Crazy Hair

We all know that Hannah has crazy hair.  We still aren't sure what her hair is going to do, turn straight, or stay curly.  For now we have a nice mess to work with each morning, which most days we just throw a clip or headband in.  Her hair is always so hard to comb through, so most nights we just call it good, and don't brush all the way through her tangles.  She always fights it, and it is one of the battles I choose not to fight, since in the mornings it is always in knots again!  But lately, she has let me braid her hair at night, because she wants to be just like Elsa.  And last night I come in to find this - Daddy combing her hair.  It was his first time combing her hair!  I just loved this moment, and of course had to get a photo of it. 

 

 

And here is her French braid, just like Elsa.  Only she says it isn't as long as Elsa's yet.  So we are working on that.  I get better each time I do the braid, and she gets better at sitting still and letting me work through her hair! 

 

 

Even the hair tie had to be blue, like Elsa.  Frozen is everywhere in this house still!!  I can hear her as I type this sing 'Let it Go' over and over again as it is on repeat in her room.  Good thing the music is great!

Princess Weekend

Our little three year old loves everything princess.  Last weekend was full of fun for her. Friday night she got dressed up like a princess for the daddy daughter dance.  Then Saturday morning Hannah joined her princess loving friend Peyton for the annual Y Princess breakfast.

 

 

 

With Cinderella.  Each girl got a welcome bag with crowns, wands, and necklaces.

 

They also had 'autograph' books where the princesses would sign their books. The girls were so excited to meet each one, get their picture taken, and their books signed. 

 

A little wand fight during breakfast. 

 

Then the girls got to spend one on one time with each princess.  The first room they got to make a head band with pretty jewels, nails painted, and makeup on.

 

Getting her makeup done.

 

Nails painted.

 

Next room they got to play games with Snow White.

 

The best picture I could get with my girl.  She kept putting her wand in front of her face!

 

The girls definitely warmed up throughout the event.  They got brave enough that they would walk up to the princesses and ask to get their pictures taken.

 

And another picture.

 

We got home, napped, and then got up to head to Kendall's 1st birthday party where the girls got to run around together for a  few hours.   

 

The big girls helping Kendall open her presents.

 

Kendall and Luke.  Pretty girl!!  6 months apart.

 

Singing Happy Birthday.

 

This girl was good at eating her cake!

 

Then on Sunday it was finally time for the much awaited Sophia and Jake show.  Hannah has been talking about this since I told them we were going back in November.  Can't you tell by the excitement on her face??!!

 

Grandma Deaner came along to enjoy the show. 

 

Cinderella!

 

Henry and me.  Henry does not show emotion at all during shows (like his mom, Andy says).  So I wasn't sure what he thought - but after it was over he talked a lot about his favorite parts and said he really liked it.  I'm thinking it is probably the last show like this for him.  My big boy is growing up!

 

Hannah was pretty excited to see Minnie Mouse.  She said 'Mom - look it is Minnie!  She is SO cute.'

 

Another busy but super fun weekend in the books.

Daddy Daughter Dance

Friday marked the first annual Daddy Daughter Dance for Andy and Hannah.  Yes, I teared up a bit.  It was pretty precious.  She was seriously so excited to go.  We didn't even have to tell her to put her coat, hat and gloves on.  She did it all herself, and was ready to go at least 10 minutes, which has never happened before (we are always waiting on Hannah to go anywhere). 

 

She got all dressed up.  She let me straighten her hair for the first time, put on makeup and painted her nails.  The finished product.  She looked so grown up and just beautiful.

 

 

This girl is SO in to dresses lately.  So she loves every chance she gets to put on a beautiful dress like this. 

 

Straight hair - and so long!

 

Hannah and her 'prince' as she calls him.

 

I overhead her say to Andy on Monday night 'Daddy!  Remember when we went to the daddy daughter dance??  That was SO much fun.'

 

With her blush on her cheeks (that she did by herself). 

 

This girl has really grown up over the past few weeks.  She gets herself dressed in the morning, actually listens once in awhile, and as Andy says 'she has finally figured out how cool her daddy is'.  Because this girl loves her daddy.  For the first time ever, she chose to ride home with daddy over mommy on Monday night, 'sigh'.  She is one lucky girl, to have such a great prince, that loves her so so much. 

Hannah Lynn Schmidt - 3 Years Old!

Our Little Miss is 3 years old today!  She has had quite the celebration week, starting on Sunday with her birthday party with her favorite Princess Jasmine, her favorite friends and family. 

So proud of her beautiful, purple, princess cake.  Thank you to Grandma Schmidt for making the delicious cake!! 

Stories with Jasmine. 

We all sang Hannah's favorite song 'Happy Birthday'

Her best friends Georgia, Alivia, and Peyton, and her cousin baby Leah's first princess party at just one week old!

Hannah and Jasmine.  

Hannah's 3rd birthday interview - All About Me:

Picked out the perfect treats to bring to school today - purple princess cupcakes with Jasmine!

This morning she had presents waiting for her from mommy and daddy, and her favorite teacher Miss Nina. 

Dressed up for school!

Grandma Deaner and Mommy picked up Hannah early from school and went to Build a Bear.  Hannah picked a pink and purple bear, and she dressed her in pink panties, a tutu, and princess shirt.  

Now we are at home, Hannah was supposed to nap, but didn't, so we will see how the rest of the day goes! What a special day to be able to spend time with just Hannah.  She is one loved little spunky girl who brings so much adventure and joy to our lives! 

Little Momma

Hannah is definitely our little momma.  She loves her toy babies, and real babies so so much.  It is pretty precious, but also super annoying at night because lately she literally takes 30 - 45 minutes to put all of her 'babies' to sleep on their cots.  Check out the picture below.  

She places out all of their 'cots' which are the pillows, then makes sure they each have a pillow for their heads, which can be an actual pillow, or a burp cloth in Minnie's case, then all tucked in with their own blankets.  She then reads them a story, and then pats their backs to get them to go to sleep.  You can see her in the bottom left hand corner, just so excited that she got all of them to sleep! 

So at what point do we start pulling all of her stuff out of her room, or do we at all, since she takes forever to do this?  Andy did it the other night when she was being naughty, and she threw a fit and seriously cried herself to sleep until 9:45pm.  Andy and I have been really good about taking away privileges from the kids when they are misbehaving and not giving in on them, so when she lost her babies in her bed after being naughty, we can't go back on it, even if she does cry, and cry, and cry.  Andy has said we need to just take the toys out completely, since she is taking forever to go to bed at night.  This thought scares me a bit because I think - if she is being quiet, and happy, and staying in her room, is it OK to let her go through this routine?  I have to figure that one out, because we don't need her staying up until 9:45pm putting her babies to bed, but on the other hand, and more selfishly, it is really nice being able to put her in her room at 8:45pm and leaving after reading one book and doing prayers. 

Other little momma moments the past few days:

Here she is putting all of her babies and toys in 'timeout' - absolutely hilarious!!  Most of them were there for biting....

And here she is making sure her brother was tucked in last night while watching a movie in mommy and daddy's bed before bedtime. 

How sweet is that??!!

So I think for now, we will let her continue her routine of little momma since it will be nice to not have to worry about her once baby comes.  Plus, I'm sure this is just a phase, and once her baby brother comes she will be pretty distracted with his arrival and being my little helper.  Maybe we will try putting her down 30 minutes earlier, so she can still go through her routine, but be sleeping a bit earlier.  I'll keep ya posted on how it goes....

Potty Training - All Done!

One of the main reasons for starting this blog was to be able to track the kids progress over the years, since I have been terrible at writing it down in the baby books.  The other day I grabbed Hannah's baby book down from the shelf, and realized I had not written in it since she was 2 weeks old!!  Yikes.  There were so many questions they asked, and I had already forgotten, but sure enough the blog pulled through for me!  One of the questions is on potty training, when did they first wear panties, go on the potty, etc.  So it got me looking back through the blog and I found This One back in September.  So at 27 months she was wearing panties - big girl!  Both of our kids got the pooping on the potty down before the peeing, which is so reversed I know, but hey, this mom is not complaining on that one! 

As far as when she started to tell us she had to go, I'm not really sure when that started.  I'm guessing around 30 months??  We went from asking her every 20 minutes if she had to go, and struggling to make her go, to not having to worry about it, which is so nice to have - especially with baby brother on the way.  Sure, we've had a few times where she looks at me and says 'I HAVE TO GO POTTY!!' while grabbing her girl parts and then pee starts going down the leg.  That is typically when she is very distracted, and deep in play time.  And yes, I have put her on the potty a few times still in her clothes as she has peed right through them - but there was no time to pull the pants down!  But that hasn't happened in the past 4 - 6 weeks.  All part of the process, I guess. 

The other thing with little girls - and this is mainly for my sister who is about to have a girl, but you have to teach them to close their legs when they pee - because if you don't, they push the pee out so hard when they are first learning that pee seriously sprays half way across the bathroom!  That was a shock for both Andy and me and one of those 'AH - WHAT IS HAPPENING??!!' moments that we can now look back on an laugh at.  I can remember being in the bathroom next to her, pee shooting out, not knowing what to do besides shield the pee with my hands, pee seriously everywhere.   

 The one thing that we weren't comfortable with was taking the pull ups away at night.  Our mornings are already crazy enough, and having to deal with a wet bed and a kid covered in pee at 7am was not something we wanted to risk.  So we bought a big ole bag of Princess ones, and over the past 6 months we have used them off and on, depending on how she was feeling, and if she had a lot to drink close to bed time.  We even used some of them a few times over, since they have been dry in the mornings for as long as I can remember.  So the plan was once we used up this last bag of pull ups we would not buy any more and see how it goes. 

Well - that night came last week, the last pullup went on.  We told Hannah after this one was used, she would wear big girl panties from now on.  She didn't care either way since she had been wearing panties off and on anyway, so it was an easy transition.  And we are happy to report that we have not had to deal with wet sheets yet, which I guess shouldn't be a surprise since her pull up hasn't been wet in 3 months (except for a night on vacay in Florida - the kids slept so hard there!!), but still, it was a little nerve wracking for the parents!!  Especially last night after she drank 8 oz of choc milk around 7:30pm...

So for baby book stats, I'm going with:

Poop trained 26 months

Potty trained 27 months

No more pull ups at night 34 months

And one sweet, very independent, little 34 month old peanut (wearing 12 month size shorts and 18 month shirt):

Stamp Loving Girl

We hit up the Disney Store while we were in San Fran to get the kids some 'souviniers' aka 'new toys'.  Henry is still into Jake and the Neverland Pirates, so I couldn't resist this adorable little stamp set.  Turns out that Hannah is much more into stamping than Henry is.  Each night since we've been back she goes to their craft table and 'stamps' for at least 10 minutes.  She just LOVES it.  Finding something to keep this girl sitting still for more then 10 minutes is a huge win for us, and it's worked out great that Henry has allowed her to play with it so much! 

So today over lunch Andy and I were at a kid toy store and I couldn't resist this Melissa and Doug wooden stamp set to give to Hannah for Valentine's Day.  I just had to get one for Hannah's friend Peyton too, who welcomed a new baby sister on Friday that we are going to visit tonight.  I can already see Hannah and her friends at their stamping parties - too cute!!

Baby Girl Turns 2!

Hannah turned 2 yesterday!!  Hard to believe, but she is growing up.  We had her birthday party on Sunday, and though it was 90 degrees and extremely humid, the kids had a blast. 

We blew up pictures of Hannah from our recent family photo shoot and placed them around the house.  Our photographer did such a great job capturing all of Hannah's different expressions!

The big hit of the party were Hannah's cake pops.  I ordered them from a place called Urban Sugar and they were SO good.  The flavors were red velvet and butter pecan.  I had her decorate them in pink and red with an 'H' and a '2' on them for Hannah.  Delicious!

The boys were boys like usual.  Heat not slowing them down one bit.

Hannah and Grandma jumping in the bounce house.  Hannah is on outfit number 3 at this point.

Feeding Papa a meatball was pretty humorous.

Hannah loving on her Aunties.

Henry giving his 'girlfriend' Ava a ride on his Gator.  Ava kept telling her mom how excited she was to go to her boyfriend's house and Henry's cousins kept calling her his girlfriend - it was pretty cute!

The kids all jumped into the pool with their clothes on.  It was so hot they dried off pretty quickly. 

The bounce house turned into a slip n' slide.  They had SO much fun sliding from side to side!  Thank goodness we had no injuries....

Opening her presents.  Much more engaged this year compared to last year.  She loved opening each present and wanted the toy opened right away. 

Giving Aunt Heidi lovin for her presents.

Testing out all of her new toys with her friends.

Saying goodbye to Grandma Deaner and Papa.

Cousins having so much fun in the bounce house/slip and slide!

Friends having cocktails on the front porch.

Playing in the backyard in the shade.

Great day, great family, friends and fun.