Multiplyin'

Annabelle and I are working on her "homework" for their "100th Day of School" celebration.  She has to count 100 of something.  We picked dinosaur shaped sprinkles.  As we were starting to count them, I said, "There are 5 different colors of sprinkles.  Why don't we sort them by color equally.  If there are 5 colors, how many do you think we'd need of each color?"  I was fully expecting to go over the counting with her to figure this out, but instead she immediately (seriously, like within 2 seconds) replied "20!"  I said, "That's right, how did you know that?" (thinking may she had just guessed, but nope...) She replied "Because 20 5 times is 100!"
That's right!

Lunch Date with My Corgan

On Our Lunch Date

This morning I dropped Juliet off with my mom and I got to go with Corgan's class on their field trip.  The field trip went late enough that he missed lunchtime at school, so I decided to take the free time before we had to pick up Annabelle to go on a Lunch Date with my boy!
When I asked Corgan where he wanted to go on our date, his first answer was Chick-fil-A.  I told him I wanted to go on a real date so we needed to go somewhere fancier than Chick-fil-A, a real restaurant.  He said "Okay... Can we go somewhere with smoothies for dessert?"  So we went to Longhorns. :)
On the way there, I prepped Corgan with how a gentleman should act on a date.  I told him he should open doors for me, hold my hand, be sweet, order for himself, and that I'd even let him pay (with my money, of course).  He was excited to try it!
When we got there, Corgan immediately grabbed my hand to hold it crossing the parking lot, then when we were safely out of the street, he ran ahead of open the door for me.  I thanked him as I entered the doors.  When we sat down, we immediately looked at the menus so he would know what he wanted to order.  When the waiter came to take our orders, Corgan proudly asked for "Chicken fingers and broccoli, please" but he kept his eyes down when he said it.  I told him to say it again and look at the waiter, and he happily did it.  During the meal, he was sweet and offered me his oranges ("You can have my oranges because I know you like them."), talked to me about his field trip, and we played some of the games on his menu.  The only "gentleman" thing he wouldn't do is sit down and put his napkin on his lap ("I'm not going to spill anything, Mommy.").  He was a wonderful date!
On the way out, I accidentally started to open the door for myself.  He gave me a big "Mommy!" and I stepped back and closed the door when I realized what I'd done.  He then held the door for me, and even held it for someone else to come inside (without me asking) before he closed it.  Then, he held my hand on the way back out to the car, and the cherry on top was that he ran to open my car door for me!  I never even mentioned the car door!
I can't wait to see what a little gentleman my little guy is going to be, and I'm so thankful to our pastor, Nicole Olinski, for this idea!  I'm going to have no problem exceeding my "dates with Corgan" goal!

My 2012 Goals

I realize that I'm a week late posting my goals for 2012, but I wanted to take a little time to really think about what I wanted to do this year. I made a list of goals for 2009, and it was a great success because I accomplished every one of the goals that year. In 2010, I created another list, and although I didn't accomplish all of the goals, I was able to check off quite a few. :) The goals that I did check off include getting lasik (in July 2010), part of "be in super duper shape" (I completed the Pineappleman Triathlon in 1:43:05 and the Art Festival 5K in 25:53- beating my record of 26:20 from 2009), was VERY active with Nana's House (including collecting items for fundraisers, helping Annabelle to raise $1200 in the walk-a-thon, producing promotional materials for fundraisers, giving presentations, getting them on facebook, and more), I visited a new U.S. State (Utah- February for a Ski Trip and a day of touring Salt Lake City), I saw "Wicked" (with Carla Ely during our trip to NYC in the fall and we splurged for 6th row seats), Keith and I took an "alone" trip as a 7th Anniversary cruise in the Caribbean, hopefully Annabelle and Corgan would agree that I was the best mom that I could be, and my most significant accomplishment was becoming pregnant with Juliet in October!  Some of the goals that I wasn't able to check off, will now appear on my 2012 list (I missed making one in 2011).

So, without further ado, here is my official list of...
KERI DONALD'S GOALS FOR 2012!

• Donate to Locks of Love
• Yes, it's 2 years later, and my hair is just NOW finally long enough to donate without leaving myself with a super-short hair cut.  Look for the new shorter "do" to be coming very soon!
• Finish Filling the Empty Picture Frames in My House
• During my period of bedrest in June 2011, I managed to fill most of the frames, but a few were left empty to fill them once Juliet was born and some where I just couldn't decide on the right picture.
• Continue to Make Contributions to Help People in My Community and Beyond
• I plan to continue to volunteer with Nana's House, but have become passionate about a few other organizations that I am very interested in helping where I can.  These organizations include The South Brevard Sharing Center, KeepVolunteering.org, Scotty Sacks, and Need-based Scholarships in information technology at UA.
• Grow Spiritually
• Regular Prayer/Devotional Time Daily
• Become Active at our church (Grace Church Melbourne), including attending services and catching up on missed services online and helping out where needed
• Read books on having a relationship with Jesus and watch tv shows that educate me on the history of the Bible
• Support Keith with Pastime, his new creative/entrepreneurship venture!
• Help Annabelle to grow in her interests
• Teach her to ride a bike
• Do a few races (running and/or kid triathlons) with her
• Teach her at least 50 words in French
• Finish her "Fairy Forest" and work with her on redecorating her handmade doll house
• Help Corgan to grow as a young man
• Keep working on his math skills as long as he's interested
• Take him out on at least 3 "dates" to teach him all about being a gentleman
• Help Corgan to become more independent in getting himself ready to leave the house
• Help Juliet to grow into toddlerhood
• Teach her sign language
• Give her all of the love (and more) that a baby needs!
• Help my marriage to grow
• Go on a getaway with ONLY Keith (no kids and no other friends/family)
• Make plans for a date night at least once a month
• Read at least one book on getting the most out of our marriage
• Be a "Fit" Version of Me!
• I may have a hard time breaking my records in both the Art Festival 5K and the Pineappleman Triathlon this year, but I intend to give it my all!  My fitness goals are:
• To once again break 26 minutes in a 5K race (this was a "life goal" that I met in 2009)
• Finish the Pineappleman Triathlon in 1:42 or better and to complete at least one more sprint triathlon
• Have a respectable time in a 10K race
• Do something "active" an average of 4 times per week throughout the year
• Run a mile in under 7:30
• Get through Level 1 of Rosetta Stone French
• Complete a "366" (not "365" since it's leap year) Photo Project for 2012
• FINALLY complete the Media Room!

Here's to a successful 2012!

Juliet LOOOVES her Annabelle!

Last night I sat on my bed with Juliet chatting with 'Cole for a little bit. Annabelle stopped in to stay good night to us and to play with her baby sister for a few moments before heading to bed. Juliet was all smiles as Annabelle coo-ed and smiled at her, but as soon as Annabelle left the room, Juliet immediately burst into all-out sobbing! It was the cutest thing ever! I immediately called Annabelle back into the room to see if her presence would make Juliet happy again. As soon as Juliet got a look at her big sister, the tears stopped. Annabelle came over and gave her baby sis one last kiss, then headed out the door again and, immediately, the waterworks started again! We repeated this experiment a good few more times, all with the same results! It was SOOOO stinkin' cute!

I love that at only 4 months old, Juliet LOOOVES her Big Sister Annabelle SOOO much! I'm such a lucky Mommy!

Annabelle's 2nd Tooth Fairy Visit

Last week Keith bought some hard foam softballs that are standard softball size and started practicing with the kids on catching fly balls. He even rainbowed the balls to them at 2nd base from home plate, and they did very well at catching quite a few! So, last Friday (October 21st) when Keith took the kids outside for a little practice before our Saturday morning game, Annabelle wanted to try catching a fly ball with a real softball! Keith reluctantly popped up a few to her from about 20-30 feet away as I watched from the sidelines. She had a few misses, but then one went straight toward her glove... and into her face!
Annabelle immediately burst into tears as blood started gushing from her mouth! I saw her violently toss something from her mouth into the grass. I ran over to check on her and her bottom tooth was missing! I asked her "Did you just throw your tooth into the grass?" She realized that the thing that she had just thrown down was, in fact, her tooth, and the waterworks REALLY opened up! She refused to go inside and clean up the blood (which was GUSHING out of her mouth) until we found the tooth! I tried to explain to her that the Tooth Fairy would be able to find the tooth better than we would because of her tooth radar and that she would still get her dollar even if the tooth wasn't in her pillow, but she just wouldn't accept that. As soon as I finished explaining that, Keith miraculously spotted the teeny-tiny little baby tooth in the grass! I could not believe he found it since Annabelle had run a good 10 feet away from where she threw down the tooth before realized what had happened and went back to look for it!
With the baby tooth in hand, Annabelle and I went inside to clean her up. Once she calmed down and realized that she was going to get another visit from the Tooth Fairy, she wasn't nearly as upset. And now she has a cool "how I lost my tooth" story to tell!
For tooth #2, the Tooth Fairy left her another special dollar. She really liked how the Tooth Fairy colored and wrote on her first dollar, so the Tooth Fairy decorated this dollar too. :)

Close up:

Like with Annabelle's first dollar, The Tooth Fairy wrote her name, the date of the tooth, and the tooth number on the dollar so Annabelle would always remember it. She also circled and colored all of the 2s (for tooth number 2), colored an A (for Annabelle), and spiced up ole' George with some color (which Corgan did NOT like, for the record). Annabelle LOVES that the Tooth Fairy loves art like she does! :)

How'd We Get "Juliet"?

Long before we knew that Baby Donald 3.0 (now known as Juliet) was a girl, I had fallen in love with the name Aurora. I thought for sure that my next girl after Annabelle would be named Aurora. Keith likes the name, but isn't in love with it like I am. One day not long after we discovered that we were pregnant with baby #3, I had mentioned that I kinda liked the name Juliet. Keith immediately jumped all over that name.

I think the reasons that I feel a connection to the name "Juliet" is because I have always really liked the Romeo and Juliet story. I was a fan of the story when I was in middle school when we watched the movie in 8th grade English class. I chose a scene from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to act out in my 9th grade English class, and I wrote a "Verona Times" newspaper for a computer class in high school. Then many years later, when we visited Northern Italy in 2006, we made a trip to Verona, the residence of the Shakespeare's fictional Juliet. In Verona, we visited Casa di Giulietta (Juliet's House) where we were able to walk through the house created for the fictional Juliet character, stand on her famous balcony, and even rub her right breast for luck (oh yeah, and Keith got pooped on by a bird while we were there, but that has nothing to do with the story)!

Fast forward a few years to 2010... Marian (Keith's sister), Annabelle, and I tagged along on a business trip that Keith had in Munich, Germany. In Munich, Verona's "twin town", we happened upon the same bronze statue of Juliet that I saw in Verona. It turns out that Munich's Juliet statue was a gift from Verona. Of course, we rubbed her breast for luck there too!

Keith's connection to Juliet, in my opinion, stems from his infatuation with another fictional Juliet, Dr. Juliet Burke from LOST. Simple as that.

Because we both really like the name Juliet, it was definitely a top choice for a possible girl name for Baby Donald 3.0. When we told the kids about it, they didn't like it at all at first. Once we showed them the trailer (and website for) the new Gnomeo & Juliet movie, they warmed up to the name a bit (but only if baby had brown hair and green eyes).

When Juliet was born, we immediately decided that she was 100% "Juliet"! She is a perfect little Juliet, and I love that we both feel a connection to her name!

One final note, when I was in the hospital after giving birth to Juliet, the movie Letters to Juliet was one of the on-demand movies available to watch. I had never even heard of the movie, but was very excited to watch it based on the name alone, and even more excited when I realized that it was set in Verona and revolved around the letters to Juliet that are left at the Casa di Giulietta!

Taking the Time to Stop and Smell The Baby

Now that my first baby is in kindergarten, I really know what "they" have been talking about when they say "They grow up so fast!"

For a couple of reasons, I feel like I appreciate Juliet's newborn stage so much more than I appreciated it with Annabelle and Corgan. With Annabelle, I was never a nervous new mom and generally felt like I knew what I was doing, but everything was still so new to me. I was still always learning this new stay-at-home Mom routine and my new role as "Mommy". Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed relaxing on the sofa with her and getting excited about every little new thing that she did, but I didn't realize how fast every little stage would pass me by and didn't know to really just take it all in and appreciate it. Then when Corgan came along I already knew many of the Mommy tricks to caring for a newborn, but I had an 18 month old Annabelle to take care of at the same time. Corgan was a slightly easier baby from the perspective of him sleeping a little better than Annabelle did and he had less health problems than she did (although all of hers were fairly minor), however I rarely had the time to focus solely on Corgan without being totally exhausted myself.

Now, it's 4 years later and I already have "raising two newborns" under my belt. I did forget a few things, but most of it is comes back to me in an "ah-ha" moment. My next youngest "baby" was already nearly 4 when Juliet was born, so I don't really have another baby to constantly keep an eye on. Both of the Bigs are in school, so at the very least I have a few hours in the morning to focus on (or nap along with) just Juliet. A few days a week I have even more time than that because my parents now live nearby and love to take care of the Bigs in the afternoons too. Now that I am very confident in my mommy skills (as a mom of a newborn anyway), there is really very little "am I doing this right?" type anxiety with Juliet. I also realize how fast she will change, so I am really taking in every little moment that I have with her. I am doting on every little grin, every little coo, and every little snuggle. I LOVE to sit and play with her by sticking my tongue out as she mimics me and does the same or by laughing a silly laugh just to make her smile a smile so big that I can't help but smile and laugh even more! I also LOVE when I motor-boat my lips and she attempts to do it too. Or when she sees me chewing or talking and she opens and closes her mouth like she's trying to chew or talk too. I can see the intensity in her eyes as she tries to figure out how to do it!

To make things even better, I notice even more things that I never noticed before because her Bigs are so in love with her too and they constantly point out the adorable things that she does. They both LOVE to sit and talk to their little baby. They rarely call her their "little sister", she is their "little baby" or "baby girl". When she is in a swing or somewhere by herself and starts to cry, it isn't long before one or both of the Bigs is by her side trying to calm her by singing (usually either "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" or "Rock-a-bye Baby") and smiling at her. They constantly ask to hold her and both are getting quite good at it. They have never shown one ounce of jealousy in all (nearly) 3 months since she's been home! Annabelle daily remarks that she is the prettiest baby that she's ever seen, and she even adores the sound of Juliet's cry! Just yesterday she was describing her favorite of Juliet's cries to me, then when Juliet cried that way later in the day, Annabelle pointed out "That's the cry that I love!" followed by a little "Awe" in honor of how cute it was! I never would have imagined that 3 months later, they would still be so infatuated with their baby sister! I love that the excitement of the newness of Juliet continues with each new thing that she does, and I think that excitement rubs off on me too!

With Annabelle and Corgan, I felt like I couldn't wait for the next milestone and was always looking toward what they would do next. But with Juliet, I know that "next" will come soon enough, so I am in no rush at all. It does seem like the past 3 months have really flown by, but at the same time, I feel like I have let myself really enjoy them not only with Juliet and her newbornness, but with appreciating Annabelle and Corgan's new roles as Big Sister and Big Brother. Yes, Annabelle has been a Big Sister for over 4 years now, but it's definitely a different kind of role with being five-and-a-half years older as opposed to one-and-a-half year older. I know with my little brother (who is 7.5 years younger than me), I had a very different, almost motherly, relationship than I did with my sister (who is only 2.5 years younger). I very much value both of those types of relationships, and I am very glad that Annabelle and Corgan now seem to have both types in their sibling dynamics.

These first 3 months as a family of 5 have already been amazing, and I look forward to seeing what the future brings... but I'm not in a hurry to get there. :)

Annabelle's First Visit from the Tooth Fairy!

Annabelle's first loose tooth has been loose for quite a while. In fact, I was starting to get worried because she was experiencing what her dentist called "shark tooth"...

Last night, she FINALLY had a break through (literally)! Annabelle was eating jello (of all things!) and all the sudden started crying because her mouth hurt and was bleeding. I told her that losing her tooth was going to hurt a little, but that she should keep working at it and maybe it would come out soon. Not five minutes later she came running out of the bathroom with her tooth in her fingers and a hole in her mouth! I haven't seen her this excited about anything since Christmas morning!

For the rest of the night, her tooth was all that she could talk about! She was going over her ideas of what the Tooth Fairy would bring and told me about what some of her friends got from the Tooth Fairy. We discussed that the Tooth Fairy collects teeth because she takes them back to her home and grinds them up to make magic pixie dust. She was excited that she was going to get to tell her class and teacher about it the next day and that she would get to wear a "tooth necklace" in class. She even asked me exactly what time her tooth fell out so that she could tell her class when it happened (my estimate was 5:00). She was so excited that she wanted me to call her teacher and tell her about it right then. Instead, I offered to email her teacher about it and send a picture. She repeatedly said "I still can't believe that I lost a tooth!" As we talked about the Tooth Fairy, she ran to her room to retrieve the "TOOTH" pillow that my sister and I used as kids (Thank God she knew where it was because I had no idea!).

When bedtime came, Annabelle put her tooth into her pillow and put the TOOTH pillow next to her pillow. After saying her prayers, she told God that her "Thankful For" thing for the day was losing her tooth.

Once she went to bed, my Tooth Fairy job began. I had already hit facebook to ask my fellow Tooth Fairies for help on the going rate for teeth. Armed with this knowledge, I decided to go with a treasure hunt approach to giving Annabelle a special dollar for her tooth. At first I was hoping to give her a dollar coin, but in the end I'm glad I ended up with a paper dollar because then I (I mean, the Tooth Fairy) could write on it. I went to work cutting out "clue" paper and armed with my pen and crayons, I made up the clues.

I finished my clues around midnight and went around the house planting the clues. Once all of the clues were out, I went to Annabelle's room to put the first clue into her pillow and retrieve the baby tooth. As I slipped my hand into the pillow to get the tooth, my girl who sleeps through EVERYTHING immediately opened her eyes and said "What are you doing?!" I told her I was heading to bed and just wanted to check to see if the Tooth Fairy had come yet. Whew! I thought I had just blown the whole Tooth Fairy thing before she ever got to enjoy it! Fortunately she believed me, and just asked if she had come yet or not. I told her the tooth was still there and that she was probably waiting for Mommy & Daddy to go to bed too so that we wouldn't see her. She laid her head back down and drifted right back to sleep.

Not wanting to be caught again, I was struggling with whether to make my second attempt at the tooth/clue exchange before going to sleep or to wait until the middle of the night (or early morning). Also, I didn't want her to wake up and find the clue in her pillow before the morning because I REALLY wanted the treasure hunt to happen when it was light out, not in the wee hours of the night. Before falling asleep around 1 a.m., I decided to try again (in hopes of turning off my 3 a.m. alarm clock setting), and this time I was successful! Go Tooth Fairy!

After that, everything went exactly as I had hoped! Annabelle woke up to her alarm clock in the morning, found the first clue, and immediately came to show me! I helped her read the first clue, and she immediately found the second. She ran around collecting clues, getting more excited with each one that she found! While she collected clues, she told me that the Tooth Fairy probably gave her clues because she knew that she loves treasure hunts. She also complimented the Tooth Fairy's drawing and coloring skills (especially on the Wii Fit game), and she told me a story about how she actually saw the Tooth Fairy in her loft when she opened her eyes for a second. She said that she only saw her head with beautiful long blonde hair and her pink wand, and she thinks she didn't see anything else because she left quickly when she saw that Annabelle was awake. The whole time Corgan was on her heals helping her to find the next clue. It was priceless!

When she finally found the "prize" special dollar bill, she was on cloud 9! She loved that the Tooth Fairy wrote her name and the date on her special dollar AND that she loves coloring so much that she colored on the dollar bill too!

After Annabelle's hunt was done, Corgan said "Okay, my turn now!" When I told him that he was going to have to wait until he lost his first tooth to get to do a treasure hunt from the Tooth Fairy, he was totally bummed!

Annabelle asked to bring her dollar to school so that she could share about it in front of her class. She assured me that another friend had taken her dollar in a few days earlier, so I let her bring it (and cleared it with her teacher before she took it into the class). When I picked Annabelle up from school, she was so proud to be able to be wearing her tooth necklace and her teacher told me all about how well Annabelle did telling her class all about her tooth experience.

I am having a hard time believing that my baby is old enough to have lost a tooth, but I never imagined that this experience would be so much fun for her! She has been giddy about it all day long, telling me her "I saw the Tooth Fairy" story and about how she keeps reaching for her tooth to wiggle it only to remember that it's already gone! She has also commented many times that she can't bite her fingernails now because she doesn't have a tooth there. Her "Thankful For" again tonight was losing her tooth. I love her excitement, and I loved being her Tooth Fairy! I can't wait for Corgan's turn!

Calendar Smarts

The other day when I went to pick up Corgan, his new VPK Teacher, Ms. Tara, asked me if we work with calendars at home. She said that she could tell that we did because Corgan is the only kid in the class who is able to answer correctly when she asks things like "If today is Wednesday, how many more days are there until Friday?" That sort of question is one of the things that we go over on a very regular basis. Any time the kids ask "How many more days until _____?" I always tell them, "Today is _____, and that happens on ______, so let's count how many more days." We even do it adding 7 days if things are over a week away. It makes me proud to hear that he is really picking up on that well and it able to show off those skills at school. :)

If I haven't mentioned it before... Corgan LOVES anything to do with math and numbers!

One more thing calendar-related, lately Keith and I have both heard Corgan say "Tomorrow back" when he's talking about something that happened "Yesterday". It's so cute that he came up with that!

Rock-a-Bye Baby as sung by Corgan

Rock-a-my Baby on the tree top
When the wind blows the cradle will rock
Rock-a-my Baby cradle will fall
And then they put Humpty together again!