It is hard for me to describe that Celie is big in words. I mean, how many ways can you say she is "big". She is a tall girl. And very strong.
Even though this picture is blurry, you can get an idea of what I mean. The 2 little girls on either side of Celie are only a month younger than her. And one of them is a taller girl as well. I mean, I am not saying she is freakishly huge or anything, I just wanted to give a perspective. She is 30 pounds of solid toddler. This was taken at Tucker's #2 birthday party. Jenn wanted all the kids to line up along the back with Tucker for the cake shot.
Matthew and I have the same conversation every Sunday - he says I should keep her with me (meaning I have to hold her and dance) while we sing the music in the morning. That translates to me holding and dancing with her for about 25 minutes. Not ideal. She gets heavy after a while. I have done it a time or two, and I do love that she gets to see her Daddy "in action" as he leads our church in Worship, but heavy is heavy. And it turns me into a sweaty mess. Our church seems to have an issue with not keeping the Sanctuary cool to begin with, so adding more sweat and movement into the mix is not a pretty sight.
We are also trying to learn "quiet during prayer time" in our house.
I say prayers with Celie every night before bed. As soon as I start, she starts calling out for Ana. I am not sure what the fascination is here. I mean, Ana is a lovely girl. And she is as sweet as she can be - but she is also 9. I think Celie likes to say things over and over if she can say them correctly. "Mrs. Debbie" was one of the nursery workers last Sunday and I was talking to Celie about her, getting her ready for her time there. I asked her to say her name and she was really good at it. Of course, I got overly excited about it and cheered her on. I tend to do this in every situation with her, by the way. Anyhew - DEBBIE was all I heard the rest of the morning.
To tie that long, drawn out story back to my point.... Celie starts (loudly) asking for ANA every single time anyone starts to pray. We started praying for Ana b/c she is our friend. We pray for all our friends and family every night. It is just Ana that seems to get the most air time. ;) Well, Ana and "Aba" (Ava). See a trend here?
In other, completely unrelated news, we got a $1.99 kitchen set for Celie's Christmas gift this weekend! SO EXCITED!!!!!!! It's a Dora kitchen, and anyone that reads this blog knows that I don't really like character stuff.... but for $1.99, I sucked it up. It is the same kitchen she has at Meme and Papa's house. Except we took the huge Dora off the side. She screwed right off, it was awesome! I started feeling REALLY guilty about spending over $100 on a silly kitchen set for our 20 month old daughter when there were kids all over the world that did not even have clean panties or food to eat. The very day I felt so guilty about it, our Goodwill mole (Punkin - she always keeps us up to date on the best Goodwill deals - it's great) told us they had a Dora kitchen at the store. Then she told me she thought they were selling it for $1.99. I was giddy with excitement. I put on a fleece, hat and shoes, hopped in the car and went to town to buy the kitchen that moment. Only, when I asked for it.... no one was able to find it. Well, OF COURSE I jumped to the largest conclusion possible and decided that the people there were just lying to me and had planned on getting it for themselves. I tend to overreact about a lot of stuff that way. I had a bad attitude about it the whole way home. Then I found out the real story - which I will not share here - and immediately had to ask for forgiveness for thinking I was the victim in that case. Long story short, we got the kitchen. And she will have a great time playing with it. And we spent $2 instead of $180.

