Parenthood is an incredible rollercoaster. It is literally terrifying, thrilling, breath-taking, riveting and the highest level of joy I have ever experienced all wrapped into one. Some moments as a parent, you feel like a failure or you feel like you will literally rip your hair out if your child doesn't stop yelling or telling you "no," but those moments are few and far between and luckily surrounded by moments of love and happiness so big it seems impossible to contain. I have said this before, but before becoming a parent, I didn't really understand what the old cliche meant: to love someone so much it hurts. As a parent, I know exactly what that means: I can physically FEEL a beautiful ache in my heart as it fills with love for Lilly every moment I am with her or thinking about her.
Darren is such a wonderful dad and Lilly loves spending time with him. One of their special times during the day is bath time. Darren almost always gives Lilly her bath and they always sound like they are having so much fun together! I stay away so as to give them their special bonding time, but I always get to hear the splashes and the giggles, and this smile tells it all!
We were in Petsmart one morning and Lilly wanted to go and see the kitty in the glass cage. She wanted to play with it, but of course it was behind glass. Luckily Petsmart is very smart (haha) and has a little feather toy on a pole that you can use to play with the cat through the glass. Needless to say, Lilly had an absolute blast playing with the cat! She would have stayed there and played all day if we let her! I think Darren was a few minutes away from taking that cat home with us because it was bringing Lilly so much joy! Too bad he is allergic to cats!
Lilly loves to swing! She usually swings on her "baby" swing, but today she wanted to try the "big girl" swing on our neighbors swing set, so we let her give it a shot. I was a nervous wreck watching her, but she did a great job holding on and keeping her balance!
Lilly and I were hanging out together one morning and Darren was out (I don't remember where) and she got into our pantry. She found Darren's box of slim Jims and decided to help herself! I sent this picture to Darren to show him that Lilly was eating all of his Slim Jims ;-) (Note: I did not actually let my 1 year old eat these!)
Lilly and I also worked on an Easter craft while Darren was gone. I took contact paper and put it against a cut out of an egg so Lilly to decorate it with little scraps of tissue paper. She really enjoyed it!
We borrowed this idea from our daycare provider as well: a car wash! We took some soap, a big bowl and a bunch of matchbox cars I bought for a dollar on buy sell trade and, viola! Lilly had a blast washing the cars and playing in the water. Lilly will pretty much do anything involving water. She absolutely loves it!
What a cutie pie!
Darren's sister, Becky and her sons, Darren and David, came to visit one night. Lilly had such a great time playing with her cousins and showing them all of her toys. It was so nice for us to get to see them! With our schedules it is hard to get together even though we live fairly close, so we're always thankful for any time we get to spend with them :o)
We bought a house! We literally started looking (not even completely seriously) on Thursday and were signing the contract on Saturday! CRAZY! It's all kind of a blur but major shout outs to Chad and Michelle, Rachel and Will, and Kelly for all watching Lilly at various points during our crazy house hunt. What a wild experience!
Easter Sunday was such a great time! I got up early to get Lilly's Easter basket ready and hide her Easter eggs since we truly had no time to do it before then since we were...oh yeah, buying a house! I wanted to try to make her Easter candy-free, so we went with stickers, coloring books, bubbles, Chinese yo-yos, necklaces, a bouncy ball, glow sticks...etc.
Lilly liked hunting for the eggs, but she was MUCH more concerned with finding out what was in each one as we found them.
She had a hard time figuring out how to open them at first. "How do you open this thing???"
"Hmmm...it looks like if I pull here..."
"Maybe if I pull a little harder..."
Don't worry, she got them open eventually and was a very happy girl! She loved putting on her necklaces and finding her stickers. She was definitely expecting candy though and was somewhat disappointed when NONE of her eggs had any candy. I guess I should have thought of that since we went to the Fuquay egg hunt and all of their eggs had candy. She still had fun though. It was funny because she would literally walk by some of the eggs and not realize they were there! I think after the "hunt" there were still 3 or 4 eggs we had to point out to her.
She finally found it behind the toy box and dove right in! Maggie was very curious what the Easter Bunny brought as well.
Michelle, Chad, Allie, Ryan and Kristen came over for dinner on Easter and we had such a great time. I wish I had taken some pictures, but at the same time, I was just enjoying our time with our friends and didn't think about it, so I am ok with that too :-) Sometimes it's nice to just enjoy your time and not be stuck behind a camera or video camera :-) I do remember the kids taking out literally every toy we owned and playing together in the living room for close to an hour by themselves! Michelle felt bad about "the mess" but I was just thrilled that Lilly was playing with the kids and being independent for an hour. I love my daughter with all of my heart, but she is VERY Mommy-centered right now and I get very few breaks other than work and when she is sleeping. It was nice to just be me for a little while and talk with adults! :-) I also remember that Lilly, Allie and Ryan laid down together and watched some of Frozen. Allie even shared some of her brand new Frozen stickers with Lilly, which was SO nice since I know how much Allie loves Frozen and she just got these stickers. We are so thankful to have friends who are such great parents and who have such amazing kids! I look up to all the amazing Moms in my life and I am so happy Lilly has positive role models to look up to as well!
After Easter it was time to get to work! Darren and I worked SO hard that week to get our house on the market! We met with the stager on Monday and she gave us ideas for getting the house "show ready" and we just ran with it. We literally worked until 10 every night getting things ready and had our house phtographed on Thursday and on the market at 12:01 a.m. on Friday! It was so worth it though because we had 5 showings in our first weekend on the market!
This is the lot for our new house!!! We went and put our SOLD sign out on the lot together as a family. The lot is almost half an acre, so we are so excited to finally have a big yard for Lilly and Maggie. It's going to be an incredible experience to build a house, but it's also going to be difficult and crazy!
I took Lilly to Kohls one afternoon when we had a showing and Darren had Challenge Island. Remember last blog when I told you how much she likes to try on my shoes? Apparently she likes to try on ANY shoes. We spend 30 minutes in the shoe department trying on shoes. She loved the "sparkly" ones and insisted on walking around in them. People kept walking by and commenting on how cute she was. It was a great way to "kill time" while we needed to be out of the house.
Lilly loves Frozen. She loves to watch it, listen to it, sing it...etc. I have posted a video of her singing Let It Go, but her new favorite song is For the First Time in Forever. This video doesn't truly do justice to how cute this was. I think we grabbed the camera, rewound the DVD and tried to see if she would do it again and it wasn't quite the same. But it's still cute nonetheless. :-)
What? You don't dance around the room in sunglasses with no pants on? Tom Cruise has nothing on me!
The weekend was gorgeous and we spent as much time as we could outside.
We pretty much stayed outside the entire day. We got out the water table as soon as we got home and played outside until dinner time. You can't keep this girl out of water!
The next morning we headed to Vaughs for Strawberry picking! Lilly liked picking them, but was more concerned about all of the smushed ones on the ground. She would point and say, "Oh no! What happened?" We had to tell her over and over again that it was ok :-)
As soon as we got home we washed the strawberries and let Lilly dive in. I took her shirt off so she could just have fun and she munched a strawberry as big her her hand. I love summer!
Of course we had to get the water out later that day! We put out her water mat and her table and she ran back and forth between them and had an absolute blast! I love watching her play!
That face melts my heart every time!
This is how you know that I have mellowed out as a mom and I have started allowing Lilly to explore on her own: she now loves to swing herself over the slide of her swing set! She discovered this on her own and now it's one of her favorite things to do. It's actually pretty amazing to see this tiny little person holding up her entire body weight fairly effortlessly! I guess when you weight 25 pounds of so, it's not so hard! I can't even do monkey bars anymore!
We had a coupon for Ruby Tuesday so we decided to go out to lunch. The restaurant was pretty crowded because it was the Saturday before Mother's Day so I think some people were celebrating early. There were two elderly ladies sitting in the table next to us and about halfway through out meal they commented on how well-behaved Lilly is and how she sits so nicely and eats without fussing or making mess. They commented again when they left and said they were really impressed with her and they have been around a lot of kids. This is so refreshing to hear as a parent because sometimes you worry that other patrons groan and roll their eyes when they see kids come in to a restaurant. Lilly was amazing the whole time, she even insisted on cleaning herself up...in her own special way :o)
We bought Lilly her own "cell phone" at Target and she has been taking it with her everywhere she goes ever since. We also bought her some sunglasses which she really seems to like. While playing outside that afternoon, I snapped some of my new favorite pictures of Lilly. Here is how I hear this in my head:
"Ok so we'll meet at the playground tomorrow around 10. You'll bring the...
"Uhhh...hold on, my Mommy is looking at me..."
"Mom, what is it? Can't you see I am on the phone???"
Here is my little diva swinging on her swing set again. Like I said, this is one of her favorite new activities :-)
Back to Falcon Park for a little Mother's Day playing!
I love this little peanut!
We had Lilly's 2 year photo shoot recently with the amazing Kayleigh B as our photographer again :-) With all we had going on that day (we had a showing in the morning, I had a show at the theater in the afternoon and we had a BBQ to go to in the evening) I can't believe we pulled this off, but the pictures came out great! Notice that Lilly isn't wearing shoes in any of the pictures...oops! We forgot her shoes at home. Luckily toddler feet are adorable and she adapted to walking in bare feet fine, even though I have told her time and time again that we wear shoes outside! I wish she could have bare feet all the time but I worry about fire ants.
We didn't get as many great family shots this time because Lilly wasn't interested in smiling for these, but we at least got a couple where we are all looking in the same direction! Win!
A dog was passing by so we used that as a way to try to get Lilly to smile or laugh. It worked, but it would have worked better if she wasn't chewing on her hand. ;-)
Lilly has a very quirky habit of pointing out Maggie's poop in our backyard and she will not let it go until one of us picks it up. She saw something on the grass that kind of looked like poop (it wasn't though) and pointed at it telling us that it was "poop" until we finally convinced her it wasn't.
This didn't work as well as I hoped, but I wanted Lilly to be in color and the rest in black and white because Lilly is the center of our world and the brightest part of our lives :-)
Here is a back-to-back of Lilly and I from last year and this year. My baby is growing up way too fast!
I love her little over-the-shoulder look.
After her snack break we just let her play on the playground and Kayleigh followed her all over the place to get some adorable pictures!
We went to Chris and Vanessa's house for a BBQ after our photos. We had a great time hanging out with some friends from the neighborhood and Lilly really enjoyed playing with her new friend, Brinley. Vanessa was a rock star and brought out face paint for all the kids! Once the older girls has their faces and arms painted, Lilly and Brinley wanted in on the fun! Vanessa painted a little heart on her cheek and "I love Mommy" on her arm. I was impressed that Lilly stayed still!
We really spend a lot of time at Falcon Park! I was at the theater all week preparing for a show, so Darren was on "Daddy daycare" duty and the playground was his best friend :o)
Lilly is trying her "swinging" trick in other places now!
I came down from my shower to hear Darren and Lilly singing "Do You Want to Build a Snowman" from Frozen. I ran and grabbed my camera and caught the tail end of their performance :-)
Lilly really loves playing with her rice! She has taken to sitting inside the bucket and burying herself in the rice. It's actually pretty funny to see.
Darren was teasing Lilly and got onto her swing set with her to play. She thought it was really funny and said, "No Daddy" with a huge smile on her face. Then she gave him a push down the slide and cracked up when he shot down and jumped up. He is so good with her!
I think Lilly is practicing for the next Jean Claude Van Dam movie! The funny thing is the first time she did this, she didn't know how to fix herself, so I had to lift her up. Then she did it over and over again and thought it was hilarious that she was "stuck" like that. I had to grab a picture.
Funny story: while we were playing outside, a real estate agent and her clients were looking at the house down the street. Then the drove up to our house and asked us if they could take a look! I asked for 10 minutes so I could get it ready and then did the fastest cleanup in history! Lilly and I walked around the neighborhood while Darren showed them our house. It was awesome!
The next day, they made an offer! We countered of course, and then we came to an agreement on Thursday!
I stayed home with Lilly on Thursday because her daycare provider needed the day off and our back ups were busy. It's hard to take days off as a teacher because it's a lot of work, but spending an entire day home with my baby girl was SO worth it! I get so spoiled over track out when I get to see her every day; this was such a welcome day for us! Darren had Challenge Island after school so Lilly and I went to Marbles for $2 Thursdays!
Lilly loves to "cook" and this was the first thing she went for when we got there. She also wanted to wear the apron, which I had to tie up for her and it still touched the floor :-)
Of course we had to take care of the animals. Lilly loves dogs, cats, squirrels, birds...you name it! She is an animal lover like her parents. There was a little girl about 4 years old playing in the same area and at first Lilly was being a little possessive of some of the toys, but after we talked about it, she would walk over and give the little girl the toys and say "Here" and then "Thank you". We are working on manners and she uses please, sorry, thank you and you're welcome frequently, but not always in the right context :-)
Big shock: Lilly wanted to play at the water station :-) She loves playing with "Nemo" and giving him a ride on the boat. She also did a great job not splashing while there were other kids around. Her favorite part was when we were done and she got to use the automatic hand dryer. Once she realized that it would turn on as soon as she put her hands under it, she would dip her hands into the water and then run over to the hand dryer to dry them over and over.
Fireman Lilly!
She really likes dinosaurs. She plays with them and makes them "roar."
I loved seeing Lilly dress up in the princess dresses. She doesn't know who Merida is, but it was super cute to see her as a princess.
One of the funniest things I saw was Lilly play with the paramedics' equipment. She put the paddles on her chest (which I saw her do last time) but then she said, "Clear!" I had to do a double take and was sure I had heard her wrong, but then she did it again. I wish I had taken some video, but at least I got a picture. She can kind of see her saying it in this picture. How funny!
On Saturday we celebrated Memorial day weekend at Amber Ridge with some of our friends and new neighbors! It was such a great time for everyone! The kids had an absolute blast playing and the adults got to hang out as well! It can be hard to go to parties sometimes when you have a toddler because you are constantly playing "pass the baby" and you spend at least half of the time wrangling your kid. This party was so relaxing for us because Lilly had so many kids to play with, tons of activities to do and the yard was fenced, so we could sit and relax while she played! This is one of the many reasons I am excited to live in our new house!
One of the funniest moments from the day was when Lilly was riding shotgun while Lauren drove the jeep. We strapped her in and they had a blast riding around! At first I wasn't sure if she was going to like it, but clearly I was wrong!
Lilly had a great time drinking from a water bottle (it's the little things, ya know??) I figured she would be covered in water, but she did a great job and drank almost the entire thing by herself!
At one point Lilly was giving Zoey (18 months) a ride in the wagon and I was so impressed that she could actually pull it! She pulled her all the way across the yard!
The Lilly hopped in and Zoey gave her a ride. After that Lauren came over and wanted to play. Before it was Lauren's turn to get in, the girls saw a couple of ants crawling on the ground. They were all completely fascinated! Lilly kept on asking, "Where's it going??" which is a pretty typical question when she sees any type of animal (or insect) moving.
After the ants, Lauren took a turn in the wagon. Lilly was pulling and Zoey was pushing. How cute!
After that I squeezed them all in together and took them for a ride. It was so nice that they all played together so well, took turns in the wagon, pulled each other and had a great time!
We were out in the neighborhood celebrating baby Elana's first birthday when Lilly and a bunch of the neighborhood kids went over the Rachel and Will's sand table. Lilly loves to fill up cups or buckets with the sand and then dump them out. We still work on keeping the sand in the table, but she tries.
This is Lilly and Drew hard at work at the sand table.
Later that morning we went to Falcon Park (as usual) and Darren took some great pictures of Lilly playing. She LOVES playing outside, especially on the playground, so she was a very happy girl!
My heart still races when I watch Lilly run because my nerves kick in, but I have to let go and realize that she is toddler now. She is going to run, and jump and climb, and she is going to fall and get hurt. The most important thing is to let her learn and be there to encourage her to get back up and keep trying!
It's hard to get this little girl off of a swing! She loves it!
Here is a side-by-side of Lilly in a swing last year and this year. Where did those long legs come from?!?
This is one of my favorite shots of the day
Our neighbors had a BBQ on Memorial Day so we had a blast hanging out with our friends in the neighborhood and Lilly enjoyed playing with the kids. I took Lilly and Drew out for a ride in a wagon and they had a blast. There was a cash register strapped to it because I think the older kids use it as a portable lemonade stand, so they even had a toy to play with while they rode. This picture looks like Lilly is pushing Drew, but she was just giving him tickles and they were giggling and laughing the whole time. It even ended with a nice hug :-)
Giving a toddler a piece of corn is hilarious. Enough said :-)
We got some bad news yesterday: our buyers backed out and are no longer going to buy our house. It was terrible news and we were crushed, but we are trying to just move on from it and not let it get us down. We were supposed to have a showing today so we loaded up the family (including Maggie) and headed to visit Michelle and the kids and go to the pool. I got a call at 11 (the showing was scheduled for 11) that the showing was cancelled. Thanks for the notice :o) *sigh* Oh well. Michelle's parents said it best: things happen for a reason and we just need to have faith. At least our house is extremely clean and we got to spend a great afternoon with our wonderful friends at the pool! :-) Lilly had a great time swimming with me, even though she was a little apprehensive of the pool at first. She takes a while to warm up to things that she is not used to, but once she was comfortable, she had a blast!
Lilly said the funniest thing this morning: we were sitting at the table having breakfast and she farted. We are trying to teach her to say "excuse me" if she farts, so I said, "Lilly, did you fart?" She said, "No, Daddy farted." I almost fell out of my chair I was laughing so hard! Darren has previously used Lilly (and even Maggie) as a scapegoat for some of his more...musical moments, but we had never heard Lilly try it! What a crazy little girl!
