"Can I hold her?"

The bigger Lacey gets, the more I seem to hear that phrase. They love that they can make her smile and "talk." It's so fun to watch their interactions.

Daddy Day 2011

Even with all the craziness of preparing for Lacey's blessing day, I didn't forget that Dan still deserved a great Father's Day. The kids and I planned in advance. I found a code for a free personalized card printed from a website, so one morning we took some quick silly pictures and one cute one for a Father's Day card. He loved it.

Once Lacey got changed out of her blessing dress, she wore her new and very appropriate "I'm wild about Daddy" onesie.

After sewing Lacey's dress with my mom's supervision, I felt brave enough to try something simple on my own. I remembered I had a pattern for father and son pajama pants, so I spent a few days working on them when Dan was out of the house and the kids cooperated enough to let me. Matty was very excited to have pants that matched his dad's!

The sillies

The sweets

Glad there's still occasionally room on his lap for me!

Lacey's Blessing Day

We blessed Lacey today, on Father's Day.
What greater gift can a man get than a new baby girl to bless???

We were able to celebrate this special day with lots of family and friends.
Here's one of all our family who were able to come. Many were missed!

I wish we could've gotten a picture with all our friends who came but there wasn't enough room for that! I counted and at one point we had 20 kids including 3 babies in the house. It was crazy!

We took advantage of the extra hands and got some family pictures.
I wish it hadn't been raining so that we could have taken them outside!

A cute one to honor the daddy in our home.

Sweet kissable cheeks!

Lacey enjoyed the snuggles and attention of the day.
Such a special lady we have here!

The Lacey Dress

When I was trying to decide which blessing dress to sew from the choices the pattern I bought came with, I was describing my options to a friend and told her that one was a very lacy dress. I realized then and there I had no other option because I HAD to make the lacy dress since it was for my own little Lacey!

I spent 3 days at my mom's house recently having her help me. With my 3 kids and 3 dogs in the house to take care of, sewing it was a very slow process! I'm happy with how well it turned out though and am so glad that she'll know her mother made it just for her. (By the way, lace is a pain to sew on!) I also made her headband and bracelet to match.

So what do you get when you cross a beautiful dress, a sweet baby, and a photographer??? You get a mom who can't decide which of a 175 pictures to show!

Two Months

This month has gone by much faster than the first one. It's hard for me to believe that it's already time to post another picture with the bear! (Click here to see last month's pic under this post to compare the two!)

Lacey is a stinker of a sleeper. She typically sleeps 2.5-3 hours between feeds at night and if we're super lucky we'll get a 4 hour stretch. I don't want to make her skip any of those feeds when she wakes up hungry because she's so tiny. We'll have her 2 month checkup next week, but I'm pretty sure she's about 1-2 lbs behind my other kids at this point. Reflux probably isn't helping with that. Her naps aren't typically solid sleep either. Sometimes she'll wake up every 10 minutes and we have to keep putting her back to sleep. Needless to say it's hard to get much done around here!

She's very observant and loves to watch her surroundings. She's smiling more for the older kids which has them very excited, and occasionally I have to break up fights over who gets to "play with her" by making her look at them. She's started cooing and "talking" to us which everyone is enjoying. She loves to be cuddled and held, especially in the afternoon hours during her fussy time each day.

There's really not much else to say about her at this point since she's still kind of in that "slug" stage. But slug or not, we love having her around!! I must kiss her a hundred times a day. Even with the crappy sleep, I LOVE having a baby in the house.

No Reason

Just going through some recent pictures and wanted to share a few.

Seriously, I could kiss these little round cheeks all day!



"Word up, Yo!"


This is what happens when your kids wake up at 6 something but they're told they can't get out of bed til 7. They find ways to entertain themselves from their beds.


While playing play-dough, Matty wanted me to make him a pig. I told him we'd both make one and I'd show him how step by step. I think he did great!


Lacey's preferred sleeping location.
I have a major knot above my shoulder blade from her using it so much.

Who Needs a Comfy Bed? . . .

. . .when you could fall asleep in a Bumbo instead!

It was her first time in one, and within 30 minutes she was asleep. Didn't think it looked that comfortable but to each her own. In her defense, she was being forced to watch Matty and Dan play checkers. That might put me to sleep, too, if I sat there long enough.

Jossy Turns THREE!

The birthday girl in her jammies this morning

My little girl is growing up! It amazes me how much she's changed in the last year. We had a little family party for her today with my mom, 2 of her aunts, and two cousins. She let me know she wanted pink decorations and a Rapunzel birthday cake. Since I knew she wasn't going to get the trampoline or the dog she was asking for (yes, this girl shoots for the stars) I felt obligated to at least give her the pink Rapunzel party she wanted.


She told me about her cake request over a month ago, so I've had time to think about it and could come up with nothing other than one of those Barbie cakes. I even tried different stores looking for little cake toppers or mini Rapunzel dolls to put on top, but came up with nothing. So Barbie cake it was. I'd never made one before, so it's a little sad. It wasn't tall enough for the doll so I had to stick a 9" cake layer on the bottom, and when it STILL wasn't tall enough I used 4 cupcakes to prop it up higher. It really didn't matter how it looked though because Jossy loved it.


Depending on how long you've been reading my blog, you may recall how Matty burned his lips blowing out his candles on his third birthday. It was pretty cute today to see that when Jossy started blowing out her candles Matty grabbed her arm to hold her back and make sure she didn't burn herself. It took her a while to blow them out because Matty wouldn't let her get too close. What a concerned big brother!


She opened up presents which included a Little People Farm, a Mulan doll, the Mulan DVD, a Tinkerbell umbrella (Matty picked it out himself for her), a sit n' spin, and a tea set. She's played all day with her new toys.

Happy birthday to my wild, crazy, tomboy, little princess!!