My sweet girl and me

My lovely and extremely talented friend, Tiffany Sharp took these sweet pictures of my little girl and me. I was so excited when she told me about this mother/daughter session. I will treasure these forever :)

Tay turns 5!

It is unbelievable to me that I have a 5 year old. Taylor is beautiful and brilliant. She is such an amazing little girl. She loves well, is always ready to help and has such a kind heart. She has a joy of life and is completely a people person.

Yesterday we were able to celebrate Taylor with all things sweet. If you know our girl, she has quite the sweet tooth (the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree if you know what I'm sayin'). We don't eat lots of sweets around here, but yesterday we did not hold back. She was giddy with excitement all day!

Taylor's Ice Cream Shoppe

The birthday girl

Ice Cream Bar

Cousins :)

We went to a friend's birthday party a few years ago and played this game. It was hilarious! I am all about making people do embarrassing things, so here ya go. The goal is to eat the donut without using your hands. First the kids, then the dads.

I know there are a lot of dad pictures, but I just can't help it. They each make me laugh out loud for different reasons.
Here you can see my brother pushing Mark out of the way (cheater). 

Wonderful facial expressions. 

These are just amazing.

 Friends!

And to top off the crazy sugar filled children, a candy filled pinata!

My beautiful birthday girl!

The first week of preschool…

was 2 weeks ago, but better late then never, right?

I had all these “great” photo ideas for Tay’s first day of preschool. But unfortunately, our nice camera quit working. It was a set back, but at least I had the old, small back up camera. And then…we arrived at her school, she posed all cute like and the back up camera wasn't working. Complete fail in the picture department.

BUT, thankfully I have a friend whose little boy happens to go to the same preschool. Yay!! She took some pictures for us. Of course I would have been all paparazzi like and taken and overload of pictures, but maybe this worked out better for all involved :)

Taylor did wonderful. She walked right in, found her name, sat down, and started coloring. 

She seems to really enjoy school, although I don’t get to hear much about her day. I am going to have to get used to having her gone 2 days a week, but I have to admit, it’s a nice break and a good excuse for some one-on-one time with my little guy.

Day 1 - Tuesday, September  4th, 2012

Day 2 - Thursday, September 6th, 2012

Ice cream treat to celebrate the first week :)

Taylor's birth story

I want to remember the details from the days my children were born. The next two posts I write will be about those special days.

Taylor was four years old on May 7^th. Today is August 3^rd, over 4 years since I gave birth to her. I know the details of her birth story will be lacking, but better late than never, right?

My due date for Taylor was May 2^nd, 2008. That day came and passed with no baby. Now for a first time mama, that was a hard concept. I figured that if her due date was May 2^nd, then she would be here by May 2^nd. Hum, I was WRONG. Taylor was comfy in there and decided to stick around for a few extra days (much to her mama’s disliking).

On May 5^th, around 8pm, I started having contractions. They were anywhere from 8 to 10 minutes apart and were not painful. To say I was excited would be an understatement. In fact, I was so excited that instead of sleeping that night, I lay awake in bed. When we rolled out of bed the next morning around 8am, my contractions were about every 6 minutes apart. We decided to run some errands to pass the time. By noon my contractions were every 5 minutes and becoming slightly more painful. We decided to go back home, grab our hospital bag, and head to the hospital.

We got to the hospital around 3:30pm. We went up to labor and delivery and I was hooked up to some machine to monitor my contractions.  Once the nurse determined that I was in fact having contractions, they checked my cervix…only 3 cm dilated! WHAT?! I had been in labor for 18 plus hours and that was all I had to show for it?

Even though I was only at 3cm, I was still admitted into labor and delivery. I put on my awesome looking hospital gown and began pacing up and down the hallways with Mark by my side…up and down, up and down for what seemed like hours. 

Once per hour I was hooked up to a machine to monitor the baby’s heart rate. At 9 pm I was only 5 cm. I was tired and feeling defeated. I REALLY wanted to have a natural birth, but it was not looking good. We decided I would go one more hour and then we would have the nurse check me again. My contractions were coming every 2 to 3 minutes. 10pm came around and I was at 5.5cm which was not very encouraging. However, we said let’s try for one more hour. At 11 pm I was falling asleep in between contractions and was only at 6 cm. At that point, I said give me the epidural. 

Within 30 minutes, I had the needle in my back and I no longer felt contractions. So I slept, well sort of. Apparently, the epidural caused my contractions to stop which meant I needed Pitocin. The Pitocin caused Taylor’s heart rate to drop, so I was taken off of it. But then my contraction stopped again.  Back on Pitocin I went and Tay’s heart rate once again dropped. At that point I was given oxygen. 

At 6am my doctor came in and broke my water. He also told me that Taylor had possibly swallowed meconium. If this turned out to be true, she would have to go straight to the NICU without me getting the chance to hold her. I was devastated.  I had been waiting over 9 months to meet this little girl and now there was a chance I would have to wait even longer. 

At 7am I was only at 8cm. We had to start talking about a c-section. This was NOT my plan. None of this was my plan. But it was becoming a reality. We did not have to make the decision immediately, but it was looming over us if I did not progress. 

My nurse came in at 8: 30am to check me one last time. I was a 10!!! I had to hold off pushing until my doctor came (go figure).  By 9:15 he arrived and I was ready to push. Taylor Paige was born at 9:33am. After 37 hours in labor, my baby girl had finally come!
And thankfully she had not swallowed meconium so she got to come straight to me!

Side note….my labor and delivery nurse is also a good friend and neighbor of mine. I was beyond thankful to have her there. She stayed way past her shift and slept overnight at the hospital just to be there for me. She was also the one who made me some sort of heavenly drink right after Taylor was born (after 18 hours of only ice chips)! Love her. 

Taylor’s birth went far from the way I planned. But she got here and she was perfectly healthy.  My nurses were awesome and I have had no complaints about the care we received.  I was just happy that our first born was here. 

let's play a guessing game!

Our friends, The Johnsons, always have these fun little ideas. I saw a baby guessing game on their blog and decided that I should probably steal borrow the idea.  Sorry for the lack of originality, but thank you Karyn.

On our right sidebar, you will see a little rectangle with "Baby Elliott!" as the title. If you click there, you can guess our baby's gender, weight, length, size, due date, and time! We will even be awarding a little prize to the winner!

Just for fun, I entered Tay and her answers into the pool! I was quite impressed with her guesses. They are actually all possible scenarios. ...

When I asked her if the baby was a boy or girl, she said "BOTH". I said you are going to have to pick one because there ain't two up in there! So she guessed girl.
She said she will weigh 6lbs. Taylor was 6lbs 10oz. and Noah was 7lbs 10oz.  I am really hoping we don't continue with the extra pound per baby, so I am cool with that answer. She went ahead and put in a second guess...20 pounds! Um, no thank you.
For the length, she said 16 pounds...we will change that last word to inches.
When will the baby be born? Her answer, Christmastime, ao December 25th for that one. And for the time, 7:30pm.

Let the games begin!

Let me see your shake pop

I love the 4th. It is most definitely up there on my list of favorite holidays. One, because we get to celebrate our independence. And two (which is my most favorite part), FIREWORKS! How someone can get all that awesomeness into one little circular tube, I will never understand.

About the watch the fireworks...

Tay is probably the coolest 4 year I know. She makes up TONS of awesome moves (just like her dad) and then gives them rockin' names.
I give you the "shovel" and the "shake pop"!

4 years

My baby girl turned 4 today.  

Taylor, you are beautiful, smart, kind, and witty. You have a memory like an elephant. You love to sing, dance, and put on a show. If I don’t hear you, I can normally find you reading, painting, or coloring. You are such a little mommy, always taking care of your baby dolls and helping with Noah. Every night, you love telling daddy all about your day while he lies in bed with you. Your imagination never ceases to amaze me. You can have a 20 minute conversation using crayons.

Last May, Taylor’s cousin had a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. Since then, she has been asking to go there for her birthday. And last night that is exactly what we did. We ate, gamed it up, and chased Noah around.

However, I think Chuck E. gave me some sort of food poisoning, so he is sort of on my bad side right now.

But it was fun while it lasted. 

Happy birthday sweet girl!

Locks of Love

Taylor has never had a haircut (unless you count the her baby mullet, which I chopped off when she was about 3 months).

We have been wanting to cut her hair for a while, but decided to wait until she had enough to donate to Locks of Love. We showed her the website and talked about what she was going to do. I think she understood it about as much as any three year old could.

And today was the day. We made an appointment, I dropped Noah off at the neighbors, and we headed to the salon.
She looked so big sitting in the chair. I may or may not have teared up. 


When she saw her ponytail of hair, she looked a little shocked, but that quickly wore off. Of course I chocked up a little, but that is to be expected.



I can only imagine what is going through her little head as we hand her hair to her and say "hold this and smile". She probably thought we were a nuts.


Before and After.


Pure cuteness.

gingerbread man decorating

Let me start by saying that I LOVE Trader Joes.
We found this little gingerbread kit there for about $3. There is no way I could have made the gingerbread man, the icing, and bought decorations for anywhere near $3. AND this little kit saved me the trouble of having to make anything.

In the last picture, Tay is actually talking to the talking to the gingerbread man, or as she so cleverly named him “cookie”.

Good times for a rainy Thursday afternoon.

layering and an update (although there is really not much to update you on)

I think Tay has mastered the trend of layering. Let me tell you a little about what is going on here.

Everyday Tay has “quiet time” where she theoretically stays in her room for about an hour. We just gave her full reigns to her closet where all her shoes become cars and she dresses herself in random attire.

Today she came out with not one, not two, but three pairs of britches (as we here in the south like to call them). She also managed to put an additional shirt on. Not sure how it got on or how it came off.  

Oh, and the big busted lip is from a collision with Noah. Or as Tay likes to tell the story, “Noah hit her with his dino”. Poor, poor girl. Always being bullied by her baby brother.

In adoption news, we are still waiting on a referral….and it will be like that for somewhere in the ballpark of 6 more months. Once we get our referral, it takes about 4 more months until we travel to Uganda. So if all goes as planned (HA, like anything ever goes as planned), we will hopefully be home with our baby by this time next year.

hot chocolate? yes, please!

Let’s be honest, this lady loves her some chocolate. I sort of have a weakness for it. Hence the reason we do not keep sweets around the house. I have no control…none! 

For example, we bought chocolate chips last weekend to make chocolate chip pancakes (which were quite yummy). We still had some chocolate chips left, so I just had to make chocolate chip cookies. That was Monday. Here we are on Wednesday and all 2 dozen are GONE! It’s pathetic, I know. But in my defense, I had some helpers :)

This afternoon when I needed my chocolate fix, I decided to find a recipe for hot chocolate. I knew we would have the ingredients because we always have cocoa on hand. It was easy, semi-healthy, and yummy so I thought I should share.

Ingredients:

• 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 4 cups milk
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla
• miniature marshmallows

Preparation:

Blend cocoa and sugar in a small bowl. In a medium saucepan, heat milk to scalding. Mix about 1/3 cup of the hot milk into the cocoa-sugar mixture, then pour cocoa mixture into hot milk in the saucepan; stir until well blended. Stir in vanilla. Serve with mini marshmallows. Serves 4.

And she thinks we’re just makin’ cookies

I will be the first to admit, I don’t always spend the time that I should with my kids. Yes, I stay at home , but there are times when I hardly interact with them.

Lately, I have tried to make it my goal to do more activities with my kids. Sometimes it is as simple as sitting on the couch with them while they watch an afternoon movie.

Today it was making cookies with Taylor. Let me first tell you this, I am major OCD! I absolutely despise having a messy kitchen. It drives me nuts!! So baking cookies with a 3 year old stretched me to my limits. There was flour all over the floor, on the walls, on the countertops, on us! Tay even “helped” watch dishes, which meant soap and water everywhere!!! It was rough to watch, but I tried my hardest to let go. And when I sort of did, we had a blast! And made some yummy cookies, which is always a nice bonus!

Notice that in most pictures, the counters are clean. That is because this OCD lady cleaned in between every step. It was just too much to have that flour everywhere. Good thing Tay also enjoys cleaning :)

twinkle toes

Taylor is officially a ballerina...if officially means that she has started dance classes. She actually started last week, but because I am a slacker mom, she did not have her dance gear until this week.
I love that her belly still sticks out.



In other news, I have been an emotional wreck the past couple of weeks. I choke up at random unnecessary moments. For example, this morning I was putting Tay's hair in a bun for dance class. All of a sudden, I got teary eyed. Seriously, what's wrong with me? For years, we have made fun of my mom for crying ALL the time (sorry mom). Well mom, looks like I may be taking after you on this one :)

Preschool…sniff, sniff

Tay had her first official day of preschool today. Seeing her with her backpack, nap mat, and lunchbox this morning was almost more than I could handle. When did my baby get to be so big? I mean seriously y’all, dropping her off at school was HARD.

Last spring, we made the decision for Taylor to attend preschool one day a week. I had been going back and forth between keeping her home and letting her go to school. Before we even had children, Mark and I made the decision that we would homeschool our kiddos (more on that later). So for us, preschool is not necessarily a step towards what her day will look like in kindergarten. It is more of a “trial run” for how we want to handle preschool with our kiddos.

Look at this cute tiny tot on her first day of school. Tay’s new thing is to squint her eyes when she smiles. And it was sunny. So….I did not get the greatest pictures. I won’t show you any of me with red, puffy eyes.

        

Poppin' wheelies

There were not really any wheelies being popped, but Tay did take her first ride around the neighborhood on her new bike. Her skills were pretty impressive, so I am sure wheelies will be in her near future.


Noah even gave it a whirl.

Let me tell you bout' my best friend

Tay and her cousin Addie are so sweet together. They may fight like sisters sometimes, but when they are buddies, it is ADORABLE!