On the weekends, Darren and I take turns getting up with Lilly and sleeping in. Recently when Darren would get up with Lilly, she would ask to take a walk. They have taken some amazing walks together just as the sun is rising. Most mornings, Lilly is still in her PJs, like her sweet little Elsa nightgown. Of course, she needed to take baby Elsa with them ;-)
Through various circumstances, we ended up fostering a dog named Princess for about a week. She came to us a total mess and after a long bath and Darren heroically removing so many ticks I was literally gagging, Princess was actually very cute and sweet. Unfortunately, she did NOT like being crated while we were gone and she destroyed our dog crate, numerous towels and had accidents in her crate a few times. It was not a good situation, since we obviously had to crate her and we obviously had to go to work. Long story short, another family was willing to foster her. We went to their house and they live on a beautiful farm with a huge fenced yard (including two other sweet dogs) and horses. The people were incredibly sweet and offered to call the horses over so Lilly could see them. She was SO excited at first...then as they came closer, she was not so excited. It didn't occur to me that Lilly has never seen a horse that close before and how big they are. She was pretty intimidated. She didn't cry, but she didn't want to pet them or feed them. Darren and I did to show her how gentle and sweet they were, and she started to smile, but she still wasn't comfortable touching them. It was nice to know that Princess had a great temporary home and that even though we weren't able to keep her in our home, we did what we could to help her.
Lilly and Maggie have a very hot and cold relationship. Lilly sometimes gets very upset with Maggie because Maggie is very affectionate and wants to give kisses and be close to us...all the time. This was a nice moment when Lilly wanted to cuddle with Maggie. Granted, she ended up sitting on her, but Maggie's tail was wagging and she seemed happy, so we went with it :-)
We were so excited to have Kristin over to play after school one day while Chad and Michelle had Open House at school. Lilly and Kristin play so well together. After snack they went into the playroom and immediately went for the dress up clothes. They may be a year apart in age, but their interests in dressing up match perfectly :-) The cuteness overload of these two is almost too much!
A play date is not complete without selfies! The girls loved seeing themselves on my phone and we took about 20 pictures, some smiling, some silly, but this one was my favorite.
Lilly gets SO excited to go to Harris Teeter. Sometimes she comes with just me, sometimes she is just with Darren, and sometimes we all go together. Can you tell who she was with during this shopping trip?? I can't tell you how proud it makes me to see my 3 year old walking down the aisles of our local grocery store with a case of beer in her cart...
Darren snapped this shot of Lilly while they were playing and there's something about it that I just love. She looks so sweet and innocent. I know she's not really smiling, but I love how calm and gentle she looks. Darren and I go in to Lilly's room each night to check on her before we go to bed. Inevitably, we both come back in the room with huge smiles on our faces because we are completely smitten with how sweet and beautiful Lilly looks while she is sleeping. Sometimes she is all sprawled out, sometimes she is laying perfectly calm like an angel, sometimes her little fanny is up in the air, but however she is sleeping, she looks so peaceful and it brings the biggest smiles to our faces. We, of course, love her when she is awake and cannot get enough of our sweet little girl, but there's something about looking at a sleeping child that just melts your heart.
One evening several people in the neighborhood decided to take an impromptu trip to Sunni Sky's. After eating their ice cream, the kiddos were all running around the lawn. They started playing ring around the rosie, which was absolutely hilarious! Seven 2-5 years olds trying to hold hands and move in a circle is a complete circus act.
They were having an absolute blast!
Jason got in on the fun and chased the kids around the lawn. He took each of the girls in turn and flipped them over his head. Here is Lilly mid-flip. I didn't get any pictures of it (since I was involved), but after some running around, Jason and I tried to organize the kids into a game of Duck, Duck, Goose. This seemed like a pretty simple task, but it was like herding cats! They all wanted to be "goosed", didn't know which way to run (or even to run in a circle), couldn't understand where to sit after running...etc. I was laughing so hard!
Miss Kelly gave Lilly a box of play food, including fruits and vegetables that are in pieces held together by velcro. She had a BLAST sitting and cutting up all of the foods over and over again. Miss Kelly sure knows how to make Lillypad smile (even if her smile looks a little evil in this picture!)
Lilly is so incredibly talkative lately and she tells us full blown stories all the time. I absolutely love it. Listening to her talk and her immense vocabulary give me so much pride and honestly, a lot of amusement. I can tell that Lilly is in the midst of a story in this picture because of her facial expression. I love it!
Kristin came over to play after school and, surprise surprise, the girls went straight for the dress up clothes :-)
They had a blast in the bath, too. Kristin looks a little scared in this picture for some reason, but they were laughing and giggling the entire bath time.
One of Lilly's favorite games is "Runaway Baby" where she drives her little push car down a hill while I chase after her. It started on a walk one day and then it evolved into a game in the backyard. She would ask Darren or I to drag the car up the hill (no easy task, mind you!) and then let her roll down the hill while she "steered" the car and laughed hysterically. It was a lot of work, but SO fun to watch!
Lilly had started a bit of a "threenager" attitude, so we decided to start a behavior chart. We broke the day down into smaller times and when Lilly made good choices and used kind words during that time, she would get a star sticker. If she earned 5 of 6 star stickers, she would get a "big" sticker for the day and get to choose from her prize bucket (hence the necklace she is wearing). If she had 6 of 7 "big stickers" at the end of the week, she would get a movie and popcorn or another special treat :-) It worked VERY well and we did it for several weeks. After that we felt like her attitude and her word choice had changed enough that we didn't need to do it anymore. It's nice to have it ready if we ever need to bring it back out again ;-)
I have been looking into dance classes for Lilly since she absolutely loves to dance and she loves music, but the studios in the area are pretty expensive and I wasn't sure she would like it. Instead, I signed her up for a "Creative Movement" class at the community center. We can only do it over track out since it's during the day on Mondays (which, by the way, I think is a real shame that they don't even offer a weekend or evening session at all for working parents...). It's not required that she wear a leotard or ballet shoes, but I wanted her to have the full experience. Luckily, our friends loaned us a cute leotard and shoes and we have plenty of tutus :-) As soon as I showed them to Lilly she wanted to put them on. She was SO excited; she could not stop smiling. I said, "Who's excited for dance class?" and she raised her hand! How cute is that???
She was so excited about her leotard that she insisted on wearing it outside. I would not let her wear the ballet shoes, but with the leotard I figured, why not? A three year old ballerina riding a four wheeler: not something you see every day!
When I was at choir or at the theater one evening, I got this text: "I was a good girl for Daddy tonight!" This seems to be Lilly's new idea of a "smile." She scrunches her face up and gives us a huge grin. In pictures it looks more like she is growling than smiling, but it's still cute.
Lilly loves playing outside, and she LOVES water. We don't usually have her kiddie pool filled up because we have the community pool now. Lilly wanted to fill her pool, so she took it upon herself to fill it using her bucket and the water from her water table...if she had stuck with it, this would have been a great activity to fill up several hours!
I know you are shocked to see Lilly dressed up again :-) Our sweet little princess was playing with Daddy one morning and he caught this adorable, sweet smile. She looks so big and grown up in this picture! I can't stand how quickly time is passing and how big she is getting.
We were at the Stott's house because we had a Cinderella costume to loan Zoey for Halloween. The girls were playing together while the adults sat on the screened porch. I noticed the girls had started taking things out of the entryway bench and when I went in, they were all sitting on the bench with winter hats and gloves on. It was so funny!
A bunch of us went to a special Story Time at Kiddie Academy with special guest, Curious George. Before the story, the kids were able to play on the playground and they had a blast. When it was time for the story they all sat together quietly. Everything was perfect until George sat a little too close to the kids. Zoey was not very happy about it, Kristin got up and walked away and Knox just sat there with his little lip out and started to cry silently. Lilly doesn't normally like dressed up characters (don't even get me started on the GIANT Chick-fil-A cow!), but she seemed ok as long as George was not trying to get near her.
That night Zoey came to our house for a sleep over! I don't think Lilly could have been more excited if I told her we were going to Disney World. We had dinner with the Stotts and then I took the girls back to our house while the others celebrated Jason's birthday. I had bought some cookie dough and sprinkles, which was hilarious. Asking 2 or 3 year olds to "sprinkle" anything on top of cookies...let's just say, handfuls of sprinkles were used. ;-)
We took the cookies (and all of their sprinkle goodness) outside for a picnic. They both loved their cookies and probably would have eaten the whole batch if I had let them.
Bath time! The girls had so much fun playing in the bath together!! It was nice for Lilly to have someone to play with in the bath other than Darren or I. I don't think she stopped smiling the entire night. Getting the two of them to sleep was no easy task! I actually had to lay between them in Lilly's bed for about 15 minutes until they both finally fell asleep at about 9:15.
Funny story: In the morning, I was laying in bed and I heard two little sets of feet running down the hall. They came into our room (Darren was actually sleeping in the spare room since he got home so late) and whispered to each other that I was still sleeping, so they ran back down the hall to Lilly's room and played. I took this opportunity to take out my good and read while they played. Then, when I heard them running back down the hall, I pretended to be sleeping again :-) This worked for about 15 minutes until Lilly came over and tapped my arm to wake me up. Hey, I will take whatever quiet, reading time I can!
Lilly really loves the powerwheels that our neighbors have. The Stotts have a jeep and the McPhersons have a John Deer. Lilly is still not very good at steering, but she LOVES to try. The best thing to do is to put her in the cul de sac where she can make a wide circle, and then turn the wheel so she just goes around and around in the circle :-) She loves it!
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