Memorial Day 2013

Our Memorial Day weekend was busy, busy, busy.  But so much fun.  Despite David not feeling the greatest, we managed to pack a lot of activity into our three day weekend together.  Annie thrives on activity, it seems, so she takes busy weekends completely in stride.  She got to see lots of friends, spent a lot of time outside, and took more walks and wagon rides than we usually have time for.  Plus, I like to think she actually enjoys hanging out with us, so she got lots of time for that over the weekend too!  And a little visit from Gaga never hurts either.

We got the hammock out for an inagural rocking of this season, and Annie quickly decided she liked pushing it almost as much as she enjoyed sitting in it.

We had a tea party with her two favorite stuffed animals, Zebra and Hop (the bunny).  I hadn't seen her pretend to feed and give a drink to her animal friends much before, so I for one was highly entertained by the tea party in general.

We went to three birthday parties, and even got to paint some pottery at one of them!  She picked out a ceramic dog to paint and was more meticulous than her almost two years would make you assume.  She was the last one to finish her piece, and was very diligent in what she was doing.

Annie loves loves loves the playground, and she was happy to have a couple of trips there over the holiday weekend.  She enjoyed the swings and the bridges and the slides, just like she always does. Have I mentioned lately how lucky we are to have her daycare right around the corner with a great playground we can use?  And how fun it is to have neighborhood friends show up while we are there?

And finally, she donned her first bathing suit of the season for our third birthday party of the weekend, and insisted on pigtails for the occassion.  I swear, she kills me sometimes with these things.  As soon as my mom and I got the pigtails completed, she pranced around the house and looked at herself in the mirror.  I'm afraid we've got a real girly girl on our hands here...and you know, I'm secretly okay with that, because I've got a whole lot of girly girl in me too!

We are right at one month out from our big second birthday celebration.  I will postpone saying anything about how completely amazed I am that two years have gone by already.  But we look forward to celebrating our sweet girl with family and friends in just a few short weeks!

A Mothers' Day Post

Warning: Highly sentimental Mothers’ Day post ahead.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I have very distinct memories of times with my mom when I was a kid.  I remember sitting at her make up table, pretending to apply blush and lipstick.  I remember loving to have my hair brushed by her and trying to be very still while she did it, hopeful that she wouldn’t stop.  I remember putting on a pair of what I believed to be the most beautiful red high heel shoes from her closet and shuffling across her bedroom floor to the drawer where she kept her special jewelry – a collection that included a gold bracelet from my own babyhood and a tiny ring someone had given me when I was born.

Now that I am older, I recognize how very blessed I was to have a childhood full of comfort and nurturing and love.  The youngest of four children and the only girl, I was also the recipient of a lot of one on one time with both of my parents, but especially with my mother.  And that remains true to this day.  My mom and I have enjoyed many many years of shared moments.  She has been a confidant, a friend, a role model.  And I think I have always had a sense that our relationship was special.  I’ve always known I got really amazingly lucky in the mom department.  But when I became a momma myself I understood things about my relationship with my own mother that I didn’t really comprehend before.

I have always known my mother loves me, but I had no idea how much until I had a child of my own.  And now that I know what it feels like to love a child with my entire being, to desire more than anything else that child’s happiness and health and peace, I understood so much more of what my mom feels for me and for my brothers.  There are moments when I find myself looking into Annie’s eyes with such joy and such pride and I realize my mom must have done that with me when I was coming up on two years old.  When Annie was an infant, I remember studying her face, memorizing every tiny detail as she slept, and thinking my mom must have done that with me.  And those realizations have even further enhanced the relationship I have with my mom.

Not a Mothers Day picture, but a cute one from the weekend, nonetheless.

Over the weekend, I was able to celebrate Mothers’ Day with my mom and my little girl (and David too, of course!).  And what a special day it was.  All day I kept thinking how fortunate I am.  How lucky I am to be a mom and to have a mom who has given me such a shining example of what a mother-daughter relationship should be.  How special that relationship can be.  And I can only hope I will be as influential in Annie’s life as my mom has been in mine.