Skylar's Birthday, Family Style

We had such a fun family dinner for Skylar last weekend.

Grandma Dew made cupcakes.

I made Skye's favorite dinner - chicken enchiladas.

Aunt Corey, Uncle Jeff, Logan, Garrett, Grandma & Grandpa all helped us eat them.

We are so lucky to have our wonderful family close by!

Seven-Year-Old Birthday Girl

It's so fun that Skye is a Spring Break Baby!

No school, so we can celebrate all day long.

Just like every year,

Daddy read The Birthday Bird the night before.

Then Skye had a sleepover in Madi's room.
We had a birthday breakfast at Mimi's Cafe.
Then Bayli went down for a nap,

Ryann babysat,

and Skye & I went out -

just the two of us.

She picked out her own outfit at Gymboree,

then got an ice cream cone at Maggie Moo's

(vanilla, of all flavors, with snowcaps).

We ended the festivities with Samurai Sam's,

lots of presents

& homemade german chocolate cake

with seven candles, of course.

Pre-Birthday Sleepover with Madi

Minnie Mouse Pancakes

Special Time with Mom

My beautiful new 7-year-old!

Happy Birthday Baby!

Seven years ago today I had my first and best homebirth.

It was such a breeze that I remember thinking how sad it was that I finally got this whole childbirth thing figured out and I'd never get to do it again.

It snowed the day Skye was born and her birth was such a peaceful, beautiful experience that I named her Skylar Grace, to remind us both of her graceful entrance into this world.

Now she's seven, and I'm left with the increasingly familiar sense of wonder at the passage of time...

Each one of my daughters was a dream come true, each one is uniquely loved, each one teaches me new things every day.

Things I love about Skylar at 7:

• She's amazingly forgiving.
• That smile.
• She shares without reservation.
• Her hair is the cutest thing I've ever even seen.
• She makes her bed every single day.
• She loves to create: color, draw, paint, sing, dance

Happy Birthday my Bitty Girl!

I hope you feel how much you are loved, today & every day.

sixteen

Today my baby is sixteen months old.

She seems like such a big girl these days.

She can walk beside me holding my hand.

She is starting to realize that she is her own little person

who can insist on sleeping with no pants

but shoes instead...

I am so in love with her

and all the silly things that make her

so uniquely my long-awaited littlest one...

loves, loves, loves to be outside

so independent

loves music & always dancing

she adorably squats on the floor
just discovered chocolate milk

still nursing

loves to open the dishwasher & climb on

23 lbs. & still wearing the same clothes she wore as a 17 lb. 4 month-old

too wiggly for a decent picture

loves food, esp. beans, grapefruit, hummus & tabouleh

says about 20 words

loves her sisters, dogs, books & uncle jeff

calls all three sisters "Rah-dee"

has the cutest curls

can do a high five

here she is, my sweet, sweet big girl in all her cute, precious wiggly-ness..

Beautiful Day

Yesterday was a perfect day for my busy girl...

Climbing in the dishwasher...

getting some love & snuggles from her Baba...

swinging forever on the glider with Skye

beautiful girls

beautiful day

Littlest Snow Angel

Bayli had so much fun when Daddy took her outside to explore in the snow!

all bundled up!

My Michael Scott

Oh my gosh, I wasted so much time today on this website.

(Thanks Mindi!)

I laughed a lot and a lot.

This one almost made me pee in my pants... :)

3 am

We're awake.

Waiting for the baby motrin to kick in...

I've completely lost track of how many times we've done this

sick-baby gig.

It is so not fun.

My feverish, crying baby pointed to the basement door

& finally found distraction looking at pictures of herself on my blog.

"Baby?"

Seriously, no one is looking more forward to the end of the cold season than me...

My Baby Cracks Me Up

She really, really loves her bead necklaces.

I think she looks like I took her to a Mardi Gras parade.

(I didn't - she found them in the dress-up box.)

She loves them.

I mean, really. She wears them all the time.


She has fallen in love with the wonderful world of outside
and laughs & laughs at the funny way the ground is uneven
and makes it hard to walk.
(This just makes her walk faster & faster
so it's more fun.)




She grabs her cute shades when she wants to go out
and has practically no hair on top.




She's curious.
And such a mess-maker.

It makes me laugh to watch her put her necklaces on...

Homemade Giveaway!

I copied this tag to get a homemade gift

from my awesome sister-in-law

(above with my super-cute nephew)...

You should see the cute coasters she made us for Christmas.

And we actually really needed coasters!

The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me! My choice. For you. This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:

1. I make no guarantees that you will like what I make.

2. What I create will be just for you.

3. It'll be done this year.

4. You have no clue what it's going to be. It may be a song. It may be a self portrait or maybe even some creation I haven't yet dreamed up. I may draw. I may bake you something and mail it to you. It may not be big or impressive. Who knows? Not you, that's for sure! But let's be honest here. This is me and I will likely do something amazing. :) So come on, sign up!

5. I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.

The catch? Oh, the catch is that you must re-post this on your blog and offer the same to the first 5 people who do the same on your blog. The first 5 people to do so and leave a comment telling me they did win a FAB-U-LOUS homemade gift by me!

Doggie!

Next to her family,

Bayli's most favorite things in the whole world are

dogs, babies & Barney.

Lucky for her, anything that's not human qualifies as "doggie"

(even though an actual dog is her favorite...)

I have been waiting & waiting for a warm day to take her to the zoo.

I have been totally looking forward to it.

The perfect day came last week (in between this month's colds, fevers & pink eye), and I packed her shades, zoo hat & baby sunscreen and headed off to the zoo.

I expected her to be beside herself with excitement,

running around saying "doggie! doggie! doggie! doggie!"

- like she did when she saw Marianne's poor cats. :)

Instead I got awestruck silence. :)

She could barely believe her eyes and quietly took it all in.

The giraffe-doggies were her favorite, I think mostly because she could get so close to them. She especially liked them the 2nd time around, when she was generous to share their giraffe crackers with them.

When we got to the car and I buckled her in her seat, she said "Doggie!!!"

I love, love, love these toddler days of discovery.

So fun.

Thanks to Aunt Carolyn,

whose Christmas gift card bought us this year's zoo membership! :)

Party Time!

One more celebration before we were done...

Madi invited some friends over for a night of chocolate fondue, movies and sleeping over.

I love throwing the girls' parties, but I don't think this was my best work - Bayli had been sick with a cold all week and got diagnosed that morning with pink eye - aagh! - but I still managed to pull it off and Mad had a ball.

It was way fun, but Bayli is sick again and I am exhausted...