Well that was a long break…

So since the last time I posted it was about my sister’s baby shower, we’ve had a lot happen in a few short months!

Parker arrived on July 17th and is as precious as can be! Hadley and I went down by ourselves while they were in the hospital and she was a super proud little cousin!

The rest of our summer was filled with swim lessons, ballet lessons, bike riding, and play dates with friends.

In August, Hadley got a fresh new hair cut for a new school year!

Harper also had her 18 month well check – healthy, growing girl at 34” and 27lbs!

We had a fun visit with mimi and grandpa (and enjoyed some delicious Uncle Julios)

Hadley graduated into the next level at her swim school and earned a ribbon for their “jump, turn, swim” for being able to jump in the water, turn around and swim to the side and get out on her own!

Then we all took a trip down to Austin so Uncle Matt and Harper could finally meet sweet little Parker!

September:

Hadley started a new school year (pre-k 3)

Hadley started the fall session of her ballet lessons and is still loving it!

And October has already  been crazy busy so I’ll save that for a separate post!

Where has the year gone??

Thankfully I’ve had Harper’s monthly updates to keep me posting occasionally but it’s been since August since I’ve posted anything outside of that!  Whew.  Apparently having a crawling-into-everything-still-not-sleeping-through-the-night-baby and a (almost) three (cue the tears) year old makes for less time on the computer.  Who knew? 

That said, I’m going to use this post to attempt to get caught up through the holidays.  I apologize in advance if I jump around a little.  I have no doubt that this post will not be finished in one sitting!

Here we go… the last family outing I left you with was the zoo.  Since then we’ve been to the Texas State Fair, Pumpkin Patch, The Arboretum, countless family visits and meals out, transitioned to a new school and a big girl bed for Hadley (in addition to ditching the paci!), transitioned Harper to a big girl car seat (after MUCH research and buying/returning), enjoyed our first Halloween as a family of four, took Hadley to the dentist for the first time, celebrated 6 years of marriage, painted our dining room, hosted our first Thanksgiving, survived the great Ice-mageddon storm in Dallas (although parts of our trees can’t say the same) and are now gearing up for our first Christmas as a family of four! 

Okay, now that I write all that out, I think I’m going to break some of those up into separate posts.  So here are a TON of pictures…and then some more posts to come!

Hadley started at a new school this year (closer to our new home).  I was worried about her transition because she is a lover of all things familiar but she ROCKED it and is loving her new class, teachers and friends!

Shortly after starting school, we decided to finally tackle the paci as well.  I am so glad we waited until she was ready, because other than a week or two of spotty naps, she never skipped a beat!  She got to pick out a big girl prize (Doc McStuffins doctor kit) after her first full day of no paci and she never even asked for it after that! 

And as if the new school and no paci transitions weren’t enough, we decided to bite the bullet and go for the big girl bed, too! 

Waking up after her first successful night in her big girl bed! (Note the crib to the left…justincase) ;)

Ever since we’ve been slowly but surely working on her big-girl room designs.  I’ve painted the walls, re-arranged the furniture a little, added some new color and décor… but it’s not quite finished.  As soon as I can find some good lamps and the perfect something for over her bed I’ll post some pictures!

And while I’m on the subject of Hadley-milestones, I’ll go ahead and throw in her first visit to the dentist!  This visit was more of a “happy visit” as they call it, and they just counted her teeth and painted princess vitamins (aka flouride) on her teeth, then let her pick out a prize and sent us on her way.  She loved it and asked for weeks if her princess vitamins were still there!

And we had lots of fun play dates with friends and family! (Oh and as you might be able to tell, I colored my hair DARK brown somewhere in there, too.)

I’ll save October for another post!

Highlights

 

Just a couple quick pictures to highlight March (and a few from April), to try to get caught up on the blog.

This picture of Hadley cracks me up.  She pulled that yellow stretchy thing out of the toy box, set it on the carpet and then grabbed her camera and proceeded to snap about 50 pictures of it.  Think she’s seen me do that a time or two (not with that yellow thing… but you get the idea).

They celebrated Texas Independence Day at school with a Texas week.  They took hilarious pictures of the kids in cowboy attire and posted them on the door.  Hadley had a blast with this and loved to show me her picture every time we were there.

I had to commemorate my first trip to Target with both girls by myself.  We’ve since been probably 10 more times at least, so I feel like an old pro already.  It is definitely like running a marathon, though, to get grocery shopping done with both girls. 

This day, I was loading up the car for school, and I turned around to see this.  Hadley looked at me and said “Ho-see tummin wit us.”  Thankfully when I explained that we didn’t have a carseat for ho-see, she quickly nodded and brought him back in, explaining to him “no ca-seat ho-see. You tay home. See you later!”

Tried to get a picture of the girls together before leaving for school and this is the best I could get.  I wonder what they were both looking at that was more interesting than my camera?

I told Hadley I wanted a picture of her because I thought she looked so cute.  Apparently that was insulting and she proceeded to pout at the car.  Oh to be inside the mind of a two year old.

Thankfully, she was in a better mood when I picked her up from school. :)

Early morning deep conversations in momma’s bed. :)  One of my biggest prayer is that these two would grow up to be the best of friends.  Always supporting and loving each other.

I’m A Survivor (of the first day of preschool)

Well, we survived!  Today was Hadley’s first day of preschool/Mother’s Day Out (the school calls it “younger preschool” but it’s essentially Mother’s Day Out). 

Matt came with us this morning for drop off (I think he was worried I wouldn’t actually leave), so that helped to have an extra distraction in the morning.  She got a little sad when we first got there and she saw all of the kids around here; I think it was a little intimidating.  She did really well at drop off, though (more than I can say for myself), and Matt and I headed back to the car.  Unfortunately, we had forgotten her nap mat at home, so I had to run home to get it and bring it back up to school.  I left it with the receptionist so that Hadley wouldn’t see me, but her teacher saw me (over the half door) and gave me a thumbs up.  However, you can see into her classroom from the walkway to the parking lot, so I spied on her for a quick second on my way out and could see her crying and grabbing the teacher’s hands trying to get them to the door. 

I spent my free time catching up on the DVR, crying and doing a little retail therapy.  Sitting around the house made me so sad and I could hardly keep my eyes dry, so I decided to shop away the tears. :) It was definitely nice to be able to take my time in a store, but I did miss my shopping buddy.  I grabbed some lunch and headed up to the church for pick up a little early (I got there almost 45 min early and enjoyed a quiet lunch in the car while I waited for an acceptable amount of time to pass before I went inside). 

When I got there she was playing happily with a giant bowl of play food.  I was so relieved to see she wasn’t crying when I got there.  Her teacher said she did really well overall, although she did acknowledge that she was pretty sad in the morning.  She said once they went outside she perked right up and had a good afternoon (and even napped a little!).  If only their day could start with going on the playground!  I packed a pretty big lunch for her so she’d have options (she is the PICKIEST eater right now), and she did pretty well on it!  I tried to pack things that I know she always likes so she got cheese, ham, pretzels, grapes, apples, a squeeze pack of applesauce and a pumpkin muffin.  She ate the cheese, most of the fruit and pretzels and her applesauce so I’m glad she at least ate while she was there!

I made little note pads for her teachers and Hadley was really cute giving them to her teachers this morning when we got there.

This was her “report card” for the day.  I really wish they had filled in how long she slept for, but all they said was that she did sleep for a bit. 

And her first piece of art!  I know we will have thousands of these over the years, but I’m pretty sure this one will have a special spot in the baby book (at the very least) or a frame!

She didn’t eat her pumpkin muffin for lunch, so we had those for a treat when we came home to play.

All in all, it went pretty well!  Although I will say that I’m pretty nervous for Thursday because she’ll know what’s coming.  I’ve heard the second and third times can be a lot harder than the first day!  Praying for peace from the mom-guilt of leaving her there and a tear-free (or at least less tears) next day!