A kiss before I go

I know as soon as I say this it will end, but Annie's taking a nap (SSHHHH! Not so LOUD!). Of course, it's after 2 so I'm probably highly jeopardizing a smooth bedtime, but I like to live dangerously. So, in the meantime I wanted to mention a couple of funny things Annie's been saying/doing lately. As I've mentioned before Annie is incredibly, painfully shy, an attribution I have a hard time understanding given who she spends most of her waking life with, but regardless, Annie has come up with what I find to be a precious coping mechanism. If we're in public and Annie wants to "check in" with Mom just to ground herself, she'll run up to me and "Mwoah!" kiss the air near me, or my leg, or my face, whichever is closer. And then run away. She is also very concerned about the wellbeing of others. If there's a kid who has cried in her presence, she will mention it (to exhuastion) for several days afterwards. There is still an instance of "Other kid cried in the gym?" that happened when she was in school over a week ago, which I did not witness myself, so clearly there can be no resolution. It's like she's telling on people, but more out of concern than spite and substantially well after the fact. Lastly, and this frustrates me to NO END, is whenever I ask Annie why she's done something or what's the matter, she'll always say, "Yeahhh" in a very agreeing tone (like "I know!") instead of actually answering the question. If there's something that can send Mommy running for the grown-up grape juice, that would be it. I'm hoping soon she'll figure it out, if only for the sake of her mother's sobriety.

Move over, Mama ... No, really, move over.

Since Annie is pretty much giving up a rest time entirely (and taking my sanity with it), the blog isn't as fruitful as it once was. Currently, I am listening to her "cry" in her crib over the monitor. So I'll make this brief, lest someone calls the authorities. I wanted to post this video of Annie actually touching animals. Repeat, she TOUCHED them. This is a rare occurance and took a good 15 minutes of acclimation and demonstration before she would even consider it (notice, I actually have to bring her hand over to the wallaby). Also, some of the animals got confused as to who is supposed to pet whom and I nearly got a faceful of hay. Enjoy.

We'll make her a Texan yet

Annie is yet again graced by a visit from her grandparents Oma and Papa Joe. They came to see Annie and the Rodeo, but I imagine also to escape the unbelievably mean winter they've been having up north. We were happy to oblige. Annie really gets a kick from people who fawn over her relentlessly, so the grandparents are her new favorite fan club. We've been very busy showing them all the sights and sounds of Annie's Houston. First there was her music class, a meetup playgroup at our apartment complete with storytime, a trip to the zoo, to the Rodeo and to the Butterfly Sanctuary (Annie only gently screamed this time) at the Museum of Natural History. We're all exhausted. In fact, Annie started napping again, so anyone who knows my sleep-fighting daughter knows that we're telling the truth about our state of tuckered out-ness.

But back to being a Texan. You might have seen above my mention of the Rodeo, excuse me, the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. It's huge, in a way only something in Texas could be huge. We felt we couldn't get the full Texas experience if we didn't attend at least once during our tenure here. We stuck to the kid-themed events and I think we only saw about 1/20 of what was at this thing. Sorry, no bucking broncos for us, but we did get Annie to pet some goats and sheep (which required a lasso itself if you know anything of her love/hate relationship with farm animals--see photo left). She also got to "work on a farm" harvesting various items and trading them in for a "dollar" which she then used at their general store to buy some cheese crackers. Awesome. Her favorite part, however, was hands-down the tractor exhibit put on by John Deer. There were farm-sized tractors for the kids to climb into and "drive" (they even had a screen to project a virtual farm scene drive-through to make the experience even more mind blowing for her). Sad to say, but it is rare I see this level of joy beaming from my daughter. The transition to full-on Texan though is not complete as Annie refused the invitation of a cowboy hat purchase for her. We'll work on it.