Bailey loves her Papa and was so excited to celebrate

I love this one- so sweet- I think I am going to get it framed for her.

Her first smiley face EVER!

Happy birthday, Papa! We love you!

She LOVES wearing her crocs on the wrong feet. It kind of makes me crazy, but crocs in general make me crazy. And of course they are her FAVORITE shoes right now…

“Foofing” her fries to cool them off

And I haven’t forgotten about my sweet little man. He slept all the way through dinner, until we were waiting for our check. I’m pretty sure it was a miracle, because he just doesn’t do that. This picture was taken after we got home. He gave us his first beginnings of a real smile. A day I will always remember, for both of them. Her third birthday and his first smile.

Bailey liked her ice cream but said that she didn’t want any sprinkles next time. How was I supposed to know? She loves sprinkles on cookies!

Then afterward, we (I) convinced Jonathon to go shopping at Target all together. Bailey wanted to just sit and read in the cart. It never ceases to amaze me how much she enjoys reading.

Happy birthday to my Jonathon! I love you and I’m so glad to have you as my husband.

Just a cute one of Bailey with my mom (Grammy)

We didn’t think we could do all 84 candles on a cupcake

I am so thankful to have my grandparents living here in town with us. I know I complain sometimes about having to “help” with them… but it is nice to spend time with them and I am glad they have gotten to know Bailey. And that they will get to know Baby Boy. Whose middle name will be the same as Papa’s middle name.

One thing that happened to confirm that, was that she hit our car (in their driveway) leaving a huge scrape and a dent and didn’t tell us. Just left to go shopping… she figured she could let us know later. Right, because that’s the normal choice. The good thing- kind of- was that it was the dealer car we had borrowed because they still have our van while they wait for a part to come in to fix a seatbelt strap. So at least we can just give the car back to them and give them the IL’s insurance info and we won’t be without one of our cars while it’s being repaired.

We did have a few cute Bailey moments, of course. At one point she said, “Daddy, my so hungry!” He asked her if she would like a cracker, and she said, “No thank you Daddy, my belly’s fullded! I need fruit snacks!”

She also had so much fun playing with her aunts and uncles and cousins. Have I mentioned that the rest of Jonathon’s family is completely normal? It’s just his parents that are so weird. I’m not sure how that happened. There was a lot of family in town because they had come in for his dad’s birthday, and also because quite a few of them live within an hour or two of his parents. It makes me wish that my side of the family was bigger- I would have loved growing up with a big family like that!

Bailey with her grandparents

Ready for Grandpa D’s party

With cousins Grace and Isaac

And my hubby! I never post any pics of just him and he is the best guy in the world.

At first she didn’t want to change into her swimsuit. It was SO hot…

But then I convinced her to put her suit on and get in the water/sprinklers and she had so much fun! She also ate a lot of Cheetos!

She liked the sandbox too. I spent the car ride home picking the sand out of her bathing suit bottom! No more swimtsuits and sandboxes together. I am glad she wanted to get in though.

Thank you to Ella for inviting us! We had a great time

Okay but we’re supposed to be talking about Grandpa. He turned 88. I am so proud of him and my grandma. They live on their own in a condo nearby and they do pretty well, most of the time. Bailey loves to go over and visit them! Here she is giving her Papa his birthday present.

My mom gave Bailey her new tricycle that evening. She had so much fun riding around the house with it. It is the pink and purple version of this Kettler tricycle and I seriously recommend it. My mom got it used and the price was really reasonable. It is much more sturdy/stable than Radio Flyer or any of the ones we saw at the toy store. The base is wide, the wheels are wide, and it’s heavy. Bailey is getting a helmet before she takes it outside because we want her to learn early that she has to wear a helmet to ride a bike. We have a family member who had a head injury from a bike accident so I take it pretty seriously!

Happy birthday, Grandpa!

I have a lot of pictures from the party. Sarah- will be getting you cd to you on Monday, I’ll leave it on your door if you’re not there. Bailey had a great time and Claire was the perfect one year old party girl! She enjoyed her cake and was happy to see all her guests, and had lots of fun opening presents. And Bailey even ate about half a cupcake!!

We had an hour in the play room. They started with 20 mins of free play then the teacher did a song or march or activity about every three or four minutes and the kids either ran around or participated if they wanted to. Then the last ten minutes in the play room were bubbles and parachute. They all marched and followed the teacher into the party room for cake. None of them cried because she made it so fun to leave the play area! The party room was set up with a parachute on the floor like a picnic blanket, and there were party hats and juice boxes arranged in a circle.

Gymboree provided everything except the cake and pizza! They only had a half hour in the party room. I could have paid extra for more time but I chose not to. I’m glad I didn’t because by the time they finished eating cake they didn’t want to sit still and be contained any more. Then some of the antsier kids went out to the lobby to play with toys and ride on the rocking horses. Bailey even got a birthday t-shirt! The really cool thing was that the day of the party, all I had to do was pick up the cake and make sure her dress was ironed!

We are so thankful that Bailey’s friends (and my friends too) were able to come celebrate with us. Thank you to everyone for helping to make it a wonderful day for her!

Say cheese!

Here she is at work with daddy. We were hard pressed to get this shot. She spent most of lunch laying on the floor under her chair, and trying to run like a wild woman through the cafeteria. It might be a while before we visit again…

After we left his work, we went to one of her favorite places… the post office! She was so sad when we left the post office. (We go there a lot to ship eBay and Avon and B/S/T stuff). So I decided to cheer her (and me!) up with a trip to Target. She loves their popcorn. She kept telling me “No no Mommy! Beelay’s turn!” when I tried to take a bite.

Bailey took a good nap that day. Daddy went and got pizza for dinner, and we gave Bailey a new Little People set. It’s a Fun Sounds Train and she loves it! There is a whole track with a station and lots of other things to play with. We had a fun and relaxing evening. I think she enjoyed her birthday.

Somewhere along the way during your second year, I got out of the habit of writing you monthly letters. Not because I don’t have anything to day… but we are just so busy living life and having fun at this point. And you don’t make it very easy to sit at the computer for more than a few minutes at a time. Definitely not long enough to compose a thoughtful post. Today you climbed on my lap at the computer to steal some of my Whoppers from Easter. You are nosey and you always can find everything I try to hide!

You are such a wonderful little girl. I truly enjoy every day with you. Yes, we have our moments where we “fight” and you test my patience. You always want to see just how far you can push, where the limits are. You are brave and bold and full of curiosity and life. You are talkative and you try to be funny and you like to march and dance and play with your foam letters in the bathtub and sing silly songs in the car. You now sing “Old Donald had farm… eieio… Farm had duck, eieio…” and so on. You can say your ABC’s now and sing the song too. Just today you sang “A B C D E F G Aisheye jaykay ellmo-pee… kwarstee you vee duhyou six yyyy zeee!” You also can climb up to reach your videos (“vee-oh’s”) on the shelf, and you get on the bathroom countertop to get your toothbrush. It drives me nuts.

You sleep in a big girl bed now. You like to tell me that you’re a “bigger girl.” Trust me sweetie, I know. I can’t believe how grown up you are sometimes. Even before you turned two, I stopped thinking of you as a baby or a one-year-old. That just didn’t seem to encompass everything you were capable of. You know all your colors (including white!) and you are starting to want to learn letters. You love Sesame Street and your Elmocize exercise video. You had an Elmo birthday cake at your family party and thought it was pretty cool. I spent a long time making that because I couldn’t wait to surprise you and see the joy on your face. You call Nutri-Grain bars Big Bird Bars (slurred into one word, “Beebarn”) and Pediasure nutrition bars are Cookie Monster Bars. We also call baby food fruit Kangaroo Food. Anything to get you to eat! Your favorites continue to be yogurt, pureed fruit, chicken nuggets, and cheese. You hate bread… still… Oh and you just started thinking it’s fun to carry a purse, so I have been collecting purses to match your outfits!

Daddy and I love to spend time with you. You make us laugh so hard. We get a kick out of trying to translate when you run a bunch of words together into one big sentence. You regularly say “Kiss you ME!” when you want a kiss. That’s my favorite. You have also started using “I” such as “I drop it.” Your new phrase is “I block” if you are holding a block, or “I cookie” if you want a cookie. You’ll figure it out soon enough. I am not in a hurry for you to lose your cute toddler language.

I feel like I understand your feelings and you words better than anyone else. I “get” you. And you are becoming very in tune with the emotions of people around you. If I am sad you come kiss my face. You love to hug your friends and family. You make me so happy. Being your mom is the best thing I have ever experienced. You are my beautiful sweetheart, my love, my angel, my muffie muff… I am so thankful for these two years I have had with you. I will do anything I can to make you the happiest little girl in the world. (Yes, we still have rules sweetie, but look at the big picture!) I love you.

Mommy xoxo

(And no, I did not know the flowers would be those colors. No, I did not see the background in advance. No, I did not turn her bracelet so that you could read her name in the pictures.)

I started out by saying how Jonathon, Bailey and I went to her friend Kaitlynn’s second birthday party this past weekend. It was at her house, and they had sandwiches and drinks. The kids just played downstairs and the adults ate, until it was time for cake and ice cream. The party seemed to go pretty well except that I got stuck sitting next to Amy’s really loud MIL during the gift opening. I heard “KAAAAITLYYYYYYYYYYN” about ten thousand times within the span of twenty minutes. That woman is loud, for real. And I don’t feel bad saying that because Amy and I have already discussed it.

When we were downstairs playing, the older kids were playing Wii. Bailey thought she needed a piece of the action and kept getting in their way. At some point, someone must have put her on this stool (or maybe she climbed up… sounds like maybe I should start supervising my child) and she was using the Wiimote for a phone.

Then the kids decided they needed that Wiimote (does anyone else feel like they have a speech impediment when they say that word?) –Bailey was NOT pleased.

We went upstairs to get ready for cake and ice cream. Jonathon asked Bailey if she wanted to wear a party hat. I thought she would hate it because of the chin strap but she loved it! It looks like she’s pulling at it in this picture but she left it on the whole time and didn’t complain.

The party had an animals theme. The decorations were really cute. Bailey gets so excited about giraffes and zebras. The cake was from McArthur’s Bakery and it was really good! I’ve seen/eaten quite a few of their cakes and I have always been impressed. I love birthday cake. I even love the smell of matches being blown out- it’s like it automatically makes me think of birthday cake!

Happy birthday, Kaitlynn!

We went over to my parents house for their little family birthday party. My mom set up the table so pretty. She is always good at stuff like that. I love her dining room table. She has these table pads that go on the top, and there are separate pads to fit on each leaf of the table. When I was little, she let me use all the spares to build legos on, and play Barbies on. The mismatched chairs are because the extra chairs went downstairs to make room for the Christmas tree so then she brought in other ones. My mom is kind of weird.

My mom’s shirt is from Avon. Isn’t it cute?

Posing in front of the tree, in the Elmo dress discussed previously.

Stopping for a sniff or a close-up look…

Jonathon got to do the honors of putting the angel on the top of the tree. It was always my job as a kid. well my dad can’t exactly lift me up to do it anymore and I was busy chasing Bailey, so I passed it off to Jonathon. I was kind of touched that my dad still saved that for me to do, since they had put up the tree a few days before that.

My mom made this cake for my grandma. In the past few years we have gotten into the habit of just getting store-bought cakes, but we decided to start making them again.

I made this cake for Jonathon. I know it’s not very pretty but it’s really hard to make a pretty mint chocolate chip ice cream cake!

I have a ton of pictures I am going to post from our trip over the next few days or so. I can’t believe how many we took. we had an amazing time. I missed Bailey, but it wasn’t horrible. We were so busy most of the time, and then we’d see a kid her age and talk about her for a minute. The last day I started getting REALLY excited to get home and see her. She met us at the airport with my parents, holding a birthday balloon for me! I turned 28 while we were on vacation. I’m old.

Here’s a shot of Cinderella’s Castle. I haven’t even had a chance to go through all the pictures yet… More later!

Enough of that. It’s late and I’m sentimental and I just wanted to post some birthday pictures! We had a fun celebration for him at our house. It was just family and we opened a few presents (Bailey helped) and we ate cake (she still doesn’t really like it). He got some golf stuff and Cardinals stuff, which is the usual for him. Bailey is really starting to understand bringing presents to someone and then helping them to open. She is also figuring out that cards are boring and the presents are the good stuff! Now, I appreciate cards. As a kid? The boring thing you had to get through before you got your toy/clothes/cd/etc.

Here are a few pics from that day. You can click to enlarge them. I trimmed Bailey’s bangs the day before, so if you look closely you can kind of tell that they are less scraggly.

Daddy and Bailey in the hot sun- It was pretty hot at first-

After an hour or so we found a cooler corner of the yard to hang out in and it was nice and relaxing after that.

Bailey with friends Kaitlynn and Valletta

Emily and Ella

Here is Ella eating her birthday cupcake- at first she wasn’t interested at all and got upset when the icing got on her hands. Once everybody stopped watching, she ate it.

Playing ball

Moving Tubes

And at this party we discovered that Bailey loves being sprayed in the face with squirt bottles!

Thank you Ella for inviting us to your party! We had a great time! Happy birthday, big one year old

When we arrived at the party, Sarah had a bunch of toys out for the kids to play with. Bailey really liked the busy box. I think that’s what it’s called. The thing where there are five pop-ups… you have to press a button/turn a dial/etc to get them to open… We might have to get her one of those for her birthday.


Andrew trying his birthday cake- at first he wasn’t really into it but then he ended up eating a lot of it. I just don’t have any pictures after the first few minutes because I was chasing Bailey around.



Busy playing amongst her friends and a giant pile of toys



This is what happens when you try to take the pictures of a bunch of little kids/babies. There is Bailey crawling away at the bottom right. Mackenzie seems to be the only one paying attention. AJ is holding a plate over his face, and Andrew is looking the other way. LOL

Bailey decided to go back and investigate the toy we gave Andrew.