So Very Two

I realize that I just recently posted to tell you all how Vivian is a menace trying to torture me to death by being two years old, but, you guys, seriously...the child is insanely exhausting. 

Let me think about where to begin...

Today I bribed her into letting me put her hair into a ponytail by giving her a piece of gum. Later in the day, I bribed her to stop chewing on rocks she'd put in a cup by giving her a piece of gum. (I buy a lot of gum)

Yesterday, I was cooking dinner (Pioneer Woman's Chicken Pot Pie, in case you were curious) (and, yes, it was delicious!) and it was just me and Vivian because Evan had taken the other two to their respected tball/softball practices. I was getting ready to make the pie crust for the top of the pot pie (Pioneer Woman's Pie Crust recipe, of course!) and went to grab the butter I needed except I couldn't find the half stick I'd left out. Now, I am naturally forgetful so I started looking in the places I might leave the butter--refrigerator, by the mixer, all the counter space. I was starting to get frustrated when it occurred to me who was home with me. Not looking, but hearing her making noises from the living room, I asked: "Vivian, do you have my butter?"

"Umm...."

I walk in and she is sitting in Evan's recliner with butter she'd dug out with her grubby little toddler fingers smeared all over his chair.

 She is never still. Never. She still sleeps with us half the night and even in her sleep she is just such a wiggle worm. She needs gross motor activities on daily basis or she is a beast. I am so, so thankful for our trampoline and large yard. Sometimes she will wrestle with Evan or run laps around the inside of the house on days when we can't get outside. I am always so relieved when they go to the YLand at the Y because it's like the playlands in restaurants and she can climb and slide while I'm working out.

 She is just so contrary. I will ask her to throw away the banana peel she just carelessly flung onto the couch and she will manically laugh as she tells me no. But, I tell her, "No, Mommy wants to throw it away," and she will scream, "NO! YINYIN (translation: Vivian) DO IT!". Sometimes trying to trying to use reverse psychology to get her to comply from the get-go backfires, though. You just never know!

 She's really cute when she's sleeping though. Or when she's restrained in a car seat.

 

 Taking her in public is like setting my pet tornado loose on mankind. Today at the library, I was in line to check out books. Again, we were alone (having the older two around is a HUGE HELP when anywhere with Vivian because they are fabulous older sisters who are fully aware that the youngest one is insane in the membrane), so every time I would try to corral her I'd end up losing my place in line. Finally, I gave up and just prayed she wouldn't tear the ding dong place down. After she tipped over the two gaming chairs in the video game area and yelled at me while sitting upside down in one and pointing to the second chair, "MOMMY! THIS-A ONE FOR YOU!", she proceeded to bring me every recycling and garbage can in the library. You'd think there wouldn't be that many cans in a somewhat small library, but you'd be wrong. She managed to bring me 5 before I was finished. How lucky am I that the librarians found her cute and were so sweet about her wreaking havoc?! I reassured them that she trashes my home as well.

 Don't get me wrong, the kid is a hoot! She likes to have us tie pieces of fabric around her neck so she can be Super Bunny and then she yells out, "SUPER BUNNY, AWAY!!!" and runs laps around the house.

Her love of dump trucks is so sweet. She asks every morning to dress up (translation: get dressed) so she can go get her pal Mac and go play trucks. We have a book with little poems in them and one is called Dump Truck. She has the whole thing memorized.

She is really stingy with her hugs, kisses, and I love yous, so we all feel honored when she actually consents to being kissed and hugged or actually tells you she loves you too after you tell her.

 Sometimes I weigh the pros and cons to taking her places because we have a very small window of what we all refer to as "Vivian Time", which means we have about X amount of time on any given errand day before she loses her mind in public and goes into full destruction/tantrum mode. If you were visiting us you would often hear us say, "If we go both of those places, we may be pushing our luck with Vivian Time" or "We are wasting precious Vivian Time!" or "We're almost out of Vivian Time, let's just go home after this."

There is a lot of stress when using Daylight Vivian Time.

We're going to keep her, I promise. I just...need reassured that I am going to survive this child being two.

And wine. I need you all to tell the Wine Fairy that my house needs stocked ASAP.

It's tball/softball season around these here parts

Once I fill out the forms in March for the girls to play tball and softball, I hoard the rest of the free Saturdays like the precious gems that they are, because once the tball/softball season starts, our evenings and Saturdays belong to the baseball fields.

This year, Julia is in the oldest of the tball groups--the 5 & 6 year olds. Evan is an assistant coach, which Julia was super pumped about.

 For some weird reason, all of Julia's games are at 9am. She only plays the 3 other tball teams from Ft Sam, but there are no 10am games at all for 2 whole months! At first I was a bit grumbily (she and Evan have to be there by 8:30ish), but now I kind of like that it's a set time and we just have to work around Elisabeth's softball schedule.

 Let me tell you how great it is having Evan around this season. Not only does he help out at all of Julia's practices during the week, but he helps drive the girls to practices and is here to take one girl to one game while I take the other to an away game if need be. It really, really sucked last year doing all of that solo when he was gone to Ohio for training for a month. Plus, he's been wanting to help coach for the past two seasons and now he is able to!

 I love watching Julia play tball because she adds her own little Juju twist to the game. She still wears skirts and dresses to practice and bright neon pink shoes to games.

Elisabeth is on a girls softball team this year. Last year there wasn't enough girls for a softball team, so she was on a co-ed baseball team. She transitioned seamlessly back into softball. Her softball coach from two years ago is back and keeps telling us how much Ebeth has grown as a player. He's all proud of her and she's all proud that he's proud. Actually, both girls have coaches from previous seasons, which is kind of rare for being on military teams; there is so much moving that the odds of having a coach be there for consecutive years is not common.

  Elisabeth plays either second or third base. She has proved to be very good at covering bases, so her coach rotates her from those two bases the whole game. Elisabeth loves not having to sit out.

 She is also hilarious at bat. Since the age range is 11-12 year olds, most of the girls are still learning how to develop their pitching skills, so there are a lot of balls thrown instead of strikes. Ebeth is like a freaking statue, staring down the pitcher, refusing to budge if it not a perfect strike. We realized that she might be psyching out the pitchers by her stone solid stance and her coach agreed. It's pretty amusing at how stubborn she is about it all.

 When we signed her up two years ago to play, I didn't think she'd love it so much. She asks Evan to help her play catch, she never complains about her 1.5 hour long practices (2 days a week). She's excited about games and is very loud about cheering on her teammates. I'm curious to see if she keeps up playing through junior high and high school.

And then, there's Vivian, who is pretty ticked that she is not allowed to play tball. She invades Julia's dugout and insists on stealing batting helmets and baseball caps.

 She has a little friend who is the little sister of one of Julia's good friends who she hangs out with in the dugout. She tries to encourage her little friend to also steal bats and helmets, but so far, it's just Vivian who is the thief.

 Vivian also insists on warming up with Evan. She wears Julia's little glove and throws the ball with the glove and absolutely refuses to accept that she needs to throw with the non-gloved hand.

 If I bring her snacks and her dump truck, she will generally stay near by and not try to run onto the fields to interrupt the games. Usually.

 After the tball games, Evan helps her run the bases, which she thinks is the most fun thing ever.

 You guys, the cuteness here is too much:

This will be our life until the end of May. It is completely exhausting but so very fun to watch them play a game they love.

Easter 2014

This past weekend (well, really week) was packed full of all things Easter. It was our first time celebrating the Easter Triduum (Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday) in the Catholic Church, and since we were joining the church on Holy Saturday, we as part of the RCIA class (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults) were apart of all the Masses. Thankfully, Evan thought ahead and took today off so we could lay around and watch Frozen with the children 4 million times today. (Dude, you guys, last night my dreams were interlaced with Frozen songs...great soundtrack, but not when you are trying to stay asleep.)

Of course, we dyed eggs. This year, Vivian was all about "I do it myself!", which meant someone had to hover so she wouldn't drink, drop, spill, or throw the mugs filled to the brim with dye.

 I love seeing a carton full of colored eggs. It's always one of my favorite Easter traditions.

 This is Evan and I before the Holy Saturday service. We clean up well, yes?  :)

 The Saturday service starts at sundown, which here in Texas is after 8pm. It also is a 3 hour long service, so, thankfully, our wonderful neighbor came over and watched the girls for us. The service was beautiful--it starts with a bonfire on the stone patio (not the technical term) of the church where the priest blesses the fire which is used to light the really big candle (not the technical term) used to light candles for masses. Then we all walked into the church where we all lit our own candles from the big candle. Two members from our RCIA class were baptized, which was awesome to witness. But, after months of being in the RCIA classes (since Sept 2013), it was an amazing feeling to finally become part of the Church. Our last class is this coming Thursday and the girls are sad (they are watched by a wonderful woman named Kathy, who was also my sponsor, and they are all sad that they won't get to see her every week anymore to play games and watch movies in the room next to our class). One of the leaders of our class took a thousand pictures (I amy not be exaggerating) of the service, so I am hoping she brings them on Thursday to share.

Evan and I got home a little after 11:30pm, so we hurried to bring their Easter baskets up and hide the eggs around the house. True to her nature, Vivian was the first one up at 6:30am and was ECSTATIC that we actually allowed her to wake up the other two girls (usually, we tell her they have to keep sleeping because Vivian likes to wake at ungodly early hours). Vivian found one egg right away and was content to just eat the contents from it and not search for more.

Do you like how Vivian's Easter basket is a new dump truck? I still hadn't bought her one yet and she really, really loves dump trucks right now. I thought this was a happy compromise. 

 Julia about exploded when she saw the movie Frozen in her basket. She had only seen it one other time since we went to see it in the theater and has asked about once a week to own it on dvd.

 The only way we were able to get a family Easter picture was by standing next to Vivian on our neighbor's tractor.

 They turned out well, though!! Probably one of the best ones of the 5 of us in a while!

 Our neighbor put together an Easter egg hunt for the houses around us. 12 kids and well over 100 eggs. Ebeth got to help her hide them.

 Can we please talk about Julia's Easter dress? We bought it at Costco and it's just so beautiful!

I caught her spinning all day.

 Vivian was much more excited to find eggs when she realized the more eggs she found, the more candy there was to eat.

 She found her allotted 10 and then squatted like a frog to eat their contents.

 Then, because our neighbor is the most awesome person ever, the kids got to break a pinata that she had made herself.

 It was a really good weekend.

Hope you all had a blessed Easter weekend too!!!