Mommy daughter week

As I alluded to in my last post, Ben was on a work trip for most of this week. We dropped him off on Sunday, and he didn't get in until 2:30am on Thursday morning/Wednesday night due to a blizzard in Denver. While he was gone, I was diligent about taking many iPhone pics and videos of Annie, and uploading them into a flickr set cleverly titled "For Ben while he's gone" - some of them were really cute/awesome/hilarious so I wanted to share a few here too! I'm glad he's back because I was feeling the intense need (even more so than usual...) to record EVERYTHING and now I can just relax. I'm going to Dallas on a work trip on Sunday, so Ben's feeling the pressure to live up to my stellar example :)

Eating a snack in her doorway while I put her clothes away


Hanging out in baby Eleanor's room when we went to visit!




Glowing pigtails!


Snapped a pic of her eating breakfast at daycare while listening to yet another long and pointless story from Sue.


And when I picked her up, they finally were able to take the kids outside to play! Of course Annie went right for a slide to climb up.


It was a "high comment" day at Whole Foods in that at least 20 people commented on how cute Annie is. Usually we just get maybe 1-3. I think it was the pigtails.


No matter how many times I took my shoes OUT of this bag, she put them back in.


Enjoying a meal outdoors on a very warm Minnesota evening - tuna salad!


Goodnight kisses for Daddy - since he was on CA time and working basically 12 hour days, didn't really get to talk to Annie at all. She doesn't really get the phone yet though, so videos were probably a better option. (I was EXTREMELY happy I got her to actually give a kiss on camera! What a great director I am)


Hair is looking great after coming out of the pigtails


And the next night - one pigtail came out at daycare so I put her hair in one Bamm-Bamm Rubble style pony on top.


I tried to give Annie some plain spinach - she took a few leaves and shoved them in her mouth and I was all proud. Then about 30 seconds later, she pulled them out individually and waved them around before placing them delicately back on the floor.


She ended up eating it later in the form of a spinach and cheese quesadilla, but was quite distracted by the neighbor kids so dinner took awhile!


Trip to the park


Bubbles and POP are a few new words I've heard Annie say this week!


The night ended with some swinging!


I had invited new blogger friend Laura over after she had to cancel last week - of course this was the ONE night that I can EVER remember that Annie wouldn't go to sleep for 1.5 hours (and wasn't happy about it either - she's taken a long time to fall asleep but normally is just chatting to herself in her crib)


She eventually did fall asleep and ended up in some awesome positions :)


Annie and Mia enjoyed watching the slideshow of this set using the flickr app on the Apple TV yesterday

The day after Ben returned, I finally cashed in on my Christmas present from my awesome brother-in-laws for a deep cleaning of the house - the woman was at our house for SEVEN HOURS!! Ben was actually extremely annoyed that he couldn't nap after arriving at 2:30am because she was there. Now that's a white whine if I've ever heard one! I have NEVER in my entire life cleaned for that long, so I sure am glad I paid someone else to do it. We just don't ever deep clean - literally never. So after 5 years in our house, it was needed! All the floors are washed and vacuumed, the baseboards cleaned, pictures and light fixtures dusted, inside and out of cabinets wiped down... oh it is awesome. We're definitely going to have her come back to deep clean again if she's willing! (it's a friend of my BIL Joe's - she's in school and working so not cleaning as much anymore) I had to run around and take photos of the whole house just to record it - even though it's not like you can really TELL the baseboards are clean from photos anyway! Could have done a better job with this photos - it was dark and rainy and I used my wide angle to make our 1125 finished square feet appear larger than it is.

Clean oven and stove!


Completely dusted bookshelf (clearly we still need some organizational help in this office). No that is not a command station, that's just Ben's work desk. No, I do not know why he needs to have 3 monitors.


And someone to decorate this room for us


Another completely dusted bookshelf with a bunch of little crap on it!


Yup, all this woodwork has been cleaned