Bus Stop Musings

I watch Jacob and Laura in the mornings before school. They're good kids and they're very good with Anna and Viva. They're also very creative. They're constantly building things, like houses and forts out of blankets. The other day they were building what appeared to be a tunnel. Anna was, of course, trying to destroy it. I told Anna to stop hurting Laura's tunnel. Then Laura informed me that it wasn't a tunnel it was an "MRI machine." I love the imaginations of little kids.

We walk to their bus stop every day, which is just under a mile round trip. I carry Viva in a front pack and I used to push Anna in a stroller. Lately, however, Anna has been wanting to walk. She's fine on the way there, but on the way home she gets really distracted. Her recent obsession is "counting" license plates. This involves her stopping at every single license plate we pass and her pointing at the letters and numbers while I call them out to her and she repeats them. After weeks of doing this, I am starting to get a little tired of it. I'm telling myself that it's like I'm doing flash cards with her. She can already sing her 'ABCs' but maybe she'll learn how to recognize the alphabet sooner! (Or at least that's what I tell myself after reading my 50th license plate of the day!)



I had to document this "counting" procedure. This is not our car though. It is, however, for sale and has been parked outside our house for a while now. Only $1100. Anyone interested?

Moving right along to another "walking home from the bus stop story"... I'm as much a hypochondriac as the next person with OCD, but I think the children of our neighborhood may have me beat. This morning we were walking through the park on our way home when I spotted about five signs hung randomly throughout the park.


Caption:
"Stay clean! Stay healthy! Swine Desease
Do not go to Mexico or Seattle
Very Bad for you!"

I was highly amused. And scared of the Swine Flu. I think I'll take their advice, all except for the not going to Seattle part.

Viva's first Easter

I took Anna and Viva to the mall a couple of weeks ago while the Easter Bunny was there. Of course Anna wouldn't go sit on his lap or anything, but she did accept a pair of bunny ears from him. And now that he has stopped by our house and given her candy, she is a fan.



We dyed eggs and we also turned some of them into little animals using a kit that Mickelle and Scott gave us. This picture displays two bunnies, a chicken, an alligator, an elephant, and a pig. To be honest, I had way more fun putting together the animals than Anna did. And she liked doing it a lot, so that is saying something. (Mickelle and Scott, if you guys are reading this and wondering 'What kit?'...Do you remember when you gave us that stack of books from Scholastic before Anna was born? Well, that kit was in one of the books. I remember looking at that kit and thinking it would be years before she would even be able to use it. I can't believe the time is already here! She still loves many of those books, by the way. Her favorite is "Goldilocks has Chicken Pox." Thanks for the great present!)



La France also enjoyed her Easter basket full of Mum-Mums. I am so glad that Jocelyn mentioned them to me because Viva absolutely loves them!


And last of all, here are our Easter sugar cookies. I tried to get Anna to decorate them, but she was too interested in eating the decorations. I would put an eye on one of the ducks, turn around to help Viva, and the eye would be gone. I'm surprised any of them got decorated at all!

All in all, it was a great Easter!

What? She can crawl?!

Anna never crawled. She didn't roll or even move around at all, until she started walking. And she didn't walk until she was fifteen months old. To clarify, yes, that means that Anna just sat there, completely stationary, until she was fifteen months old. To this day I'm not quite sure how she made the transition from baby lump to full mobility.

Knowing this history of my first born, you can imagine how strange it is for me that Viva crawled for the first time today... at eight months old. I realize this is a very standard age to start crawling, and she's been mobile for several months now, rolling around. But it's weird for me to have a crawling baby. It's actually very nice. She also got her top two teeth this weekend. She's growing up so fast! They're both so dang sweet. I love them!

We went down to Portland this past weekend for general conference. We had a great time with Josh's family. We were heart broken, however, to discover that Costa Vida closed down. I came close to shedding tears.