when you try to eat a popsicle that's bigger than you

Before:





After:

our last first birthday

It is so hard to believe, but on Saturday we celebrated Ainsley's First Birthday! Where has the time gone? Just one short year ago we welcomed this little girl into our family:

And she has grown to be this beautifully precocious one-year-old:

okay, okay...one where you can actually see her face...









Here is her tower of First Birthday cupcakes:





And here she is eating the one on top, after Jack helped her blow out the candle of course.

And here she is, eating a little more, with Jack's help again!

Snakes and surgeries aside, it's been a great year!

Happy Birthday, sweet peanut!

post traumatic stress

Last night, I dreamed that I bent down to pick up Ainsley and the tail end of a snake was in her mouth...the rest of it was wrapped around her neck. I just rolled my eyes and held her closer to Doug and said, "Um, honey...can I have a little help here?" And so he unwrapped the snake from her neck and took it away. "Maybe we should kill it this time!" I called out to him, but he was already gone.

And so in addition to waking me up three times a night, she's also wreaking havoc on the precious little sleep I am getting.

I am so waking her up every Saturday morning at 6am when she's a teenager...

Ryan's Top 7 books for summer reading for his family and friends!

Hello Everyone!!

It's been a long time since I wrote on the blog. Well, since summer is getting closer, I'm sure everyone is excited. Pool Parties, Fourth of July, Summer movies, sleepovers, etc. But what are you going to do in your spare time? By the title, I'm positive you know.

As the reader of the family, I put together the Top 7 Books for Summer Reading. Three of these books might have a little bit of drama in them that I don't recommend them for 5 and under. the rest are fine...

Here they are, from worst to greatest, The Top 10 books for summer Reading!!!! ( they are all good books to read, I'm ordering them from my least favorites of the favorites, to my favorite of the favorites)


7. No talking by Andrew Clements
A very funny contest between boys and girls to see who can talk the least in 3 days.


6. Molly Moon (series) by Georgia Byng
About a girl who learns to hypnotize. Pretty good series.


5. The Kingdom Keepers by Ridley Pearson
5 kids are suddenly programed to go to Disney World when they go to sleep. They must stop Disney villains from taking over the world.

4. Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney
Funny. Super funny. Terribly funny. Supercalifragilisticxpialidociously funny.

3. The war between the Hatfords and the Malloys ( series ) by Phillis Reynolds Naylor
This series doesn't have a name, but they are good. First book is called, The Boys start the War.

2. The Percy Jackson & the Olympians ( series ) by Rick Riordan
Percy Jackson finds out he's the son of a Greek god! Fantastic series!

And the number one book(s) you have to read is....

1.) The Island series by Gordon Korman!
6 kids are shipwrecked on an island in the middle of the Pacific. Series of 3. A HUGE thriller. Trust me.


That's it! I hope you have an awesome summer!!!!!!!!!
- Ryan

alternate ending

I was listening to Doug read Walt Disney's Tarzan to Jack the other night and heard this:

"...And then Tarzan and Jane got married and lived happily ever after together in the jungle and had lots of jungle babies. The End."

Funny, I don't remember that part from the movie.

omg

After we dropped Jack off at school today, Ainsley and I headed over to Harris Teeter to pick up a few grocery items that I had not been able to pick up at SuperTarget yesterday. Most importantly Jack's chocolate milk, because SuperTarget has not had it in stock for the past 9 days (SuperTarget...not so super!) So, we got home and I started putting the groceries away while Ainsley headed over to her "clubhouse" and proceeded to clear everything out, I can only imagine, in order to crawl inside. Except she got a little side-tracked and decided to crawl off into the dining room. I continued putting the groceries away until I realized that she was really quiet. Now, in my experience, Ainsley being quiet is not usually a good thing. And so I wondered if perhaps I forgot to put the gate up and she was working her way up the stairs. Or maybe she was getting into her favorite ficus since the gate that used to protect the ficus is now guarding the stairs. So I walked into the dining room, expecting to see her with a mouth full of dirt or halfway up the stairs. What I wasn't expecting was to see her sitting on the dining room floor, waving a snake in the air. Yes, you read that right. Ainsley had a snake in her hand. For a split second I thought, "Oh, it's a toy. Right? It has to be a toy." But then toys don't generally start wrapping their bodies around your daughter's wrist, do they?


It looked a little something like this...*

*Totally staged photo using a toy snake. Of course I would not let my infant daughter play with an actual snake while I went to go get my camera. But I would give her a toy snake to play with after the fact to use for effect in this blog entry. Shameless, I know.

Anyway, then I started to panic and I ran in and grabbed her arm and tried to get her to drop the snake. Which she wouldn't do. And then she started crying, either because I totally freaked her out or maybe because the snake was trying to bite her, because I could see it's jaws open...and after what seemed like an hour and a half, but was probably only 3 seconds, she did drop it and all (at least) 18 inches of it slowly slithered over into the corner behind that stupid ficus.

I called Doug and when he didn't answer, I called my neighbor, Wini, and begged her to come over and help me get the snake out of the house. Our conversation went a little something like this:

Me: Seriously, how do I tell if a snake is poisonous, because I think one just bit my daughter!

Wini: Uhh...what??

Me: Oh, and it's still in my house!

Wini: What??

Me: I AM NOT AN OUTDOOR GIRL! I DO NOT LIKE SNAKES! PLEASE COME OVER NOW!!

Okay, that's probably not exactly how it went, but the details are a little hazy since I was seriously about to lose it. You get the idea though. And because she's a good friend, she came over and didn't even laugh at me when I met her at the door with an empty Cool Whip container, even though I know she was thinking, "Um, right...I'm sure we can catch this snake with a Cool Whip container!"

Wini called her husband, Terry, and described the snake to him. He said he was pretty sure that it was a harmless snake, but that if it wasn't and if it had bit Ainsley, she would be having a very severe reaction. Ainsley had a couple of little scrapes on her wrist, but no other reactions, so Terry told us we needed to just get the snake out of the house and keep it until he or Doug came home. Using some cookie sheets, cook books and cutting boards, we were able to sort of trap it and then with a really big stick, prodded it into a large stock pot lined with a trash bag. Once we got him in the trash bag, we put the trash bag into another bag, tied it up and put him on the front porch until the guys could get home. Doug let him out (way down the street) and I took this picture.

Doug sent the picture to someone at Davidson College that ID's snakes and he let us know it is a juvenile black rat snake. A harmless snake that eats lots of mice and rats, so let's hope he does just that and eats all the ones in the neighborhood, because I don't know what I would do if I found Ainsley playing with one of those!!

This girl is going to be the death of me...

because we aren't getting a puppy

Jack has named him "King Lizard." The kids think I don't want them to have a pet, but really, this little guy is fine. As long as he never, ever tries to get into the house.