been growing all at the same time.

I got her dressed for daycare one day and everything she was dressed in fit. When I went to pick her up in the afternoon, the shirt I had put on her most definitely did NOT fit! So, I had to go digging through her closet to russle up some new clothes she could wear until I went shopping again. While I was looking for clothes, I found the cutest fairy outfit that my sister-in-law gave Holly for her birthday last year. I put it on her and she loved it! She spent about 45 minutes walking around the house in it and still puts her crown on very often!

Here is the sweet girl posed and smiling for the camera. After you oooh and aaah over how cute she looks, check out how short those sleeves are on her shirt! That's the day she grew!
Holly loves to have her picture taken, but only really close up to the camera. Its hard to get her to stand away far enough to get a good picture. She rushes you like a football player and wants to see the pictures you have taken, so you have to snap a picture quickly and hope it turns out decently.

Van wanted to go show off her new outfit to Van, so she went charging down the hallway like she was a mad woman on a mission.

Van thought her outfit was super cute, too! I think her actual words were something to the effect of "Oh, mu God, where did you get that?!" Its so fun having Van around. Every time I think about her leaving, I get sad and wonder what Holly is going to do without her around!

Next posts: Chinese New Year and my birthday (which I generally don't advertise much).