Easter

This year Laurel's birthday landed on Easter and Annika's is April 4th.  We got to celebrate by going to Steve and Jodie's house.  I didn't take a lot of pictures, but here is a cute one of the three girls.

Happy Easter everyone.  And Happy Birthday Laurel and Annika!

Striking another pose

Esme is still being her normal fashionista self.  Here was today's outfit.  She also decided to start posing for the camera. :)

Apples and trees

Last night it was my night to put Esme to bed.  We read a book called Wump World that we got from the library.  I understand the idea behind the book and Lord knows I'm all about the environment when I can be.  But let me just tell you that this book was simply depressing...  Moving on.

After reading, Esme and I snuggled for a bit.  She always says "put your arm around me to keep me safe" while she's falling asleep.  So we always lay on our sides, and I put my arm around her.  We make a great spoon!  But last night I just couldn't get comfortable so I told her that I was going to lay on my stomach next to her.  Pretty soon she decided to lay on her stomach too.  I said "now we are the same!"  And her response?

"Mom, you know the apple doesn't fall far from the tree..."

What the?????????  :)  The fact that she knows that quote and can recite it without making any mistakes just floors me!

And then she fell asleep.

Ouch!

In an effort to enjoy the last few days of snow on the ground this winter/spring, Mamoo and Papa took Esme sledding.

On Papa's first trip down with Esme, the hit a bump and went flying.  Esme scraped up her face (apparently she's related to me!) from the snow and from her headband that came down over her face.  The little teeth on it really got her.  This is the picture Mamoo texted me.

Unfortunately, Papa Rex hurt his back and had to be taken home right after the wipe out.  Mamoo didn't want that to be Esme's last sled of the winter, so after they dropped off Papa at home, they went back to the hill and sledded for quite awhile.

When I got home from work, Esme was sitting on the couch under a blanket.  This is the girl who is NEVER cold.  I asked her if she was cold and she said no (of course not!) but that being covered up with the blanket was helping her face to feel better!  Apparently, Oreo cookies help too since there were a ton of Oreo crumbs on her face. :)

We were a little worried because she had swimming lessons tonight and hoping that it wouldn't sting when she got in the water.  We put some Vaseline over the cuts and she did great!  It didn't even seem to bother her at all.  I think afterwards she was a little more swollen, but maybe that would have happened even without being in the pool water.

The good news is that every time I ask her if it hurts, she says no.  So I think it looks worse than it is.  Let's just hope that this is the last time she tries to land on her face...

Snowman

Esme, Mamoo and Papa made a snowman today.  I think this might be the best snowman I have ever seen in my life!

Beginning of Spring Break!

No preschool for us this week because of Spring Break.  Esme's very first one!

We started off the day with a play date with Esme's favorite friend in the whole world right now, Emily.  Esme L-O-V-E-S Emily!  We play a lot of make believe at our house and no matter what we're doing, Esme pretends her name is Emily. :)  This is a great improvement over our previous pretend personality - Rihanna.  Yuck...  Anyway...

Emily's mom, Laura, is the best and she planned an Easter Egg hunt for the girls which included Emily's three sisters.

Esme and Emily

Esme, Jessica, Emily, Hayley and Rebecca

And don't forget Daisy!

After we got home from Emily's house, Esme went for a bike ride.  She has come such a long ways since last fall.  She has all kind of confidence and just zooms all over the place.  I couldn't keep up!

Look how far away she is!!!

Over all it was a great day!  Thanks Laura and the Roth family for having us over.

Fashion choices

Esme continues to floor me with her fashion choices.  I love them!  Here she is as she got ready to go hiking with Aaron.

I'm convinced she'll be a fashion star someday!

Waiting for the Bus

Today Aaron was sick.  He finally caught the crud that the rest of us have beed struggling with. :(  That meant that I took Esme to Aaron's parents for the day when he usually does it.

I was loading up the car and running in and out of the garage and when suddenly I got a glimpse of Esme.

Me:  Esme, what are you doing?

Esme:  Waiting for the bus.

My car was the bus, and it was not even close to looking like rain.

Board Games

Today we had a fun day.  Esme got a new game called Sequence.  I've never played this game before in my life, but the kid version was fun!

 Cinder decided she wanted to play too.  She kept crawling across the board.

 Kaiser, however, was not as interested...

Littles 2 or Littles 3 - that is the ???

Today was Esme's last day of swimming lessons for this session.  It looks like we are going to do Littles 2 again next session.  At the beginning of this session, she started off doing so well that we thought she was a shoe in for Littles 3 next time.  We even registered her for it with the instructor's approval.  But then we had a few iffy weeks.  After we got back from Hawaii, Esme didn't want to do as much in the water without help.  She wanted Miss Christy to hold on to her the whole time, or to jump into Miss Christy's arms rather than into the water beside her.  So we decided that it would be better not to push her and re-registered her for Littles 2.  We thought/think it would be better to make sure that lessons are always an enjoyable experience for her.

Wouldn't you know it, tonight on her last night of class, she kicked butt!  She did so great!  Miss Christy said it was her best week ever and that based just on tonight she would say she could move to Littles 3.  What to do, what to do?

We decided on this.  We're keeping her in Littles 2 for now, with the same rationalization as before.  I would rather have her do really well in Littles 2 than to flounder in Littles 3.  That being said, the first week of class the new teacher will test her and if it looks like she could move on, we will reevaluate then.  So the verdict is still sort of out.

The last thing done in class each week is some sort of fun reward for the kids.  Today it was getting thrown in the air like a cannonball.  Esme loved it!  Thanks Miss Christy for a great session!

Taking care of Mom

Today I stayed home from work.  I had a headache, cough, sore throat, plugged nose, etc.  Your everyday, average crud.  Esme has been sick too, but she's towards the end of it.  She felt good enough to go to The Children's Museum with Mamoo and Papa while I stayed home and slept the day away.

When she got home, she came and sat with me for about three and a half minutes.  That's really all you can get her to sit still for these days.  She brought one of her books for me to read to her.  I told her I really thought she should read it to me since I was sick.  She reminded me that she didn't know how to read, so I asked her to try it "for pretend".  She made up a great story about Scuffy the Tugboat.

And then she left to play downstairs and do "more fun things".  Oh well, at least I got a few minutes with her!

Granola Girl

Esme loves to dress herself.  For the most part I let her.  I know there's going to be a time in the future when the struggles of being a parent of a girl are going to be huge.  Boy issues, friend issues, self esteem issues, facebook issues.  Ugh.  Not looking forward to it.

I, not so secretly, hope that by the time Esme is a teenager the pendulum is going to shift far in the opposite direction of where it is now.  I pray that facebook and anything remotely similar is gone, that turtlenecks and long prairie style skirts and dresses are in, and that tattoos are taboo.  Please, just allow me to live in my dream world for just a little while, won't you?

Ok, so back to the real world.  As I said, I let Esme dress herself 90+% of the time.  My main reasoning for this is twofold.  First, I think that there are bigger fish to fry, if you will.  I'm not going to argue about colors that don't match, etc because I want her to have a lot of "yes" moments so that I'm not the "no" mom that never allows anything.  Second, and more importantly, I think it's most important that Esme likes the way she looks.  I care more that she thinks she's pretty than if anyone else does.  And if she thinks she looks beautiful in a mermaid dress and galoshes or a gazillion accessories who am I to tell her differently?!?  She needs to answer to herself.

On that note.  The other day she decided that she wanted to wear her Chaco's.  Yes there was snow on the ground and no she didn't care.  I told her that she had to wear socks so she should probably just wear her shoes.  She said - "I can wear socks with my Chaco's!"  The compromise that we made was that she had to wear her boots to preschool and then she could wear the sandals.  Oh my gosh, that made her a happy girl!

So here she is, my granola girl.  I posted a picture of this on facebook (do I see the irony in that?  Yes I do!) and a friend of mine from Washington state said this was a sure sign that we are meant to be back in the Pacific Northwest.  Who knows?  Wouldn't that be nice!  Maybe someday Esme really will grow up to be a granola girl in Portland or Seattle.  We'll have to wait and see!