Happy Easter!

This Easter we grilled out, decorated eggs, hunted eggs, and decorated cookies with friends. It was so much fun!!!

Egg decorating was a blast!!

Look at this group!! It was so much fun!!!

We decorated some YUMMY cookies!!

This is her Easter dress! I LOVED this dress from the first time I saw it and I was even cuter on! A friend of mine made the bows to match. They are so much cuter than the ones that went with the dress! Thanks, Rachel!

Peek a Boo! I see you!!

Ode to Apple and Didi:

Fried rice and white rice are better than the rest,
but mexican rice is still the best!!!

Love,
The Brown Eyed Girl

I will carry you

This is for everyone who has lost a child. I hope it touches you as it has touched me!

This song was recorded by Selah. It was written by Todd and Angie Smith for their daughter Audrey.


I Will Carry You

I Will Carry You
There were photographs I wanted to take
Things I wanted to show you
Sing sweet lullabies, wipe your teary eyes
Who could love you like this?

People say that I am brave but I'm not
Truth is I'm barely hanging on
But there's a greater story
Written long before me
Because He loves you like this

So I will carry you
While your heart beats here
Long beyond the empty cradle
Through the coming years
I will carry you
All my life
And I will praise the One Who's chosen me
To carry you

Such a short time
Such a long road
All this madness
But I know
That the silence
Has brought me to His voice
And He says...

I've shown her photographs of time beginning
Walked her through the parted seas
Angel lullabies, no more teary eyes
Who could love her like this?

I will carry you
While your heart beats here
Long beyond the empty cradle
Through the coming years
I will carry you
All your life
And I will praise the One Who's chosen Me
To carry you

Fun with play-doh

Presley doing what she loves best!

The animal moved out

My child is the funniest person I know. She gets it from her daddy! On Sunday Presley woke up from a nap saying an animal was biting her in her ear. We took her to the dr only to find out that the ear infections are back. Thanks stupid tubes for falling out before our contract was up!!!! I expected much more of you!

The other day I asked her how her ear was feeling. She said, "the animal moved out".

Where does she get this stuff?

The memory stocking

Okay it's a little late to put this up here but I just got the one for this year put on there so I'm gonna share. I LOVE this so much. It's a plain stocking and every year my friend embroiders something on it that represents that year in Presley's life. Here is a pic of the stocking.





The first thing put on it was the spider. The spider was a stuffed animal that came with an itsy bitsy spider book and she LOVED that thing. It was even the theme at her first birthday.



Next it was an airplane. 2007 was a BIG traveling year for Presley and she went on 20+ airplane flights so we did an airplane for 2007.

This year it has definitely been DORA!!! So she has been the latest installment on the stocking.

My heart hurts for this little one!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1126422/Its-confession-mothers-make-But-woman-asks--So-I-LOVE-daughter.html

Mommy, me, and the monkey

I had every intention of Presley and I having a great Friday. We still did but it wasn't just us. I had an EARLY dr appointment and we then went to daddy's work to hit that drawer stash of suckers she's always talking about. While we were there a friend's husband (they didn't realize I was out of work that day) told me her and the kids were at the Monkey Treehouse.

http://www.themonkeystreehouse.com/index.php

If you have never been I HIGHLY recommend it!! So we went and with the exception of lunch we spent all day!!! It was good to catch up with some friends and for Presley to see her little friends.

A mommy and me day!

School called on account of cold. Hmm, now that just sounds strange. No snow, no ice, just....cold. Oh well, who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Every evening and weekend I get to spend with my girl but there is something special about a unplanned day of just the 2 of us. The endless adventures we will have. The play-doh ice cream cones with sprinkles that she can't get enough of, the same book read over and over, the begging for mandarin oranges, the silly giggling, that smile that will make the world right no matter what has gone wrong. I'll bet when we go to daddy's work to have lunch with him she will go right for the drawer where she knows he will have suckers waiting for her.

I'm so excited! My morning will start at 4:00 a.m. when my miracle will crawl into bed next to me and say "let's snuggle, Mommy". She will then kiss me and say "I love you, Mommy". And we will snuggle warm and cozy under the covers until the alarm wakes us back up. **SIGH** I could never envision a time in my life where I would ever look forward to 4:00 a.m. But I truly look forward to that time!

"Say PLEASE, Mommy"

I'm not gonna ask my child to go to time-out. Does that make me unfair to not say please when I always make her? Fine, in the name of fairness, when my child gets to send me to time-out she doesn't have to say please!

Okay, I'm in

I have decided to join in all the blogging fun that I have been pressed up against the glass peering in at. The funny thing is I said I would never do it and now I don't know why I said that.

SO here I am.

My little Presley is 2.5 already. How did it happen? Where has the time gone? I just really don't know. She was a wish and a prayer. She was pills, shots, and charts. Now here she is, my little snuggler that surprises me everyday!!!

Here is some background to bring it up to date. I had a really hard time getting pregnant. I lost 3 little angels. 2 of them are boys and 1 is unknown. There has been some talk between my dr and I about participating in a study to see if my body rejects boys but I am not sure I really want to know if my body attacked my sons. I took drugs to get pg and even with the drugs Mark and I were married (almost to the day) 5 years before Presley joined in the fun. She was a stinker from the get go. I went into labor at 30 weeks but with Terbutaline and bedrest she stuck in there for a little bit. Around 35 weeks my liver was shutting down and my blood pressure was so high that the dr couldn't believe I did not have a stroke. So on July 11th (several days before my already scheduled early delivery) Presley was born via emergency c-section. I will say that if you are gonna have a baby emergency c-section is a way to really cut the process short. LOL!! Just kidding I am not recommending it. But I will say that I didn't have time to get worked up before she arrived. It was about 6 hours until I got to hold my little one because, like I said, she does things her own way. I was determined to breastfeed. Presley was determined not to. I pumped all of her meals until she agreed to go for the boobie. It truly SUCKED! She was over a month old before she would actually breastfeed. That was a month of crying and frustration for both of us. I had some good support and the LC's at Centennial kept reminding me that when she got closer to her true due date she would learn. It was almost to the day that she finally learned. It's a good thing I am that stubborn because later breastfeeding became a must. When Presley was 2 months old I woke up in the middle of the night to see her flailing her ams. Her eyes were open, her mouth was open, but no sound was coming out. I yelled at Mark and started pounding on her back. She started crying (and more importantly breathing). We had to take her to Vanderbilt for an upper GI. The upper GI showed that she has pretty bad reflux. Presley started on Zantac. The reflux didn't get better and she has really bad exzema. Friends and research led me to the elimination diet. I took out all allergen foods (almost every food on the face of the earth UGH!) and started adding back groups one at a time. When it was all said and done I couldn't have milk, eggs, or soy while breastfeeding. Presley was allergic. I gotta tell you that was so hard!!! I live for pizza, cheeseburgers, tacos, just about everything you shouldn't eat and I didn't get to eat any of it from the time Presley was a little over 2 months until she weaned at 18 months. When Presley was a year she went for her first allergist appointment. It showed that she was allergic to milk, both parts of the egg, and peanuts. From trial and error we added tomoatoes, cranberries, and something else to the list but I can't remember. She was drinking soy milk when she weaned but I learned that with me having PCOS (another post to come) she shouldn't have it so we went to rice milk and added flaxseed oil to her oatmeal everyday for fat. At 2 years old she was able to start drinking real milk. YEAH!!

Okay that's all for now. It's gonna take a while to bring this up to date and I really want to. Not sure why, just want to.