Hannah's Birthday

Monday was Hannah's 2 year old Birthday! We had a party on Sunday with her cousin Claire, but I don't have pictures from that yet.

On Monday, we went to Chuck E. Cheese to celebrate with our friend Braewyn. Hannah loved the slide, but was not too fond of Chucky.

Also, we watch Sesame Street every morning, and those of you who do the same you know that Elmo learns about a new thing every day (I mean there are reruns). Well on Hannah's birthday, Elmo ironically learned all about BIRTHDAY'S! It was so fun because Elmo sang Happy Birthday and I loudly slipped in the name Hannah! And he learned about birthday cakes and presents. Hannah had a good time!

Oh and sorry for the lack in postings. I switched to a MAC the other week at work and it took me a while to figure out the pictures and I still learning the videos!

Enjoy the pics!

They sure do learn young!

I just thought this was cute. We were in Monroe a few weeks ago for a party, and as you can see we were getting ready for the festivities. Hannah had a blast with the ice chest. It went up and down and up and down the driveway!

More Water

Everyday Hannah reminds me of how awesome it must be to be child. And by that I mean, how little it takes to get excited about things.

Recently Hannah has had this fascination with water! Yes, something she has been very familiar with her whole life, but is now the coolest thing ever. For those of you who don't know, we live REALLY close to Lake Pontchartrain and we go over it all the time. Well, if you were driving with us last week, you would have thought we had never gone over the lake or played on the lakefront. It was hilarious. She was so excited I thought she might jump out of her car seat. She kept saying "More water Mommy," and "WOW" and "Look Mommy, water."

When we pass by fountains, she says, "More water Mommy." And a few weeks ago, I was finishing up painting my house, and Hannah figured out that if she had some paint on her hands that I would run and put her hands under WATER! You can imagine what went on after that.

I guess the point of this is that sometimes we should stop and try to look at the world through a child's eyes. It must be amazing.

Self Portraits

Hannah is really loving the camera lately. The other night we were playing on my bed before she went to sleep, and we practiced our self portraits. Lets just say, the girl loves the camera. Please excuse me, this is my end of the day, don't really care anymore look.








HAHA! These crack me up!

Silly Bath Time

Hannah has learned to open and close the door on the bathtub, so we play silly games with it. First are some pictures of her sillyness and then a video. Hope you enjoy!

The video and the sound are delayed a little bit.

Straighten on up!

Again, sorry for the lack of posts lately. We are alive.

So, I may put my foot in my mouth big time, but I am just proud of myself. I always thought I would have the child that you would find on Nanny 911. Yes, I watch that show and I realize that most of the time its the parents that need the Nanny more than the kids. Well, I have to say that I don't have one of this kids.

It's not that Hannah never acts up or whines. Because she is teetering on the terrible two's, but what I have done is instill the fear of mommy in her! I was worried a few months back about Hannah getting out of control, and my parenting skills are still so young that I new I needed help- so I asked her Dr. He suggested a book called- Magic 123! Now it is for disciplining ages 2-12, but I would say it is pretty effective for under 2 as well.

For instance, when Hannah acts up I simply count to 3, and then to the room. You are thinking, okay Allison, my parents did that to me- what is the secret? Well, there is none! And now when Hannah acts up, all I say is "Do you want to go to your room?" She sweetly replies "NO" and straightens right up! Its a miracle.

One day we were in the movie store and she kept running the ailes. I stopped, looked at her and said "1"- she came running back to my side. It is like telling a dog heil! Okay, not just like that- but they can be trained!

I know next week this exciting new parenting skill may not work so great, but for those of you who keep Hannah sometimes- give it a try!

Well, this isn't really a good Hannah blog, but I am just excited that this actually works- at least for now. So no one make fun of me when I am around you and this doesn't work!

Oh, Hannah is doing great! She is just talking away and so much fun! I wish I could freeze her like this. I will get some pictures updated soon.

Hannah and Claire

I know most of you know by now that Hannah LOVES babies. Well this is a video of her and her cousin Claire. Hannah will copy anything you do with Claire. It is super cute!

For those of you who don't remember, these two are exactly a year apart- only separated by hours! So, this is a great comparison of the change in one year. They are cute together.

Hannah at Christmas

Hi everyone!

Yes, Hannah and I have been MIA (missing in action). We have just been busy little bees. I went through my camera this weekend and found some cute videos that I had taken.

This one is of her at Christmas. If you notice, when she tries to open one of the presents she says "broke." Well, Hannah now refers to alot of things at "broke." If something doesn't go the way she wants it tom "broke." If something doesn't work just like she thinks it is intended, "broke." It is really funny, and also a great thing for me!

When there is something I don't want her to get into, I simply tell her it is broken and she quietly walks away. I mean, who wants to bother with something that is broken!

Well I hope you enjoy!

Picture Time

Hi everyone,

So I apologize for the lack of posting. The holiday have been a bit crazy. For those of you who don't know already (probably not many), Hannah was in the hospital a couple of weeks ago with a repiratory lung virus. Do not fret- we are okay now. After about a week and a half of breathing treatments, the little one is now breathing easy.

We went to Monroe for Christmas, and this is Hannah and all of her cousins (Larking, Claire, Caroline and Ella). We were trying to having a photo opp, but you can imagine with 5 little ones. But I have to say it went quite well. The video below is a bit of the excitement. Just imagine, all of my siblings and the grandparents behind/beside me trying to take this picture. HAHA.

Enjoy!

Sea Shells for ME

As many of you know, we went to the beach for Thanksgiving this year. Hannah has never been real keen on the sand touching her, but this time we finally broke through. We had to keep her shoes on her, but hey, atleast she wasn't glued to my hip.

The video is of her and Nona looking for sea shells. This will be Nona's debut on the blog, so everyone give her a big applause!!!!!!

I will try to post more pictures of the weekend later on in the week.

What exactly are "Age Appropriate" chores?

I am not real sure what is going on with my blog this morning, but it is underlining and making everything blue like a link- wierd! So I am just going to go on with my story.


So what are "Age Appropriate " chores? Hannah is very interested in the cleaning aspect of the house. I have a mini dust pan that she takes out and tries to pick things up, and as you can see below she also has a passion for swiffering! Is it so wrong of me to stick a swiffer pad on the bottom and let her have at it!

I mean she seems to want to help, so why not let her? And I must admit she is very talented with the swiffer. But personally, I like swiffering ALOT more than I do other chores around the house- and now that I can make the decision on who gets what chores, Hannah better get a knack for folding clothes! Since that was my chore as a child, I am so over it. So I will just make Hannah dislike it as much as I do, then she can make her kids and/or husband fold the clothes. It is just a mass conspiracy against clothes folding! Well I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving! We are going to the beach, so we should have a lot of good pictures when we return next week.

My Buddies

This is Hannah and her two buddies, Braewyn and Ciel. I believe I have talked about them before, but they came over last night to eat dinner and we decided to capture the sweet little angels all together.

Braewyn and Hannah like to dance together, tear apart nicely organized living rooms, crowd around the same toy at the same time and expect not to bump heads or lose the parts to the toy and teach each other their different animal sounds!

Now, as you can see, Ciel is a baby, which is now Hannah's favorite thing in the world. So she loves to hug on Ciel, help feed her bottle, pat her head and last night she just walked up to her like she was a big girl and tried to pick her up. She just loves Ciel so much, so it will be fun to watch how they interact as Ciel keeps getting bigger.

Well, these our Hannah's buddies. Sommer (Braewyn's and Ciel's mom) and I were talking about if they stayed friends until High School how bad they would be together. I would suspect Sommer and I would stay up many nights wondering where they were, but not much different than now- we stay up all night wondering why they won't sleep! Is this called irony?

Zoo- Look at the sheep and billy goats

Saturday, Hannah, my mom, Claire and I went to the Zoo for my mom's birthday. It was a blast. Below is a video of Hannah with the Sheeps and Billy Goats. It took her a minute to warm up to them, but after a while she loved them.

P.S. Just ignore me. I really hate how I sound on these recordings, but they are too cute to worry too much about that.

Random Pictures

Hannah had her Chistmas pictures at school on Tuesday. Of course she wouldn't let me do anything with her hair. But the good news is that they said they might have gotten a couple of good shots, the others she was a little displeased with be made to sit in fake snow- but who could blame her. So this is what she looked like at th end of the day- bring on the proofs!













This is just a picture of Hannah this morning. She loves Sesame Street. She watches it every morning, and when we are leaving, she waves and says good bye to Elmo and everyone. And the benefit- I learn lots of new stuff too. We both get a Spanish word of the day and some times a sign language word of the day. I think I love it as much as Hannah (I know that is sad)












If can tell by the two pics, Hannah got another trim last night. Her bangs just keep growing right into her face, and I can't seem to train them to go over. I am trying to get rid of the mullet and people refering to her as a him- it really aggravates me. And I have some pics of that, but she was drooling a little and it didn't look pleasant enough to place on the blog- she had a two-tone shirt.

Well, everyone have a good one!

Halloween

I know everyone is very eager to see our little Indian! There are a lot of pictures below and some are from Boo at the Zoo on Saturday and others are from Halloween night. Hannah liked Trick-or-Treating, even though she never actual said Trick-or-Treat when we got to the door. And she has now discovered her love for Candy- better known at Nandy. I had to pull quite a few wrappers out of her mouth Halloween- those silly wrappers weren't going to stand between her and candy.

1) Caroline and Hannah before Boo at the Zoo,









2) Hannah and Caroline at Boo at the Zoo. Hannah liked carrying around her pumpkin with the candy.













3) Hannah dancing to the music at Boo at the Zoo. Everyone kept saying, "Look at the cute Pocahontas." So I just went with it, and Hannah officially turned from plain old Indian to Pocahontas.











4) Hannah and Mommy on the carousel at the zoo. Hannah wasn't quite sure about it. She kept holding onto me and then the zebra would go up and she would have to let go. She had this very confused look on her face the whole time. And if you look real close you will see Brad and Crawfish Elle beside us.









5) Here is Hannah on Halloween night. I think this picture speaks for itself.













5) This is Hannah after I dug the wrapper out of her mouth. Apparently, there was chocolate in there.













6) And this is the puking Pumpkin. I just thought is was funny. Mike carved it himself. I kept walking past it all night and thinking- that looks wierd. And then as we were leaving it dawned on me- his pumpkin was puking! HAHAHAHAHAHA I thought it was funny.








So that is rundown of our Halloween. I have to go home today and hide the Pumpkin with the candy because Hannah threw a fit this morning for candy. I hope everyone had a good time at Halloween too.

Halloween Party

Today is Hannah's Halloween Party at school. They can't wear their costumes, so those pics will be coming next week. When I handed her pumpkin to her, she immediately put it on her arm and said, Bye-Bye. I guess she picks up that when Mommy or anyone else puts her purse on her arm that means we are leaving.

We have been practicing Trick-or-Treat all week, however, I am not sure if just anyone could decipher it- but I can tell what it is. I am sure she will get to a door on Halloween and just freeze! She will be with her cousins and her friend, Braewyn, so maybe they will keep her going.

Oh, and Hannah is going to be an Indian for Halloween. She has already tried it on a couple of times, and it is super cute.

Along with Trick-or-Treating on Halloween, we are going to Boo at the Zoo this Saturday in New Orleans. I have never been, but it should be a lot of fun. And as you can see, Hannah is ready to go!

I hope everyone has a great weekend, and I will post the Halloween pics next week!

Hannah 1-2-3

Check it out!!!! When Bill brought Hannah home on Sunday, he had realized over the weekend an awesome trick. Of course, it took me a few tries to get it on camera, but here it is.

Please disregard all the goldfish in her mouth- she ate all her dinner so she got a treat!

A Lesson for Mommy!

So, I had my first "watch what your saying" lesson last night. I was so shocked that it took me a few minutes to realize what had just happened- then of course, I laughed!

Hannah and I were on our way home from school and it was raining. I almost missed a turn, and I said "Crap." Then I hear her say, "Crap". It wasn't real distinct, but she was definitely mocking me. Then I said, uh oh, and then I hear her in the back seat saying that too!!!! The crazy thing was that she wasn't even paying attention to me. She was playing with her shoes.

I knew this was going to happen, so I don't know why I acted so surprised. I just kept driving home and pondering what had just happened. I am still a little taken back, but I guess I should just be glad it was just "Crap"!!!

Now I am going to start telling strangers on the street to watch their language! HA- that would be awesome. "Um excuse me sir, I know this is a free country with free speech and all, but could you refrain from using those socially unacceptable terms in front of my daughter." But I guess I need to start with myself!!! Who would have thought I would get in such a tizzy about the word "Crap".

Ah, the learning lessons that my 18 month old daughter continues to teach me. She will straighten me out before you know it!

Sweet Baby!

I know I tell people this all the time, but I think it is so sweet. Hannah loves babies! Everytime we are in a store and she sees a baby carrier she points and says baby. There was even a time when a lady had a department store cart and it was filled with clothes were a baby would normally sit, and Hannah kept pointing and saying baby, baby. I think the lady was a little taken back because she was like, "no, baby and thank goodness for that!" I just laughed and went on.

She loves being around her cousin Claire. Although, she did scare her a few times when she got real excited and screamed. I hope Claire isn't too scared, but she sure has leary eyes when Hannah gets close.

Last Friday, we went to a friends house who has a daughter Hannah's age and another 2 month old baby- yes, pray for her! Hannah was so sweet to the baby. We put all three of the girls in the back seat, and Hannah just sat there quietly and watched the baby. When we got home, she rocked the baby and was just so interested in everything it was doing (which wasn't much).

And her friend, Braewyn, who is her age has a baby doll with a stroller and pacifer and all the good baby stuff, and Hannah goes straight for it every time we are there. She loves to hold the baby and put the pacifer in its mouth, and stroll her around the house.

I guess I like it so much because it amazes me how she is so young but still picks up on this baby stuff. She just seems so sweet and gentle (I mean as gentle as an 18 month can be, we do have to tell her stop rocking so aggresively sometimes). I just think it is sweet, and it makes me feel good about the person she is becoming and will become in the future.

There's more than one way to say No!

Hannah has really gotten good at understanding what I am saying to her. I am finding many advantages to this. For example, she will put her toys in the basket, put her milk on the table, and whole bunches of new things. But she is also learning how to say No- in more ways than one!

On Sunday, Hannah took an early nap, so she went down again later in the afternoon. I didn't want her to sleep too long, so I went and got her up about an hour later. I let her lay on my bed to wake up slowly, but then it was time to get up. We were going to a friends house to eat dinner, and it was time to go.

Hannah was laying on my bed with her thumb in her mouth, balled up with her butt straight in the air. I started asking her questions like, "Are you ready to get up? " "Are you ready to go and eat?". At first, she was shaking her head no, but since she was face down on my bed, that was obviously too difficult. I noticed a second later that she hiked up her butt a little higher. I continued to ask her questions simply to annoy her. Do you know what she did? She answered me with her BUTT! She started shaking her butt in the no direction!

So I kept asking questions and she kept shaking her butt! By that time I was laughing so hard that she got up and jumped on me and it was over. But (no pun intended), how smart of her to use other body parts to communicate when other things weren't convenient. Although I would rather her not communicate with her butt, whatever works!