Things to love about Nellie and Annie

Annie loves...

• Being held, cuddled, and snuggled.
• BABIES. Baby dolls, baby humans, baby animals, baby bottles, baby strollers.
• Nellie. Everything Nellie does is exciting and/or hilarious to Annie. Well, almost everything.
• Her pacy. Especially the one for infants with Pooh on it that she found at grandma's house.
• Grapes
• Carbs, and sweets. When we give the girls sandwiches, Nellie only eats the meat and Annie only eats the bread. Basically, Annie eats like me and Nellie eats like Kev.
• Books. It is currently 8:33; Nellie is in the top bunk sleeping and Annie is reading with a flashlight.
• Singing, and all things musical. She knows all of Twinkle Twinkle, Jesus Loves Me, the Dora theme song, and Three Little Birds (Bob Marley).
  
• Taking baths, right up until the hair washing part.
• CHAPSTICK! I can't believe I almost forgot the chapstick.
• Her pink (well, brownish) silkie blankie.

Annie does NOT love...

• Not being held when she wants to be.
• That we're making her give up her bottle.
• When Nellie sits on her, takes her stuff, etc. etc.

Nellie loves...

• Talking. Moving. All the time.
• Learning new things - Kevin's been teaching her a lot about birds, and she also seems particularly interested in theology (being very concerned about whether or not animals go to heaven after we saw a dead squirrel in the road.) She also learned to milk a cow on Saturday at the Baby Animal Day on campus.
  
• That she is starting to read words. OPEN, mainly, and TREE.
• Playing a game with Annie that involves saying, "Okay Annie. You run this way, and I'll run that way." Runrunrun around the kitchen-dining room-hall-living room loop. Cue raucous laughter.
• Her cousins. All of them, but Robynne and Leah especially. It really is nice to have so many little girls close in age.
• The fact that we're getting ready to enroll her in preschool next year.
• Princesses, Dora, blah, blah.
• Gum. (Just like her Uncle Dave.)
• Doing gymnastics. We've been taking her and Annie to open gym for preschoolers where a gymnastics instructor is there to teach the kids tricks. I think it's what Nellie was born for. Annie likes it but mostly keeps an eye on the baby brothers and sisters sitting in their carseats in the corner.
  

Nellie does NOT love...

• Being told what to do.
• Bugs.
  
• Pop. I'm pretty sure we really just brainwashed her into believing she doesn't like it. Oh well!
  

Cordial glasses

I've never had cordial. I'm not really even sure what it is, and what I do know comes from that scene in Anne of Green Gables. But the summer I turned 21, I bought these glasses:



Erin and Steve took Kevin and me wine tasting up north, and I got the glasses as a souvenir. I thought they were pretty, but I never intended to actually drink out of them. I thought that someday, they would make good medicine glasses for my hypothetical kids. Which is what I told Kevin, and in retrospect I'm glad it didn't scare him away to hear his girlfriend was buying gifts for her future children!

Anyway, when Nellie was sick last week, I took the glasses out and for once, she actually drank her Tylenol. It totally worked! I thought back to when I bought them almost 9 years ago...and here we are. I feel like I've arrived.

Uncle Dave (in honor of his birthday)

Nellie and Annie LOVE Uncle Dave. They love all of their aunts and uncles, of course, but the fact that Dave and Laurel live so far away makes them a more exciting novelty. When the girls take a bath, Dave and Laurel come home to visit and their plane flies overhead. We yell "Hi Uncle Dave! Hi Aunt Laurel!" and wave at the ceiling so I can quickly pour water on their hair. (Annie still cries about this, but it kind of works.) When Nellie cries and can't think of a good reason, she tells me she's crying because she misses Uncle Dave. When I ask who we should pray for, it's always Uncle Dave and that he'd have a good day at school. When Dave and Laurel visit, it's pretty much a party all the time.

So we've spent some time thinking about what to do for Uncle Dave for his birthday today. Among the ideas was mailing him a letter. Nellie transcribed it to Kevin, and we thought you all might enjoy it. (Sorry Dave, you won't actually get the note for a few days.)

"Help Police Officer. I need help. My back hurts, I see you are building a bridge. I do what you do, but I pretend I'm a police officer. It is after 8 o' clock! How are you doing fire fighters? Do you see that big blue dragon? Annie I don't know what you're doing with that silly old bonkey! No!"

Happy birthday, Dave!

Girls' Weekend!

Kevin had to go to a conference a few weeks ago for work, and since it was the last weekend of my spring break we decided to have a fun girls' weekend. We started Thursday night with a movie night on the "new" comfy pull-out couch. Friday we went to Frederick Meijer Gardens to see the butterflies, then stayed overnight at a hotel in Grand Rapids so we could swim! Xander, Erin, Steve, Grandma Linda, Grandma Cathy, and Papa Roger all came to visit. On Saturday, Erin and I took Nellie to see Princesses On Ice. It was a true Disney show--lots of fireworks, glitter, magic, 15 dollar cotton candy, etc. I was a little worried at first; after all the other excitement, Nellie was a tired and told us on the way there that she doesn't like princesses...but of course she loved it! Here are some pictures (in reverse order.)

Nellie's most favorite: Princess Aurora (Sleeping Beauty)

Tiana!

We're finally here! Who's most excited, Nellie, Erin, or Jamie?

Butterfly activities

Butterflies!

So nice to see flowers blooming

Pajama party with "Enchanted"

No Fever? No Problem.

It would appear that Nellie is sick. My first (and really only) clue was that the great Nellie, Empress of Energy, was tired. Yawning every couple of minutes, "my toes are too tired from walking in here" tired. Otherwise, she seemed fine. Mom and Dad were here for dinner and Nellie was all smiles, games, stories, and director of ticket sales for an imaginary baseball game.

Well, the first thing I did was take her temperature, and sure enough, 100.1 degrees. She, Kevin, and Annie were all sound asleep on the pull-out bed watching Snow White before too long.

The funniest part was when I overheard Nellie pretending to take Annie's temperature. She read off a string of numbers then said, "See Annie, you're fine. Not sick." I laughed at the Wacyk-ness of it. I know for sure they got that from me and my childhood, when it didn't matter if you were throwing up, purple-with-polka-dots, or suffering from internal bleeding. If you didn't have a fever, you were perfectly fine. Not sick.

And, for the record, whatever you were complaining about in the first place could be cured by taking vitamin C, or rubbing vitamin C on it, as the case may be.

Hey, a nut!

In preparation for Nellie's "Little Kickers Preschool Soccer" league coming up, Kevin bought the girls a new soccer ball today. Just for reference, the team practices for the first three weeks, with a scrimmage the final week. :) She gets a t-shirt. Our friend is the coach.

We took the ball to Kevin's bird dog trial today. At first, Nellie didn't want to play with it because she was afraid it would get dirty. After I told her that a dirty ball is cool because people will know she's a hard-core soccer player, she went to rub mud on it, which was preferable to her rolling in the mud, which is what she told me she was going to do!

Anyway, the girls had fun playing soccer at the farm. This evening, we walked to the park and Kevin taught Nellie about trying to score a goal and how to be a goalie. On her last shot of the night, she missed the goal and shouted "aw, nuts!" as she fell dramatically to the ground. She got up a moment later holding an acorn and yelled, "hey, a nut!"

A nut, indeed! That girl cracks me up.

Can't take it with you

After church today, we picked up donuts at QD like any other Sunday. We ate them at home, and while I cleaned up the kitchen, we heard emergency sirens come closer and closer until it sounded like the trucks were on our street. Which they were. Because the house across from us, where a family with a little girl Nellie's age and a newborn live, was in flames. Smoke poured from the bedroom windows and flames were already shooting out of the front living room window. It was terrible. From the way the firefighters were working, it was clear that no one was inside, but the thought of all the family lost had me in tears on and off all day.

Plus, their family is so like ours. The girls like to play together at the park down the street, and always yell hello whenever they spot each other coming out of their houses. Remarkably, they seem to have the same energy level, and make up games together that involve little more than running and falling down. The little boy was just born at Christmas.

Our neighbor two doors down is a firefighter, and she housed the dad the and kids for the day. The mom was at work. I was there when he called her to tell her that there had been a fire, and when the fire department told him not to expect to recover anything from the house. The three-year-old was still in her jammies, so we packed up some of Nellie's clothes for her. Nellie took it all in stride. She was fascinated by the fire trucks (all six, plus an ambulance, police car, and two regular fire department vehicles) and was mainly concerned that her friend had plenty of princess clothes. Nellie helped me deliver them, then stayed to play Barbies while I went back for a portable crib and bouncy seat.

It's hard to know what to say, or how to help, in this situation. What would I do in this situation? If I lost all my worldly possessions? I mean, I know it's just stuff--stuff I complain about dusting and organizing and finding places for. But still, they're the artifacts of our lives, and the lives of others who came before. And what, what would I tell my kids? I hope it would be this: "Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD" (Job 1:21).

All in all, it was a grounding experience, and a good reminder. Our stuff isn't that important. And you can't take it with you.