Pip Pops

One of my favorite things each year is the first time that I get to pull out my flip flops and put away the thick socks and boots. I love them and wear them pretty much every day until October or until my toes start turning purple because it's so cold outside. I was so excited to buy MB her very first pair of pip pops as she calls them. She did not love them at all and she would scream bloody murder every time I would try put them on her or even suggest the idea. Over react much? So, I let it go and moved on thinking she would have to come to realize the thrill of pip pops on her own. Well, she has been really interested in mine lately and especially likes that she can see my toes in those shoes so we talk about pip pops almost every day. Then, Shanna called last week and asked me to pick up a matching pair for Sadie. Today, I had the great idea to show MB that her shoes matched Sadie's and that seemed to do the trick. She has been wearing them for hours now and they are adorable!

Pip pops are perfect for watering plants. Stick with me kid and I will show you some of the best things in life. :-)

Side story about flip flops: For the past few summers, my mom has set goals for herself of new things that she wanted to learn or do over her summer break. These have all ranged from things like getting fit to learning how to use her camera. My favorite goals of hers were a few years ago. The first week of the summer, she called to say that she had picked out her goals. She then proceeded to tell me that she wanted to learn how to do on-line banking (admirable goal) and that she wanted to learn how to wear flip flops! Hilarious! I am proud to say that after a few days of practice, she had it down pat and hasn't looked back! She then conquered the on-line banking and ATM a few weeks later. I was very proud to be on the phone with her to help her with the first ATM transaction. Way to go mom! Now that she is fully retired from teaching, she is learning how to play golf and has become quite the competitor and even played in her first tournament last week. She is living it up!

Five Months and Counting

So I seriously had a hard time deciding if I was going to take belly photos this pregnancy. However, I decided to forge ahead out of fairness to the little fella and take pictures of months five through nine. I *may* be showing a bit larger this time around but don't judge! :-) Baby boy is doing great and Dan was able to feel him moving for the first time a few days ago. So fun! I am feeling great and can hardly believe that in four months, we will be a family of four. Oh my!

Five Months this time around:

Five Months pregnant with MB:

Twenty/Twenty One Months

It's about time for an update on the little lady and she has been quite the busy little girl lately. Here are somethings that have been keeping her (and us) busy. Feel free to scroll down to the pictures at the bottom.

- Talking - She is starting to put more words together instead of just one word at a time. She is really into ownership and likes saying Daddy's chair, Mama's chair, Mary Beth's chair, Papa's tractor, etc. She confuses N and M some times. She says Map for Nap and Nahk for Milk. Some of our other favorites are Wok for Rock, Di gin for do it again, Boo for Blue, Ellow for Yellow, Wap for Lap and Poap for Soap. Fortunately, she no longer calls Soup "Poop" and she has moved on to calling it Boop. Much better. There are other words that she says perfectly like hat, door, more, eat and apple.

- Manners - She says nope when she doesn't want something. We have no idea where she picked this up from but we are working on no ma'am and no sir. We also are working on saying I'm sorry and Please on a more frequent basis. She is such a sweet girl though so as soon as we remind her of the right thing to say, the says it right away.

- Observant - The girl can spot a school bus and any baby from miles away. We will be driving down the road and out of nowhere, she will start saying Ool Bus or Baby and sure enough, I can normally find what she is talking about. She is quick and my new challenge for myself it to try and find the bus or baby before she does but it rarely happens.

- Stats - We think she is gaining a little bit of weight but she still doesn't eat very much. She definitely is getting taller and seems to take up the full length of her crib even though she still has a ways to go. She is wearing size four diapers and is moving into 18 month clothes. Leggings fit best and we have to safety pin the waist of most of her other pants.

- Potty training - MB has tee teed in the potty three times and the first time was on 3/10. It was a complete surprise to her and she was a little concerned as to what was going on. She still likes to keep items in her potty more than she likes to use it. We are going to start potty training at some point around her second birthday because we think she is starting to get a little more interested in it and we would love to only have one in diapers.

- Music - She really loves music, especially a toddler music CD I bought for our trip to Charleston. Sometimes I look in the rear view mirror and she has her arms in the air moving them from side to side and a big ole grin on her face. We were scanning the radio on our trip to Charleston (I can't listen to the CD ALL the time) and it landed on the 80's song, "Let's Hear it for the Boys". MB loved that song and danced for the entire thing, it was hilarious!

- Barney - I never thought that I would be recording Barney on my DVR but that is our reality now. The girls loves the purple dinosaur and she watches the show with 100% focus. We do not watch TV often but if TV is a must, this is always her choice. She can sing along with some of his songs and she is so proud of herself. She calls all TV shows and cartoons movies.

- Hide and Seek - I included a video of her finding Easter Eggs and this has been such a fun thing for us to lately. She gets to excited and keeps saying more, more, more!

- Big Changes - She gave up her pacifiers like a true champ. We think she went into withdrawal because the day after she gave them up, she woke up with a fever and had five teeth coming in! It has been a rough few weeks and after the double ear infection, she is starting to feel more like herself. I am just glad that she is back to sleeping through the night again!

- Colors - She can recognize most colors and tell us what they are before we ask her. A month or so ago, when we would ask her what color something was, she would always say Pink. We would have to ask her twice to get the real color.

- The Cat did it - I guess everyone needs a scapegoat and MB's is the cat that visits Mimi and Papa's house while she is there visiting. She talks about that cat the entire time and she is constantly looking for it. A month ago, she finally got the nerve to pet the cat and it clawed at her arm and scratched her. It was so traumatic for her but she doesn't give up that easy. She still loves that cat but she blames every scratch she has gotten since then on that cat. She will pull up her pants leg or point to her wrist and say "Meow that" for Meow did that and furrows her eyebrows in deep concern to get our sympathy. It doesn't matter how many times we tell her the cat didn't scratch her this time, she doesn't believe us. It's so amazing how good her memory is on things like that.

- Book Worm - I can't tell you how many times a day MB brings me a book to read and says book, wap (lap). We read tons of books and she will scan her bookshelf trying to pick out just the right now. She has a book memorized with Dan and I am trying to catch them reciting the book on camera so hopefully I can catch that soon. She much rather watch videos of herself than make new ones.

- Singing Along - She is starting to sing along to certain words in songs and right before I get to the end, she starts asking me to sing it again. Whenever we are riding in the car and she get a little cranky, all we have to do is start singing one of her favorite songs.

- Side - We have been spending a lot more time out"side" and I am glad that MB has come around. She didn't want anything to do with the outdoors or grass last year but she has loved walking through the yard and picking flowers since everything is in bloom.

- Shy - Lately MB has gotten really shy around older men, to the point of crawling in our laps and closing her eyes for several minutes until she thinks she they have gone away. One of the pictures below are from her hiding from an older man when we were riding the trolley from the top of Stone Mountain. She has always been really friendly to strangers so we are not sure why she is shying away now.

- Funny Moment - When Dan was out of town a few weeks ago, I had to get out of the house so I took MB to Jason's Deli by myself. We were doing really well and were enjoying chatting with this older lady and then a young guy came and sat at the table that was right next to MB's seat. She talked to him and he went on and on about how much she was like his niece, etc. and they became fast friends. She was putting on a show for him and I was cracking up. Next thing I know, she started flapping her arms because she was so excited and her ice cream bowl flew off the table, bounced off the floor and absolutely covered that guy in ice cream. I was in shock! I had no idea what to say or do. Mary Beth said "Uh Oh" and I was thinking, oh yeah, you can say that again little lady. He was dressed in nice clothes and he now had chocolate/vanilla swirl all over the right side of his body. I jumped up to get some napkins to help him get it off and I apologized a million times. I was so embarassed that I packed up our things right away, offered to pay his dry cleaning bill and told him we better get out of there before we do any more damage. He was so nice about it and seemed completely understanding. As we were practically running out of there with flushed faces, a lady stopped me to say that was the funniest thing she had seen in a while and told MB nice shot! She told me I would laugh one day and she was right, it just took me a few days to get over being so horrified! There is never a dull moment and Duane, if you are out there, I am truly sorry and hope that this will not deter you from having your own little chickadees one day! :-)

Here are a few pictures from the last few weeks/months:

The first time we were able to have a bow in her hair without the headband, quite the accomplishment that lasted about one minute!

Picking flowers

Playing at the park with daddy. She looks so grown up here to me.

Kisses for me, love them!

More flower picking.

The cat that gets all the blame...this was before the clawing incident.

On top of Stone Mountain with my family.

Trying to pretend that an older gentleman did not try to talk to her and gripping daddy with all her might.

Seriously dad, is he gone already? I'm not turning around until he is gone.

It's important to find your own style and do what works for you. I think she pulls off this look quite nicely.

Wedded Bliss

Happy Anniversary to the best man I know! I did really well in marrying you. Thanks for accepting me with all my flaws and even loving them. I couldn't be happier in going through this life with you. You have been my best friend from the beginning and it is so fun being married to you. Thanks for an amazing four years and for being an amazing father! One day soon, I hope to write a post about how we met, became friends and fell in love because I think Mary Beth and our future kids would get a kick out of reading that. You are my favorite and I am so excited about our trip this week! These are some of my favorite photos from that surprisingly cold Easter weekend. Dancing at the party on Friday night. I love that my dad is smiling and enjoying himself in the background. He reluctantly took dance lessons with my mom because she loves to dance and those lessons paid off! A beautiful picture of my grandparents shortly before their 60th anniversary. My paw paw passed away later that summer and I am so glad they were there for that day. We had two rookie preachers and close friends marry us. My dad joked that he just hoped we were legally married! Joe had yet to graduate from seminary and Marc had been out for about a month. They did great and we loved having two people who knew us really well be the ones to marry us and it made the ceremony really personal for us. It was fun being their first too. I think this picture was either right before or after Marc dropped the ring. It was a much needed laugh, we thought it was great. Some of our most favorite people in the world, all of our interns and their spouses. Many of these people knew we would get married long before we had a clue. My father-in-law built that awesome arbor in the background and when we have a more permanent home, it will be up in our yard for sure.

Leaving the church on our way to the reception and so excited to be hitched.

So happy to get on the road to our honeymoon.

I don't think they will allow a pregnant woman to zip line through the jungle this time around but maybe we can ask them nicely. Note to self, use all of these pictures for encouragement to loose this baby weight next fall! And this is the infamous picture I took moments before I thought not only the honeymoon, but life in general was over. Dan assured me that we did not need a guide to take us out on the hobie cat because he had done this once before. I agreed because how bad can it be, surely my new husband would not lead me astray? Well, a few moments later, we were heading out to sea as fast as we could possibly go and our resort was getting smaller and smaller, I started panicking big time. We had passed everyone else that was out enjoying their leisurely ride and the other boats with guides started blowing their whistles and beckoning us to turn around. If only that were possible. I started freaking out and screaming at Dan to turn the boat around because we were way out there and going over huge ocean waves. I was gripping that little plastic tarp with my life. After what seemed like an eternity but probably was only seconds, Dan was able to get the thing turned around and we headed back to land wide open with no control. We almost decapitated another honeymooning couple naively swimming in our path before we ran the boat up on shore yelling at people to get out of the way. It was a horrifying and hilarious experience that we often laugh about. Dan did not have the same experience that I did, he thought everything was totally under control the entire time and really enjoyed the outing. Imagine that. I have told Dan never again and he has been trying to talk me into it for the past four years. I hope I can stick to my guns this time because he is excited we will access have to the hobie cats again on this next anniversary/baby moon trip. No. Thank. You. (drafted on 4/5/11)

Mini Vacay

I am on a layover in the airport and am getting caught up on blogging.... Dan had to work in Charleston a few weeks ago and MB and I took off a few days to meet him there. We stayed on the Isle of Palms and had such a great time. While poor Dan had to work, we hit the beach, walked the pier and took naps. What could be better? We enjoyed hanging out with Dan at night and eating some good seafood. It was my first trip to Charleston and we will definitely go back. He will be renovating banks there for a little while so we are hoping for another little family getaway some time soon.

Getting reaquainted with the sand, she loved it! Checking out her sand toys.

She really liked the dry sticks that were washed up and drew lines in the sand.

Chasing birds was one of her favorite things to do while we were there.

She is about to make a run towards that poor little bird.

Making a few mud pies after I begged her to get out of the water, it was freezing cold!

Ditching the hat.

Cheese!

Mwah!

Prayers, ABCs and Eggs

Here are a few random videos from the past week:

Getting a head start on egg hunting. She was all over it!



She has the hardest time with L and N for some reason but she is doing great with pronouncing her letters.



A few weeks ago, MB started praying in the middle of supper for family members. It is so sweet. I had to prompt her a little, when I pulled the camera out, but this is a sample of some of her prayers.

Do they favor?

I could totally be making this up but I really think the little fella looks a lot like MB already. There is something about his mouth and nose that reminds me of her. This is our 20 week ultrasound picture that was taken last week. I can't believe I am half way through! Time flies by when you have a toddler to entertain you and wear you out! He looks great and is growing well at a whopping 13 ounces. I am also pleased to report that I only gained two pounds in the last month. Since I am adding that to the update and haven't added any other weight gains, you know that must be my record low so far. Somehow I don't think our all inclusive beach trip that is coming up is going to help much with my next weigh in. Oh well....on to the pictures.


And just because big sister is too cute not to include a photo, here she is blowing bubbles at the park.

Love those pouty lips!