Sweet Caroline

We got the chance to get together with one of my sister's good friends from college, Jill, and her precious baby girl, Caroline yesterday. I have been dying to take pictures of Caroline because she has the most amazing hazel colored eyes and is seriously one of the most adorable kids I have ever seen in my life. I caught myself repeating over and over how precious she was. Anyway, I had so much fun taking her pictures and some of them really turned out great. These are my favorites. Her little legs will make anyone smile. I just want to squeeze them! Seriously though, is she not so precious??








Lucy continues to struggle with being kind and calming down around John. She just isn't there yet. We are still having a really good time though and they have their moments of just laughing and having a great time. Today we took all three kids to the shoe store and Lucy and John tried on about every shoe in the entire place. John was shoving his feet into rain boots that were 3 sizes too small because he just adored them so much. Lucy was running around in high heels. They thought it was pretty fun. I am sure that the workers were happy to see our little tornadoes go!



Hmmm, this looks like fun.




Are you seriously taking the hose away.

Trying to catch raindrops

Family Time

Holly, Adam, John, Wyatt, and Amy all got in to town. For some reason, Lucy always takes a long time to warm up to John and she never really stops being on the defense the whole time he is around. It is hard on me and seems to be hard on her. I just wish she would lighten up and play a little nicer with John. She is SO protective over anything that she is playing with or holding. Even if John is not messing with her, she is worried that he MIGHT mess with her. On top of being defensive, she is extra whiny from 2 year molars breaking through. Two of them are actually in, but the top two are still making life a bit more interesting for now. I know that they are bothering her because she has her fingers in the back of her mouth a lot which is something that she would never do. They seem to be coming in at a really rapid rate. So, maybe in the next week or so she will have all four of them in and we can resume our "minimally whiny" life back because this whole "whine all of the time" bit that has been going on is for the birds. Non stop whining will kill me with a slow, miserable death. I cannot stand it.

There have been some moments of kindness. They are getting better. Lucy is the one who needs to just calm down and relax. I do too. I know that when I am on edge with her, it only makes her worse. I just really wish that we could get the whining under control and make her more at ease. They are currently watching a movie peacefully together. I think it will get better each day.

Here are some super cute pics from the past few days. Wyatt is 11 months now and he doesn't mind getting his picture made. Does he not have the most incredible eyes? Have a great weekend!

Thanks!

Thanks for all of the encouragement about Lucy adjusting to school. It is always nice to hear the stories of other people's kids having similar issues and making it through it just fine. I know it is going to take several weeks of adjusting. I just hope she learns to like it. Surely she will. For those of you wondering if I cried, I must say that I really had to choke back some tears when I went back to get her and she was still clearly upset. That was so pitiful and sad to me. It broke my heart. I had several questions about the dress in the past post. It is made by Misha Lulu and I got it from Bella Jacks in Fayetteville, AR. However, it is from this past spring, so it will not be an easy one to find any more. I must say, it is one of her cutest dresses. And one more thing, she didn't actually take the backpack to school. It was just for the pictures. And I totally agree, she looked so grown up with it. She does love that backpack.

Also, I just wanted to say that I get comments all of the time asking me to email someone back with the answer to a question, but I don't have an email address. Unless your blogger account is set up to show your email, I don't see it. So, if you need something and want to email me, my blog email address is listed to the right or you can leave a question and include your email address. I don't want you thinking that I am ignoring you if you have left a comment with a question and I never got back to you. I am sometimes slow, but I do try and get back to the questions that are asked when I can. If you have asked me something and I haven't gotten back to you, please ask again!

We are at my parents. We have been on the go nonstop lately. It will slow down next week. Lucy and I have taken 5 flights in less than two weeks. We are absolute pros at traveling alone. Lucy has been a dream through all of this. No crying, fussing, or anything during any of the traveling. What a trooper! Holly and her family and my sister Amy get here tonight. I hope that Lucy has a good time with her cousins. Here are some pictures from today that were just cute.

Meet the Teacher Day at School

Today was a big day. Lucy went to her little "school" to meet her teachers. She will be going to a mother's day out program 2 mornings a week starting next week. To put it mildly, she did not like going to school. She was only there for an hour and she was upset most of the time. Her teachers were so sweet and encouraging. We are just going to take it slowly and see what happens. I am not going to force this on her and if she is just not ready to handle it, then she just isn't, and I am perfectly fine with that. I will say, I am looking forward to two mornings to go to the grocery store, Target, clean or just chill out by myself for a bit. It will be refreshing and I will be quite productive.

We got up this morning and got ready early so that we would have plenty of time to snap a few pictures before we needed to leave. We ended up having enough time to stop by Starbucks and enjoy a tea and muffin as well. Lucy's school is at our church, so she knew where we were before we went in. She was just unsure and clinging to me. I hope she transitions okay. I know she will have fun if she can just relax. You know what I was most worried about? Her Mongolian spots. For those of you who don't know what Mongolian spots are, they are these darkened spots on her back and butt that look just like bruises. They are very common in Asian people. A lot of the time, they are just on the person's bottom, but Lucy's come about half way up her back and three of them look like finger marks to me. It would be VERY easy for someone who did not know about them to assume her back and bottom were all bruised up. I don't want people thinking that, so I talked to the teachers about them and told them I would be happy to have Lucy's doctor write a note about them since they are documented in her chart. The teachers definitely thanked me for pointing it out before they just saw them while changing a diaper. I am totally paranoid about people thinking that she is all bruised up because I have actually had strangers ask me about the "bruising" on her back when we were at the swimming pool.

Here she is on her first day of school.





Such pretty catchlights

Thoughts on Texture

I am looking for your opinion on adding texture to pictures. I am just in the very beginning stages of trying this, so I have a far way to go until I feel happy with how they look. I think that the idea of adding texture is great and when it is done properly with the right picture, I am always amazed. There is a great tutorial about using textures on Momology that I found really helpful so I thought I would choose a few pics that I thought would look good with texture and try again. So, I am wondering what your thoughts are on adding this to a few of my pictures.  Like it or not?  Also, I am borrowing my friend's Nikon D200 for the next day and I can't wait to get Lucy out and experiment with it.  It is a VERY big and fancy camera.  I am going to try and get some pictures of Christy's new baby girl, Ava, with it as well.  I will show you what I come up with in the next couple of days.  Let me know what you think of these.