Conversations with Hannah

Instead of "Ta-da!" she says "Pa-ta!"

Instead of singing "I love Clara, she loves me. We love Mommy, yes siree. She loves us and so you see, we are a happy family," Hannah's version goes something like this-"I love Clara, she loves me. We love Mommy. E I E I O!!!!!!!"

Me: Are you a kangaroo?
Hannah: No. I'm precious!
M: Are you silly?
H: No. I'm just a kangaroo!!

M: Is your Daddy obnoxious?
H: No. He's a monster!
M: He's a monster??!!
H: No. He's a jabberwalky!
M: He's a jabberwalky???!!!!???
H: No! He's a GIRL! Named Goldie Locks!

Daddy walks in the door:
"Daddy! Hi!! I'm so glad! I missed you! Watch 1,2 on Daddy's phone? Please please please???
(1,2 is what she calls her favorite Sesame Street video. )

"It's perfect! This is awesome! It's perfect! Holy Cow! Oh, my gracious!"

These are just a few of the gems that keep us in stitches around here. Hannah loves to sing, and makes up her own words to songs. She has pretty advanced verbal skills for her age, and she is always amazing us with the things that come out of her mouth.

I love to see the temple

Last month, Dan and I went over to Dallas to go to the temple. Under different circumstances this would be nearly impossible with a nursing baby who doesn't take bottles, but we are very blessed to have so much family around. My mom works at the temple on Saturday mornings, and my brother and his family live about 10-15 minutes away, so we are able to meet my mom at the end of her shift and switch cars. She takes the girls to my brother's house to play with their cousin while we are in the temple. It works out great, and it gives us an excuse to see them, which we wouldn't get to do as much otherwise. On this day, we got there a little early so we could take Hannah for a walk around the grounds and show her the temple, and to take some pictures.

I love this picture!

Water table!!!

My brother got Hannah a water table for her birthday, and she loves it. She wants to play with it all the time now. These pictures are from the first time she played with it.

Splash park!

We didn't know there was a splash park near us until the summer was almost over. One of our friends from church invited the ward play group to go with them one Friday morning. It was so much fun. Hannah is a big scaredy cat and wouldn't go in the water by herself, but oh well. The splash pad is attached to a regular park, which was really nice and was surrounded by trees so it was not too hot or sunny. A lot of our friends from church were there which made it extra fun. Now that we know about it, we're definitely going to go back next summer!

This is Hannah's friend, Chloe. She's 8. Hannah absolutely adores her.

I love those last three pictures. They are too cute!

We love to swing

These are from the first time we put Clara in the swing. She loved it. She stayed in for a really long time, and didn't fuss at all. We finally took her out because the rest of us were ready to go inside. Hannah loved swinging in the big swing while Clara swung. She thought it was so fun to swing together.

Happy Birthday, Hannah!

So this is a month late, but Hannah is 2 years old now! I wish I could be happy and excited about that, but lately I just want to ask "Who is this little monster and what did she do with my sweet little girl?" Hannah has always been a very well behaved, happy child; not especially whiny, and very silly. But the terrible twos have hit us with a passion. Now it seems like all she does is whine, scream, and do anything she knows she's not supposed to. Ugh. She's still pretty silly, but that's being pretty heavily outweighed at the moment. This too shall pass, right? Well anyway, we had a party for her at my mother-in-law's house so the kids could play in the water. Unfortunately, three of her cousins couldn't come because they had just moved to Houston the week before, but they sent Hannah a really cute Happy Birthday video that she watched about a million times. I made pork barbacoa with rice and beans and burrito fixins. It was yummy. Hannah made out like a bandit. She got lots of princesses, a princess play castle, a water table, a tunnel, Despicable Me pajamas, and books.

playing with Uncle Luke

She finally learned to climb this all by herself!

Emily wanted to help open presents

Princesses! Dan was delighted. Can't you tell? Hahaha

Emily's first Cowgirl lesson

Thank you everyone!!!! Happy Birthday, Hannah!

Smiley Girl

Clara is such a smiler. When Hannah was this age, it was near impossible to get her to smile. She still is really shy, actually. But not Clara. She smiles at everybody. All the time. I can't believe this little one is almost 5 months old already! She's getting so big. She is rolling all over the house and trying to figure out how to crawl. I actually saw her army crawl for several inches yesterday. She's growing up too fast. The good part of this is that she's gotten a lot better at nursing and no longer screams when I try to feed her. Well, for the most part, anyway. She still cries when she's either tired or teething, but I'll take it. She loves to sit up and stand, and her favorite thing to do is look in the mirror. She LOVES to smile at herself. It's so funny. She also cracks us up when she cries. She rarely will open her mouth and wail. Most of the time, she presses her lips together and makes a funny humming sound when she cries. She loves Hannah. Every time Hannah comes near her she lights up and gets excited, wanting to play. She wishes Hannah would play with her more than she does, but Hannah gets bored quickly and HATES to share, but that's a whole separate issue. We love this little smiley thing and we're so glad she's part of our family!

Gotta love that hair!!!