It’s Been Awhile

Apparently I fell off the blogging bandwagon again so I’m going to attempt to get caught back up!  I know there’s a certain grandparent in Russia right now who would probably appreciate the photos and I know I will appreciate it when I’m trying to fill in baby books! 

I have yet to blog about Hadley’s big girl room, all my car seat research, Hadley’s birthday party and Harper’s birthday party… let alone Easter and everything in between so I’m going to let this post serve as a big picture catch-up and go from there! 

We went to a Superbowl party with friends. I watched zero football.  I did watch my kids. And eat some queso. :)

Hadley got some iPad time while Nana & Poppy were in town for Harper’s birthday.

Hadley and I had a fun time at her class Valentine’s party – also known as the only times she’s allowed to eat candy, cookies AND drink juice at the same time.  AKA: tummy ache and sugar crash 30 minutes later.

At 12.5 months old, Harper FINALLY popped two teeth! 

We’ve done a lot of swinging and playing outside enjoying some warmer weather finally!

We found out there’s going to be a little BOY in the family soon!  My sister & brother-in-law will be welcoming a sweet little mister come July! 

Hadley & her friend Russell from school were enjoying the photo booth set up at their school’s lemonade stand fundraiser.

We’ve had lots of fun play dates with friends!

We visited daddy at work and little miss made herself at home in the office!

I designed the invitations for my sister’s baby shower  and I really like how they turned out! She’s planning to do all different neutrals in the nursery – cream, white, grey – along with pops of orange, so I tried to design them with that in mind (and I had to throw in a little blue )

Harper started walking at 13 months old and hasn’t slowed down since!  She pushes this little stroller around the house NON.STOP.

 

I celebrated my 31st birthday on April 2nd.  The girls and I went to lunch with a good friend and her daughter (who treated me to a starbucks g/c – hence the pic below) and then we got to spend the next couple days with my college roommate and her family!  I couldn’t have asked for more. :)

The girls and I have enjoyed plenty of chick-fil-a lunch dates – which is slightly more expensive these days given Harper’s appetite!

I’ve always rocked Harper to sleep, but lately she has been goofy and giggly at bedtime while we’re rocking and then asks to go into her crib.  While I’m a little sad that she rarely lets me rock her to sleep now, I am loving the sweet smiles and giggles!

I went back blonde! (Sorry for the lame selfie).

We enjoyed some family time with mimi & grandpa last weekend (April 12/13).  Lots of good food and playtime!

Hadley LOVES to bake with me, so we’ve spent lots of time in the kitchen baking sweet treats!

Oh yeah. And a tree fell on my car.  Well, fell may not be the right word.  More like a tree was hit by a car and knocked over on top of my car.  Kind of cancelled out the relaxing pedicure I was enjoying with a friend.

Of course we had to go have a margarita on the patio with friends to compensate for the tree incident.

Whew. Ok – now to work on a few more updates to get us all caught up! 

Five on Friday

I *should* be posting Harper’s 7 month post today, but I haven’t finished it yet, so I decided to join in on 5 on Friday again. 

{one}

Harper is SEVEN months old. Which means she is officially on the downhill slide to ONE.  How does it happen so quickly?  Despite the lack of sleep we still have, I will so miss this baby stage when it’s gone!

{two}

I am so happy that football season is back, but I have to say, having young kids around makes me a little less into it than usual.  Am I the only one who feels like there just isn’t room in my brain for one more thing in this stage of life?  Between feeding times, nap times, diaper changes, medicine doses, cooking, cleaning, laundry, and scheduling doctor’s appts, play dates, meetings, lunches, etc…keeping up with things for a family of 4 on top of getting no more than 3/4 hours of consecutive sleep at night is just all that my brain can handle right now!  Hopefully once the girls are a little older I’ll be able to fully get back into football season.

{three}

Hadley started preschool at a new school this year and I am loving it so far!  The director and her teachers communicate with parents constantly (I get daily and weekly updates from her teachers (with pictures!) and it is just a smaller community than her last school.  I’m glad we made the switch this year.  Hadley seems to be adjusting pretty well so far.  She’s not napping there, but her teachers said she’s staying put and lying there perfectly still/quiet until I get there, and she’ll come home and nap for a couple hours here after school, so it’s working so far.  If she starts to fall asleep at school, though, I may have to start picking her up a little early b/c 45 minutes is NOT enough for my sweet girl!  She is the youngest in the class, so I know she’ll probably be a little behind some of the other kids in sleeping/potty training type things. 

{four}

I really need to go fold laundry and start about 5 more loads.  Being sick for the past week has be SO behind. That’s all.

{five}

We’ve been in our new house for almost an entire year already!  I can’t believe how quickly this past year has gone.  And I also can’t believe that I don’t have a single room in our house yet that feels “finished” to me.  I LOVE to decorate and know that turning a house into a home is an ever changing process, but I think part of why I feel so scattered all the time is the fact that I have so many “projects” in my head for every inch of our house!  Don’t get me wrong… I absolutely love this house, and other than cosmetic things, there’s really nothing I’d change.  I love the layout, love our location, love the “bones” of the house… if only hiring a painter for trim/walls wasn’t so dang expensive!  Oh well.  I’ll keep chipping away at the trim and walls little by little.

NOW IT'S YOUR TURN TO SHARE YOUR "FIVE ON FRIDAY"!

Five On Friday

I’m linking up with Darci at The Good Life today for 5 on Friday!  My first post without pictures of either one of the girls in it…*gasp!* (But don’t worry, most of the points are about them anyway.)

 

{1} Once you have kids, time spent with your parents becomes a double edged sword.  Matt was traveling for work (read: fly fishing in Utah. It’s a hard life he leads) most of this week so my mom came to stay with me to help with the girls and hang out.  It was so amazing to have her help.  I thoroughly enjoyed getting to sleep in a bit a couple mornings (as in sleeping until 7:30/7:45!), not stressing about making dinner, only changing half the diapers, having an extra person to entertain a busy toddler, and just having another adult around during the day to have conversations with!  However, now I’m dealing with the detox phase.  It is seriously as if Hadley is detoxing from a drug.  After dinner tonight she was fine one minute, then SOBBING for no reason the next, then throwing a tantrum on the stairs on the way to the bath.  Bath time was equally dramatic and ended with a tearful toddler screaming that she didn’t want to dry her hair (despite the fact that having wet hair resulted in the same dramatic tears… you can’t win with a 2 year old). 

Said through gasps, sniffles and sobs: “I don-don-don’t wanna dwy my haaaaiiiiirrr!” 

“Okay. It’s going to be wet when you go to bed then.”

“Noooo!  I don-don-don-don’t want my hair to be wet at bedtime!”

I foresee a Friday spent in our pjs and lots of Daniel Tiger and Sophia the First while we try to rest away the after-effects of the grandparent-drug.

{2} I really wish Harper would sleep through the night.   That’s all.

{3} This is the first summer since we’ve been married that we haven’t taken a vacation.  We’re still toying with the idea of renting a beach house in Galveston for a long weekend before the summer is done but there’s nothing in the books which feels a little odd.  Although I’ll admit that it’s my fault – I am so picky about what type of vacation is “doable” with 2 young girls.  Especially including one two year old who does NOT sleep with anyone else in the room with her and an infant who just doesn’t sleep regardless of what room she’s in. *yawn*  It’s not really a vacation if you can’t sleep, is it?  Maybe next summer we can leave the girls at home and enjoy adult beverages and sleeping in.

{okay. I lied. I had to throw in this picture of Hadley playing in the ocean for her first time at Hilton Head last summer.}

{4} Our upstairs AC unit went out last week.  As of yesterday we were STILL dealing with the repair company trying to get it running properly.  Thankfully we have 2 other units, and right now Hadley’s room is the only room upstairs, so it hasn’t been a huge deal, but oh.my.word. FIX IT already!  The guy who came out last night was the 6th guy to come and look at it and it was the 7th time someone has been out to our house in the past week and a half.  Can you say inefficient?? It appears to be running properly now, but I’m not holding my breath.  And I also know the names of all of their office managers and the president of the company.  I’m afraid I became one of the headache customers… whoops.

{5} My school supply loving heart couldn’t pass up this pack of sharpies at Target the other day.  Is there anything better than writing in a planner with a fresh fun new color sharpie?  Sorry for the randomness… I’ve got a couple posts about packing a hospital bag and favorite baby products the second time around coming soon!  Happy Friday!

An Update of Sorts

Umm, where did the month of May go?  Seriously, y’all.  I think an entire week was lost somewhere.  I’m going to try to remember what we’ve been up to the past couple weeks and hopefully get back on track!

• First and foremost – Hadley had her first trip out of state!  I’ll save the details and photos of our trip to Hilton Head, SC for a separate post.
• Hadley had lots of catching up to do with friends when we got back – her “aunt” Courtney was begging to see her, as was her nana, aunt Katie (although that hasn’t worked out yet!) and Hadley was dying to see her neighbor/bff Camry.
• Hadley got her first busted lip – x2.  She busted it on our hardwood floors, and the next day, re-busted it in the exact same place.  I had to bust out (pun intended) the stain remover for multiple outfits.  Bless her heart.
• We celebrated my second Mother’s Day!  Seems hard to believe!
• This momma got food poisoning.  I’ll spare the details, but I have seriously never been so sick in my life.  It’s been about a week and certain smells are still making me queasy.  It was a great way to lose a quick 6 pounds, though!
• Thankfully, my mom was in town for a couple days when I was sick – I seriously don’t know what I would have done without her.  It would have been hard enough caring for Hadley, but add in the fact that the next day I had promised to watch my friend Sarah’s little Hadley again and there is no way we all would have survived without nana. :)  She definitely got a bit more than she bargained for that day!
• Thanks to the aforementioned sickness, Hadley is down to one nursing session a day (right before bed).  I never really intended to keep nursing this long, but given all the benefits (for both of us!), I’m really proud that we’ve made it so long.
• I’m thinking about signing Hadley up for swim lessons this summer.  There’s an indoor aquatic center not too far from us and I think it would give us something fun to do during the week outside of our usual. 

And I’ll leave you with an iPhone picture dump to finish “catching up!”

Poor girl with her swollen, busted lip…

Drivin’ with “aunt” Courtney…

Her first real pig-tails!  Such a big girl!

 

Mother’s Day with my sweet girl!

And last… doesn’t every kid have to have a picture in the dishwasher?  It’s some sort of right-of-passage, isn’t it?

Friday Phone Dump

Just wanted to share some randomness with y’all from our week!  And if you haven’t already, head over to Karen’s blog and link up your home (or room) tours now that her guest-posting tours are over! 

• I am super excited about this seersucker dress I found at a re-sale shop!  I had my neighbor monogram it (it’s dangerous having a neighbor who can monogram!!) and LOVE the end result!  I think Hadley will be wearing this all summer!

• My rose bushes look like this a couple times a year – I wish they stayed like this year round!  It’s so nice to have some color back there!

• I have been trying to find the perfect “all-season” wreath for a long time now and finally just decided to go grab a grapevine wreath from Hobby Lobby and tie some burlap on it!  I really love it and am wondering why it took me so long to do this!

• I’ve had these plastic bins just sitting in a cabinet waiting to help organize our pantry for about a month now.  I finally decided to make some chalk-labels for them and started organizing!  Again, why did I wait to do this?  It seriously took me no time at all and makes the pantry look so much neater.  It’s a work in progress, which is why you’re not seeing the whole pantry, but it’s been such a simple makeover.

If you follow me on twitter or instagram, you may have already seen a couple of these, but for those of you who don’t…

• At Hadley’s 15 month appointment while we were waiting for the doctor, I pulled my phone out to take a picture.  I asked Hadley to smile and she gave me such a cute little fake grin – she cracks me up

• I love this picture of my two favorite people walking up to church on Easter Sunday

• Someone was WIPED.OUT. after playing hard in the nursery and hardly sleeping the night before

• I was organizing Hadley’s dresser the other day and when I glanced over at her to see what was keeping her so quietly occupied, I found her sorting her handbands on her arm.  She might have gotten a bit of her momma’s OCD.

• Today we played out in the driveway with sidewalk chalk – I’m pretty sure more of it wound up in Hadley’s mouth or on her little tush than actually on the driveway, but either way, we had fun :)  (P.S. that’s a mum mum in her mouth in that first picture in case you were wondering)

Hope y’all have a wonderful weekend!  We’re waiting for my sister & brother in-law to get here for a fun weekend with family!  Happy Friday!