Disney On Ice!

We took Laina to Disney on Ice this morning and we had a great time! We've had these tickets for a while but I didn't tell Laina we were going until this morning. She seemed pretty excited to see Mickey, Minnie and the gang in action. She was somewhat unimpressed when the lights dimmed at the Civic Center and kept asking us if we could leave now but luckily she made it through that and had a great time. In order to introduce Laina to the characters, little by little I've been getting my hands on all the Disney movies, borrowing from the library, borrowing from video stores, borrowing from friends and even friends of friends! This Disney on Ice show starred Mickey, Minnie and all the gang plus characters from The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, Lilo and Stitch and Peter Pan. Laina got to re-wear her birthday dress with Minnie Mouse on it and decided to bring "red minnie" with her to the show. She told us after that her favorite part was when Peter Pan and his friends were flying. I was pretty impressed with that myself! And of course we all loved seeing our very good friend, Tinkerbell. Here are some pictures.

Joe and Laina before the show started

Our good friend, MinnieAriel and Flounder

Simba, Pumba, Raffiki and Timon from The Lion King

Lilo and Stitch

Mickey, Minnie, Goofy and Donald
Oh wow! It's Tink!
Wendy, the boys and Peter flyingTinkerbell!!!!

The finale

Laina and Minnie

Laina and I

Little Sarah is having a baby!

This past weekend, Laina and I attended Sarah's baby shower. It's so hard to believe that little Sarah is soon to be a mom. We had a lovely visit with the crew. Sarah had a great shower and got lots of things to help her welcome her new little boy who is due to arrive at the end of March.

Laina and I stayed at Auntie Renee and Uncle Mike's house which was also lots of fun. Laina was exhausted from playing all day and quickly went off to sleep in her sleeping bag at the end of the night. We had fun sharing a room together and I loved when Laina crawled into bed with me in the morning.

It was wonderful to see baby Emily too. She's getting so big, has lots of beautiful hair, has awesome upper body control and just grabs at everything in sight. She didn't cry at the sight of me this time either so that made me feel good! The crazy thing is that I forgot my camera at home so the weekend has gone undocumented for me. I did snag these pictures from Rae, my soulmate in "mommarazzi~hood" so that is good. Renee has an adorable shot of Laina, Emily and Uncle Mike snuggling on the couch that she will hopefully be emailing to me soon !

The Agassiz Girls reunite!

Three beautiful sisters, Rachel, Sarah & Amy

Where I Stayed While You Guys Married Up?

As most three year olds do, Laina has been asking lots and lots of questions. Sometimes it can be exhausting to keep up with all the answers, sometimes it can be fascinating to 'watch' her little brain work, and other times its just plain humorous. We have a lot of pictures around our house and 97% of them are pictures of her. There are the occasional pictures that don't have her in them and she always questions why she's not in the picture. This morning she was looking at a picture of Joe and I on our wedding day and she asked me "where I stayed while you guys married up?" I tried to explain to her that she wasn't born yet. She didn't like that answer and said "I stayed home?". I told her again that she wasn't born yet when Daddy and I got married and then she just changed the subject. I guess the notion of life before Laina is not something she wants to talk about!

Well, its a happy day here in Steeler Country. Joe and Laina came downstairs to begin watching the football game at 6:30pm last night and Laina was in rare form. She was jumping around the living room and every time Big Ben or Hines Ward came on the TV she would shout out their name and she started cheering like a cheerleader (no idea where she learned this) and shouted "GO STEELERS!". I asked Joe if he gave her the "black & gold kool aid" upstairs. Here's a shot of the two fans taken last fall. Go Steelers!

Happy Birthday to Me!

Well, I'm 37 years young! I had a lovely birthday yesterday with many highlights - - the first of which was when I was carded at the store buying some wine. Woo hoo! Joe cooked me a delightful lobster dinner, Joe and Laina made me a beautiful cake, they gave me gorgeous yellow roses, two beautiful balloons, a new charm for my charm bracelet (a camera charm!) and eventually we will purchase that new Nikon which is my Christmas & Birthday gift....Two of the sweetest parts of the day were when Laina and I were driving in the car and out of the blue she said "happy birthday, mommy" and I melted....and when she wrote "MOM" on the envelope to my card and then signed "LOVE LAINA" on the inside. I'm so impressed with that little girls writing. It's awesome to watch it develop. I got lots of nice calls, emails, and facebook birthday wishes. So far, 37 isn't so bad! Here are some pictures of our delightful dinner!

A Princess Pizza Party

We invited our friends Rick & Kim and their two kids MacKay and Gannon over to watch the football game on Sunday. Joe was in his glory because he had people to share his love of football with. Laina was in her glory because MacKay was at her house to play! Laina just adores MacKay. She talks about her all the time and I think because MacKay is just a little bit older then Laina, she just loves her. She asks us about her ALL the time and so we knew she would love the get together. We purposely didn't tell Laina that MacKay was coming over until about an hour before they arrived and its a good thing, because for that entire hour, every five minutes we were asked how long it would be until MacKay got there. The girls immediately dressed up as princesses and had a wonderful time playing in the living room, up in the playroom and up in Laina's bedroom. Laina was very excited to show MacKay her "big girl bed". At one point I came upstairs to check on the two of them and Laina said "mommy, I want you to leave now". Oh wow I had visions of a having teenager! Yikes! Here are some cute pictures of the girls having a grand old time. Oh and the Steelers won so Joe was on Cloud 9 and Laina jumped up and down and shouted "Go Ben Roethlisberger"! What a fun time we had!

Then...and now....

Here's a picture of my niece, Nicole wearing the cutest nightgown and bonnet when she was probably around 2 years old. She's now 16.

And here's Laina wearing the same nightgown! Laina's 3 so its shorter on her but it still fits. I just dug this out - Di had saved it for me, should I ever have a little girl someday. I have no idea where the adorable bonnet is. Laina loves it because its her first nightgown so she thinks I'm letting her wear a dress to bed. Joe and I thinks she looks so "little house on the prairie!"
We had to add PJ bottoms to keep her warm because its so cold out...and of course Laina needed to add some shiny shoes.
When I told Laina we were taking pictures to show Auntie Di that the nightgown lives on....she decided we also needed to show her a video, so we recorded this - Laina doing "the nightgown song"!

Oh Wow - this is big

We closed a chapter on the book of Laina today and we moved our little baby over to a "big girl bed"...no more crib....*sigh*. It's very cool but somewhat unsettling as well. Having Laina in a crib was one of those last little connections to babyhood that we had with her. Laina was probably one of the oldest preschoolers to be in a crib, but we really had no need to move her since she never ever ever tried to climb out. She's a crib~dweller and has been since the early days...she's just always loved her little crib and never questioned her existence in it. But, Joe and I figured that if we didn't make the transition some day we would end up with an 18 year old still in a crib - ok, not really but you get the picture. We were also back and forth about whether we wanted to put her into a twin bed, or just convert her crib into a toddler bed, which meant buying a safety rail....decisions decisions....but then our very tall girl helped make the decision as the crib was getting too small, what with Laina and her 50 "buddies" aka the stuffed animals.

So, today was the day. We moved the twin bed back into Laina's room, went out to buy a bed rail so she wouldn't fall out of bed and we purchased new sheets for the bed. When I told her about the whole thing yesterday she excitedly proclaimed she wanted Tinkerbell sheets. How she even knows they sell Tinkerbell sheets is beyond me but they do - so we got 'em. Then she proceeded to tell me "next week I want Mickey Mouse sheets and then I want Backyardigans sheets". Yikes! We got the whole room set up for her this evening and then let her go upstairs for the big reveal.....drum roll please.....and this was her reaction.

I think she likes it!

Joe and I are adjusting, and I will admit I had a tear in my eye as we put her to bed tonight. Our little girl is growing up. So far she's done well, she went right to sleep and didn't really play too much in her bed. Who knows what the night will bring though!

We Love Dance Cam!

Dance Cam was one of Laina's Christmas gifts but given the overabundance of new things to play with, we just got around to opening Dance Cam today. If you don't know Dance Cam, its a little video camera that plugs into your TV and you can watch yourself dance. You can use the music that it comes with or dance "freestyle" with your own tunes. Here's Laina dancing freestyle. Of course, this was a big hit today as it involves two of Laina's favorite things....dancing and watching herself dance....ha ha!