Bailey is five!!

This past June, my baby turned five! It's hard to believe that so much time has flown by. Luckily for Bailey, her birthday landed on a day when Mike was home.

After lunch, we opened her presents, and had unicorn cake. Unfortunately, our camera died mid birthday celebration:

Our friends gave us a great idea- band-aids for birthday presents! In our house, if there is a box of band-aids, every fall, every ouchie means a huge tantrum because I won't give a band-aid for an injury without blood. So, both Bailey and Avery got band-aids for Bailey's birthday and they can do whatever they want with them.

Bailey got soccer stuff too- she started playing soccer right after, but I'll have to do a separate post about that.

Bailey had a great birthday, and had a serious stack of presents- thanks grandmas and grandpas! Unfortunately for Avery, it did not go so well. Poor Avery was very jealous, and despite getting band-aids from us and a new pair of sandals from Grandma Cindy, she spent a lot of the party bawling, poor thing. It's hard to be two.

We were able to surprise Bailey- she had wanted a bike, but obviously, there were no bicycle shaped presents wrapped. After she finished opening her gifts, and thought she was done, we pulled down her new bike. She loved it, and of course had to go out and give it a spin immediately.

Here are the things I want to remember about my five year Bailey:

• She is a great help around the house and with her sister- she even cleans her room and vacuums
• She is getting really good and cartwheels and flips
• She loves playing outside- her favorite things to do right now are riding her bike, roller skating, jumping on the trampoline and swimming
• Avery is her best friend-they will play together for hours
• She loves listening to music and books on tape
• She loves learning to play the piano
• I am always amazed by how excited she is about life- she wants to try everything and gets excited about every day.
• One word to describe her: sunshine

I love you Bailey!

Ballet Recital

Throughout this last year, Bailey did ballet at a dance studio in Cicero. She loved it. She would come home from dance and show us all the things she learned, and even taught Avery some of the ballet terms.

She had a great time- except when she thought about the ballet recital at the end of the year. Whenever it came up, she was terrified. She told me she didn't want to do it, that she wasn't going to. When I asked her why, she said she was afraid of falling of the stage, and was scared to dance in front of so many people. (Her second fear kind of surprised me. She won't dance at home without an audience. Really. "Mom, why aren't you watching me dance?" was something I heard all day long. "Mom, I can't dance! Nobody is watching me! It's not fair!" I watched her, I just couldn't do it for hours on end like she requested.)

The long dreaded day of recital arrived, and she sat next to be practically shaking. She got to watch the other dancers first, but was curled up in the ball in her seat. When it was finally her turn, we walked back stage, and said good bye and went back, nervous myself. In one of the earlier dances, one of the little girls just stood on the stage and cried. I was afraid that was going to be Bailey for sure.

But, as you can see in the video, she surprised us all, even herself. She loved performing and did a great job. After it was done and I went to get her, she was gushing about how fun it was. She even said she wanted to do another recital that very day. I'm just glad she had a great time!

Oh, and in case you were wondering, Avery wore her little green ballet dress up there too!

Finally! A New Post: Graduation

Yes, it's been a really long time since I blogged. I have lots of excuses, but mostly it's because I hate my computer. I guess I should be grateful I have one, but it's way too slow!!

So, back to June. This last year Bailey and I did joy school. We both had a lot of fun. I am really glad that I got to be Bailey's teacher before I send her off the all day Kindergarten this September. This was our second year doing a co-op style preschool, and I have to say, joy school was pretty nice. It had all the lessons planned for you, complete with pictures, songs, snacks, everything. Mike will tell you I stayed up late many nights coloring, but still, it was pretty easy as far as teaching preschool goes. Here are some pictures of our preschool grad:

Avery insisted on wearing her dress up dance costume to the graduation. That little girl wore the outfit for about a month straight.

Here is a little snipet of them singing. It was adorable. At their first party back in October, they were supposed to sing, but mostly just stood there looking shy. And now they are singing! They have all grown up a lot this last year, and I can't believe that in a little more than a month I'll be putting Bailey on a bus, and sending Avery to joy school. Where does all the time go?

Swimming... in our basement

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In March, we finally bought Bailey a new swim suit, and the goggles that she apparently couldn't live without. Bailey and Avery were so excited they ran around in their swimsuits for a few days. I'm glad that we are members of the YMCA and can go swimming all the time, even where there is snow on the ground.

A few days later, Bailey could have used her new swimsuit to swim in our basement. Due to the home repair projects we were working on, we had unplugged the sump pump. We should have known better. One warm day and a rainy night later I woke up to six inches of water in our ENTIRE basement. It was awesome. I called Mike at work, and of course he didn't know what to do, and couldn't leave to help out. Oh the joys of residency.

I spend the entire day pumping water out with a pump I bought at home depot, and bucketing water out. Despite the thousands of gallons an hour the pump pumped, it wasn't enough. If I stopped bucketing, the water would actually get higher! It was so frustrating.

Luckily that night, we borrowed a pool pump from a member of our church. We dried the sump pump off and had both those running. Within an hour we had gotten most of the water out of our basement.  

Oh the joys of home ownership...

Maple Syrup

This month has been a pretty miserable one, but we still got out and did a few fun things. Right now, it's maple syrup season in central New York. Last fall, we were reading a book, and Bailey was curious about maple syrup. We told her when it was maple syrup season we would take her too see. So, a few weekends ago, we visited Beaver Lake Nature Center and did their maple syrup tour. (We took Flat Stanley along with us. He was a project from one of our nieces.)

Ice Skating

One of the things I love about Bailey is how she always wants to try new things. She had been wanting to go ice skating all winter, so on a free Saturday we finally took her. Avery, or course, was too scared to try. Bailey was too cute- she was trying to convince Avery that she needed to try and told her, "Avery! It's super fun! I've been waiting my whole life to try ice skating!"

Mike took Bailey out on the rink, and she picked it up really fast. Avery and I had a fun time eating nachos, watching Bailey and Mike skate, and watching "basketball show" in the lobby.

It's been a long nine months

So... residency has been a lot harder than I expected. I knew it was going to be hard. I knew Mike was going to be gone a lot. But I guess I didn't really know how it was going to effect us. I didn't realize that Bailey and Avery would feel the effects of his absence so deeply. Bailey has been sleep walking since the year started, and it's almost always when Mike is at the hospital. She has thrown massive tantrums in the middle of the night, but only when Mike is not there. Last month, Mike was home a lot (he was on a radiology rotation), and this month it has swung to the other extreme. Since the month began, Avery is a different child. She throws marathon tantrums, I'm talking an entire hour long, screaming how she wants her dad.

And then there's me. I have become so jealous of any time he has off. Today I got so mad because he was off doing good, service oriented things, but I thought it was so unfair. How come other people get to spend time with him when I don't? Why does he get to serve other people when I've been doing everything that's required to run a household, except for the going to work part?? And even then, I teach piano lessons four days a week. Why do we have to spend next Saturday cleaning the church, when we haven't even finished cleaning out our own flooded basement? It makes me so mad, and depressed, and overwhelmed.

Bailey, Avery and I are very busy doing lots of fun things, and lots of not so fun things, without Mike. It makes me feel like we are living two separate lives, and when and if our paths cross, we're lucky. But even then, there are extra study groups that are "voluntary" and the church service that "needs" us. How do I not resent this??

Mike keeps telling me that it's only one and a half more years of this terribleness. I have a hard time believing him. I see fifth years working more that I think they should be. Maybe I'm just in too deep to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Maybe it's just been a really long month. Maybe I'm just really tired.