hannah & daddy

hannah has a great daddy. he takes her to the park, to the store, and out for ice cream. he pretends to be the rabbit to her alice in wonderlad; the king mermaid to her "girl mermaid." one of their favorite things to do together is search youtube for videos. one really strange thing that hannah likes is america's funniest videos, so she loves youtube videos of people doing funny things. one of her favorites is charlie bit me. it's cute to watch her laugh at it, but i do hope this doesn't give her any ideas about biting other people! sometimes she will stick her finger in my mouth and say, "ouch charlie, that hurt" - in a british accent, of course.

bookworm

hannah loves reading. yesterday morning she dazzled me by reading a book that i read to her often - she flipped through the pages and read them one by one, getting almost every word right! we have read that book a million times so even though i was super impressed i knew she had some time to memorize it. but then later in the day she read a book to me that we've only read a few times, and the last time we read it was at least a week ago. but she remembered it, and again had almost every word down.

she moved over to her new "big girl room" a few weeks ago, and since then she's wanted to SLEEP with a book every night. at first i tried to discourage it because . . . well because books aren't cuddly, i guess. and did i mention she wanted to sleep with a whole stack of 'em? but after a few nights of arguing with her and trying to get her to snuggle with a soft bear instead i gave up and decided to let her sleep with one thin paperback book.

i found her in her new room a couple weeks ago reading to herself:

hannah's imagination

over the past 6 months or so hannah's imagination has exploded. she started maybe a year and a half ago with pretending to be a dog or a cat. now i think she's pretending to be something or someone every minute of every day! sometimes i will say something like, "let's brush your hair, hannah." and she will tell me, "i'm not hannah, i'm alice in wonderland." her favorite two characters by far are alice and the little mermaid, but she also pretends to be cinderella and "tommy." if you read the post below, you know tommy started off being what she called her little sister, but then tommy turned into a pretend baby she would carry around, and sometimes tommy is just someone else she pretends to be. it can be kind of embarrassing, like when tim took her to the park and she was playing with an older girl and all hannah would say is "i'm tommy" over and over and over again. she gets really into her roles and assigns us parts, too. now i don't know if all this pretending is normal for an almost 3 year old, but i'm going to say it's a sign of intelligence. ;) and maybe a future actress in the making. she also comes up with pretty ingenious uses for normal things around the house. i've seen a retractable tape measure become a fishing rod, a bracelet become a hula hoop for a doll, and a pair of shoes become dogs, and the shoelaces their leash.

here's hannah last month playing one of her favorite pretend games: tea party.

it's a girl!

i'm 19 weeks pregnant, and we went to get our second ultrasound today. we found out that we're having another little girl! we're so excited! i'm so glad hannah came with us to see the baby, she really was fascinated and she talked about the doctor's visit the rest of the day. she kept saying that we heard the baby's "heartbeep" and that it went "bump bump bump." that made a big impression on her. the nurse mentioned that the baby's head is facing my back, so of course hannah remembered that and talked about it, and said that the baby is "scratching momma's back." for some reason she named the baby tommy a couple weeks ago, so now we have to convince her that that's not a girl's name.


hannah talking about dr.'s visit - it's a girl! 6/30/10 from julie cottrell on Vimeo.

hannah at huntingdon

i hadn't been back to huntingdon since i graduated five years ago, but i've been wanting to take hannah there for pictures for the longest time. wednesday, we went to montgomery to have lunch with my friend katherine and it gave us the perfect opportunity for a quick photo session. she liked it there. she called all the buildings castles and pretended to be a princess.

arts & crafts

these past few months we've been keeping busy with projects. we've stocked up on paints, play-doh and coloring books. we're also taking an art class at my friend maria's store, mamunchis. i think hannah's favorite is play-doh. for some reason she gets a kick out of squashing my creations.

visiting grandparents

we've made visits to both brewton and huntsville over the past month and hannah has had a blast being with her grandparents. at mimi and pops' house she spent a lot of time at the pool, especially while i was away one day photographing a wedding. she would sit on the steps and pretend to be a mermaid but she couldn't be convinced to go out into the water. (all of these pictures were taken with my new point-and-shoot, which i'm loving! i can keep it in my purse and never miss a moment.)

at granny and grandpa's we did some swimming too, and dad gradually got her out into the middle of the pool! she started by walking on this step that ran the length of this smaller pool and then moved onto the big pool. she rode on grandpa's back through the water, splashed, kicked her feet, and pretended to find spongebob on the bottom.

we went to a fair on memorial day and hannah had so much fun. she wanted to ride everything, even the really fast and upside down-rides. i think she rode these cars at least seven or eight times.