August 30, 2009

Dropping off a bunch of cute pics and a couple cute stories from the last couple of days.

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Swimming in the pool with Julianna.

Julianna: Owwww. I hurt my soul.
Me: What do you mean you hurt your soul?
Julianna: (Pointing to the bottom of her foot) My sole! I hurt my sole!

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As I mentioned last post, Julianna is crazy about Dinosaurs and can identify several of them. Rather than carnivores and herbivores, she classifies them as either Mean or Nice. I think it's obvious which fall into each category.

I bought her some Dinosaur flash cards from the $1 bin at Target the other day. I swear we had just run through them once or twice at the most. Anyway she took the cards to Dada's house on Thursday and pulled the first one out and said, "Look Dada, it's a Ankysaurus". Of course, we had to look at the card ourselves to see if she was right. It was an Ankylosaurus! I will say that Ryan also has several little dinosaur toys and books and things, so she probably was exposed to it more than the one time we went though the cards, but still - this was no run of the mill t-rex or stegosaurus!

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I just talked to Ryan and he said that Julianna showed him another card and said "It's a Iguanadon. It's Mama's favorite."

The Iguanadon had stripes like a zebra and I did say when we were looking at the cards, "Oohh Julianna, look at this one. It has stripes like a zebra. I think it might be my favorite."

I'm telling you, this kid has the most incredible memory!

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Ok, 'nuff bragging on her. Here are the pics:




Reading Danny and the Dinosaur.













Wandering around the beautiful Davidson College Campus. It's not Chapel Hill, but it's close. Go Heels!







She's walking backwards in this one.




Lollipop bouquet!

Tutus and haircuts

I guess it's obvious from the post title, but Julianna got both a new tutu and her very first haircut this week.

She has wanted to wear the tutu pretty much everywhere, all the time! Really, I have hardly been able to get the darn thing off of her for bed. She thinks she looks like a fairy princess. She really is just precious - but I wish I would have anticipated how stinkin' annoying those little bells on it would be!! :)












Tutu and tennis shoes - interesting look!

She did WONDERFULLY for her first haircut. Not a single tear. She was definitely nervous - I wouldn't say she was exactly all smiles and giggles, but very sweet and compliant. Everyone made over how much hair she has and talked me into only getting one inch cut off. Seriously, if you didn't know she had the haircut you would NEVER guess. It looks pretty much the same - but maybe a little tidier. Anyway, we took her to a little children's salon and she had a pretty great experience overall.


Playing with the owner's son before haircut.


She chose the police car.






After haircut!





Oh, and one cute little story from Ryan:
(Julianna was sitting in his lap)
Ryan: How many eyes do I have?
Julianna: Two.
Ryan: How many ears do I have?
Julianna: Two.
Ryan: How many noses do I have?
(Julianna put her hands on either side of his face and smashed her nose against his so as to add another nose to his face)
Julianna: Two!

August 23, 2009

More pics and a couple more stories. That kid has me laughing a good lot of the time. She is such a little rascal! She is also so darn sweet, I could cry right this moment just thinking about it.

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I made some elbow macaroni the other day and just put a bit of butter, salt, and the tiniest bit of pepper on it. When I sat it in front of Julianna she promptly pushed it away.

Julianna: I can't eat it.
Me: Why?
Julianna: I can't eat dirt!!

I guess the pepper really stood out on the white pasta and she was convinced I was serving her dirt. It took a lot of convincing to get her to believe it was like "black salt" and definitely NOT dirt!

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We were driving down the interstate the other day and I looked up at the clouds. I thought one looked distinctly like an alligator. I then said to Julianna, "What do the clouds look like?". She was quiet for a while and then said "I see a alligator." What????!! Mind you, I said absolutely NOTHING about an alligator. So either the kid looked up into the sky, saw the same cloud that I did and also thought it looked like an alligator or she has mad psychic powers and knew that's what I was thinking about. Crazy!

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We were again driving down the road and Julianna said "I see a Dinosaur", and pointed to the side of the road. And I swear the way the kudzu was growing up a telephone pole, it looked EXACTLY like a T-Rex!

By the way, after birds, Dinosaurs are her favorite things!

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Julianna was playing in the bath tub last night and was being down right NAUGHTY!! She was splashing me, drinking the bath water, and screaming - All of which I told her to stop doing about a hundred times. I finally said, in a very exasperated tone, "JULIANNA, YOU ARE SO.....", but stopped myself and didn't finish my statement. I'm not even sure what I was going to say - maybe "naughty" or "wild" - who knows.

Anyway:

Me: JULIANNA, YOU ARE SO....
Julianna: Precious!

Once again, I couldn't keep myself from laughing and only said "That's not exactly the word I was thinking of!"

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Ok, last one.

We were over at Mimi and Poppy's today to go out on the boat and swimming in the lake. Anyway, before we went out Julianna was coloring at their dining room table. Poppy came up to her and said that her picture was beautiful or something to that effect. She replied, completely unprompted, "Thank you Poppy."

I just LOVE it when I see her demonstrate good manners so naturally and sincerely completely on her own. Love it! (We don't want any Thingamajigs aroung here, right Granddaddy?)


Playground Pics:





Big girl going down the BIG slide!




Here's the precious one now. She looks so darn ornery doesn't she?!


Love this pic!


Her darling new chair at Mimi's.


On the boat.


Lake swimming! She had the greatest time and really believed she could swim all the way across the lake to the far shore! I told her, "I don't think we can make it". She said, "I can". Gotta love the confidence!




We got lucky this flock of geese came along. The only way we could get her out of the water was to bribe her with feeding them. They are getting a snack of leftover french fries and sugar cookie!!!

Pics

Just wanted to post a few pics tonight. Oh, and wanted to transcribe a conversation Jules and I had last night:

Me: Julianna, let's pick up your puzzle and put it back in the box now.
Julianna: No.
Me: Yes, let's do.
Julianna. No mama. Why?
Me: Because we have to pick up our toys after we play with them.
Julianna: No.
Me: Just pick up the puzzle.
Julianna: Nooooooooooo.
Me:(In one of my finer parental moments) Julianna we're going to pick up the puzzle because I said so and I'm the BIG boss.
Julianna: Mama, I'm the wittle boss!

At this point I tried REALLY hard not to laugh or even crack a smile - but I failed, and she totally knew I was amused. She's, of course, said she was the "wittle boss" about 3 times today. Eek! What a wittle mess. What am I going to do with her?


Coloring!












Louise and Julianna taking care of their babies!



Jules put this little cone (plastic ice cream cone minus the ice cream) up to her nose and said "Look mama! I'm a woodpecker!" SO CUTE!

August 15, 2009

Well it's been so long since I have posted that I don't really know where to start. Every time I think about updating I think about how much I have to catch you up on and how many pictures I have to go through and it just seems too daunting. So I keep putting it off...

Well, I think I will try to give you the cliff notes (or as we called it in high school - the yellow version) of the last month, post a few pics and then move forward.

*Julianna and I moved out of my parents house and into a little condo in a tiny town called Davidson. It is a college town about halfway between my parents and Ryan. We are very happy in our new place and the town is darling. We are already loving the little library downtown. Yes, this is a BIG deal. This move has been really exciting and wonderful but also very hard and a bit sad for me. But it was definitely time for me to move on and forward!

*I promised Julianna a kitten after we moved to the new house, mostly to ease the transition. She loves the new place but misses Mimi and Poppy terribly. Anyway, we have a new little WILD ginger cat! She named him Pumpkin all by herself.

*One of my VERY bestest friends had the most beautiful baby boy on July 29th. Welcome to the world John Wilder Bancroft. You are already loved by so very many people!




*Julianna gets smarter and funnier and more beautiful every day. I have been trying to keep a little journal of some of the darling/funny/brilliant things she has been saying lately. I'll try to share a few each post for a while. Here are a few:

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Julianna is absolutely mad about my parents' cat Oscar. She is ALWAYS trying to get him to "snuggle" with her. She finally, after almost a year, got him to lie down with his head on her lap. She was thrilled. She said "Oscar, I am so proud of you!" Hee.



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I was sitting on the edge of the bathtub with my feet in the water during J's bath. She decided that she wanted to do the same. She was obviously very wet and SLIPPERY. She started to slip off the edge and I caught her.

Me: That was a close one!
Julianna: Good save Mama!

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Mimi takes art classes. She showed Julianna one of the paintings she was working on. Julianna said, completely unprompted and with so much sincerity it would make you cry, "Bootiful Painting, Mimi."

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Mimi and I were singing "the Itsy Bitsy Spider" and I really drew out the ending, singing "climbed up the spout again" like a (dreadful) opera singer. Julianna said "Bravo! Bravo!". Where does she get this stuff?

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Jules and I put together a big puzzle train the other day and our new kitty came and walked across it, breaking it apart. After patiently repairing the damage she very calmly said to the cat, "You do that again and you gonna have a time out."

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Julianna is crazy about birds and loves to look at bird encyclopedias. She can definitely identify more birds than I can - really. Well, I almost fainted when we were reading a Mercer Mayer book and there was a blue bird drawn on one of the pages. I said just glancing at it, "Look Julianna there's a Blue Jay" to which she replied, "No Mama, that's a Kingfisher". I didn't even know what a kingfisher looked like. I had to look it up on the internet, but I'll be damned if she wasn't right. Whoa.


Bird in book


Actual Kingfisher

Pics from the past several weeks:

The Atlanta Pics I promised:


Julianna and Jay. They were just precious together.


I LOVE this pic! Julianna has said more than once since we were in Atlanta, "I miss Jay."


Katy, Hannah, Jay, and Ansley. Would you look at the eyes on those kids?!!


All 4 kids were MESMERIZED by this largest saltwater tank in the country (world??)!


What a jump!

Other Pics:




What a cheeser!!!







I let Julianna go a little wild with the markers! It started off just "painting" my toenails...


At the ice cream shop in downtown Davidson.


Julianna and "Punkin" snuggling.



Julianna thinks she is a "ballnernina" right now and is forever twirling and jumping. "Watch this Mama!" is the most often heard phrase in our house right now.



Julianna checking out baby John. She pronounced him "SOOOOO CUTE!!"

Ok, so more like unabridged War and Peace than abbreviated cliff notes but atleast I did it. I think it was a lie I needed to tell myself to get started :)