Interview with Hannah

Hannah - 2 years 10.5 months old

1. What is something mom always says to you?
"don't get in leah's makeup"

2. What makes mom happy?
"by giving kisses!"

3. What makes mom sad?
"by don't giving kisses"

4. What does your mom do to make you laugh?
"Make silly faces!"

5. What was your mom like as a child?
"When you were a baby you were supposed to have a toy" (She looked so serious I decided not to push that any further)

6. How old is your mom?
"I don't know. Twenty ten? And I'm two. How old ARE YOU?"

7. How tall is your mom?
"You're short down here but I'm shorter down here." (all with hand motions)

8. What is her favorite thing to do?
"Put make up on" (huh? I do that maybe once a week probably less lol)

9. What does your mom do when you're not around?
"Look for me" (haha)

10. If your mom becomes famous, what will it be for?
"opening candy!" (I am pretty awesome at opening candy....)

11. What is your mom really good at?
"going to bed" (I totally rock that. She's right.)

12. What is your mom not very good at?
"not eating sushi" (Truth.)

13. What does your mom do for a job?
"to take care of us & my tiny bum"

14.What is your mom's favorite food?
 "Shrimp" (It's crab & sushi but shrimp is a high up there.)

15. What makes you proud of your mom?
"putting make up on" (I'm sensing a theme here...)

16. If your mom were a cartoon character, who would she be?
"a woodpecker" (huh. who knew.)

17. What do you and your mom do together?
"watch Diego!"

18. How are you and your mom the same?
"our skin looks the same"

19. How are you and your mom different?
"You have boobies" (nice)

20. How do you know your mom loves you?
"you give me hugs"

21. What does your mom like most about your dad?
"giving him hugs!"

22. Where is your mom's favorite place to go?
"Sushi Hut!" (She means Tokyo Bowl. I never have figured out why she calls it Sushi Hut!)

Her own “special” pillow…

The other day our neighbors had a garage sale. Leah managed - with her own funds - to purchase this small square pillow with a princess of some sort on the front. She was quite pleased with herself.

And in typical, 'fantastic', older sister fashion she informed Hannah that this was HER special pillow and Hannah as not to every use it or touch it. (No I didn't smack her in the back of the head.) I comforted Hannah the first few times I heard about it and then I decided to tell Hannah we would go to the store and find her a pillow of her own.

When Hannah & I finally were out just the two of us we looked all over walmart for a decorative/kids pillow and couldn't find anything fun. So I took her to the fabric department and told her to pick out any fabric and I would make her a pillow.

She was so beyond delighted at the idea. Just that moment was worth it. 

She - of course - picked out some Dora fabric. I went and picked out the fringe and a pillow form. Away we went.

A few days later I produced a pillow and again her reaction was so completely worth it.

Here's a couple of pictures. It's just a simple envelope style. We are talking about Hannah here. It needed to be washable. I've never done an envelope and fringe at the same time but including drawing out what I was gonna do on paper the whole thing was maybe 20-30 minutes.

 

 

And now Leah is wanting a pillow made by mommy instead of what she has. And let's not stop there. Drew wants to know could I please make him a manly version (yes. he said that. manly version).

Potty training. Sigh.

Hannah: I want to wear underwear.
Me: You have to pee in the potty.
Hannah: I don't want to.
Me: Then you have to wear a diaper.
Hannah: No. I want to wear underwear.
Me: Then you have to pee in the potty.
Hannah: I don't want to.
Me: Then you have to wear a diaper.
Hannah: No! I want underwear.

....

Repeat.100 times.

....

Save me. And what is left of my sanity. Please?

Manners

Hannah: *ACHOO*

*a moment passes*

Hannah: Say Bless you!
Leah & I in unison: Bless you, Hannah!
Hannah: Thanks guys!

It's a good thing she's here to remind us to be polite. Heh.

That's not funny!

Do I count as a blogger anymore? I'm seriously going long stretches here.

There are several factors. One - my laptop has been busted for awhile. And I don't mean it kind of doesn't work. I mean it's BUSTED. It's in pieces.

And I've been doing genealogy. A lot. So when I sit down at this desktop I am generally organizing dead people - which I love to do.

We are moving in two weeks and I've been packing, dejunking, organzing. Ew.

In really fantastic news, I am getting a new laptop in the next week or so. I so miss being mobile with my computer!

Now to the point of this post...

Just a funny little video of Hannah. She does the greatest dirty look!

Five Words

Today I read two blog posts. One was from Camela who does a thing called BYOC (bring your own crazy) every Friday and the questions are always different. One of them today was to have several people (friends, family, etc.) describe you in 5 words.

And then another was a link Camela sent me to a post challenging a person to come up with 5 things you like about yourself.

I knew I’d have a hard time with that but having my friends say nice things to me was a lovely thing to have happen today as I’m mentally not in the best place in the world. Getting used to having Fibromyalgia – it’s a toss up whether that’s harder physically or mentally…

Anyway – this was great fun and I highly recommend it if you need a mental boost. And then ABSOLUTELY go write five nice things about yourself! Above all we should like ourselves!

Drew
I totally told him he had to add more to replace clean because… LAME.

1. Clean (gee. isn’t he romantic?)
2. Motivated (huh?)
3. Sensitive
4. Perfectionist (who is he talking about?)
5. Sexy (awww)
6. Sensual
7. Committed

Leah
(she was so extremely shy about this. It was so sweet!)

1. good cook
2. nice
3. gives lots of kisses (then we had a little talk about what the word affectionate means)

Hannah

Me: Can you describe mommy?
Hannah: Yes.
Me: Well?
Hannah: FUNNY! (with all the glee in the world. I love that girl)

Renee

1. smart
2. funny
3. awesome
4. compassionate
5. honest

Kathy

1. empathetic
2. creative
3. loving
4. patient
5. strong

Leah (my sister)

1. compassionate
2. nurturing
3. intelligent
4. talented
5. sensitive

Camela
who wouldn’t stop at 5 and when I pointed that out said she was doing a 2nd set of 5. She’s a rebel.

1. real
2. loyal
3. trustworthy
4. fun
5. a little crazy
6. intense
7. mother
8. friend
9. creative
10. smart

Jeff

1. Genuine
2. Irreplaceable
3. Witty
4. Vulnerable
5. Loyal

Ann Marie

1. Amazing
2. Brave
3. Fierce Dancer (I've not seen it, but I can imagine)
4. Cool Mom
5. Awesome Friend

Ann Marie said these things to me on FB and then we had the following exchange:

Me: Thanks!! And LOL at Fierce Dancer - In my own mind I am. That's the same thing, right??

Her: I believe that is the DEFINITION of being a fierce dancer. :D

(that made me laugh. hard.)

Jen

1. thoughtful
2. great listener
3. compassionate
4. strong
5. persevering

Becky

1. generous
2. selfless
3. Google-queen
4. genius
5. mathematician

My Mom/Cathy

1. brilliant
2. forgiving
3. absolutely fabulous friend
4. intuitive mother
5. such.a.wonderful.daughter.
6. thoughtful

Me

1. I’m a loyal friend
2. I’m a good mother
3. I am sensitive, emotional AND emotionally strong. (These things can coexist. I think people seem to often not know that.)
4. I am loving and affectionate.
5. I am generous.

That list I made myself took me forever! Sweet glory. I don’t know what that says about me but I don’t feel like analyzing it!

Now go forth and do this exercise. It’s good for you!

Sisterly Love

Chatting with Hannah

These four videos took place over the space of 14 minutes. I thought this was a good depiction of how much happy entertainment Hannah brings to our lives everyday!

Toddler Fingers

I love them. I kissed those ones after she was asleep and then took a picture and left so she could nap without me kissing her fingers more…

Hannah and her Allergies

When Hannah was about 9 months old. Maybe 10. She ate a hunk of frozen peach in one of those little mesh things. And got a hideous rash around her face and all inside her mouth.

No more peaches for Hannah.

When Hannah eats anything with jelly on it she gets a redness anywhere it touches around the outside of her mouth.

No more jelly/jam for Hannah.

A few weeks ago Hannah grabs my spoonful of peanut butter while I was answering the door. All around her mouth and everywhere she drooled (she had on no shirt) there was a red rash. Lines all down her tummy. Within probably an hour of that we had an appt at an allergist for Dec 12th. (Yesterday)

So yesterday, Drew, Hannah & I headed off to Casper. (There is – of course – no allergist in Rawlins. Imagine that.)

At the appointment we went over everything that happened before and they did a standard scratch test on her back with the addition of peaches and watermelon.

The results are that she is allergic to peanuts.

And dust. Yes – dust.

And cats. That’s right. We have two cats. We won’t within the next 48 hours or so. Maybe today.

If you know me at all, you know – I love my cats. I’ve been crying on and off about it today but there really is no choice to be made to me. I love my cats but not enough. Hannah’s comfort and health obviously come first.

If she didn’t touch and love the cats so much that would help. But it’s just not the case. Hannah LOVES the cats and (unfortunately) they actually love her back. They like to lay on her, rub on her, snuggle with her. She likes to rub her face in them. That kind of thing.

Probably 2 days ago I said to my mom – Something is not right with Hannah. It’s been 2ish weeks and something is just off. I’m not sure what to do. In the end I decided that we’d go to the allergy appt and then go to the regular doc this week to find out what’s up if the allergies weren’t the problem.

But guess what I realized on the way home yesterday? That’s exactly how long we’ve had the new kitten. Hannah picks that kitten up about 100 times a day and carries her around the house. Rubbing her face in the kitten heaven only knows how many times. So OF COURSE it got worse since the kitten came.

Sigh.

As far as the severity of her allergies goes, it’s not life threatening – the peanuts because she has no breathing issues at this point. But with each exposure to peanuts it will get worse. He said we don’t need an epi-pen now but that we’ll need to talk about that when she goes to preschool/school. (because that’s obviously the place where she’s gonna get accidental exposures)

The dust. I don’t even know where to go with that. We live in WYOMING. Oh my word. Of course dust is just everywhere. There is no escaping it. He did tell me when I do things like vacuum she needs to not come back in the room for at least 45 minutes to let everything settle.

I need a new vacuum cleaner designed with Hepa filters. It would be better if we didn’t have carpet. (Easier said than done.)

I think that is all. Oy.

Drew took this picture about 5 minutes into the 15 minute waiting period. You can’t see the cat one very well because of the lighting but it got just as bad as the dust one. And they all got worse than what you see here in this picture.

The peaches one was just the slightest pink dot. With most of them you can see they didn’t react. There were 23 spots in all.

ETA: He thinks she’s growing out of the peaches thing. He said to try them again later.

Tidbits

*These are all thoughts I had or things that happened between 5 am and 6 am in my bed this morning*

***

When Hannah tells you she wants to snuggle in bed – she means lay next to her. Not touching. I can rub her hair, sometimes hold her hand.

When Leah says she wants to snuggle in bed – she means fully body contact. Encircled in arms.

***

Leah: All four of us are in this bed and I don’t even feel squished!

(I certainly did.)

***

Hannah might ask for a duck to hold at 5 am. And she’ll mean the hard rubber ducks from her bath toys. Of course.

***

When you ask Hannah what an animal says – do not be fooled. She knows them all but she thinks it’s HYSTERICAL to say “meow” to every animal. Probably because it makes me laugh every time. She just gets this mischievous look on her face and I can’t help it.

****

Hannah:  one two thee four five!

Drew: WHAT did she just say!?!?

Me: She counted to 5. You know. Like every one year old does. One two three four five.

Hannah: six!

Me: That’s a new one. Seven!

Hannah: eight!

Me: Nine!

Hannah: Ten!

Me: Well okay. She counts to 10 like every one year old does…

***

Some things about this age are exhausting but really – life is so simple. They’re needs are pretty simple. They may not wake me up at 5 am to play with ducks in my bed later, but the worries are gonna get more intense. Today I will enjoy their simple needs.

Productive Napping by Hannah

Hannah was supposed to be napping. It was quiet for awhile and then I heard her playing but she wasn’t calling for me so I was just enjoying the quiet. After awhile I say to Drew, “Go tell her she can get up. I don’t think she napped but oh well.” And a few minutes later I hear Drew exclaiming, “HOLY CRAP!” So I come running and this is the sight that greets me:

I said, “Hannah! That was so naughty!” And she started to cry and got in the rocking chair in her room (at least she didn’t color that!):

When I undressed her for a bath, I found this:

She clearly stuck that marker right in her belly button. What goes on in her head??? LOL!

So that’s a blue permanent marker. A little keychain one. I had it in my pocket. (I was crafting and using it to mark some things.) I think it must have fallen out. Well… CLEARLY, it fell out.

The walls and the bed and the floor are all cleaned up. Rubbing alcohol wiped it all right off. No big deal.

Her skin, however… it will fade eventually but the last incident just faded. And I need to take Christmas pictures. There is some on her neck and under her chin. Someday she’ll not have permanent marker right?

The sheets and the pillowcase, and that shirt went into the garbage. It’s a shame because she loves that shirt. She rubs it and says “Blankie shirt!” because it feels just like her blanket. Sad.

Oh and just so you know. I only have 4 permanent markers. She’s gotten in 3 of the 4 in the last 4 months. Watch for the orange one to make an appearance soon… *smacks head on desk*

*Happy Sigh*

Snuggling with Daddy before school

CHEESE!

Hannah has clearly gotten the idea behind saying cheese. She even points at the camera and asks me to take pictures. Her face looks pretty much like this in every picture lately (except the grouchy ones. hehe.)

It used to look like this when she said cheese. She’s much more into it now, eh?

PS I swear I do her hair. I can’t do anything about her walking around with a blanket on her head half the time though. So. Stinking. Cute.

A Thousand Words

This is just the kind of day Hannah and I are having…

She’s seriously ticked off at me for taking her picture. I bet she’ll love these even more when she’s 14.

It’s 10 minutes later. I’ve come back to add one more picture.

Oh Hannah. Sigh.

Ya. That’s permanent marker.

The Hideous Trip

We left Castle Rock, Colorado around noon. This trip - with smooth sailing and minimal stops from the short people in the back - takes about 4.5 hours. We stopped in Aurora to see Hannah's bmom, Amanda. We were gonna hang out but she was feeling crappy to say the least so we took her and Hannah's bdad some lunch and headed home.

As soon as we left her house and got back on the interstate we hit construction. Awesome. That lasted well over an hour just to go about 10 miles.

We had a normal drive to Cheyenne - albeit very windy around Cheyenne. We stopped to see Drew's mom, sister, and nieces. We visited for awhile, checked the road report and realized we need to get going. This was probably around 6? I forget. By the time we got to Laramie (45 miles from Cheyenne), the roads from Laramie to home were closed. Great. Drew has several brothers who live in Laramie. We headed to one their homes. They have a basement with this fantastic huge sectional sofa in it. Leah, Hannah, and I all slept on it and Drew slept on a twin mattress next to us. It was really comfy. Hannah thought we were insane - telling her to lay down and go to sleep on a couch but she handled it really well and then slept all night without any troubles. Yay for her!

(as a sidenote: Hannah has started calling us all with our last name involved. Leah Howe! Mommy Howe! Daddy Howe! So when she woke up Sunday morning her head was right next Leah's and she sits up and with total glee shouts: LOOK! Leah HOWE! - I'm ever so glad I was awake to witness that.)

We all get up. The roads are open. YAY! We pack up, leave, get the girls some breakfast (which before we left the house they both refused but then Leah was starving a few minutes later. I love kids. haha.) We get 20 miles down the road - we're so happy to be heading home. And boom. They reclose the roads. We are forced to turn around, drive the 20 miles back to Laramie to wait. We decided to hit Walmart. I needed things there but I hadn't wanted to go before because I wanted to be HOME.

Oh well. We spend 3 hours in Walmart. I get all the things I was after. The girls are losing it. I think maybe we should go back to his brother's house. So does Drew. Leah does not agree. That's backtracking. I see her point (no. she did not use the word backtracking) We were driving past the theater as we discussed this and see that "Puss in Boots" starts in 15 minutes (in 2D. THANK GOODNESS. I've had it with 3D movies.)

So off we go. We watch the movie and just towards the end I check on my phone and YAY - the roads are open.

We head out. Again. By now it's like 2:30/3 in the afternoon.

100 miles to go from Laramie to Rawlins.

20 miles. We pass the turn around mark. YAY.

30 miles. Dead Stop. Dead stop traffic in the middle of nowhere. Miles and miles of cars. Sometimes we'd get up to 4 mph.

SIX HOURS. 20 more miles. That's how long it took to go the next 20 miles. Six. Hours.

At one point I turned to Drew and said – the pioneers probably did this 20 miles in better time while pulling handcarts.

There were no accidents. It was windy. Very very windy. My sister heard them refer to it on the news as "hurricane force winds". We don't have hurricanes here. We just have wind. A lot of it. Sometimes it's stronger than others. But when you mix that with some dry-ish snow - there is no visibility. It's awful.

There was nothing to do but forge ahead. Did I mention that this 20 mile stretch has no cell phone service?

My poor children. They did so well. Leah never had a fit or freaked. Hannah had one little melt down at about the four hour mark. Seriously? She's one. That's impressive.

At that point (being the stellar law abiding mother that I am...) I let them up. We were staying between 0 mph and 2 mph. I let them get up and walk around the van. Hannah even sat on Drew's lap for awhile. Leah got in my seat and I went to the back of the van and cleaned it so I didn't go stir crazy. When we started to move faster I buckled them back in and they both fell asleep not long after.

Finally about the 60 mile mark traffic got normal. It was glorious. We were home in less than an hour from that point.

I actually cried when we got off the interstate. My babies were sound asleep. It was 10ish. We put them in bed, took a long hot shower, and I was asleep the moment I got in bed. Drew said he was all wound up and watched TV for awhile. He was amazing at the driving. He's so careful with all his girls in the vehicle with him. Gotta love that about him!

And I gotta love that just the day before he'd bought us 4 new tires. If we'd hit those roads on our old tires. Oy. That would not have been good.

There you have it. The hideous trip.

I don't want to leave town again for awhile, okay? Thanks.

For a little happy - Here are some pictures of the girls during our walmart trip. They were both in footie jammies.

Leah said: Let’s pretend to take a nap now…. I’m fooled. How ‘bout you?

NaBloPoMo

It's that time of year again! Blogging every day this month. The good news is I've been in the mood to blog lately so this will get me going for real! Woot! ;)

*****

Of course now I've been sitting here staring blankly at the screen because I can't decide where to start! ha.

The prompt today is "What is your favorite part about writing?" Eh. It isn't so much that I love writing (especially since I don't think I'm particularly good at it) but what I love about blogging - or the blog world in general - is the sense of connectedness it gives people. And often this blog is a cathartic place for me to work out things that are going on in my head or something I'd like perspective on from other people.

And of course - a place to talk about my adorable children!

I posted these two pictures on Facebook yesterday. This is yesterday for Halloween:

That is my gorgeous Pumpkin Spice Girl at the end of the day. She was so exhausted and so happy. She declared it “The best Halloween EVER” and was still saying that this morning when she woke up exhausted and headed off to school .

And that is perhaps the cutest pumpkin ever to make a Halloween appearance!

And for an extra treat… Hannah wishing you a Happy Halloween!

and yes… she really does love chocolate just that much.

Fancy…

Are there words for this? Because I don’t have them… Someone caption it for me. Please?

Blogger App

I'm just testing out this blogger app while I rock Hannah to sleep.

Hello people. :)

And a picture for your viewing pleasure ...

Cupcakes

Really? Could she be any more adorable??

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