Quilts

Right after Emmie was born my friend Kristy started making beautiful quilts as baby shower presents.  I must admit that I was pretty bummed that she started doing this after I had Emmie...all her quilts are so fabulous.  Anyway, Kristy told me that when I had another baby she would make Emmie and the new baby a quilt and I was so excited!  Last week Kristy and I had dinner together and she brought the finished products...I was sooo happy...they turned out gorgeous and I love that they're completely different from each other!  I had seen Emmie's fabric but I had no clue what Ellie's was going to look like.

This is Emmie's quilt.  The bold colors really fit her personality and I love that there are so many animals on the quilt as Emmie is quite the animal lover!

(Franklin likes the quilt too!)

This is Ellie's quilt.  It has much softer colors and I really like the pattern.

(I didn't get a good picture of the back but it's cream with kind of a light khaki colored flower pattern.)

So...thank you so much Kristy for your hard work and the fabulous quilts for the girls!

Sleeping like a baby?

So you know the expression "I slept like a baby"?  It's supposed to mean that you slept great...this is how my baby was sleeping last night when I went in to kiss her goodnight...not so sure I would consider that a good night's sleep!

PS. Tonight she's pretty much in the same position except her legs, from the thighs down, are hanging out of the crib rails!

Sunday Style Section

I only have a few pictures from this week.  We didn't go to church this week because I haven't been feeling great and I decided to stay home and rest instead...so no cute Sunday outfit.

I just love her little denim jumper.  It's so soft and I think it looks like such a little girl outfit!  I also love the pigtails!  Her hair has gotten a little thicker so it's easier to pull back and she's gotten better about holding still while I fix her pigtails.

USC cheerleading outfit!  We've been celebrating the success of the baseball team by wearing all our Gamecock gear!

I was so excited that this dress (which I sewed for her last year) still fit!  I knew it was still long enough but I wasn't sure if it was wide enough but it fit great!

35 Weeks and Furniture

I'm now 35 weeks (and 3 days) pregnant with Ellie...that means less than 5 weeks till my due date and only 2 more weeks till I'm considered full term!  I haven't blogged much about my pregnancy but overall it's been pretty good.  I didn't have very many days where I felt very sick at the beginning (most of my problems with feeling bad when I was pregnant with Emmie were related to low blood sugar so this time around I was careful to eat a snack every few hours to keep my blood sugar up).  I've definitely been more tired this time around...I was convinced that I must be anemic because I was so tired but nope...just tired from chasing around Emmie!  I think I'm about the same size as I was with Emmie...and, like Emmie, Ellie is measuring exactly right for her age.  One good thing that's different this time around is that my blood pressure is doing much better.  With Emmie they induced me at 39 weeks because of high blood pressure but it had been creeping up at each doctor's appointment.  This pregnancy my blood pressure has been pretty much the same since my 16 week appointment (with one much lower reading at my 20 week appointment!).  My blood pressure is higher than normal but not anything to worry about so that's definitely a blessing! 
I realized the other day that in 5 weeks (or less) we're going to be bringing baby Ellie home from the hospital!!!  It seems so unreal!  I recently told someone that this time around it just hits you all of a sudden at the end that you really are going to have a baby!  With the first baby you have baby showers and have to get TONS of stuff...things like strollers and swings, monitors, bottles, changing pads, bouncers...I could go on and on.  This time around we have most of the stuff we need so there's not this sudden invasion of baby paraphernalia in the house (plus even if there was you probably wouldn't be able to find it under all of Emmie's toys and books..ha!).  Also, Ellie's crib took a long time to come in so until last week we didn't have any furniture in the nursery.  Which leads me to the fun part of the post...Ellie's room pictures!  We've had some snafus with the furniture so I still don't have her 5 drawer chest but I have a box for each drawer and so all the clothes are sorted out so it will be a quick transition to the chest once it gets here...hopefully at the beginning of July.  Also, the chair they brought was the wrong fabric so they had to order a new one which will hopefully be in in about 3 weeks.  The right chair will be the same fabric as Emmie's and I'll move the ottoman from Emmie's room into Ellie's room.  Right now I've got this cream colored chair that I'm desperately trying to keep Emmie and Franklin off of so it stays clean (hence the blanket).  My fabulous mother came early on Friday and helped me finish up all Ellie's laundry, put together the crib and rearrange the furniture (a few times!), line all the dresser drawers, and finish Ellie's letters, among other projects we worked on!  I felt so much more settled once the nursery was put together and the laundry was done.  I still have some more baby supplies that I'm waiting to arrive from Babies r Us.  I also need to get a floor lamp or a little table of some sort to put beside the chair.

The view from the door.

Dresser and letters.

Valance.  I love the flounes!

Crib and chair.  The chest will go on the wall that's across from the crib.

18 months

I am 18 months old!

• I weigh 26.4lb which is in the 88th percentile and I am 33in which is in the 85th percentile.
• When my mommy was my age she was 32in and 21lb 10oz and when my daddy was my age he was 32 1/2in and 21lb 10oz.
• I wear 2t or 3t shirts, 18-24mo dresses, 18mo shorts/pants, 2t-3t pajamas and size 5.5 shoes.
• I have 8 teeth that are all the way in.  I have at least 3 teeth that have poked through but haven't come in all the way, one of which is a molar.  I might have more teeth that have poked through but I won't let my mommy look in my mouth for long!
• This month Mommy tried to potty train me but, while I was very ready emotionally, my body wasn't quite ready yet.  While the potty training didn't work, Mommy was so proud of how well I did sitting on the potty!
• I got my first haircut this month.

• I know TONS of words and I will also talk in 3 or 4 word sentences sometimes (I've been doing this for a while but now you can actually understand what I say!).   I also repeat whatever anyone else says...I'm just a little sponge.
• I have so much personality!  I am generally very happy and I love to laugh.  One minute I'll be running around laughing like a wild child and the next minute I'll be sitting on the couch reading a book or working on a puzzle.

• I love the pool and the beach.  This month I went to both!

• This month I went to Summerville and hung out with GG, Papa Coach, Uncle Blake, and Emily.

• This month I also went to Greenville and hung out with Gran, Grandaddy, and the Giant.  I also got to help Grandaddy churn homemade ice cream!

• This month I went to the waterpark at Fort Jackson with my friend Jackson.

• I still love going to My Gym and this month I went to the summer party they had!

• I love to sing and I really like when songs have motions...I've gotten pretty good at doing the motions for the songs!  Some of my favorites are "Open them, Shut them", "Wheels on the Bus", "Head and Shoulders",  and "Little Cabin in the Woods".
• This month I started sometimes wanting to sit in the big people chair at the kitchen table while I eat. 

• This month I got my first kiss...from Hoby Messervy! I liked it so much I went and kissed another little boy that was at the same party...my daddy was having a heart attack!
  
  

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY! (and Sunday Style Section)

Happy Father's Day to all the dads in our lives!  Paul and I are so blessed to have wonderful dads that love us so much and have done so much for us.  Emmie has a great daddy whom she adores and she loves her Papa Coach and Grandaddy so much (they also spoil her rotten!)! 

Emmie and Daddy reading the paper together.

Dancing with Daddy!

Emmie at the beach with Papa Coach

Emmie and Grandaddy.

Sunday Style Section

I LOVE THIS OUTFIT!  I found it at Daff-a-Deals and it is so stinkin adorable!

Bows and ruffles and polka dots, oh my!

Love this dress with the little bandana!

How cute is this picture?  I had held out my hand and told her to stop so I could take her picture and she imitated me...hilarious!

This was her Sunday dress this week.  I got it at the end of last summer and I found it when I was cleaning out Emmie's closet this week.

Water Park Fun!

Today we went with my friend Christina and her son Jackson to check out the local water park.  The water park is on Fort Jackson, the army base in Columbia.  The park has a baby area with a pretty good sized wading pool and a splash pad.  They also have a lazy river, a big kid pool, and a few waterslides.  It was super clean, had nice cool water (perfect for combating the summer heat!), and until we got ready to go at 1 it wasn't too crowded.  Today was a perfect day to go.  We got there around 11 this morning and it was a little overcast and not too hot yet.  We will hopefully get to go back a few more times before Ellie gets here!

Jackson after going down the slide...Emmie prefered to climb up and down the slide stairs.

Emmie LOVED the splash pad.

Potty Training Attempt

So I'd set aside this week to try to potty train Emmie.  I went into the whole situation knowing it might not work because she's not quite 18 months.  One of the things I was most worried about was getting her to sit on the potty for longer than 10 seconds...about the longest she would ever sit on it when we were "playing" potty.  I was worried that she would rebel about having to sit on the potty for a few minutes and that it would turn the whole experience into one big temper tantrum.  Not so!  She did GREAT sitting on the potty and in fact was willing to sit there long past the amount of time I would have made her stay.  She was SOOOO emotionally ready to potty train...you could tell she WANTED to be a big girl.  Unfortunately, her body just wasn't physically ready to potty train.  After a day and a half of intense work we went back to the diapers.  She could tell me she had gone pee-pee and she knew she didn't want to go in her panties but she couldn't ever tell me ahead of time that she needed to go.  Also, in the mornings she would go about every 15 or 20 minutes for a few hours...sometimes just a little and sometimes a lot.  We will try again closer to her 2nd birthday.  I think that as soon as she's physically ready to potty train she'll be pretty easy...she definitely wants to go in the potty. 

I must say that through this experience I have once again seen what a sweet little girl Emmie is.  She was overall VERY cooporative and definitely wanted to try to do what I asked of her.  I was really afraid that the potty training would just be one big meltdown for her but she was a little trooper and only had a couple of very brief meltdowns...mostly related to being exhausted.  I must say that while the potty training didn't work this time I'm looking forward to trying again when she's physically ready....and when I'm not 8 1/2 months pregnant!

Some of the positives of potty training? 
I'm pretty sure the floor in the den wasn't this clean when they installed it...lots of lysol and clorox wipes on that floor yesterday and today! 
I have everything I need for meals for this week...and probably some for next week too since I wasn't sure how long we'd be stuck at the house.  Also, they're all EASY meals!
We pretty much have all week free to do nothing (except for Wednesday...that's our busy day!) so we might find something fun to do...I've heard the waterpark at Fort Jackson is great so we might go check it out one day...or we can just hang out at home and do nothing...we've been so busy lately that just putting my feet up sounds pretty nice!

CHEESE!

I've been trying to teach Emmie to smile and look at me when I tell her to "say cheese".  I think we're making progress...

...the only catch is that she thinks she also needs to get REALLY close to the camera!  HAHA!

Sunday Style Section

Love the little ruffled bottom!

It's stylish to get a haircut!

This isn't a great picture of Emmie but it shows her new haircut and I love this little outfit....purple is one of her colors!

Her Sunday dress.  This was the stillest I could get her!