Playdates!

I love it that Laurel is old enough to have friends. We have been doing playdates like crazy lately. At least one a week, but sometimes more. A great bonus is that us moms enjoy them too. It is great to get some adult interaction when you spend all day talking to a 2 year old. I like to watch Laurel with her little friends too. I have come to the conclusion that she is very bossy. She likes to tell everyone how to do everything.

One of the best playdates we had recently was with a mom and little girl whose parents and grandparents go to our church. They come visit every few months or so and we have been trying to get the girls together for awhile. We finally had a playdate at the Children's Museum and Carmen and I and Annley and Laurel totally hit it off. Carmen and I just talked about everything, but mostly about our girls (of course), being stay home moms, and her little baby boy who is due next month. The girls cooked in the play kitchen, colored, played with all the cool toys, and played tag. Laurel now likes to tell me, "tag you're it Mommy!" and "chase me!" I so wish the lived closer because the girls get along so great! They both love to talk and like to play the same things.

Of course, Laurel's best friend is Emily and her Mom, Connie, is one of my best friends. We get together with them at least once a week. The girls always scream in excitement whenever they see each other. It is so adorable. People are always stopping us and saying how cute the girls are together.

Here are Emily and Laurel at the park. Emily was tickling Laurel; how cute can you get?

At the Museum of Arts and Sciences. They love the monkeys and the balls!

A great place for playdates is at Barnes and Nobles. The girls love to play with the train table, read books, and play with the stuffed animals. They have story time on Fridays too!

My good friend from college came to visit during Christmas break. Her son, Cale, and Laurel are only a couple days apart. She has a new little baby girl who is so cute. Shannon and I had so much fun catching up and after Laurel got used to sharing her toys, so did the kids.
Laurel's friend from church, Hank, came over for a playdate for the first time so his Mimi could go shopping. They played together so great that I didn't even have to do anything. I could get used to that! They played trains and chased each other around the house. They were adorable!

My best friend from elementary and middle school just found me on facebook. I was so excited to get back in touch with her and find out she has three girls! We got together and had so much fun catching up while the girls played. Her middle girl and Laurel are only a few months apart. I love it how toddlers can meet and be best friends in 5 minutes.

I'm enjoying all the friends that Laurel is making and we are looking forward to more fun playdates!

Sickie

I have a lot of posts I need to do about our fun trip to the circus, my birthday, our snow day, and Valentines Day but my baby is sick right now and that is all I can think about. Doesn't this picture just say it all? Laurel is NOT feeling well!

She seemed a little out of sorts last Wednesday, but she woke up about an hour early and I figured that was all it was. She is NOT happy if she does not get her beauty sleep (just like her mama). I put her down for a nap and she slept three and a half hours which is really, really long for her. When I went in to get her I knew something was wrong since she was just laying there in a sad little heap instead of climbing out of the crib like she normally does. I realized that she was very hot and I took her temperature which was 103 degrees. I began freaking out and then realized there was no Tylenol in the house. So I called Matt and he was almost home and didn't answer since we don't have service on the back roads close to our house. He got home and had to turn around and go back out on an emergency run to Kroger. Laurel and I got cozy on the couch and watched Beauty and the Beast. She LOVES this movie, but it was the first time she sat and watched the entire thing. Usually 15-20 minutes is the longest she sits still so I knew she must have been feeling really bad. I got some medicine in her and she seemed a little better, but as soon as it wore off she was burning hot again. We had a bad night with her up every hour and me holding her most of the night.

We went to the doctor in the morning and she still had a fever and also a double ear infection. We were on the way to pick up her medicine when she puked all over herself and the car seat. Lovely. We went home and poor Matt had to go get her medicine since I had a pukey kid and car to deal with. Thursday is a blur of puking and cleaning up which went on all day. I was thrown up on more times than I can count. We had another bad night where it seems like I spent all night rocking her back to sleep.

Friday she actually seemed MUCH better. No fever, no puking, just a little tired. We hung out all weekend in our pjs and did some fun Valentines stuff, but mostly just watched movies.

Saturday she sounded a little hoarse to me and then she started coughing. My baby has NEVER had a cough before and it freaked me out.

By Sunday her voice was almost completely gone. She sounds like a 70 year old woman who has been smoking for 50 years. So, so sad. I was planning on taking her back to the doctor, but she slept great (15 hours!) and didn't cough once. I checked on her many times to make sure she was still breathing and she was sleeping peacefully each time. I thought she was finally on the mend.

This morning she seemed all better except her voice, but then started coughing again during her nap. She woke herself up and was not happy about it. So it is back to the doctor for us tomorrow. I hope she is better soon. She is so tired of being sick. She has watched every movie we have and she is over it.

I'm definitely going to have some work to do once she is better though. She has totally regressed with her potty training. She is allowed to drag her blankey and paci around the house whenever she wants. I'm rocking her to sleep each night like I did when she was a tiny baby. She can watch TV whenever she wants. She gets treats for taking her medicine without too much of a fuss. I do nothing but hold her all day, but what else can I do? My baby is sick and all I want is for her to feel better. If you ask Laurel if she is sick though she will say, "No, I not sickie! I go outside and play!"

CAKE!!!

I met a wonderful lady about a year ago at Kindermusik and we have become best friends. Her little girl and Laurel are only a few months apart and play together so great. We get together at least once a week for a play date. It has really made being a stay at home mom a lot easier. It is so nice to have someone who is going through the exact same thing as me. We can just talk forever.

So Connie makes that most amazing cakes and offered to make Laurel's cake for her 2nd birthday party. I was so excited and we spent weeks trying to come up with a theme. Finally we decided to have the cake match the pink and green pig outfit Laurel was wearing for her party. Laurel has always loved pigs and that was her first animal sound so it seemed fitting.

The cake Connie made was beyond amazing and everyone was in awe of it. I figured the cake needed it's own post so here are a few pictures of the most awesome cake ever!

Laurel blowing out the candles

Happy and excited after blowing out the candles

This is how Laurel feels about the cake. She LOVED it. We saved the little pink pigs on top and Laurel likes to sing them "Happy Birthday" all the time. Adorable!

Connie, thank you so much. I could not have asked for a better cake. You are a wonderful friend!

Birthday Photo Shoot

Laurel and I were bored one day this week so I decided to do a photo shoot with some of her cute outfits and the top of her amazing cake (the cake will have it's own post!). I'm not the greatest photographer and Laurel is not the best subject since she hates to stay still, but we got some cute shots. Enjoy!

This is Laurel's birthday outfit which matches her cake. Adorable much!

I let her play with this musical horse to keep her happy.

Outfit change and still playing with the horse!

Looks tasty!

Laurel got hungry towards the end of the shoot!

Happy Happy Birthday!!

I cannot believe Laurel's 2nd birthday has already come and gone. It seems like just yesterday I was driving to the hospital to have her and now she is two years old!

We started talking about her birthday as soon as Christmas and New Years was over. She was so excited to get to do "nastics" (gymnastics) and have all her friends come. Whenever we talked about her party she would say, "Papa come? Emily come" and just go through and name all her friends and family. We also started practicing blowing out candles while singing Happy Birthday to her. I just wanted to do it once or twice so she knew what to do, but Matt seriously did it almost every night in January! It was so cute how she would get so excited every time those candles came out. One good side effect of all that singing was that she learned to sing Happy Birthday on her own. It is the most adorable thing you have ever heard. One day when I was talking to her about her party I said, "and after you blow out the candles on the cake you can open your presents!" She looked at me so confused and said, "Santa Claus coming?" I guess in her mind only Santa Claus brings presents. When I explained that you get presents on your birthday too, she seemed to accept that, but every time I mentioned presents she would say, "but Santa Claus not coming?" like she was still trying to figure it out.

The night before her party she was so excited and kept saying, "I go sleep. Wake up. Party!" Just like Christmas Eve she was too excited to sleep well. It was almost 10pm before she finally fell asleep, which is really late for her. Luckily she slept in until almost 9 (I was worried she would wake up too early and then want to take a nap right when her party started). Her and Matt made pancakes like they do every Saturday. We quickly got ready and it was party time!

She was so excited when we got to Sportz Quest where we were having the party and she does gymnastics. We got the food set up while she begged to go play. Her friends started showing up and she was so sweet and greeted each one. The gymnastics teacher quickly went over a few rules and then let the kids loose to play. Laurel just ran around like a little nut, jumping and rolling, sliding and running everywhere. All the kids were having so much fun; it was just fun to watch them enjoy themselves so much.

After a good amount of play time, it was time for food and cake. Laurel blew out the candles on her cake before we had even finished singing the happy in "Happy Birthday." We lit them again to get a picture and she happily blew them out again. The kids all seemed pretty hungry and they ate their food happily. Laurel ate some of her food and then decided to walk around to the adults and mooch food off of their plates too!

After food it was present time. Laurel was adorable opening presents. She wanted to open and play with each present of course. She cracked me up with some of her expressions like, "so cute!" and of course, "oh wow!" A few times when I told her to say thank you to someone she tried to give them the gift she had just opened.

We opened presents pretty quickly and then the kids got to play a little bit more. Laurel was so sweet telling all her friends thank you at the end of the party. We went home and fed Laurel a late lunch and then she took a nap. When she woke up we opened presents again and she had just as much fun the second time as the first.

We had such a fun day and Matt and I just really enjoyed watching Laurel having such a great time. Did I say I still can't believe my baby is two!!

Here are a few pictures from her party. Enjoy!

Laurel and I before the party started.

Jumping on the trampoline!

Playing with her "boyfriend" Drew

Just having a great time while my Dad and brother watch.

She LOVED this slide so much.

Getting a ribbon while everyone clapped for her. She so loved being the center of attention.

Just blew her candles out...for a second time!

Opening presents!

Thanks to everyone who made Laurel's day so special.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

We had a great Christmas this year. It was so fun to see how into it Laurel got. She was so excited for Santa Claus to come and asked every night for a week before Christmas, "Santa Claus coming tonight?" On Christmas morning the first thing she said was, "Happy birthday Jesus" and "I love you Jesus!"

Here is Laurel with some carrots for Santa's reindeer on Christmas Eve.

She wanted to stay up and see Santa eat his cookies and the reindeer eat their carrots. We kept telling her she had to go to sleep or Santa wouldn't come. She was so excited that she had a hard time falling asleep though. Then she woke up several times and wanted to know if Santa had come yet.

I enjoyed playing Santa Claus and eating the cookies, yummy!

Laurel got a train table as her big present this year. Matt finished the table on Christmas Eve so it was really down to the wire. He had fun setting up the trains for her while I finished wrapping all the presents.

Santa has come! Laurel had a HUGE stocking which was nice because I really got tired of wrapping around 11:00 and just shoved the rest of her loot in her stocking!

Laurel's face on Christmas morning when she first saw her train table.

She was in awe!

As you can tell she really LOVES her Thomas!

It was really hard to get her want to look in her stocking or open presents. All she wanted to do was play trains!

After a long while of playing, Laurel decided those gifts under the tree looked pretty interesting.

Throwing wrapping paper was lots of fun.

She got lots of neat toys and wanted to open and play with each one before moving on to the next. Towards the end she got tired of opening presents and gave the last few to me and Matt. She said, "one for you Daddy!" and "one for you Mommy!" It was so adorable.

We headed down to Matt's parents and Laurel enjoyed the bounty of Grandma's kitchen.

Yummy!

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas. I know we did!

Tis the Season

I have to admit, I'm like a little kid at Christmas time. I love all things Christmas and now that I have an almost two year old Christmas is even more fun. I've had such a wonderful time this month experiencing Christmas through Laurel's eyes.

She LOVES Christmas trees and we have to stop and admire everyone we pass. She has "redecorated" ours about 20 times. She loves seeing people's decorations in their yards and houses as we are driving, especially Santa Claus and reindeer. Of course if we are driving at night she goes crazy when she sees Christmas lights. It is so cute to see how excited she gets every time!

We've only seen Santa five times this month. She finally sat on Santa's lap and told him what she wanted for Christmas the last time. It was so funny because she was being shy at first and wouldn't say anything. Santa asked her if she would like it if he brought her some dolls and she said, "No dolls, Thomas trains!" The whole way home she kept telling me that she didn't want any dolls only trains for Christmas.

I have been reading her lots of stories about the Christmas story and it is so great to hear her talk about the angels, Mary, and baby Jesus. I'm not sure how much she really understands, but she remembers the main characters!

Here are a few pictures of our Christmas season so far...lots more to come!

Laurel with the first Christmas tree we saw this season at the Museum of Arts and Sciences.

Running after church in one of her cute Christmas dresses.

Helping to pick out our Christmas tree!

Decorating the Christmas tree!

Dancing to some Christmas music in nursery.

Laurel and her friend Emily on a shopping trip to Toys R Us.

Redecorating the tree!

Petting a reindeer on one of our trips to see Santa.

And enjoying her favorite thing, trains!!