beach day with the cousins.

sk sits like my mom and i do. one or both our legs are always curled up under us somehow. church is about the only place we sit like normal people.

ava, bryce and ashley came to visit us for a couple of days! we had beautiful beach weather yesterday and the girls had so much fun playing together.


ashley and the girls kept sk last night for trey and i to go down to the dock street theatre to see smokey robinson. the whole evening was quite an experience! and he was an awesome entertainer - it was all really kind of comical and fun. thanks ashley, ava, and bryce for taking care of sk! ava and bryce are excellent big cousins! i hope sk is as good with hayes as a&b are with sk. even though we missed having jonathan around, it was great for sk to be with just ashley. sk is so completely obsessed and enamored with my brother that sometimes she wants to give him all of the attention (kind of like ava is with her uncle trey)! when i went in to get sk up this morning she said, "ashley!" before she saw it was me. i think she was a little disappointed=)

we are thankful for cousins and are excited to add another girl to the bunch this summer. speaking of that one, i had my 23 week appointment today. i'm measuring 23 weeks..."spot on" is what the dr. said;) we'll see hayes again in exactly 4 weeks on april 24th to check my placenta. can't wait to see her again! everything else is going fine.

anyway, we hope the rest of ava and bryce's spring break is fantastic and we are already looking forward to seeing them again over Easter and sk's spring break. sk, trey and i will be spending easter and some of sk's break at our family beach house on amelia. it's a new year so we're hoping the beach house curse has lifted and we can actually go and enjoy some family beach time without any mishaps. prayers are welcome - if you click on the beach house curse link and read, you'll see why;)

a bitter nut.

mary hazel:
mary means bitter. hazel means hazel tree or nut.
i'm carrying a bitter nut.

sarah katherine:
sarah means princess. katherine means pure.
big sis is a pure princess.

let's not encourage the girls to ever look up their name meanings. one may feel a little, well, bitter about our choices. ;)

lately. a completely random post.

we've been doing a little of this....

and a little of that....

you know, just normal stuff. running from mommy in high heels and minnie mouse undies while holding our hands in such a way as to make sure the oversized rings don't fall off our fingers. all completely normal.

mrs. jennifer sent the baby clothes back to us that we sent down when laney grace arrived. some were ava and bryce's and some were sarah kate's. so glad another sweet baby girl was able to wear those sweet newborn gowns and sleepers that babies grow out of so quickly and now another sweet baby girl will wear them all once again.
i've started washing, hanging and folding....i still have bins and bins to go through but this is a good start.

doug and trey put up the bead-board. i've called a painter and he is coming tomorrow to give me an estimate. the walls will be painted blue and the bead-board will be painted white hopefully within the next 2 weeks.

this bed was in sk's nursery and now will be in this nursery. it serves as an extra bed and a changing station;) i ordered a duvet cover for it today that i'm hoping goes well with the crib bedding. this was my gma hazel's bed....fitting=)
ashley, if you are reading this then don't worry - i'll have the bed made for you when you arrive on sunday!


monday was a beach day....

hoping this coming monday will be another beach day since ava and bryce will be here....

just as i thought....the right side azaleas are now beautiful and in full bloom and the left side is fizzling fast.

we eat dinner at the church every wednesday before trey goes to his class. it is so nice to have at least one night a week where i don't have to wonder one bit about how, where, what we're going to eat;) sk and i rocked a bit while we waited on trey this past wednesday. she was quite a sight....stickers all over face, 4 "necklaces" including one lay, beauty & the beast sunglasses, paint on her elbows....just a complete mess.

sk has done great in her big girl bed. we've been so proud of her!

i weighed sk tonight before bath and she was 28 pounds. i won't share my weight but let's say that i don't weigh the same thing that i weighed 5 months ago....can't believe i'm 5 months pregnant! yikes, i'm due in just under 4 months from today. my new craving is bananas. i've moved on from peaches and have become a complete monkey. trey and i have stayed loyal to our Lenten promise and have stayed away from refined sugar except for frozen yogurt sundays. this explains my fruit obsession. can't get enough.

sk and i went to target yesterday and then to one of our favorite little lunch spots where sk always gets a smoothie with her lunch. when we were walking up the stairs to our house she was slurping the very last little drops up through her straw and i said in a loud voice, "WOW, that smoothie must have been soooo good!!!!" sk replied, "do not yell at me mama. it is RUDE!" i couldn't help but laugh. i obviously wasn't yelling at her. another funny thing she's been saying to me lately is...."hey mama, are you thinking what i'm thinking???" ha, where does she get this stuff? usually when she says that to me i say, "i don't know, what are you thinking about?" and she says, "i thinking about beau-beau. he a boy." ha...everytime she says she's thinking about beau.
another funny thing is potty time in public places. we go in and i get her up on the potty and she loves that her voice echos in a bathroom so she yells really loud, "hello!!! i go POO POO!!!" i just don't care anymore....i have a potty-training toddler who loves echos and this too will pass. i'm just glad she'll use the darn potty! and another sk funny: "i turn three in july and i eat cake. ooooooh, won't that be great, mama?"

that's what we've been up to lately. now i'm off to give trey a haircut and to eat a banana.
;)

growing up.

sarah kate - you are sleeping in your big-girl bed for the very first time tonight! 3/18/2012

you are so so excited! some things you were very clear about:
you did NOT want to wear your sleep sack. we were shocked, but you made it very clear from the moment we showed you your new bed that you would like to sleep without it. guess you won't be going to college in a sleep sack.

also, tomorrow i will take the flat sheet off. you want to sleep on the fitted sheet with the quilt over you, but you do not want to sleep with the flat sheet on top of you so right now you are sleeping on top of it.

you did not want us to linger in your room! we took pics, i crawled in bed and read you the 3 books you wanted to read, we said our prayers and then you said, "can you get out of my big bed now please?" ha! so we left and you fell asleep very quickly! i can look at you through the video monitor and you never even moved much after we left the room.

i hope you sleep well the whole night! so far so good. we are so so proud of you, but i'm a little sad because you are SO not a baby anymore. guess it's a good thing that we have a baby on the way=)

we read a book that mrs. amy lent us about elmo moving from a crib to a big kid bed.

night night, bug bug!

there are a few other ways that you are growing up so fast!

you are doing an excellent job keeping your big girl undies dry! you only had 1 accident at home last week and you had one accident this weekend down at mimi's house, but other than that you did really well. today on our way back to charleston you had me pull over right there on 17 so you could crawl in the back and go #2 in your froggy potty! that road is just so bare and so i'm glad i keep a frog potty back there for you. so anyway, you are out of diapers except for when you sleep. and i still put a pull-up on you when we are going to be out of the house for a long time (& when we're traveling) but you usually keep them dry. such a big girl!

also, you can identify all your letters. you know most of their sounds as well. i know you can't identify all the lower case letters but you definitely know all the capital letters.

you were not scared of the easter bunny this year=) you sat with him for a second last year, but you didn't want to. this year you thought he was cute, furry and nice. we met ava and bryce at the avenues friday for a disney store visit and a train ride so y'all got your picture made with the big bunny while there.

and some other pics of our big girl:

dressing herself....

bedtime stories with her papa bear...

reading with ava...


yogurt with papa (before i had to yank her out of there for being ugly to her mommy! getting big also means testing your limits a bit.) ;)

the best friend's club goes on a train ride...

putting miles and miles on mimi's trike.....

love our big girl! i wonder what sort of "regression" we'll have when hayes arrives. i hear that this is common. maybe she'll have some accidents or maybe she'll have trouble sleeping through the night? i'm hoping that we're doing those 2 things (potty training and bed transitioning) soon enough to where she'll be used to them both by the time the baby comes and maybe will not regress too much. that's our hope! no doubt there will be jealousy! mimi was holding our sweet 12 week old cousin, lilly rose, yesterday and sk ran up and asked mimi to hold her instead. so lilly rose was handed off to me and mimi held sk who laughed and made baby noises. hmmmm........

mary hazel lucy.

we finally decided for sure about the baby's name: mary hazel lucy. we will still call her hayes. we were trying to decide between mary hayes and mary hazel. i wish grandma hazel were still here to meet her namesake, but i know she already knows her. so now we'll have our sweet sarah named after trey's gma and our sweet hazel named after mine. all 4 of our girl's names (sarah katherine and mary hazel) are family names and i like that!

so, her bedding came in today!!!! i love it more in person than in the internet picture. i held the sheet against our new blue 1/2 bath walls and it is a perfect match. so that's great! we'll paint the bead board white and then the blue on the walls. we are grateful that sk's grandoug is coming back this weekend to help trey put the bead board up and install crown molding in our 1/2 bath. so so sweet of him to work around our schedule and to come back after they just left here monday morning from their wonderful weekend stay with us. can't wait to get back from folkston on sunday night and see it!

hayes already has a best friend! alden, who is sarah kate's best friend, became a big sister yesterday! the murrell family chose for this baby to be a surprise and i'm so excited that it is a GIRL!! not that hayes couldn't be besties with a little boy, but i think it's so sweet that alden and sk will have little sisters together. i saw baby ames tonight at the hospital. she's darling. and tiny...i mean, she was 7 pounds 12 ounces which is a perfectly nice sized baby i know, but holy moly i forget how tiny newborns are compared to my growing toddler!
i didn't get a pic of ames...i was too busy holding her;) but i did get a pic of my 2 favorite peeps leaving the hospital. sk and alden played hard in the waiting area while i was in the room with amy. they were so excited to see each other.

i meant to do a belly pic at 20 weeks but i forgot so trey took one tonight. i'm 21 weeks....will be 22 weeks on friday. i put a pic from both pregnancies on here:


this is me at 20 weeks with sarah kate....

and then this is me at 21 weeks with hayes. i put on the same clothes for the pic so i could compare;)

we will get to see baby hayes again! i only got to see sk at the 8 week appointment and the 20 week anatomy scan but we'll see hayes again in 6 weeks to check on my placenta. i have a marginal placenta previa which means that it's closer to my cervix than it should be. the tech, nurse and dr. all assured us that it will go to where it's supposed to be, but they need to take another peek at 27 weeks just to be sure. the pics of her should be really good by then and they'll take more 3d and 4d pics again so i'm excited to see her even if it's because i have a misbehaving placenta;)

some iphone pics...
sk and trey reading the 'sisters' book that lala and dougie brought her...

spring is beginning to spring...

our azaleas on the left are in full bloom and the right azaleas are starting to bloom. uneven every year. don't know if it's because we don't know how to care for azaleas or if it is the positioning of our house in regards to sunlight. after the lion (aka march) leaves then we'll get fresh pinestraw laid. i love fresh pinestraw!
can you tell from this pic that our house has shutters? no? well me either! why the heck did the builder of this house put grey shutters on a grey house? and why the heck doesn't the current owner get a ladder and a bucket of black paint and paint those darn things? trey wants to get real black functioning hurricane shutters. great...that will actually look beautiful i completely agree, but since that won't be happening anytime soon then perhaps the ladder and bucket of black paint idea would work for now. all that being said, i am really grateful to have a house to live in. ;) and i can't wait to have 4 *human* lucys living inside!

what is love?

last night sarah kate wore a nightgown to bed that is pink with red hearts all over it. this morning while i was eating my cereal she came over to me, described her gown and then she said, "hearts mean love. love means that we are happy and comfy cozy." thought that was so funny and sweet at the same time. so to sarah kate love means happiness and being comfy cozy. i like that! i also guess i use "comfy cozy" alot.

this morning i put sarah kate in her easter dress. she was so thrilled to put it on...she just loves it! we had an appointment at 10:30 at one of our local children's boutiques for an artist to draw a pastel portrait of sarah kate. she did an amazing job and so did sarah kate! she had to sit still on a stool for 25 minutes. they had a little tv for the clients to enjoy while sitting there so she watched peter pan while the lady drew=)

i can't wait to have it framed. it looks just like my sweet girl!

it's supposed to be cool here this weekend but it's still nice and warm today. we played outside for a while before lunch.

bella was excited when sk brought the sidewalk chalk out. she likes to paw the pieces around the driveway. such a kitten-like thing to do and yet, she turned 9 on march 3rd.

mr. handsome.

mr. handsome and sk before school one morning a couple of weeks ago.

sk has really enjoyed wearing her rain gear on these wet march days.

love this little goofy girl!

we have ordered the bedding for hayes's nursery. we have already bought sk's big girl bed bedding so that transition will be made in about 2 weeks. hope that goes well. she is excited about it at least and i have decided NOT to make her sleep without a sleep sack when she moves into her big bed. that may be too much at one time, plus her toddler sacks have feet holes so she's not all cramped in there or anything. it's a comfort to her - she rubs the zipper on her hands and face while she gets herself to sleep.

she started potty training again last friday so today marks one week since we started. she has done great and is no longer afraid to use the big-people potty. she'll use a big potty anywhere we go & will gladly do any of the business that she needs to do while on it! i'm so glad i gave her a couple of months before trying again on the big potty because she's just not scared of it anymore at all. she still uses her frog potty some too here at home and she has a frog potty in the back of my car that she uses when we need to. she is not without accidents. yesterday she was playing hard at the park with her friend foard and she didn't stop to tell me that she needed to go. i had her in a pull-up luckily, but until yesterday she had been keeping her pull-ups dry while we are out so i was a little discouraged, but i'm proud of all the success she has had.

this is hayes's bedding. her colors will be blue/grey and "punch pink" and coral. something different from sk's pale pink/green.

i have pom-poms picked out from etsy in several shades of pink for above the crib and some art picked out for the walls. the bead-board will go up next weekend and then we'll get it painted. i want it all completely done by the end of may. the first week in june we will be on amelia for our kriner family beach trip and then the rest of the summer (before july 20th) i want to just enjoy spending time with sarah kate. i took my 'big as a whale self' to the beach or pool every day for 5 weeks up until the day before sk was born so i'll be doing the same with this one especially so sk doesn't miss out on her usual summer fun. praying i don't get put on bed-rest for any reason! our one on one time that we've enjoyed for two and a half years is going to end before i know it! she's my little constant side-kick and she tells me all the time that i'm her best friend. she'll have to share me soon enough, but hopefully she'll just love her sister and will continue to feel happy & comfy cozy;)

"hearts mean love. love means that we are happy and comfy cozy." ~sarah kate lucy

wordless wednesday: alhambra park.