time for school

 

i spent the majority of my time yesterday

driving around town, meeting with PRESCHOOLS.

yes, brette is already to that age.

on one hand i am so ready for her start school.

make friends. 

take a picture with her little backpack.

fall in love with her teachers.

start learning things that i would never think to teach her.

on the other hand, ITS TOO SOON!

she's my little two year old baby.

she needs to be with me.

she needs to be older.

she needs to stay little.

 

but i have a plan.

don't i always?

she'll go two days a week when she's three.

three days a week when she's four and

if i think she's ready,

she'll start kindergarten when she's five.

she'll  be one of the younger ones in her class, but

since she's a girl and i don't see any delays,

i think she'll do just fine.

in fact, her and eden will both start kindergarten together.

the cut off it august 1st, so

she makes it by a few months.

that means its definitely time to start venturing out of the house.

she's super excited about school.

she talks a lot about going to school like madeline and eden.

i'm excited for her.

 

i met with four different facilities yesterday.

some i loved, some i liked and one

i crossed off my list immediately.

of course, my favorite one is the most expensive,

but it's also less than a mile from my work.

hello, convenience.

and i still have to work out a schedule with

my work hours and ronnie's,

but hopefully if everything comes together we

should have her enrolled for this fall by next week.

as of right now, she'll be going every wednesday and friday and

still spending monday's with my parents and her cousins.

then next year she'll go monday, wednesday, friday. 

that's the plan as of now.

 

 

also, a little sidenote:

reid will be one by the time brette starts school,

 which means she'll start going to an in-home daycare on fridays

instead of spending the day with my mom.

this also means, i'll get every wednesday with just reid.

i love the thought of getting a little one on one time with her.

brette got a whole year.

reid gets one day a week.

#SecondChildProblems

 

 

 

that's what little girls are made of

there must be a lot of

sugar and spice and

everything nice because

we keep getting more and more

little girls.

 

in the last year all my friends had babies.

all. of. them.

and only one is having a boy.

luckiest boy alive, am i right?

 

we started last april when shannon had paige.

 

then i had reid in july.

 

margie had clara in january.

 

lindsay had willa at the beginning of march.

 

and jana followed suit with katie a few weeks later.

 

this week alone i was able to drive to warrensburg

on tuesday to spend the day with willa and

then head to north kansas city on thursday to meet little katie.

 

but we're not done yet.

dana will add our one and only boy in may and

kassie will round us out with

our last girl (for now) in july.

 

our lives are so packed right now.

everyone is planning showers and 1st birthdays.

we're packing lunches and pumping breastmilk.

we're trading maternity clothes and baby gear.

we text at least a dozen times a day to

ask advice and keep each other sane.

we share funny parts of our day and pics of our babies (or bumps).

we're raising these kids together and

these new little girls are so lucky.
they are starting life with built-in buddies.

i can only hope they become friends

or find friends like i did mine.

 

love you girls and all your new little ladies you've added to my life.

 

 

(this pic is three years old, but its the only one i could find with all of us in it.)

(minus margie)

 

 

 

  

 

easter weekend

easter went exactly how i expected.

a hectic morning, followed by a relaxing afternoon.

because lets face it,

all the BIG events of easter happen before 11am.

baskets, easter egg hunt, breakfast, church.

(and a 45 minute drive to my parents so we could all

go to church as a family.)

it made for a crazy morning.

luckily i had our bags packed the night before,

clothes laid out,

baskets stocked and ready and

the eggs were hidden.

 

(brette's basket)

(reid's basket)

(easter dresses all ready for the next morning)

 

brette was so cute talking about all her things in her basket.

i had my video camera going, but i didn't notice that i didn't have very

much data left and it stopped recording 16 seconds in.

i want to cry.

 

 

 

 

and she loved finding all her eggs.

maybe next year reid can help too.

 

 

even with all that prep i was still running around

in my pj's at 9:35am when we were supposed

to leave for church by 9:30.

i made ronnie throw everyone in the car

while i ran upstairs to change.

(and THIS is why moms always look worse than the rest of the family.)

i put my sweater and shoes on in the car,

but we made it their with one minute to spare.

church went really well.

brette and her cousins basically just snacked

the whole time and practiced their whispering skills.

reid was passed around and actually made it through

without screaming which i didn't know was possible.

 

 

once we were back to my parent's it was smooth sailing.

lots of food and family.

all 19 of us sat down for an amazing dinner and

enjoyed the day.

brette made it without a nap and relied on the

18 pounds of chocolate to keep her on a high.

i swear, you can't take your eyes off her and the candy dish.

its like a moth to a flame.

 

 

 

hope you enjoyed the holiday.

happy easter!

inside my head

this isn't so much a blog post as it

is a little download off all the hilarious

things i've found on the internet that speaks to me.

anytime i see something on facebook or

instagram that i love, i save it to my phone.

most of the time i'll send it to my tribe of girls

or to ronnie because there is so much truth in all of these.

so here you go... have a laugh.

(happy easter, right?)

(i heard three is worse than two. dear lord, why?)

(not sure who i'm voting for yet, but this is classic either way.)

(grammar is important.)

(i sent this one to my aunt mickie, because this. is. her.)

(and i sent this one to my mom. i'm always on top of my

laundry, but it's never actually in drawers.)

(at least the girls looks cute.)

(my back. for real.)

(this one is SO ronnie that it kills me.  if you see him head to

the bathroom with his phone, it means that he's taking a loooong break.)

(i sent this to ronald.  he probably doesn't remember it.)

(can i get an amen?)

(if you ever spend the day with brette you will most likely

have to hear about her socks and her shirt. it's maddening.)

and now you know.

real life.

reid: eight months

 

 

this beautiful little baby is eight months old and

she is truly the sweetest little thing ever.

ever. ever.

 

 

growth:

we do not have a doctor appointment until next

month so i have no clue how big she is,

but she wears 6-9 month clothing and size 3 diapers.

the sides of her hair is getting long and i mostly just

tuck it behind her ears. 

i'm hoping her back starts to grow too or

it might be a loooong time before she's sporting a ponytail.

she is sitting up on her own quite nicely.

i still like to have something behind her in case

she falls back but i trust her enough to sit and play for a bit.

she will also flip and flop all over the place and can

push herself backwards, but

so far, no forward movement.

i also remember with brette taking off the couch cushions

to let her practice standing up to play.

i'm going to try that out on reid in the next month too.

hopefully crawling is on the horizon.

but what she's really into right now is screaming.

the highest pitch, loudest scream i've ever heard.

it pairs nicely with a two year old trying to do the same.

(send earplugs)

 

 

sleeps:

sleeping has gotten SO MUCH BETTER.

with the time change, she now

goes down between 8:00-8:30 and has

been sleeping until about 5:30.

i nurse her, put her back down and she'll sleep to about 7:30.

every once in awhile she'll still wake up around 11:00 or 12:00

but i just give her pacifier and she goes right off.

napping however is another story.

normally, i get one long nap a day.

nine times out of ten its in the morning.

then she'll take two other shorter naps.

one early afternoon and the other early evening.

i can only hope that one day,

she can just cut it down to two long naps

and then my life would be so much better.

i put reid down three times and brette down once, so

i feel like a lot of my day is centered around naps and

it kind of sucks.

i've also started giving her a blanket.

its one of those breathable aden & anais ones that

i can wrap her up in but she can bust out of easily.

i'm still nursing her to sleep which i know i need to stop,

but its just so easy and she's not the best eater, so

i like to take advantage of some quiet time.

i guess i'll need to find a new plan soon.

 

 

 eats:

like i was saying, not the greatest eater.

if there is anything going on in the room, then

she has to know what it is.

she spends most of her time looking around and hardly

anytime actually eating.

so, most feeding are right before she sleeps.

i nurse her at 6:00am,

9:30am,

noon,

2:00pm

5:00 pm and

8:00pm.

she also gets fed twice a day.

we're still on baby foods.

i know at this age brette already had several teeth

and we had moved past baby foods and would

let her pick up and eat table food.

reid is just no there.

i have done it some, but

with no teeth there are very limited things i feel

comfortable giving her.

 

 

plays:

she hates laying down and

has to be sitting up to play.

she also can get upset when brette takes her toys

(which is quite often).

however, they play so well together.

its really sweet to watch.

reid just laughs and smiles at brette all the time.

i try to keep brette from being too rough and

i can only imagine how mush worse its going to be once

reid starts walking.

i'm kind of nervous for it.

i just don't want a constantly injured baby.

(i  m i g h t  be a helicopter mom)

 

 

firsts:

she went to her first parade.

she celebrated her first st. patrick's day.

she took her first ride on the lawn mower.

she had her first bites of meat. (mushy chicken salad and loved it)

 

and that's it.

our little eight month old.

 

 

mr. bear was in brette's room and since brette was napping

we used tator hog as a stand-in.

miss reid loves her puppies.

 (and they both love ronnie - - just look at that smile)

 

i feel like spring has sprung which means

summer is right around the corner and all

too soon we won't be counting her age by months but by years.

make it stop.