Some recent Annika-isms

Life is fun with Annika (and Ezra too!)

Sitting down to eat her breakfast of oatmeal:
"Daddy, blow on my email. It's too hot!"

Right after watching How to Train Your Dragon and acting with Ezra like Toothless, the dragon:
"Toothpaste! Come back here Toothpaste!"

Playing with Ezra and acting like Dora and Diego:
"DiDaygGeeO, I'm Dora!"

Showing her Dad some of Mom's feminine products:
"Look Dad! Mom's little diapers!"

Annika's favorite thing is to pretend she is a baby. If she is ever fussy, all we have to do is ask her what kind of baby she currently is and she will instantly melt into your arms and cuddle.  It's a great trick. Everyday she goes through many different types of babies. Here are some favorites:
"I'm a baby adult!"

"I'm a baby bad guy!"

"I'm a baby Grandma!"

etc. etc.

Anyway, Annika is a riot. I guess you just have to know her. Oh yeah, and she's really cute too.

Keys

Sorry to my reader (Jonathan) about abandoning this blog as of late. I apologize for my laziness.


Today we got the keys to our new house! To tell you the truth, I felt completely overwhelmed when the sellers left us there alone. Where were the landlords? And the leases to tell us what to do next? And all the usual rules? It was strange and a bit disorienting. 


We let the kids play in the backyard a bit, which they loved, and then we showed them their room. They are sharing a room but there are two big closets so we let them pick out which "playroom" was their own. Seeing them run around as their usual happy selves while Jonathan and I discussed paint colors made me feel like all was well and that we could make that house our home. 


There is a lot of work that needs to be done on the house, so we will be keeping very busy. But we excited about all the possibilities. Oh and we found many potential pets for the kids during the short while we were there- a monarch butterfly, a baby slug, a newly popped out of the ground cicada and four deer in the backyard(so much for my garden plans!)


I should tell about the cicada I saw. If you don't know what a cicada is, you should look it up. They look pretty disgusting and are loud as heck, but they are amazing too. They live underground for 17 years, I think, and then they dig their way to the surface where they slice open their shell and fly into a nearby tree(like a butterfly) where they mate for two weeks and then die. 


So today I actually saw one of these pop out of the ground right in front of our new house and thought "It's a sign. Just like the cicada, today we begin a beautiful, new and short chapter of our lives(short because it is only a 2 bedroom house and because I still have dreams of returning to the west someday.) It's perfect." So that about sums up this new adventure for me.


Here's a pic of our new pets. They were not very afraid of us at all. What should we name them?