Baseball Ready

Ella had her first t-ball practice this evening. She is the only girl on a team with 11 boys. That threw her for a loop in the beginning. She was pretty timid starting off. She has never played ball AT ALL before, but luckily several of the boys have never played either. The coaches asked if everyone knew where first base was, and all the boys scream YES! She just sat there like a deer in the headlights. I finally spoke up and said, "She isn't going to say it, but no she doesn't know." It turns out that about half the boys didn't know either they just screamed yes because the other boys screamed yes. They had a really good first practice. The dads tossed balls for them to try to catch and throw back. Only one little boy can do it--it's his third year. He is really good. Then they practiced stopping grounders. This was when Ella started showing a lot of insecurity. At one point she looked over at me and Scott and looked really upset. I started going out to her to see what was wrong, but the coach saw too. He also started out to her, so I stopped. I figure it's better to let the coach have a chance to work with her than for Mommy to come to her rescue. I have no idea what he said to her, but it worked. She perked right up and started really hustling. Then they all ran the bases. Ella volunteered to try first. By the end of practice, she had learned that she had to touch the bases with her foot before going to the next one. Several of the boys didn't catch on, so I was quite proud of her. I will admit that I am a bit worried how it is going to be for her to be the only girl on the team. Tonight I felt like the coaches did a really good job of treating her the same, so things are off to a good start. She also learned how to stand "baseball ready."

Tonight when we got home she gets into position. The conversation went like this:
Ella: What is this called?
Mom: Baseball ready.
Ella: Yeah, baseball ready, but sometimes it's just called bending over.

ohmygosh! I laughed so hard I cried...literally had to wipe the tears off my cheeks...cried. I love that kid!

Brenna Cute-isms

Brenna has incorporated a few things into her vocabulary that are adorable! She has figured out that "beep" means you are in the way. If something is in her way, she immediately says, "Beep. Beep. Beep." If the thing that is in her way happens to be me she starts screaming fairly quickly. "BEEP! BEEP!" She particularly loves to play this game when I'm cooking, and she will pry herself between my legs and the cabinet and push against me with all her might screaming "beep" at the top of her lungs. This particular thing is either cute as can be or highly annoying depending on the circumstances--she mostly does it in a cute way, thank goodness.

The second thing she does is honk. Scott has a John Wayne figurine that Brenna can reach. She walks up to John, squeezes his nose and says, "honk." It is soooo funny because she thinks it is hilarious! I wish I could catch a picture of it.

Flower Girl Dress

Ella is going to be the flower girl in Lane and Casey's wedding (my brother and his fiancee) in three weeks. We got her flower girl dress altered. She looks so cute. I'll have more pictures to post after the wedding of course, but here's what the dress looks like.

The Japanese Gardens

We went to the Japanese Gardens with my good friend AnnaLisa and her daughter Megan. AnnaLisa and I have been friends since the first day of high school. Our daughters are now fast friends. Megan is 4 months older than Brenna, but all three girls get along incredibly well together. Just the other day Brenna was running around our house screaming, "Megan? Wha are ou Megan? MEGAN!" And Megan has been known to repeat "Ella-Brenna, Ella-Brenna" for minutes at a time. It is great fun watching our girls play together, but I digress. We took the girls to the Japanese Gardens, and I got some nice pictures of the girls.

Brenna watching a squirrel.


Ella trying to avoid having her picture taken by not looking at me. Funny that it turned out so well.


Megan had been playing with the bushes.



Not the most attractive picture of Brenna, but check out the size of those coi! They were very fun to feed. The kids loved it!

Our Little Consumer

Wheezer gave the girls gift cards to Toys R Us for Valentines day this year. We went tonight so the girls could each pick out their gift. Brenna has the role of consumer down pat. She would run around the store, point and yell, "I wan dat!!! I wan dat! OHHHHHH! Wook at dat! Mommy, wook at dat." She carried a "purse" around for quite a while. It was actually a carrying case with bath tub blocks in it, but to her it was a purse, and she wore a pair of rabbit ears on her head almost the entire time. She would cry when we took them off her head. Eventually, Brenna decided on a doll that has a zip, snap, button, buckle and tie. She is really learning these skills lately, so it was the perfect find.

Ella found a stuffed unicorn as soon as we walked into the door. We showed her every other aisle in the joint trying to persuade her that a toy other than a stuffed animal would be a better choice. We have about 1,263,987 stuffed animals. The only other thing she wanted at all was a Hannah Montana wig. A stuffed animal was bad enough, but the wig? No. I do NOT think so. Those things get matted and gross within thirty minutes of coming out of the package.

Note to the grandparents: This is not a good gift idea. The wig will find its way to the trash rather quickly. I promise.

The New Playset

The girls got a BIG birthday present this year. They also got it early. All the grandparent's helped us out a little bit so that we could get exactly what we wanted, so a BIG thank you to Granny, Papa, Wheezer, Poppers, Granddad and Grandma. It already has probably 40 man hours of play and it's only a week old with several cold, windy days where no one played on it. In mom's book it is a success because all the neighborhood kids are outside....ahhhhhh, bliss!

A view of the whole thing:


A view of the back which includes the bottom deck. There is a cool mailbox attached so it makes a great house:


An action shot:


It has been used so much by all the kids that the grass is already starting to wear away at the bottom of the slide and under the swings. Kids came out of the woodwork the day it was installed. We even met the kids that live in the house behind us (who we had never seen before). They were hanging over their wrought iron fence with hang-dog expressions gazing wistfully at all the kids playing. Finally one of them got up enough courage to yell, "Can we come over and play too?" So they've been over every day since then. Luckily, they are well behaved kids. The playset looks a bit like an ant hill when all the kids are going in 9 directions at once.

Really? Nothing since Thanksgiving....

Obviously, I've got to get on the ball. I will seriously try to update more (we've all heard this before, right?) with both pictures and stories.

I guess the biggest story in our life right now is that Ella has now reached the age of lying. DRAT! It's been building for awhile--little stories here, a white lie there. Well, last night she got caught in her first ever boldface lie. I told her to put shoes on before she went outside. A few minutes later she comes running through the front door and proceeds into the living room with no shoes on her feet. I said, "I thought I told you to put shoes on before you went outside." She says "I took them off as soon as I came back inside." Fast-forward to us getting ready to leave for church. Her shoes are no where to be found because they were in the car where she left them after school. UGH! Sad moment for Mommy. I've been hoping to avoid the first actual lie for a bit longer. She was disciplined for disobeying and disiplined further for lying. To her credit she was heartbroken that she would have to earn our trust back. She bawled and said, "You don't believe me anymore!" I'm very proud of her for realizing the truly serious part of telling a lie.

To end on a good note, I will also say that I think five is going to be a good year. We went to the play structure at Chick-Fil-A the other day. I hollered to Ella that it was time to leave. Cue the whining, cue the crying, cue the arguing. Huh? There was NONE! In its place I heard, "I have to go now. It's time for me to go home. Just a second Mommy. I'm not at the slide yet." A few second later she appears at the bottom, grabs her shoes, puts them on her feet and says, "Come on Brenna. It's time to go home now." So that's what gaining maturity looks like. AWESOME!