Anna gets SO excited about Matt's birthday every year. This year she picked out a birthday present back in November and kept it hidden in her closet until last week. She can be good about this stuff when she wants to. Kate, on the other hand, is not so good at keeping secrets yet :)
Matt requested pizza for his birthday dinner and pumpkin cake for dessert. Yum! Then he and the girls went out to eat on his birthday. He also took the day off as a "personal business day". We really do a bit of personal business related to our home addition, but he also had the chance to have some Matt time before he single parented over the weekend.
Here's the girls helping Matt find his 33's hidden all over the house.
Saturday morning I left with some friends from church and beyond to attend our annual girls' getaway weekend; this year we visited Galena, IL. We had a great time! Not all attendees are moms, but those of us who are were extremely thankful to be only in charge of ourselves for about 30 hours :) We did some shopping, sightseeing, tours, swimming, lots of eating, chatting, walking, etc. A good time was certainly had by all!
Time for side stories ... today Anna acheived her goal of earning 100 pennies for chores and not sucking her thumb. Wow! She chose the Cars plate and fork (the bowl and spoon are the next reward). This kid has incredible self control when she's sufficiently motivated!
Kate and I have been fighting a cold for a week or so. Not fun. Especially when that means that she regressed a bit with potty training. Yesterday saw several accidents, but today was actually accident free. Hopefully we're on the upswing with that whole situation.
Anna is really a cool kid. I know every parent thinks this (or should think this) about their kids, but it doesn't hurt for me to say it. I need to back up a little bit for this story to make sense. During Kate's Kindermusik class, Anna usually plays across the hall in the nursery (the music classes are located in a church basement) with another girl until our friends Henry and his mom, Julie, show up. Anyway, a few months ago another boy, an older sibling of one of Kate's classmates, was also in the nursery with the kids and was just being a bit of a pill. He was older than the three kids, bigger (obviously), and acting like a bully. Julie even had a bit of a run in with him towards the end of their time together.
Well, yesterday we see this boy there again before Kate and I go into class. Anna, pretty subtly, asked me if she could just stay in class with Kate and I instead of going to the nursery. She grabbed a stuffed animal and proceeded to participate with Kate's class as if the stuffed pig were her baby. That, in itself, was pretty cute. Afterwards, she told me very appropriately that she didn't really want to be in the nursery with the boy who "wasn't very nice" so she thought she could stay with me instead. If only some of the 7th graders I used to teach would have acted as maturely as my three-year-old daughter! It's pretty amazing that she voluntarily and appropriately removed herself from a potentially bad situation before it became bad. Anyway, I was proud of Anna.
And finally, Anna and Matt had a wonderful daddy-daughter conversation one evening last week. Anna asked Matt if they could just talk for awhile instead of rough-housing and tickling. I wasn't present for the conversation, but Matt told me later that it ranged from topics such as marriage to parenting to preschool. Anna certainly thinks about a lot of things these days :)
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