For as often as I think about blogging, it's remarkable how little I actually do it. Because after every little event, I think, "oh, hey, I should write that down," And clearly, I don't.
But life moves on, whether I write it down or not, and my girls are growing like crazy, being awesome and we are trying to keep up with the boring and exciting times that we have.
Example, since I last blogged, Lily turned 4; Emma is potty trained (through the day); Kaylee is on the move at lightning fast speeds; we went to Nashville; had visitors; had the house just about turned inside out and a heap of other things.
First, our trip to Nashville.
Jesse and I joke that "all" our friends from college live in Nashville, TN. While that's not entirely true...we do have a bunch of friends down there, so we figured it was time to be social and go see everyone. It was a long over due trip and went entirely too fast, but we all had a good time. Before we left, I told Jesse that I didn't care how many times we had to stop, I wasn't taking the risk of Emma regressing and having her travel in diapers. Impressively, she made the entire trip both ways without a single accident. I was shocked, as she hadn't even gone one day here without an accident. And while it took us a bit (a lot) longer to get there, I think it was worth it, because she's been a rockstar.
Our time there just went too fast, that's all there is to it, and true to my typical form, I barely took a single picture. Which is really too bad, mostly because Lily and Emma made two new best friends with Addiston and Isabella Miller and they were all precious. Because that was already a month ago and I'm just now sitting down to write about it, we'll just skip to the hightlights:
- Lily, Emma, Addiston and Bella all playing together. Even the arguments over whose turn it was with what toy. Learning to share is hard, especially when there are so many new and exciting toys!
- talking to my friends in person instead of just over the phone!
- a cookout on Saturday and the genius "s'moreo"- yes, brilliance in the shape of two Oreo's and a marshmallow.
- Sunday was jam packed (for a family of 5) but great: brunch in the morning (thanks for meeting up with us Heather, TJ, Nathan, Whitney, Derek and Tiffany!), a trip out to see Derek and Tiffany's land and future home site, and getting to go on an double date with Jared and Lindsey without kids (what?!).
I feel I do need to expound on the whole "without kids" part. Lindsey had scheduled with her usual babysitters to come watch a herd of girls so we could go out, and while I was a nervous wreck, it was great. I never leave Kaylee, and even though she was probably grumpy the entire time, she survived and the babysitters were smiling and alive when we got home, so success. Apparently, Kaylee did scream for quite awhile at the beginning, and then it was discovered that her hair had gotten wrapped around the button on the back of her shirt! So badly that they had to actually cut her hair a bit to get it untangled!
Hilarious! My baby's first hair cut. And even though it's one of my favorite shirts of hers, it's going as it is into her baby box...so all of you folks with bald babies jealous of her flowing mane of hair...just go ahead and laugh even harder.
And then we came home and Lily turned 4. I have a 4 year old. Unacceptable.
I also decided it was a good thing I am not an overly emotional mom that melts down every year on her child's birthday...because that's just not practical. Besides, Lily did it plenty for me anyway, so I'm set. For reasons unknown to me, she decided she didn't want to grow up and wanted to stay 3 forever. I remember panicking at various points of growing up about turning the next year and not wanting to because I'd never be the same age again. What a difficult concept for a little child to wrap up in his or her brain, so I tried to explain why this was exciting and tried to get her excited.
We celebrated quietly: Jesse brought her flowers and balloons before we had dinner, cake and gave her presents.
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| we unburied my wedding dress last weekend and Lily asked to try it on. |
At 4, Lily is funny, sweet, caring, but also exploring her independence and what Jesse and I will let her do. For example, we tell her to do something (go put your books away), she will get this little attitude and say, "no, I'm not going to." And then we get to have a nice little chat about being respectful and obedient immediately. We are definitely having fun with this age, and love trying new things with her. Her imagination is so enjoyable to watch, and how she interacts with her sisters and other kids. Without a doubt, her favorite imagination game is to play doctor, and will do check ups for anyone who will let her. Heads up if you ever get a check up from Doctor Lily, everything "looks good," and your blood pressure will always be 20-30.
Emma is chugging along. She is doing great without diapers, and I can proudly say that because we got ahead on diapers for Kaylee, this month was the first in 4 years that I haven't had a shipment of diapers coming from Amazon. I had to sit down for awhile when I realized that.
She intentionally makes us laugh, which I love, and she is incredibly sweet and affectionate. She is very adventurous and independent. Example, I helped her go down a fireman pole one time at the park and then got distracted with the other two and looked back and she was zipping down by herself like a pro. I do need an extra set of eyes I can devote to her. All of the wonderful sides help balance out her meltdown point and temper, because when she's mad, the entire world knows. Or at least our neighbors. Emma has decided to be done with naps, and she's handling that like a champ, but some days naps are required. Her vocabulary is growing and some of the things she says crack me up. Don't worry, she is getting entries in the "Lily isms" posts. Her current favorite phrase is, "that's weird?" asked like a question, meant like a statement.
Kaylee is 8.5 months old and is just a joy. Such a sweet little thing that makes everyone smile who holds her because she doesn't typically care who is holding her. Lily and Emma always put up a fuss when I would pass them off to my friends and family until they really got to know the other people, but Kaylee just gives them a good hard stare, looks to see where I am and goes on with life. She's a mover, no surprise there, and loves to babble and sing. She's been doing the army crawl thing for a few months now and this weekend started giving the hands and knees variety a shot. She will tentatively cruise around, holding onto furniture and has attempted standing by herself on occasion recently, but not too interested in that. Yesterday morning, her first tooth popped through, which I'm happy about since she's been grumpy enough I'd expect an entire mouthful. Ok, she really hasn't been that bad, but I really dislike it when babies are teething and no teeth show up. That's just not fair.
Kaylee is still a pretty good sleeper, though she doesn't sleep through the night yet. I'm positive she's old enough, and I'm certain she has enough nutrients through the day to last her all night, but I'm not too worried about it. Obviously I would prefer that she sleep through the night, but it's kind of handy because after I settle her down, I just go check in on Lily and Emma and do bathroom runs at that point, so it's been a disguised blessing that she's still waking up through the night. She's not a big fan of pureed fruit, but she loves green beans, peas, squash and sweet potato. She's tried a variety of other things and I'll let her gnaw on apple slices or grapes in a pouch. And because she has older sisters, she also loves Cheetos and cocoa peanut butter crunch cereal. Don't judge our food choices, we will admit that we let our girls have terrible snacks on occasion.
Jesse and I are doing great. This month has been a focus on decluttering, organizing and deep cleaning our house. You know, because who doesn't spring clean in the fall? All three girls needed bigger clothes, and having to up entire dressers full of clothes for girls so close in age was definitely the most miserable thing I've had to do with three children to date. Lily had outgrown everything in 3t, but some of the smaller cut stuff could be washed and put directly into Emma's drawer. Emma was bursting out of everything 18-24 month and has to be in solid 2-3t clothes. Kaylee...our little chunk...is in 12-18 month clothes, so a handful of the 18 month things could go straight from Emma's drawer to Kaylee's. This took me all week to accomplish and only got it done because I made Jesse help on the weekend, but it was a huge ordeal for me: find the appropriate size clothes in the attic and send them to the wash. Empty 3 dressers of clothes, and as clothes came out of the wash, box up/hand me down to the next kid or for the next kid and figure out which dresser the new clothes go into. Nightmare. Overall though, our house is looking a bunch better!
And since I've now been working on this post for a week and keep adding/changing everything about it, I should probably call it good enough for this round.
