No Rain Daddy

I really don't have too many pictures from last week. Last weekend I came down with a massive attack of the allergies and spent Saturday through the middle of the week feeling pretty awful and going through Kleenex like crazy. I think it was the constant change in temperatures, back and forth, or something. By about Thursday I was finally feeling better once my Allegra D and Flonase got in my system.

I saw a cute little stamp set on Amazon for $7 and ordered it for Lilli. It's a nice little Melissa and Doug transportation set and she loved it. The ink is washable so it's "worry free" and she had so much fun stamping her paper and coloring them. It has airplanes, buses, trains, fire trucks, etc in it.
We've had lots of rain lately. Lilli is not a big fan of rain, when she woke up on Thursday it was absolutely pouring down rain and the first thing she said was "No Rain Today Daddy". Ha!!! But getting to "rain gear" up made her pretty happy!

Heading to school.Thursday night we had some severe weather. It was right before we were headed to bed and all of a sudden the wind just whipped up and the tornado sirens were going off. We were close to pulling Lilli into the closet but it went through pretty fast and everything was fine. There was quite a bit of damage about a mile away in our neighborhood - several large trees down, etc. Apparently the coverage of our neighborhood was severe enough that I got several calls and texts from people the next day making sure we were ok.
Pippin is tortured by his sister in numerous ways, this is just one of them. You'd think he'd just knock the balloon out of his bed, but I guess the thought didn't occur to him.
Friday night we went over to Target East so I could get a wedding shower gift. Brent and his Mini-Me were quite the entertainment when we ate at Jack in the Box on our way over.
High Fives, too slow!
Love those Target Dollar bins! I don't feel like we go to Target all that much, but when we pulled in the parking lot she pointed at it and said "My Target". I guess we do.....
She's quite the little shopper! I'm pretty sure she is going to tear up our credit cards one day, even more so than she already does!

Adventures in Pottyland

Our adventures in potty-land just keep on getting more and more exciting! She's using the potty probably about 50% of the time, some days more and some days less, both at home and school. Some days she wants to use it constantly and other not at all, so I don't think we'll be transitioned anytime soon but she definitely gets what she needs to be doing and can fully communicate it. Now it's just going to take time and a LOT of patience.

For the longest time she wouldn't even wear big girl undies, and now she has to change them out about every 15 minutes. I've gotten her several pairs that have some of her favorite things on them - elephants, Gabba Gabba, some Nemo ones from a coworker (one of VERY few people I would take hand-me-down undies from!), and some with owls on them. Hanes seems to be the best fitting brand, since she is SO tiny most of them are just enormous on her. Sour gummi worms and jellybeans are her big reward. And for some reason "two" is the magic number so we usually tear them in half and she thinks she's getting the world! Pippin is trying his best to help as well. Last Sunday afternoon (when all these pictures were taken) I was getting a Pull-Up for her after she had used her little potty and Pippin was in the room with us chewing on some of his toys. I heard him snorting around but when I turned around he was completely "cleaning" her potty for her. I'm pretty sure my screams could be heard in the entire Davidson County metro area. Nasty dog!!!!!
Today she used a public bathroom for the first time - twice! She wanted to go potty both before and after Sunday School. I am not loving that stage of training, but since we're out and about all the time at least we got some good practice in a much cleaner bathroom than a lot of stores and restaurants. She actually used the potty most of today - and didn't have any accidents from 4:30 until bedtime at 8!
Her legs are almost long enough to be able to pedal her tricycle. She's getting REALLY close!
But she's also just as happy pushing others along.
Silly kids.


Taking East Nashville by ATV storm.
Headed downtown.
And we don't always make it to the bathroom! Actually I think a few good accidents have made her much more aware of really listening to us when we tell her she needs to go.
And I'm pretty sure she'll kill Brent for that picture one day.

Little Pink Dresses

Last Sunday Lilli was a little hesitant when I dropped her off for Children's Church. There were two other kids crying about being dropped off, and anytime other kids get upset she feels like she needs to get upset, too. So they let her pet one of the puppets and asked when her birthday was. When I told them she'd just had it they got all excited and told her they'd sing to her that morning and she would get $1 from the puppet. When we picked her back up she was as proud as a peacock with her $1 bill and was wearing it in the little pocket of her dress. I guess that was good wardrobe planning on my part!On our walk to Sunday School every morning we pass several large animals and she always has to stop and give them hugs. It's pretty hilarious. She also has to tell several of the animals on the wall Hello each week as well.
This dress is so stinking cute. However it's now much less cute because she got ink pen all of it at the grocery store in about 6 or 7 spots and I'm not having much luck getting it off. You can't really see it in the pictures though because it's just lots of little specks.

Heading back in. Every photo shoot, and most every other activity, is interrupted by trips to the potty.
Love this artsy shot.
A little stuck.
Just hanging out.
Cheese!!!
A windy day! She gets sour gummi worms for going potty and she'll keep them in her mouth forever just sucking on them.
Blowing bubbles from the big wand she got for Valentines Day from Brent.
Still hanging onto that Gummi.
Such a cute little dress. Hopefully some intense stain removal tactics will help restore it!!!

Happy Birthday Luke!

Last Saturday morning we were invited to Peek-A-Boo Playtown to celebrate Luke's third birthday. PAB is up in Hendersonville and is a little indoor play place with all kinds of stuff for kids - kitchens, tools, cars and trucks, dinosaurs, a slide and so on. We had never been before (mainly because stuff like that is so packed on the weekends) so it was fun to try it out. (Lilli is in pink on the climbing blocks.)

Luke is the little boy in the middle. We didn't take many pictures and since there was another party going on as well as just people there for open play we didn't get any good close-ups of him so I stole this off his mom's facebook page. Oops!Taylor was cracking us up trying to get into the fire truck car. Several of the ones Lilli's age were scooting around in them so he wanted to as well. He just couldn't hardly get those long legs in there.And then once he didn't he couldn't move them to get the car going anywhere.
The kids got to play for a while and then had cake and juice.The other party also did their cake at the same time so once the little ones were done eating it was a great time for them to play without so many other children out there. And I don't think they minded not watching Luke open his presents.Lilli enjoyed playing in the kitchen and also really loved the train table. She could play with cars and trucks all day. I guess I have instilled good cooking habits in her since she knows to use an oven mitt!It was no shocker to us that she wouldn't want to go. We chased her around for 5 minutes trying to lure her to leave of her own free will but that was for sure a no-go. We got quite the good little fit on the way to the car. I think she had a good time at Luke's party!!!
And I think it wore her out nicely!

Fashionista!

It's officially my favorite time of the year! Consignment season has started and is now in full swing. Over the next few weeks I'll probably hit about 10-12 different sales to get all of Lilli's clothes for this spring/summer (as well as some things like jeans for her to grow into this fall.) Probably about 80% of everything she wears comes from consignment sales. I hit my first sale last Friday at lunch with "the ladies". There's a group of 4 of us who like to hit the sales and get things for our kids/grandkids. It's so much and we have the best time comparing our great deals and making sure we find whatever it is we're out looking for. Last Friday's sale was a really small one, but only 3 miles from work and we all found at least a couple of things so it was worth it. There's one HUGE difference about this season versus all the prior ones - Lilli is WAY into everything I am bringing home. I got 10 different things (for $21) and she wanted to check out every last one of them. Before I knew what was happening she was stripping down and wanted to wear her bunny shirt with a swimsuit on top and her new sparkle shoes. And man, she was PROUD of her new threads!
Any time she's especially happy with an outfit or thinks she's looking super cute she starts twirling and putting on a show for us.
And Pippin just runs along for the ride!
Saturday night she wanted to wear nothing but her raincoat, rainboots and walk around with her umbrella. And it was a really nice day outside! I have no clue where these moods strike her from but it is pretty hilarious.

I hit another major sale at lunch today with 2 of the other ladies and ended up with 21 things for $65. I mostly go to this sale for play clothes and pajamas, and I ended up getting a really nice number of PJs for this spring and summer as well as several good pairs of shoes and a few toys. Lilli LOVES fire trucks and I was able to get a couple of fire trucks for her (normally really hard to find) as well as some Hot Wheels (also usually hard to find). They had a lot of good toys today but their clothing wasn't as strong as it's been in the past, but I was happy to get the PJs and other things I got. Of course Lilli spotted one of the fire trucks the second she got in the car and ended up spending a good portion of tonight in mis-matching pajama pieces.

At least she shares my love of used clothes!

Arts and Crafts

We've been doing lots of arts and crafts during this loooong winter. Lilli loves anything artsy like painting, coloring, drawing, etc. She's got a serious creative streak. Michaels always has great stuff in their $1 bins that makes for fun and easy little projects she can mostly do on her own. Before Valentines I picked up a little Snoopy glitter kit.

Basically it had two little Snoopy cut-outs where you peel off several stickers and then pour glitter over the exposed area to create the pattern. This was our first glitter experience and WOW. The glitter. Everywhere. Still.She had a great time pouring the layers - it came with 3 different colors but they were so similar she ended up blending them together a lot but she had a blast with it.
But did I mention the glitter??? Fine little glitter, all over her, me, the floor and pretty much all over the entire house since glitter travels like sand.
But she had a blast and much like all the leaves that fall from our Christmas tree it will eventually be out of our house in time for the next glitter project.
We also worked on her Thank-You cards last week from all her birthday gifts and finally got them mailed out today. (Actually I had Brent put them out at the post box yesterday but we forgot about Presidents Day.) I had Lilli draw a picture for each person (of whatever she wanted) in each card and she got to decorate it with stickers or just whatever. One person got a bunch of Santa stamps in theirs. She mostly drew Daddy, Mommy, and Pippin but one card had Sharks and there were a few other random illustrations from only within her mind. Her other latest trick is "signing" her name - she the "sticks" above and below the butterfly below. (Sorry, Blogger can't figure out how to rotate this one.) She knows her name is several sticks and normally she will draw 5 straight sticks if you ask her to sign her name. (For some reason on this one she did 4 sticks). How many kids can already write their name at the age of 2???
And that's exactly why we gave her the easiest name ever to write!! She can name all her colors now, several shapes, is pretty good with counting and can identify quite a few letters of the alphabet. And I don't have a clue how many words she knows because I feel like she knows them ALL and likes to use every last one of them in the car when I'm driving.