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The first born is constantly surprising me with her questions, witty remarks, and capabilities of learning new things. The child thrives to learn how to spell new words each day. She asked how to spell microphone yesterday. Um, what?!? Instead I usually try to quickly pick a smaller word from my brain to spell for her such as girl. Then the other day she said to me, "Mom, something's not quite right." Where does she come up with this stuff? I tell ya, I spend a lot of my day cracking up. Because of Annie's tendency to dress up as mermaid using socks and foam letters, Mike's mom decided to make the girls mermaid tails (sorry, no pictures yet to document this). Annie has been thrilled to now have a meraid costume to wear regularly. The funny part though was when the tails arrived, Annie put it on and then asked to go swimming. Uh, I don't think so. {We did happen to open the pool last week, by the way.} Annie's school has brimming with activities the past few weeks. She had a spring program early in the month where each class represented a season or weather pattern. Annie's class was winter. Then Annie went on a field trip to a farm (Mimi and I went, too). The farm set up different learning stations such how maple syrup, honey, and butter are made. The kids were completely exhausted by the end of the day. Tomorrow is Annie's last day of school, and on Friday Annie's school is having a graduation. Mike's not too thrilled to attend an event that "celebrates mediocrity", but I'm kind of interested to see what they do.

Mimi is growing up to be quite the cute, little girl. Her speaking skills are developing like mad. I love hearing the new things she says each day. Mike's already got her memorizing the chain of command that Annie knows so well. She seems to be in perpetual motion, and I would dare to say she's even more hyper than Annie. Mimi loves to tackle people (especially Annie) and usually doesn't slow down before bashing into one's face--I speak from multiple experiences. A surprising characteristic Mimi has developed is protectiveness of her big sister. Whenever Annie is getting in trouble Mimi will huddle over Annie and say, "No! Stop it!" I don't know where that comes from, but it's hard to not give in let Annie get off scott-free. I'm sure the novelty will wear off soon. We're still working with Mimi to get her potty-trained, but she's resisting. I think we're making progress though because I caught her putting her stuffed puppy on the mini-toilet telling it to "go potty" yesterday. Mike has been making a great effort to teach the girls about gardening. He has them help water the plants each day and had them weed a little one day. So yesterday the girls were spending their time outside working the dirt. They each had a watering pail and spoons. I didn't notice until it was too late that Mimi had been sneaking inside and putting scoops of dirt into the toilet. I have no idea what she thinks she was doing. Hey, while you're at it, check out the girls' May 2007 album on their page.