20 Month Photos

Anna- 20 Months

Anna

Maria

This knit outfit was something passed along to us from Larry's mom.  She said that it was their time in France when he was born.  We'll have to search and see if we can find a picture of Larry in it.

a birthday trip

We headed to Ft. Wayne on Friday to celebrate Easton's 2nd birthday.  I had some errands to run while I was in town, mostly returns.  The girls and I ate lunch at the mall, and they enjoyed playing on the ride cars.  They don't realize that you are actually supposed to pay and the ride will move and light up...thank goodness! 

 Since it was so cold on Friday, we spent quite a bit of time "walking" the mall.  I didn't really shop much, especially since the double stroller just doesn't fit in some stores very well.  I did manage to tire them out though on the mall play area.  They conked out in the van on the way to the party, and since we were going to be early, I stopped in a parking lot and let the girls sleep.  I knew if I tried to get them out and into the house the nap would be over and they would be unbearable!

Anna has quite a bit of growing to do in the next 4 months to catch up with her cousin!
 Happy Birthday Easton!

20 months and almost 4

Time to make a record of where the girls are at now.

We love this stage of Anna's development.  She is learning SO much.
She loves to sing.  It's amazing how much she knows of these songs: Jesus Loves Me, Let Me Call You Sweetheart, Bicycle Built For Two, You Are My Sunshine, Michael Row the Boat Ashore, Row Your Boat, Twinkle Twinkle, Baa Baa Black Sheep, Rock A Bye Baby, Frere Jacques, Wheels on the Bus, ABC's

She can also recite lots of nursery rhymes: Humpty Dumpty,  and she can also say part of our family meal prayers.  She talks so much and so clearly.  She basically is saying complete sentences, often leaving a word or two out, but definitely abel to understand her wants and needs most of the time without too much confusion or frustration.

She can count to at least 10, and I think she knows a few colors,

She helps us read several books and lately LOVES Goodnight Moon.  She often requests a book we have by "Apple Book", but she really just likes the cat on the 1st page.

It's pretty common for her to come running when she hurts herself and ask "Kiss it?"

It also seems that Anna has quite a temper and authoritative streak.  She often tells Maria "No saying/doing ____" to whatever she is saying or doing that she doesn't like, or if she has heard us tell her that already.  She is often heard repeating something we have told Maria to do, or just what she thinks she should be doing like "Maria sit down and eat." that she told her at dinner this evening.

Both girls have been playing really well together lately.  Maria shows more interest in having Anna come to play with her, well, not all the time, but more than in the past few months.

Maria, who will be 4 in April is definitely showing interest in reading more and more.  She loves the Magic Tree House series, probably encouraged by the audio version of books 1-8 she received at Christmas from Aunt Emily and Uncle Justin.  We are on book 12 now.  She says that if she could go anywhere in the Magic Tree House, it would be to Camelot, so we picked up a Tale of King Arthur book to read last week.

She still loves preschool and loves to report that she "always" listens to the teachers the first time!  Why, oh, why can't that be the case at home.

Dress-up seems to be all the rage for her now, frequently have a "ball" that she has to get ready for.  Yesterday while a friend was over they were going to a ball and then going camping...they didn't think they were at all overdressed for camping!

She requested I take her picture all dressed up, and really wanted to make sure that I got the wings in the picture!

a revived floor

As far as lake house projects go I am pretty much done with major things, just a few that when we have the money we will tackle them, new front door, bathroom countertop and backyard patio/landscaping.  

This was one last one that just required finding the product to do it.  I had seen grout being stained on some HGTV shows, and thought that would be the perfect solution to the dingy, stained grout in our main bathroom.  I had tried to clean it, with bleach even, to no avail.  So, after checking a couple places, I finally found grout stain at Menards...I tried Lowe's and they didn't seem to know what I was talking about?  Anyway, it was SO simple and I am so happy with the results.  I chose a darker color (Mocha) to hide the dirt stains in the grout.  

The steps are basically like this, clean the tile/grout well.  Paint on the stain with a brush, I used a small cheap one and cut the sides to make it narrower, that way I would have less to clean off of the tile in the next step.  The directions say to allow it to dry for 30 min. and then spray with water and clean off the tile.  I decided to just wait until it was a little bit dry and clean it off with a dry towel, which prevented the extra water mess.  It all worked out and I think it looks great, much better than dirty tiles looks!

love is...

sisters

Another snow day

We got quite a bit of snow this week, and while Maria and Daddy went out to sled and play in the snow, Anna found other ways to have fun.  If you remember from my other snow post, Anna isn't too fond of playing in the snow, maybe she takes after her mom?  So, I did something that I had done with Maria a while back(when she was less than a yearold in fact!), and brought the snow into her.  She had a blast eating and playing with her dishes in the cold stuff.

That evening the girls and I made ice cream smoothie/shakes...can you tell that one of the fruit we used was blueberries?  Yummy!  Never too cold for ice cream.

the wonder of each day

Mom and the girls, story time.  I read a condensed version of The Secret Garden to Maria over several days.  Anna was listening.  Later we watched the movie, it's always been one of my favorites.

 The girls received The Magic Tree House (books 1-8) on audio and Maria has been listening to it quite a bit lately.  In one of the books the kids travel to the moon.  So on this particular day the girls got ready to head to the moon, putting on all their snow gear.

 Can you tell Anna likes to roll play about eating, she sure has enough practice in real life.

We have plenty to praise God for; the wonders of each new day.

working on birthdays

Well, I know we just had Christmas, but the girls will each have birthdays before we know it.  I think in the future we may do very minimal gifts at Christmas, maybe a game and some books.  We really want to focus on the gift of Christ and not the gifts anyway.  Since they have spring birthdays, April and May, it seems like they just got gifts, and what could they really NEED already?  Anyway, I'll have to revisit this again in the fall and evaluate as a family what we want our holidays to look like.  So, I decided to work on part of the girls' gift list, which will be mainly handmade items.  I had seen this monkey pattern a while back and decided that I have made several softies for Maria, but Anna doesn't have any yet.  So here is gift #1.

This pattern was SO easy(and free!), it literally only took me a couple of days from cutting out fabric to finish.  I somehow missed the pattern piece for her shoes, and it was from fabric of my mom's so I'll have to get that when I am there again, and the hat needs a bit of trim, but not sure if the hat will be left off for now anyway, since most accessories are just lost around here.  I like the lighter fabric that I used, but the original is cute too.  There are a ton of others people have made and posted here.