We had to let her show the neighbors just how cool she was;) So we broke out the wagon and took a trip to the big park outside of the neighborhood… so everrryone could get a good look at our superstar:)
Lily loved every second of it!
Just a few shots I grabbed last week. This is what the house looks like after the Lily Monster spends a day in it:)
Tried setting some seamless paper up on the back patio to get some Vday pictures of Lily with her cute “beer”.
Not so fun in windy Arizona:/ Not long after I started shooting the wind blew the whole set up over!
Lily was more than willing to sit on the paper for me and loved her new bear that we bought as a prop. But she isn’t familiar with society’s ideals of modesty! She was spread eagle most of the time and had Mr. Beer in a deadly headlock while she was at it! The few pictures that I did get of her were just silly:) This one is my favorite though!
I am trying to wrap my head around Lightroom 2 at the moment and it’s giving me a headache lol. I’m hoping to take a little break from my wonderful Scott Kelby book, watch my Thursday night shows while Thomas takes a test and then get back to work. I’ll post some new pictures of Lily tomorrow for all of you! Thanks for your patience:)
1. I am going to try and get back on track with these and blog a lot more often. I’ll get some new pictures of Lily up tomorrow.
2. Our little girl is growing up so fast! I can’t believe it sometimes! We took this about a month or so ago but it just proves that she’s not even riding the fence between Babydom and Littlegirlville! She can slide down the big kid’s slide all by herself! VIDEO
3. Here are two more videos of our big girl singing, dancing and talking up a storm:) VIDEO #1 VIDEO #2 Cute huh!?
4. You can see her little band-aids in those last two videos. Lily had to get her shots today. Never fun. I talked to my mom on the phone while we were driving to the clinic and SHE was heartbroken that Lily had to have them done lol. My mom came with me once to a shot appointment and vowed to never do it again lol. I can understand though… it’s hard to watch. Thomas took her today and held her while it was happening. I’m glad I didn’t have to hold her down. Never a good time:/
5. Lily’s talking a lot now! I’m just going to be obnoxious and list all of her words for you;)
6. I ran across this beautifully gut wrenching birth story last week and wanted to share it here. It isn’t a sad story at all but it is filled with this mother’s pain and grief. I cried like a little baby. But it was a beautiful story and it really changed me in an amazing way! Nella Cordelia’s Birth Story
7. And while we’re on the subject of babies… I’m not pregnant. We were definitely hopeful with all of those beautiful OPKs I posted about… but this wasn’t our cycle. I had a pretty rough day on Saturday. I’m basically just scared. I went through a lot before I got pregnant with Lily and as much as I am thankful for everything that I learned during those times… I’m scared to have to go through it again. I was letting myself live in some little dream world where it would be easy for us this time… that we learned “enough’” last time and that I could just do what we did to get Lily and that that would magically be what we needed this time and there would be a new life inside of me. I didn’t want to think about going down that road again… so I lived in that world until Saturday. Then it became a reality that we were going to have to wait until after Thomas gets home. Lily will be two. Who knows how long it will take for us to become pregnant. What if we have to do treatments this time. I was angry that I wasn’t getting what I wanted and that I was going to have to step out of that dream world and face a reality that to be honest, I would do almost anything to not have to face again. But that has passed. I snuggled my baby that night and talked to a good friend and I know that I will do whatever it takes to make my little girl a big sister one day. I will face my reality and I will fight through it just like I did all those years ago. I will hope and pray, every month that it will be the last month but I will know in my heart that every day is worth it and that I will only be better for the struggles we face together to grow our family.
8. And on that note… we got some good news on Monday. It looks like Thomas will be in town for a few more weeks before he has to leave for his deployment due to some paperwork not being done right in Washington. So not only are we all loving the fact that we get to spend more time together… we are also hoping that he’ll be around long enough to get one more shot at getting pregnant:) Here’s to hoping!
9. Lily turned 18 months old on the 20th. I didn’t even realize until tonight! I’m a slacker:p I’m going to take her downtown this week and do her pictures so look forward to those next week:)
10. Thomas and I have started a NetFlix account! We have spent our nights in bed watching movies and the first two seasons of Dexter this week! I am addicted to that show. We can’t watch season three online so I have to wait a few days for the first disc to come in the mail:/ But, if you haven’t seen it… Please do! It’s a great show!!
1. Well, it’s definitely not Tuesday! It’s been a few weeks since I’ve done a ToT though so I figured I’d just throw one together for you guys:)
2. Some big news, that if you follow me on Facebook or have talked to me in person, you should already be aware of. But for those of you that solely follow here I wanted to mention that Thomas will be deploying in a few weeks. This will be his 4th tour overseas and it won’t be his last. He will be gone for just under 6 months and though I can’t say where he’s going it won’t be to Iraq or Afghanistan this time!
3. Since we found out about this deployment MUCH later than we ever did at his last Squadron we didn’t have a lot of time to get used to the idea. But we sat down and talked about everything and decided that we wanted to try for another baby with the last cycle we had before he left. If you’re new to the blog you probably don’t know about the struggle we had to get pregnant with Lily. We tried for just under two years and conceived her on our last cycle before Thomas’ 2nd deployment! So to say that we are clinging to hope this time is an understatement. To cut trying down to just one cycle and be serious about our chances is a little silly to most people. But with everything that we went through last time we know our chances, we know what worked for us in the past and we are no stranger to disappointment. We have one AMAZING daughter that we were so blessed to be given. We will never long for a child like we did before. We decided to try for a second baby but if that isn’t in the cards for this cycle then we will just spend the next 6 months loving the one we have and start trying again when he gets home:)
3. Being the fertility nerd that I am, I got online the night we talked and ordered an Ovulation Predictor Kit [OPK]. They are little test strips that can detect the hormone that your body releases around Ovulation. They are amazing. I have always been a fan. When you’re trying to get pregnant and month after month you stare down at a stark white space on a home pregnancy test where that second little line would be if you were, in fact pregnant… it is such a positive feeling to look down at these OPKs and see that second line. Even though they in no way guarantee that you will get pregnant, it’s just like a little positive affirmation for me… They fill me with so much hope.
4.And this month was no exception:) 
As you can see, each day that I took a test the second line [the one on the left] grew darker and darker asI neared my time of Ovulation. On CD#16 you can see that both lines are of equal darkness… that is a “+ test”. That indicated that I would ovulate in the next 24-48 hours!
5. So, I appologize if this was off-putting to anyone. I am a strong advicate for Fertility Awareness and don’t believe that it is anything that should be shameful or hidden. Thomas and I are both very excited about the prospect of having another little life added to our family. And though there is a wonderful chance that that life is being formed inside of me as I sit here and type all of this out… there is a chance that it isn’t. And so I just ask that you keep us and this dream in your thoughts and prayers over the next week. What’s done is done. There is nothing that we can do to change the outcome now… But positive thinking has never hurt anything;)
I really don’t even know what to title this post!
This is nothing new in our household. If you’ve talked to me on the phone or Skype you’ve more than likely heard me yelling for my beautifully silly daughter to get her “hands out of the TOILET!!…. Now!” Every chance she gets she will run as fast as she can into the guest bathroom, pull her bath-time toys from their net in the tub and proceed to play for as long as it takes one of us to find her and put an end to the silliness. To be honest, the first few times I didn’t mind. We clean our toilets and that one rarely ever gets used. We have to leave the bathroom door open because that’s where the catbox is and also where the dogs get their water. Lily would always play in their water dish and made huge messes that she would then slip and fall in… so the toilet just worked for everyone and we always washed her hands afterwards. Well, not anymore. The last week we all had to start using that toilet since the one in our master is messing up regularly. And Lily has started drinking the toilet water from her tea cups. It’s not a pleasant thought for me. So I’ve been trying to crack down on her. I took these pictures the other day and that was officially the last time she would “get away with” playing in the toilet!
**And just for the record, she isn’t actually drinking toilet water in any of these pictures.**
The last few weeks she’s been coming to us when her diaper is dirty but has also been fighting actually getting her diaper changed. She hates being laid down to get cleaned up. Add that to the mounting interest in the toilet and Mommy has now decided that it is time to introduce Lilly to the “potty”. I am not at all convinced that she is “ready” to be potty trained. Nor am I looking to potty train my child all on my own since Thomas will be deployed in a few weeks. BUT… I do believe that she needs to start understanding the “real” reason for toilets and know what she is supposed to do on them [eventually]. So tonight, before her bath, she ran to the toilet to start playing and I told her that that wasn’t what the “potty” was for. I took off her diaper and sat her up on it and told her that this is where big girls and boys go potty. She sat there for a while and clapped her hands and said “good girl” a couple of times and then she wanted down and we got in the tub. I’m going to get the dog’s water bowl out again and start leaving the lid down on the toilet. I’m also going to pick up one of those little inserts that you put on the toilet seat to make the opening smaller so she can sit on it on her own. I think I’ll just take her in there whenever I need to use the bathroom and let her watch and then take her turn sitting on it by herself. Hopefully after a while she’ll get the clue and stop wanting to play in it all the time. But who knows… 
