A mile in my shoes.

As I’ve mentioned in many of my blog posts, Anna is obsessed with my shoes.  Unfortunately, she doesn’t have many from which to choose, so she’s limited.  Her shoe obsession certainly doesn’t come from me.  It doesn’t come from Joe either, thankfully. 

The other day, I was minding my own business, probably sitting on the sofa eating and watching Golden Girls, when all of a sudden I hear clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk.  I think to myself :Hmm, what is Anna in to now?  Is she beating our bedroom TV with one of her toy golf clubs?:

She turns the corner, and this is what I see.  Thankfully, my camera was right within reach.

Yes, those are my shoes.  Yes, that is my child wearing them.  Rather well, I might add!

I love how she takes them off before she walks on the carpet.  I have no idea where she’s learned these manners.

Always Golden.

I’m going to write about my child.  I love being able to look back months/years down the road and see what she’s up to during certain periods of time.  It seems like she grows so quickly.  I look at her and she’s 1” taller and a gagillion times smarter. 

What does Anna look like now?
Crazy.  A little crazy ball of energy with SO much personality.  Messy hair, bumps and bruises, sweaty – this is what she looks like on a daily basis.  Anna, once again, decided to crash Jackson’s two month photo shoot.  Except instead of sitting quietly while I took her picture, she did her best Britney impersonation and made her mean face.  She also kicked at me for good measure – but in a loving way.  <—Is that possible?

 

Here’s a photo of my nephew Jackson at two months.  Isn’t he precious?

 
And here he is flipping all of you off.

Back to Anna. 

I’m not sure how much Anna weighs at this point, but when I stood her on my home scale, it looked to be about 27 lbs.  When I pick her up, it feels more like 270, but that’s because I’m weak and should probably start lifting weights.

She’s a tall, sturdy little girl – rough and tumble.  She likes to run and play and act crazy, spin in circles, dance to music, sing, yell, eat eat (that’s how she says she wants to eat, she always says it twice), feed Cosmo the dog.   She’s already in 2T, sometimes 3T clothes and 6, almost 7 shoes.  Her feet were newborn size for nearly a year, then BAM, boat feet central (just like mom).  That’s OK, it gives her more leverage when she dances.

She’s having a word explosion now.  She can pretty much repeat whatever we say, so now we have to be more aware of the words we use.  Then again, we’re perfect angels with a flawless vocabulary, so of course she’ll only learn appropriate words like love, light and charity. 

The cutest words she says are as follows:

Corn
Onion

Dr. Pepper

Cosmo (maaamo)

Cat
Car (caaaaah)
What that? (except it totally doesn’t sound like this, but we can tell from the inflection and the fact that she puts both hands out in a way that we know what she’s asking)
Shoe
Catch (cak tc)
Keys
Oh no (but it sounds like meow meow)
Eat eat
Cheese
Please (peas)

Thank you (da doot)

Juice (booce)
Milk (meeel)

Laptop (yes, I am serious)
Phone
Paw Paw

Lea Lea (her favorite auntie)
Jackson (babakso)

These are the words I can think of off the top of my head.  There are more, but I’ve forgotten them because that’s what good mothers do.  We forget important things like this.  At this point, she can mimic most of the words we say, and there are many words that she says that only I can understand.  She and I have a language.  I speak baby. 

Her favorite activities are dancing, poking me in the butt, watching Golden Girls, riding in cars, wearing jewelry, stealing all of my purses and wearing them all at one time, playing with her cousin Jackson, spending time with her grandparents, hitting (I mean, petting) Cosmo the dog and Harley and Chloe the cats, trying to hack all things technical – cell phones, laptops, television, DVRs.  She can touch something and completely change all of the settings in 1.5 seconds.  You get your phone back, and everything is in Chinese.  It takes 2 years to fix the damage she’s done.  Hopefully she can use this talent for good instead of evil one day.

As I mentioned above, my child loves watching Golden Girls aka GIRRRRLS.  Whenever she’s angry or upset, I say, “Want to watch Girls?  She immediately shouts, “GIRRRLSSS!”  Then she will watch about 2 or 3 episodes with me.  I promise you I’m not making this up.  She’s way too cool for Yo Gabba Gabba.  She’s traded Foofa for Rose Nylund and Brobee for Sophia.  I can’t say that I mind.  It’s far less annoying to chant the Golden Girls theme in your head all day long vs. some of the ridiculously mind numbing music of YGG (although I do admit to loving the song I Like Sandwiches and I Love Balloons).

Here’s an old skool video of Anna watching Golden Girls.  So, her obsession has been long lasting.  I’m guessing she probably became addicted in utero since I watched the show daily.

So, this is my child.  A funny, sweet, crazy, bundle of energy who loves to laugh, run, jump, play and be around people.  We are truly so blessed to have such a precious child in our lives, and I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to be her mother.  I am looking forward to watching her grow and learn and be everything she will ever want to be.

I love you, Anna. 

Jersey is delicious.

I'll admit that I'm not very well traveled.  Considering my extreme fear of airplanes (aka fiery tubes of death), I don't travel very far.  I will, however, be facing my fear come September, but that's another post for another day.  Stay tuned.

So, only crossing the state lines of a few northern and mid-western states and the majority of the southern states, I've never had the opportunity of witnessing the glorious beauty of New Jersey first hand.  When I say beauty, I mean the hilarious train-wreck of Jerseylicious/Shore/Housewives/Couture.  I actually scour my Tivo box looking for all shows with the keyword Jersey.  Why, you ask?  Because all Jersey shows are incredible.  It's like being transported to another planet - a planet of orange, oompa-loompa-like guidos and giudettes with Snookie-high hair, gold hoops the size of cantaloupes, fist pumping at da club, pasta and gravy, muscles and boobs, hooker shoes and horrible accents.  What's not to love? 

I've made a mental note of the thoughts I have while watching all of these trash-tastic Jersey shows.

Wow, people like this really exist?
Yo, 1992 called, they want you to retire their style now.
It's actually possible to be that orange?  Wait, people think that's attractive?
I wonder how often these girls are propositioned as street walkers.
"Yo, woman, get me some pasta" is not exactly a term of endearment.
Is fist pumping the Roger Rabbit of the 2000s?
How short is too short?
How annoying is too annoying?
How much make-up is too much?
Boundaries, they have no boundaries.

It's all delicious.  It's one hour of mind-numbing and hilarious entertainment.  I'm being introduced to a portion of the population that I never even knew existed.

Party girl.

My child’s social calendar is more full than my own.  She isn’t even in school yet, and she gets invited to more birthday parties than I ever did.  I love it because I get to eat cake, and if you know me, you know I love cake.  Plus, Anna gets to interact with other kids and do cute stuff like steal their polka dot sunglasses and hula hoop like no one’s business.

Keep reading.

We were invited to our good friend’s daughter’s birthday party at the gymnastics club where I worked many moons ago.  It’s a great place and a great space to have a birthday party.  I should know, I had Anna’s first birthday there! 

Here she is doing her best Elton John impersonation with some sunglasses that she stole from some poor little sunglass-less girl.  (Before you wax all judgmental on me, she gave the glasses back.)

Jumping with dad on the trampoline.

Attempting to do a back handspring.

She didn’t get too far. 

All girls like rings, right?

Nope, not Anna.

So, she tries to steal another little girl’s hula hoop. 

We find her another hoop.

Then she drops it and finds a ball instead.  I think she inherited my attention span.

It was a great party with great friends.  And great cake.  Lots and lots of cake. 

Father’s Day FAIL.

One thing I’ve realized over these past 21+ months since becoming a mom is that the opportunity to take quality photos of my child is becoming quite scarce.  You see, when you have an active toddler (ahem, a Tasmanian devil toddler), there are very few moments of opportunity to snap a quality shot.  By the time your shutter actually closes to capture the sweet moment you have envisioned in your mind, your child is already 45 feet away from you with his/her hand in a toilet or walking toward you with a fossilized piece of dog crap – true story.

Last Father’s Day, Anna was a mere 8 months.  At this point, while she was starting to become mobile, she was still under my spell.  She couldn’t move quickly enough to avoid the camera.  HA!  So, I was able to get some cute photos of her for Joe’s Father’s Day card.  She even cooperated to take additional photos for her grandfather and Paw Paw. 

Here’s a little re-cap of how it went down.

Here are some pictures from last year.

This was the final product – I :heart: Dad! 

This year I was going to go a step further and actually try my hand at being creative and artistic.  I went to Michael’s and bought some wooden letters and paint.  I figure I can use these letters every year going forward.  The paper letters I made last year lasted for 1.2 seconds. 

Yeah, it was all a great idea in theory.  After giving myself a hump back from bending over so long while painting these letters, I figured I’d already jumped the hardest hurdle of the day.  Surely my sweet, innocent offspring would be a little angel and pose perfectly for the photo shoot.  Right?  Right?

WRONG!

Here are some of the outtakes of our little Father’s Day 2010 photo shoot.

Nope, you’re not losing your vision, that haze you see is what happens when you take a camera that has been in an air-conditioned house into the great, humid outdoors of the dirty south.  This was really the only decent shot I got of my child that day.  Well, at least she was holding the letter instead of throwing it at me or dunking it in Cosmo’s water bowl. 

Do you like her gladiator sandals?

Wow, look, a ball.  I’m done with photos now.

OK, this one is kind of cute.  I should’ve just made a card with this one heart photo and called it a day.

Let’s make sure we highlight every ugly thing on our back porch. 

Basically every photo was out of focus and blurry because she was running away from the camera the entire time.  I can’t say that I blame her.  It was hot, it was humid, it was the last minute, and she knew it.   I was seriously about to find some other DAD photos online and PhotoShop Anna’s face onto them.  Do you think Joe would’ve known?

Next year I will be better prepared.

Maybe.

Probably not.

Big shoes to fill.

I really couldn’t care less about shoes.  I have a brown pair.  I have a black pair.  I have a dressy pair.  I have a running pair.  I’m good.  Every once in a while I’ll splurge on a BOGO deal at Payless.  Don’t be jealous.  Not everyone can be as stylish as I am. 

What’s really odd about this whole deal is that my child somehow inherited some shoe gene that she certainly didn’t get from me.  Perhaps it skips a generation?  Then again, my mom doesn’t really care about shoes much either.  Maybe Imelda Marcos is a long-lost relative of ours.  If so, please message me to find out where you can send my inheritance check.

Being the lazy person I am, I leave my shoes in various places around the house.  I figure one day I’ll get around to picking them up.  In the meantime, Anna always takes it upon herself to try all of them on for size.  Granted, her feet are the size of boats, but they’re little bass boats.  My feet are huge tugboats.  So, when she wears my shoes, it’s quite comical.  She’s actually mastered walking in my shoes, and she also puts them on the right feet.  She’s a genius, I tell ya.  A shoe obsessed genius. 

<<Side note, as I type this, my child is trying to put my heels on.>>

Here she is trying to fill my big shoes.  She’s doing a heckuva job, too!

Who you lookin’ at?

I believe she’s doing The Hustle right here. 

Do ya think the shoes match her outfit?

I can only hope and pray that I don’t have to sell a kidney to support her shoe habit one day.