Our little dancer..

Lately, Annabeth's favorite way to play is to run around the house. When she was younger, she liked sitting and playing with her dollhouse, or coloring, or more sedentary activities, but lately she has been on the move. One of her favorite things to do is to "da nce" around her grandma's room to upbeat Spanish music. Her dancing mostly consists of running around and around in circles, sometimes holding a stuffed animal dance partner.

Tonight when I put her to bed, she wanted to dance, so I turned on some Spanish music for her in her room for a few minutes. She asked me, "Mommy, is this marching music?" I told her, "It's dancing music!" Then she asked, "Mommy, is it shaking your bottom music?" Oh boy, I don't know where she got that one from. I'll have to ask her grandma. :)

Some other funny moments from the last few days..

Last week before I went to the grocery store, I asked Maria if there was anything I could get her from the store that week. As I added a couple of items to my list, Annabeth said, "Grandma, do you want cottage cheese?" Annabeth loves sharing cottage cheese with her Grandma. When I brought it home, she danced around, saying "Yay! Cottage Cheese!" I'm glad she can get so excited over something that's pretty good for her at the same time. :)

After dinner the other night, she asked if she could play in her Grandma's room. When I said yes, she said, "Yay!" A short pause, then, "Now I'm going to sing a pause about it!" She then danced around in a circle, and sang, to the tune of "She'll be coming round the mountain." "Play, play, play, play, play..."

While we were cleaning up from dinner that same night, Annabeth asked me for some crackers. I asked her if she wanted Saltine crackers, but that's not what she wanted.. she asked for the round crackers. While I was getting down the Ritz crackers to give her a couple, she asked me, "Do you know what I'm asking you for?"

Update on Baby Moore #2

On Tuesday I had a pregnancy checkup and heard the baby's heartbeat for the first time! It was so exciting - I teared up, because it was so good to hear the baby and know things were going well. So, in honor of this special moment, here are some pictures that I haven't posted yet, along with a little story.

Around the middle of October, I was cooking dinner one night, and I peeled this clove of garlic, a "mama" garlic with her little baby attached. I showed it to Pat, and said, I wonder if this is a sign that we are expecting? Pat said we should take some pictures just in case. We had been wanting to have another baby, and just in the last month or so had been trying to get pregnant. When we took this picture, it turns out that I was about a week pregnant, but we wouldn't know it for another couple of weeks.

Here is the pregnancy test we took a couple of weeks later. Two lines meant we were pregnant. :)

Some funny things lately...

Here are some funny moments from Annabeth recently. Sorry I haven't been good about posting lately, but I've been very tired the last few weeks during the first trimester of our pregnancy. Annabeth is really excited about having a new baby brother or sister. She likes watching Dora, and one of her Dora programs is called "Big Sister Dora." In the program, Dora's mom has a boy and a girl. Lately, after watching Dora, when I've been asking Annabeth if she wants a brother or a sister, she says, "A brother AND a sister!"

Last week we went out for dinner and were coming home. It was after dark. Annabeth was trying to reach the little roll down shade at her window and couldn't quite get it. She started crying and said, "I NEED my shade! The sun is in my eyes!"

A couple weeks back, Annabeth watched part of a Sesame Street episode that had a song about it being ok to be sad, and it's ok to cry. After seeing it, when I talk to her about whining, she says, "I'm not whining, I'm crying!" She figures whining isn't ok, but she shouldn't get in trouble for crying.

Annabeth loves singing, and has been enjoying Christmas music this time of the year. This year she really wants to listen to a 3 song Christmas CD that she got with some Christmas books from her Uncle Jon and Aunt Sara on her first Christmas. Her favorite song is Jingle Bells, and she goes around the house singing it all the time.

One of Annabeth's new words the last couple of weeks is "forgot," which she says, "gu-got" She has reminded me several times when I "gu-got" something. It's so cute how she says it.

Annabeth loves Grandpas and Cowboys

Annabeth loves older men, anyone who is a Grandpa figure to her. Our neighbor, Mr. Pinney, who is probably in his 70's, has come over to talk and visit on a couple of occasions. Both times, Annabeth has run to him, wanting to be picked up, and said, "My grandpa!"

This week when we went to get some Chinese takeout and were waiting for our food to be ready, another grey haired gentleman came and ordered and was waiting for his food. He told Annabeth hi, and started talking to her, and suddenly she left our table and ran to sit in his lap! She didn't call him grandpa while we were there, but when we were leaving, she started fussing and said, "I want my grandpa!"

Annabeth has a friend at church, Micah, who wore a cowboy hat to church a couple of weeks ago. Last week when we went to the grocery store, Annabeth would point out anyone wearing a cowboy hat and say, "Mommy, it's a cowboy!" Then she would shout across the store, "Hi Cowboy! What are you doing, cowboy?" This was to at least 3 or 4 different men who were wearing cowboy hats that we saw during our shopping trip.

A Buggy Family

Here are the pictures from Halloween of our whole family.. Pat and I made costumes to go along with the bug theme of Annabeth's ladybug costume:



Pat had a yellow vest and his happy face hat, to which he added some stripes so he could be a bumblebee. I love my buggy family! :)

I put on one of Pat's vests, one of my adventuring hats, and added some of Annabeth's bug toys - a butterfly, some bumblebees, a spider, etc, and went as a "Bug Keeper."

This is not a Halloween picture, but I thought it went with the theme of the post - these are some Bunny ears that Annabeth's cousin Kendall got her at the balloon fiesta in early October.

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The last few weeks Annabeth has started using the word "after." The only problem is, she has it confused with the word "before", so she'll say something like, "I want to read a story after my nap" and when I say, "Ok. We'll read a story when you wake up from your nap," she gets really upset. I've tried to explain to her the difference between "before" and "after", but she's still working on figuring it out.

Today we went to the grocery store, and I was talking to one of the ladies about pacifiers. She said that her son used one, and called it a "binkie", and I told her how Annabeth had named hers an "abba" from the time she could talk. Annabeth, who is listening to the whole conversation as she sat in the little "car" attached to the front of the grocery cart, pipes up as if she needed to set the record straight, "Lady, it's called a pacifier!"

Our little ladybug, etc...

The other day Annabeth and I went for a walk, and lately she wants to get up on the bridges on our street and look out. I lifted her up, and she said, "Wow, look at the world!" Then yesterday, "Look at the view!"

Annabeth is also trying to get the hang of using pronouns. It's neat seeing her as she's trying to learn grammar. The last couple of days I've noticed her saying things like when we went to get Grandma at the doctor's office, "We're going to get she." English sure is a complex language to learn.

Here are some pictures of Annabeth in her Halloween costume. Pat and I ended up dressing up and going out with her to trick or treat. Annabeth was a ladybug, Pat was a bumblebee, and I was the bug keeper. I'll post a picture of all 3 of us when I get it downloaded from our camera, but here are these for now: