March 2014

Frozenmania
The Disney/Pixar movie Frozen has now become a genuine obsession for a lot of little girls — including ours. We watched it again at a family movie night, and now all Annika wants to do is watch it again (and sing the songs, and talk about it, etc.). Lukas is right in there with her (e.g. standing next to her for nearly two hours while she lounged on the couch watching it on the iPad …), although he stops short of making his own gloves out of paper towels traced from his hands and taped together with Scotch tape along all the edges (an innovative solution she came up with to solve her “no gloves” predicament). The better to re-enact scenes, I ended up taking her to Payless to get a pair of “high heels” (black patent leather with rounded toes and a 1.5-inch heel), which Lukas (hilariously) clomps around in whenever they’re not occupied with her feet. And this obsession colors all aspects of life: We got some rain, which she’s pretty sure she and Vilma caused to happen because they have “rain powers” (which she demonstrated with an Olivia-style rain dance). 

Party time
— Annika was invited to her classmate Siena’s birthday party, which was at a nearby bowling alley (awesome!). It was fun, especially since they had the bumpers up and a whole bunch of lanes going at once, so nobody had to wait. Also there was beer for the grownups — yay!
— Niamh’s family had their annual St. Patrick’s Day party (with the kegerator of Guinness), and this year was much easier for us than last year — Annika can hold her own in a crowd (plus they were showing Frozen upstairs in the kids’ playroom), we didn’t have to follow Lukas around all over the place, and R. and I actually got to talk to some people (including a guy who was randomly in town and happened to know our college friend Weird Arthur, back in Louisiana — small world!). 

School days
— Crazy Hat Day: I can’t remember what was the reason for it, but they did a Crazy Hat Day. Annika, true to her own inner light, chose to wear a garland of metallic green St. Patrick’s Day stuff (clovers, mostly) that she found at Michael’s. So cute!
— Scooter time: Her friends Alana and Vilma both have Razr scooters, and their moms would bring them to school pickup, which led to Annika instructing me to bring hers every day that we’re not going somewhere after school (e.g. dance, swimming). From a somewhat cautious, wobbly beginning, she quickly got quite proficient, scootering all the way home from school, and even doing some one-footed tricks and super-long glides by the end of the month.
— A new career: Annika now says she wants to be a science teacher, based entirely on her love of the science lessons taught by Mrs. Daly (who apparently makes the rounds at school, giving age-adjusted variations on subjects like electricity, density, nature topics, etc.)
— Field trip to a farm: The Kindergarteners got to go (on school buses! yay!) to a farm in the hills; I went along as a chaperone for her class. It was really a great trip — lots of animals (chickens, goats, pigs [ugh], cows), a garden of edible plants, all kinds of things. Now she has renewed her pitch to get a cow (“We can build it a shelter on the grass by the pool! We’ll have fresh milk all the time!”).
— St Patrick’s Day: Still inexplicably one of her favorite holidays; this year was notable for her insistence that leprechauns are real, and that whatever was going on (e.g. can’t find a sock, rainbow happening, toy out of place) is due to their activities.
— Another excellent report card: As expected, her second trimester report card was a sea of 3’s (that’s the highest grade) and nothing else. She is killin’ it! 

Tooth time
— Since our previous pediatric dentist has retired, we worked our connections and found a new dentist; he was great, the staff was great, the place is MUCH closer and easier to get to, and Annika and Lukas both loved it there. Yay!
— Busy Tooth Fairy: Annika lost her two upper front teeth about a week apart, so she has the classic little-kid gap right now. She is so, SO cute like that. :-) 

Lukas the ungovernable
— Crazy walking stamina: I can’t get this kid into an umbrella stroller anymore, and he insists on walking absolutely everywhere on his own — including all the way home from picking Annika up at school. Even when she’s zipping ahead on her scooter, he is running to catch up.
— A new, unwelcome trick: Lukas continues to be a butthead about food, and his latest trick is to hold something in his mouth the entire time we’re at the table. Recently it was a bite of chicken nugget; he chewed it and held it in his cheek, like a chaw of tobacco, while he drank milk and refused anything else, for nearly an hour until I finally got fed up and dug it out with my finger. WTF. He LIKES those friggin chicken nuggets. WHY DOES HE DO STUFF LIKE THIS.
— Pinkeye: Who knows where he got it, but Lukas had pinkeye, which required him to have eyedrops 4x/day for a week. He didn’t like it, and struggled a little, but by and large it was not too difficult — he took it like a champ.

Annika the Accomplished
— Swimming: After months of no new ribbons, and a little bit of discouragement for that reason, she earned her O-fish-al Porpoise ribbon at last. We were so proud of her for not giving up (reminding her that she was only doing lessons once a week instead of 2x/wk like in summer, and no practice at home), and she was SO EXCITED to finally get this one.
— Reading: We’re going through the Little House books at bedtime again, in no particular order, but with a new twist: At the end of each night’s chapter, I have her read the first page of the next chapter to me. And she can do it. For real. She figures out new words, she gets the rhythm, she knows where to pause and how to read dialogue — it’s amazing.
— Climbing: There’s a sort of rock face piece of equipment at the playground where we always stop on the way home from school, with no grips or toeholds, just irregularly-sized and -spaced steps, and she’s always been kind of afraid of trying it. But one day, she just … did it! And now she’s a regular power girl, going up it in two seconds, NBD.
— The magic clock: We got her a clock that turns green at a time you set, and it’s been a miracle for us — she no longer bursts through our door at 6:15 on the weekends! If she wakes up early, which she almost always does, she waits till it turns green at 7:00 to come wake us up! Victory!

The Quotable Lukas
—poh-pee-doh (computer)
—PAHSS-ba-bye (pacifier)
—“Whatchoo got dere?” (inquiring)
—“My ankees baseball book” (originally Annika’s, now his fave)

The Quotable Annika
—“Mr. Ford says that in the next Year of the Horse, we'll all be 17 years old, and he'll be in a nursery home.”
— “They mean news, Mommy, not apps.” (Her explaining about “Goldbug updates” in the Richard Scarry Busytown Mysteries books.)