Little Miss is 2

Little Miss Victoria Jean is two years old!! We celebrated with a party over at Pops and Gigi's house with just the immediate family. It was a cluster celebration with my little bro's fiancee's birthday and Pops and Gigi's anniversary, but don't get me wrong, Victoria was definitely at the center of it all.

Playing with the bubble machine from Uncle Corey and soon to be Aunt Katie.

Very carefully opening each and every present.

Time for the blessing.

Some cookie with Pops. He is always good for it.

C'mon Riley, smile normal.

I believe she was all smiled out by this point.

At age two, Victoria is full of joy and life. She has a bit of drama throughout her day, but springs back from most things fairly quickly. She is blatantly defiant and does it most times with a bit of a grin, but responds well to a firm word from Mommy or Daddy. She knows the rules of the house, but still chooses to test them every so often. So different than Riley in that respect. She is definitely my shadow and mimics almost everything I do. One of her favorite things to do it pretend to put on make-up while I am putting on mine. She also pretends to put lotion on and put mousse in her hair. We went for her two year check-up (only one shot this time - YAY!, but she also has a sinus infection - BOO!), and she is in the 80% on height and 90% on weight. I new she was bigger than most two year old's because she has outgrown most of her 24 month and 2T clothes and because it absolutely kills me to hold her longer than about two minutes, but wow ... she's a big girl!

Her little voice at times sounds so much like Riley that I sometimes do a double take. I think that I can for the most part translate her little toddler-speak:

"shyer" - pacifier
"na-a" - banana
"byee" - Riley
"daee" - Daddy
"kay-i" - Caroline (this is a new one that just started this week, took me forever to figure it out)
"mock" - milk
"doa" - Dora
"coo-ee pees" - cookie please
"moe" - remote control
"meer" - come here
"peh-pain" - airplane
"choo-tray" - choo-choo train
"bap-ty" - bath time
"shuh-sheem" - ice cream
"bah-er" - water

I love that she says bye-bye to EVERYTHING - the cold weather when we get in the car "bye-bye code", the bathtub, the dog everytime we leave the house, her crib when she gets up from her nap, the TV, the couch, my bathroom ... kinda weird, but totally cute. Then there is the "tank you belcom" which is thank you and your welcome. She says this as one fluid word everytime she is supposed to just say thank you. She still plays with Riley's toys (tractors, cars and legos) but I did see her playing with her dolls this past week. Then later that day I caught her like this:

So, at age two here are some of Victoria's likes and dislikes:

Likes: Whatever Riley likes, bananas, shoes, star dolly, Dora, singing, dancing with Mommy and Riley, going bye-bye, brushing her teeth, picking out her own clothes - especially the old t-shirts that have the stains on them and are not allowed to be worn outside the house, books, putting anything in her stroller and pushing it around the house, oreos, her blanket and pillow, talking to Grandma and Grandpa on the webcam, trucks, riding in the buggy at Albertsons that looks like a car, grilled cheese sandwhiches, Gigi, pulling Riley's hair (have no idea where she learned ths from), and giving kisses.

Dislikes: Mommy fixing her hair, almost anything that is not her idea, Riley's door shut, getting her diaper changed, dinner, Daddy getting her out of her crib, vegetables, Riley being at school all day (me too), shopping, and wearing socks.

Dearest Victoria,

I am just so absolutely in love with you. You are so much fun to be around. I so enjoy our days together. You make me smile and laugh often. You definitely keep me on my toes. You are always so chatty when it is just you and me. I love that. Never stop doing that. You have a sweet yet sassy personality. You are beautiful. You are loving. You are decisive. You do not waiver. You are not easily persuaded. God gave you all the qualities for a reason. My prayer is that this will create in you a boldness and courage to share your faith and God's love to those around you and to be in this world and not of it. I hope you will learn this next year to trust me and Daddy, more. I'm telling you darlin', we know what is good for you ... especially when it comes to food.

Love,
Mommy

P.S. - Just a heads-up sweetheart ... I do believe that the pacifier will be making it's exit in the next month or so. It is time.

With all her new toys, here she is at the end of her big birthday
playing with a old van we got Riley years ago and some
Star Wars action figures. Whatever.

Spring Break

Maybe one day we will be that family that sets off to fabulous destinations on Spring Break. But in the meantime, this Spring Break will probably be a typical Spring Break for the Thompsons.

Monday - Sleep late. Run errands. Reward kids with a Slurpee from 7-11 for being good while running errands. Pull weeds in the front and back yard for 2 hours. Everyone, including Mommy goes to bed at 8PM.

Tuesday - Sleep late. Can't hardly move from weed-pulling fun that was had yesterday. Keep pajamas on all morning while playing with kids and trying not to move too much. Get new church shoes for Riley and groceries from Walmart. Again, a banner day.

Wednesday - Sleep not-so-late. Go to friend's house to play all morning. Have a blast! Come home and nap. Spot clean carpets that evening.

Thursday - Sleep late. Eat breakfast around 10AM. Go to park and play around 11AM. Grab Sonic and return to the park for more playing. Come home and collapse on the couch or in the crib, depending on who you are. Go get ice cream that night for 10 great jobs in the "Great Job Can"- whoo-hoo!

Friday - Sleep late, again. Watch tons of Dora and Diego all morning with the kids on the couch. Spend most of the late afternoon and evening on a 5 hour shopping trip to find a dress to wear to my bro's wedding next weekend. Find two possibilities, buy them both, try them on for Carey and the kids when I get home almost after dark and am told that they just won't do. Have Riley take a picture of me in the two dresses. Totally agree with the hubby on this one. Put kids to bed early so that hubby and I could watch the series finale of Battlestar Galatica (teary-eyed, sniff, sniff).

So, how will I top this Spring Break next year? Well, as you can see, it can only go up from here.

Went to the park today ...

... and had an absolute blast!

Yes, I cut her bangs

Little girl hair ... definitely a learning process. The sides are too short and the middle is too long. They really need to be evened out a bit, but I am scared that I will make it worse. So, I will just leave as is and try again in about a month.

I just can't bring myself to go pay someone $10 to cut her bangs and trim the back. She doesn't have that much hair ... yet. I mean, I opened and closed the scissors maybe 7 or 8 times last night. That comes out to a little over $1 for each snip.

Nope, not gonna do it. Not yet. I would like to wait until it requires more than 7 or 8 snips to cut her hair ... possibly 20 or so. Then we will pay for the haircut.

Besides, I still have burned into my brain Riley's first trip to a no-kidding real live "haircut store" (that is what he calls it). He just turned two. The stylists had absolutely no patience. There was a lot of crying. There was some blood too. Not fun. I do believe that either Daddy or Pops took Riley to get his haircut for the next 3 years. Seriously. I was not going to go through that again.

Give me some time, Victoria. I will figure out how to cut and style your hair.

If not, I am sure Gigi will come to your rescue and just take you in herself.

Tax Return Time

Ok all of you do-it-yourselfers out there. I have just the thing for you to use to prepare and file your tax return. It is so easy to use and totally FREE.

www.taxact.com

It gives you all these easy questions to answer and then populates and calculates your return for you. You have to deal with the annoying question of do you want to upgrade your return now for only $9.99 and get the super deluxe service. Just ignore this, click no and move on. A necessary evil I suppose for getting to use it for free. Then when you are done, just e-file the baby and you will get your refund (hopefully you are getting a refund) in only 2 short weeks. SWEET!!

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to email me. I don't mind at all. It will help me exercise that CPA muscle in me and make me feel more useful.

Looky looky!

Home Improvement Project #2 - Install French Doors for the Office

Estimated cost - $350
Estimated time to complete - 5 or 6 hours
Demolition - Some
Degree of difficulty (1-10) - about a 6, only because hanging doors is a bit of an art and we have some fitting issues

So, our tax refund was deposited into our checking account on Friday. Saturday morning we are at Lowes buying our brand new french doors. The big questions ... (1) glass or no glass, (2) pre-hung or make the jams, and (3) cut the doors to fit the opening or cut the opening to fit the doors.

We went with the pre-hung french doors with the glass and we did a little cutting on the doors and the opening.




So, approximately 10 hours and $390 later, we have the finished project.


Pretty snazzy! And Carey did an amazing job of finishing it off. They really look like they came with the house. But, don't look to closely at them when you come over ... the paint job is lacking a bit. We ran out of paint, so I will attempt to do some touch-ups this next week to pretty them up. But some areas are a bit beyond touch-ups. The wood bubbled up some in a couple of places. Not sure what happened. We will have to try to fix those areas another way. Also, the doors are a bit snug against each other. This was not planned, but after some thought, I would prefer it to be a bit difficult to open. That way, the little ones cannot open the door on their own. A child-proofing door hanging if you will. So, if Carey is working in the office, he won't have little visitors constantly coming in and out.

So, five years after telling Carey that I wanted french doors on the office (of course five years ago it was the office of our dream home in Granbury, which we sold after living there for only 14 months so that Carey could go to law school ... don't get me started on that) I FINALLY got them. Yay!!

And BTW, Home Improvement Project #1 was the deck ... which will be completed hopefully in the next couple of weekends. Can't wait for that!!!