Adylade Louise

Adylade Louise kept us waiting and waiting and waiting ... but she was worth every moment of the wait!

She is absolutely perfect!

I was induced Tuesday, February 21st at 8:30 am and Ady was here by 2:10 that afternoon. I wont subject you to all the details, but it was a fast and easy labor and delivery. She had her cord wrapped around her neck twice and was smurf blue when she was born. It took a little work to get her breathing well, but she was a healthy 8 lbs. and 20.5 inches long.

Ady looks so much like Larkin. It is fun to watch both these girls developing a relationship already. Larkin is in love with her little sister, and Adylade loves all the snuggles and kisses that Larkin showers her with constantly!

It is amazing how suddenly grown up Larkin seems ... she is such a great big sister, and is such a big girl in every way! Big ideas, big energy, big attitude, big helper ...

Larkin made birthday cupcakes for Adylade while Scot and I were at the hospital. When she came to visit later that night she brought them to share.

I am so in love with both my little ladies! I am one blessed momma to get to snuggle and spend my days with these two cutie patooties!

A Few Fun February Moments

I have been thinking lately about how blessed I am. My life is a little crazy, and let's face it, I'm a little cookoo at times, but I am so happy. Every day there is something silly, or touching, or blissful that reminds me of how much I love my life!

Here are a few moments from this past month that put a smile on my face ...

Larkin putting on her "makeup" in the bathtub

:)

A picture of Larkin and her daddy (with lots of hair) ... can you tell her favorite bath crayon was green this month?

:)

Larkin and I LOVE to play this game! I cut out 10 shapes (usually corresponding with a holiday in the month) and then hide them all over the house. Larkin runs around and finds them. We count them and I hide them again for her to find. She shrieks with glee every time she finds one of them, and it always makes me smile.

Try this at your house. We have used ghosts, pumpkins, gingerbread men, hearts, flowers ... just hide them and watch your kids go nuts!

:)

Three Cheers for Turning Three!

February is an intense month at our house. I have been mucho busy and haven't had much time to upload or edit photos, but decided that ready or not, the blog must be updated if I am ever going to get caught up on all that has happened in the last few weeks.

First up ... Larkin had a birthday! Our little lady is 3 (going on 13) and is the definition of a "big girl"!

We are so in love with Larkin and all of her little quirks that keep life exciting.

Larkin commissioned her birthday cake this year, and dad delivered ... a pink cake with polkadots and sparkles! I have a tradition of making Larkin's birthday hat, and this year she requested a pom pom on top ...

In truth, I was a little preoccupied this month and neglected Larkin's birthday until the last minute. I ran around trying to pull together some sort of special birthday celebration. We had some friends over for dinner the night before Larkin's big day, and I stole a page from my cousin's book and filled Larkin's room with balloons to wake up to on her birthday. It was a school day and we still had a million things to do, but she loved waking up to a room full of balloons!

Thanks for the great idea Racheal!

3 Things to Know About Larkin on her 3rd Birthday

1. Her favorite colors are (and I quote) "red, and blue, and pink, and purple, and lellow, and green, and all those colors."

2. Larkin LOVES to have bedtime stories told to her about "The little girl who ..."

3. Larkin can whistle and wink, two skills that are so funny to me.

What I Learned This Week ...

I am taking a language development class. Keep reading ... I promise this post is mildly fascinating.

We were learning about stress syllables this week, and how babies and toddlers use stress syllables to begin learning the rules of the language that they hear. In the English language most two-syllable words are stressed: STRONG, weak ... like AFter or DAddy.

Get the idea ... here comes the cool part ...

When toddlers are learning to talk they take the strong syllable and duplicate it. This means that DAddy becomes DADA and BOttle becomes BABA. Now imagine a three-syllable word like banana- the stress emphasis is: weak, STRONG, weak. So we say it: baNAna. And even with three syllables toddlers still pick up on the strong syllable and duplicate it, turning baNAna into NANA!

Fascinating right!?! Pay attention to the way a toddler talks the next time you are around one- they are learning all kinds of amazing language skills!

TRY

"She has a lot of TRY!"

Have you ever heard this expression before? I hadn't until a recent conversation with the hubs about a book titled The Try, that he discussed in class. It is an old cowboy saying. Used in this way, TRY is transformed from a verb into a noun. It is a fascinating concept.

A person with TRY gives everything she's got, overcomes the odds, has a work ethic like nothing you have seen before, makes necessary sacrifices to succeed, rises above the grime of the world, turns the ordinary into the magical, has a plan, has integrity, is powerful in a quiet but determined way, feels purpose in every day, is a warrior in her life.

Fascinating right!?! Don't you want to do more than try, but have TRY now? I have been thinking a lot about this idea, and not only do I want to have TRY, I want my children to have TRY. I want them to be warriors, to have a plan that they sacrifice for, to have integrity, to feel purpose in everything they do, and to rise above the grime of the world.

But how do we teach our children to have TRY? How do we teach them that there is more to life than weathering the storm? How do we teach them to thrive and overcome the odds and stretch themselves beyond what they think they are capable of? This is just one of the many challenges of motherhood. How do we become a woman with TRY and then teach our children how they too can become a person who has a lot of TRY?

Just some food for thought ...