Hollyhand House

Monday, February 6, 2012

Birthday celebrations

Around our house, we usually celebrate birthdays for a few days! 
On Friday, I made Anna Riley her "special" birthday pancakes...pb and chocolate chip pancakes with m&ms and sprinkles on top! :)  I sang Happy Birthday to her and she attempted to sing with me. 

Friday afternoon, Mom came to stay with the girls so I could do some last minute errands for the party on Saturday.  The weather was nasty Friday night but we had plans to take Anna Riley to dinner and for dessert.  Mom decided to just stay home with Ava Kate rather than going with us since it was such a messy night. 

Anna Riley loves going to eat Mexican.  We took her to Iguana grill last year for her birthday so we decided to go there again.  She thinks all the decorations in there are so pretty! :)


After dinner, we headed to Yogurt Mountain!  When we walked in, Anna Riley started clapping.  She loves her "ice cone" as she calls it.  I let her pick what to put on her yogurt...of course she had m&ms, reeces, sprinkles and hot fudge!


We then headed to Toys R Us to let her pick out a toy.  I have never let her just go in that store and so she was so excited.  She went from one toy to the next.  She finally found a Strawberry Shortcake grocery cart that she wanted and she pushed it all around the store. 

When she got home, she got her other present from us...an Anywhere chair form Pottery Barn with her name on it.



Saturday morning, we were pretty busy with getting everything together for the party but we stopped to sing Happy Birthday again! 
She also got new bedding for her bed. 

Sunday, February 5, 2012

2 years old!!

I can't believe our little girl is now two years old!!  She is growing and changing everyday!  She has changed our lives in so many ways and I thank God everyday for such a wonderful blessing!! 

Here is what Anna Riley is up to at 2 years old:

-She weighs around 28 lbs (appointment in a couple of weeks), wears size 2T clothes, size 6 shoes and 4 diaper.
-She started preschool this month and she seems to really like it!  She has adjusted really well. 
-Since starting school, we have had to move her bedtime up to 7:30 and maybe eventually 7 because she was starting to wake up every morning between 6:30 and 7 so she was just exhausted especially on school days.  She also takes one nap a day that lasts usually two hours.  She usually goes down for that between 12:30 and 1. 


Favorite Foods:  Mashed potatoes, Sweet potatoes, hotdogs, green beans, chicken nuggets(preferably from the "cow"...aka Chickfila!), waffles and pancakes, most any fruit
Favorite snacks:  Cheese, yogurt, Nutra Grain bars, Fruit snacks, popsicles, goldfish, cookies, m&ms and cake!!
She has a new love for juice (or I should say very watered down juice and roaring waters).  She used to drink so much milk but she doesn't like it as much anymore (I guess she takes after me).  She LOVES orange juice!!

-Favorite toys:  Babydolls, her baby strollers and grocery carts, the ipad/phone, her doctor kit
-Favorite shows:  Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Dora the Explorer, SuperWhy, Curious George
-Favorite Activities:  playing outside, painting, playing games on the ipad, playing in our cars, reading books, riding on the gator, Running all over the house as fast as she can.
-Favorite book:  Goodnight Moon (we read this over and over)
-Favorite songs: Twinkle, Twinkle little star, If your happy and you know it, Itsy Bitsy spider, wheels on the bus and Jesus loves me. 

-She loves her "sissy" so much and Ava Kate watches and laughs at her all the time.  She always ask for her right when she gets up.  If anyone else holds Ava Kate, Anna Riley comes and wants to hold her.  She has helped me feed her bottles and oatmeal.  She gives her kisses all the time.  It just melts my heart!

-She is talking nonstop now!  When Dr. Roberts told me at her last appointment that she should be saying around 200 words by two, I was a little worried that we would not be anywhere close to that.  Its amazing how much she has improved with this since then!  She can communicate with us so much better now and that really helps her frustration! 
-Some of the phrases I hear often are:  "Okay, Mommy!", "Oh no, I tuck" (she thinks she is always stuck!) "I can get it", "I did it", "I hold it", "Mommy/Daddy rock rock", "I eat" "I want snack/wawa/goose- juice" "I go Bye-bye"


-She is getting better with her colors and she likes to point them out when she sees them somewhere.  She knows yellow, blue, red, green (most of the time), and pink.
-She likes to count and she does it all the time.  If I give her m&ms or something similar she wants to count the first and name the colors. 
-She likes to sing the clean up song and will help clean up small messes...I look forward to when she can clean the playroom up on her own. 
-She has a new found love for "singing!"  If you start singing a song, she chimes in but only knows about every other word and the words she knows she says really loud!  So cute! 
-She makes the funniest faces and often when we are getting on to her, she tries to do a funny face so we won't get on to her! Too bad, it doesn't work! :)
- She recognizes our cars and places we go.  She knows certain friend's houses when we pull in and she knows when we are home and when we are at Chickfila (yes we go there quite a bit!) 
-She has developed quite the little temper.  I can't blame this one on her Daddy at all because he doesn't have the slightest temper.  When she is tired, she goes downhill fast!  She is very impaitent which also leds to a tantrum more times than one!  Oh the terrible twos!!  I have a love/hate relationship with this stage!!  I love watching as she is learning so many things and the cute things she is starting to say but when the tantrums start, I often wonder where my sweet girl is?!  I have said so many times, I can be so frustrated with her one minute and then my heart just melting the next.  I guess only your child can really do that! :)

A few cute things she has did this month:
-A friend of mine hands down a lot of her girls' clothes to us.  One night, I put a pair of the pajamas from them on Anna Riley.  I did not re-wash the clothes because I knew she wouldn't give me dirty clothes so they still smelt like her house (you know how everyone's house has a different smell).  When I put it on AR, she immediately sniffed it and said "That's the girls'!"  (We often say we are going to play with the girls' rather than saying all three names). I thought that was so neat that she picked up on their smell!!

-Recently, everytime we wear a shirt that has the Alabama 'A' on it or anything Alabama she points to it and says thats Roll Tide! :)

-When I drop AR at school, for the first couple of weeks before she would get out, she would say "Mommy, come back??"  Poor thing! And one day, she told her teacher as she was fighting back the tears, "hey, that's my sissy!!" in a very matter of fact kind of voice! So sweet!

-Every lady with grey hair she sees, she immediately thinks its Mimi (Rileys grandmother).  She gets mad when we are out and "MiMi" doesnt talk to her! haha  There is also this commercial that comes on the local channel that is an advertisement for a dentistry in town and everytime she says "hey, thats Mimi!"

-If you have been reading my blog, you know I always refer to my Mom as Anna Riley's Granna.  Well, poor Mom...she has been trying to get Anna Riley to say her name since the day she came out and being stubborn like she sometimes is, she never would.  She would even call her "PawPaw" when we would ask who Mom was.  Well a couple of weekends ago, Anna Riley spent the weekend in Berry and when she came back, Mom had a new name.  Anna Riley decided that she was going to call her Kat!  There is no changing her mind either!!  She came up with this all on her own and refuses to call her Granna...only Kat!  So...whether Mom likes it or not, she is now Kat! :)

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

The Itsy Bitsy Spider

The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the water spout.

Down came the rain...


and washed the spider out!

Monday, January 30, 2012

Our weekend

We didn't do very much this weekend and I have to admit I really like those kind of weekends sometimes! We are really enjoying this spring-like weather in January!! 

 On Saturday morning, Ava Kate got her first taste of solid food.  I decided to try oatmeal rather than rice cereal this time and she really liked it. 

Anna Riley spent most of the day outside with her Daddy.  Since it was windy and AK is getting over her cold, she and I stayed inside most of the day.



Saturday night, my parents decided to come for a visit.  My Dad will not be able to come to Anna Riley's party next weekend so they brought her a present.  Her big present is a Barbie Jeep to keep at their house to play on when she is there but she hasn't seen it yet.  She loved the Dora dress up set she got though!  She even took a bath with the necklace and wand!



I guess playing all day tuckered these two out!  Anna Riley wanted her Daddy to "rock rock" her and usually he rocks her for a few minutes and lays her down.  I was in the back feeding Ava Kate and fifteen or twenty mintues had passed and they were still in the den so I went to see what was going on and both were passed out!!  I went to get the camera and Riley woke up (because his mouth was wide open! haha) 
No, I do not make my child wear a bow to bed, she begs to wear one all the time and she wanted one in before bed. :)


Sunday morning, Ava Kate went to the nursery for the first time.  She did great but I knew she was sleepy when we dropped her off, but she didn't sleep at all.  So when we got home, sweet girl took a 3 hour nap and I had to wake her because she had already slept through a feeding.  


This is what happens when I say
"Take a sweet picture!"

I love this picture because this is how
Ava Kate watches her Big Sister
all the time!!

And yet another "sweet" picture! :)
Hope you had a great and relaxing weekend!!




Wednesday, January 25, 2012

sweet cousins

My sweet nephew, Duncan, got to come play with Ava Kate on Monday morning while Anna Riley was at school.  I had not seen him since Christmas since we had rounds of the stomach bug and colds we didn't want to give him our germs! So I was so excited to get my hands on him again!  He had gotten so big since I had seen him last!!  When we put him and Ava Kate on the quilt together, AK immediately grabbed his hand...they are going to be such sweet cousins!  I can't wait to see these two grow up together!


Ava Kate 3 months 2 weeks
Duncan 6 weeks



So sweet!



Duncan just stared at AK the whole time!  haha

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

AR's heart update

We went back to UAB yesterday for Anna Riley's one year check on her heart with Dr. Carlo.  We didn't get the news we really wanted but it wasn't necessarily bad either. We were hoping that she had outgrown the premature heart rhythms that she was having last year.  Dr. Carlo said he is still hearing the same thing he did last year but that she really might not ever outgrow it. The good news is, it doesn't really affect her.  He said she might notice a difference and eventually be able to tell me her heart feels funny at times (kind of like people with heart murmurs). He still wanted her to wear the holter for 24 hours again to monitor her heart to make sure there weren't any other irregularities.  I was a little worried about her wearing it this time but she did great...she kept calling the actual monitor part her phone! haha.  The nurses all bragged on her yesterday too because she would just lay back and let them do what they needed to do.  She was such a big girl.  She also wore her monitor to school today and did great with it.  She was very excited to take it off after her nap though!  We get the results back in a few days. 



What a difference a year makes!