Park Time!

One of Evie's favorite things to do one a nice day is go the park.  We leave near a few nice ones so we take her as often as we can.  Once there, she can run, jump and play to her heart's content - and hopefully wear herself out so that we all get a good night's sleep!
She loves to swing and recently has taken to commanding "Higher Mama!  Higher!" when I push her.  She grins and shrieks as she flies through the air, giggling when I pretend that she has knocked me over.  She also loves the slides and has no fear about going down them, big or small.  I wish we had friends that we could go to the park with sometimes.  Evie will follow kids around and try to play with them, but most of the time they are older and don't pay much attention to her.  I can tell that she really wants a friend to play with - she used to playing with other kids at daycare.  But regardless, we still have fun!

Busy Girl

Evie is a busy girl these days...

Exploring nature during our walks….

Dyeing Easter Eggs…

 

Driving her car….

Swinging at the park…

Wearing tutus…

Blowing bubbles…

She also had a big milestone… we turned her car seat around to the front!  Evie loves being able to see everyone and stretch out her legs!

Happy Easter!!

We had a wonderful Easter weekend in KY.  The weather was amazing and perfect and we all soaked up as much sunshine as we could.  Saturday, we started our day with a visit to G.G. Mitchell.  We snacked on Panera bagels and lemonade and sat out on her deck to enjoy the nice day.  Evie was a crazy girl and had a little bit of trouble listening, but overall we had a very nice visit.  We fed the ducks, Evie made us all laugh and she got a new book about being a big sister from G.G. 

After going back to my parents and having a nap, Evie played outside.  Again, we were SO happy for the nice weather!  She played on the neighbors swing set, ran around barefoot collecting rocks and chasing Crosby, inspected the wind chimes my parents had outside and picked some dandelions.  I think that she would have stayed outside forever, but it started to get dark and Mama had a special treat for Evie…. Her first manicure!  She was so good while we cleaned up her nails and painted them a pretty pink color.  We even used Kiki’s nail hand dryer.  She loves showing people her nails now!  Next time we might try a brighter color… I think she’d get a kick out of blue or bright orange!

Sunday morning Evie was very excited to discover that the Easter bunny came!  She got a pair of pink rain boots, two new books about babies and big sisters, magnetic letters for our fridge and candy.   She definitely had her fill (and then some) of Peeps, jelly beans and chocolate eggs.  I don’t think that we have ever let her have so much candy.  She was in jelly bean heaven.  :)   

 She also got a Easter gift from Aunt Sha-Sha – Color wonder markers.  She is going to flip when we let her open those.  She loves to color and if she can get her hands on markers (which is not often), she really has fun.  These markers will be perfect because she can’t stain her clothes, the walls or anything else!  We can’t wait to try them out.  She got spoiled by Kiki and Pops – cute outfits and candy and a tool box.  She is one lucky little girl!!  After church, we went to our annual Easter brunch with my mom’s side of the family.  It was so much fun to see everyone and to watch the kids play.  They all loved Juneau the dog.  We had an Easter Egg hunt and my Aunt Laura had an awesome Easter craft for the kids as well.   It was a busy, fun-filled afternoon.  

After brunch, we headed back to my parent’s house to load up the car and head home.  But first we got to meet the Smith Triplets!  Bennett, Larkin and Sawyer are just adorable and we all enjoyed seeing them.  Evie seemed to do well with the babies, giving them toys and being gentle.  Let’s hope that continues with her brother or sister!  Evie was good as gold on the way home, despite not sleeping a wink.  Guess all that sugar kept her up.  :)  After we got home and dropped Crosby off, we went over to Grandpa Tim and Katherine’s house for dinner.  Evie had fun playing with the toys and talking up a storm.  We cracked up because, while she wouldn’t touch her own dinner, she did eat half of her Daddy’s sandwich.  Everything is always better off of someone else’s plate I guess. 

When we finally did get home, Evie crashed fast and slept all night long.  It was one fun, exhausting weekend!  It made me really look forward to summertime.  I already told my parents that I may come up this summer with the kids and stay a week!  I’m happy that I will have some time off this summer to enjoy the weather and my kids.  Sounds so strange to say kids, but in +/- 8.5 weeks, that will be the case! 

Happy Easter Everyone!  Hope yours was a blessed as ours!

Bring on Spring

We’ve been trying to enjoy the snippets of good weather we’ve been getting lately. Evie loves playing outside.   Pat got her a box of sidewalk chalk and we’ve been having fun drawing on our front walk.  She has so much fun with it that she never wants to go inside!  We’ve been taking walks and looking at all of the flowers, trees and animals that we’ve missed this winter.  Evie talks non-stop (I’m not exaggerating!) and she loves to point out everything that we are seeing.  I’m still trying to teach her how to ‘drive’ her little car, but she can’t figure it out.  She can move backwards a little bit, but mostly she just sits in it, gets in and out, and pushed it around from the outside.  She LOVES playing outside with Pops when we got to Kentucky.  My parent’s neighbors have a swing set with a slide that they don’t mind us using.  Evie went down the slide at least a dozen times our last visit.  Then she followed Crosby around the backyard and halfway down the street (Pops was right behind her).  Evie and Crosby are two peas in a pod when it comes to exploring new places!  We’ve gotten a lot of rain lately and last week, while it sprinkled, Evie and I went on a puddle walk down the street.  I had the no-so-bright idea to bring Crosby.  Evie wore her raincoat and I grabbed an umbrella and Crosby’s leash and off we went.  We didn’t even get halfway down the drive before Evie insisted on holding the umbrella and Crosby started choking himself by pulling too hard on the leash.  We made it about 7 houses down, to the curb, when I told Evie that we had to turn around and go home.  But Evie didn’t want to go home.  She turned away from me and started to run across the street before I stopped her.  I told her that the street was dangerous and not to step one foot in the street.  She proceeded to look at me and then intentionally put on foot in the street.  OMG.  The attitude.  It said ‘That’s it. We’re going home” and took the umbrella from her, folded it up and tried to grab her hand.  She threw herself on the ground and started screaming and crying.  I’m sure the neighbors thought I was pulling her arms out of her sockets or something.  I managed to pick her up, and take her and Crosby home (it felt like a 40 mile walk), with her screaming the whole time.  We got home and I went to set her down when I noticed that she was only where one shoe.  No way.  I walked to edge of the drive and looked up the street… and there is the shoe lying on the sidewalk by the curb.  Back up the street we went, Evie happily talking now because she got her way and we got to continue our walk.  I seriously cannot win sometimes.  Baring the meltdown and shoe fiasco, our time in the rain was fun.   Evie enjoyed splashing in puddles and dancing in the rain.  Hopefully we have more spring weather coming our way!

Playing with chalk

Singin' in the rain

Playdough with Uncle Adam

Playing with new toys with G.G. Mitchell & Great-Aunt Carolyn

Enjoying a treat

Walking on a sunny day with her new umbrella - thank you Grandpa Tim and Katharine!

29 weeks!

Hello Third Trimester!

Hard to believe that I’m already 29 weeks pregnant. Time really needs to slow down.  Even though this pregnancy has been harder on me that the last time, it is still going by incredibly quickly.  I hope the next +/- 11 weeks go by relatively slowly so that I can enjoy being pregnant with this little one and have time to get some things ready at our house.  We have lots of cleaning to do and we want to get started on Evie’s room, even if we aren’t moving her in there for some time.  I want to buy some ‘Big Sister’ books for Evie too. And we need to buy some gender neutral clothes (just a few), set up the baby stuff, clean the car seat, etc... 

I think my bump is bigger this time around (or at least that’s what people are telling me).  I’ve been having tons of Braxton Hicks contractions.  I really didn’t have these with Evie until a week or so before she was born, but with this baby they started around 20 weeks.  It’s a little bit disconcerting because I can’t tell if anything is wrong or not, but so far my doctor has said that everything seems normal.  Whew! 

I have no feeling whatsoever if this baby is a boy or a girl.  We haven’t decided on any names yet, but we are working on narrowing down our lists.  It’s definitely made this pregnancy a little more exciting to not know the gender.  It doesn’t bother us at all, but it sure seems to bother other people!  We are very excited to find out if this baby will be a sister or brother for Evie.  Evie still doesn’t understand much about what is happening.  Right now, she just knows that there is less room on Mama’s lap and that she has to be gentle around my belly.  Little does she know that her whole world (and ours) is about to change!

no matter what think, I'm still the princess around here!