cousins.

happy two weeks to baby hayes!  and happy friday!!

girlfriends.

sarah kate and alden with their little sisters.  best friends with best friends-to-be.  

hayes was the life of the party if you can't tell;)  ames and hayes don't know it yet, but they love each other lots.  ames was born on march 12 which hopefully will still put her in the younger classes at school with hayes.  school is where alden and sk became friends and i'm hoping these 2 will be in the same classes as well - i think march 1st is the date that separates the "youngers" from the "olders" so they should be together.  either way, they will certainly be together quite a bit - probably trying to keep up with their big sisters.

tomorrow i'll be flying solo for the first time.  my mom has been such a big help to us!  sk has had the best week, and she and mimi have gotten out every day to do something fun for a little while.  they've gone swimming, they've gone to the aquarium and they've gone out to lunch a few times and gone shopping some.  

we appreciate all her help with sk as well as her cooking & cleaning and such.  hayes has been inducted into mimi's very exclusive 'best friend's club.'  ava and bryce will be here this weekend so perhaps they, along with sk, can perform some kind of fancy ceremony to make it official. ha!  

my little swimmer.  trey took her swimming almost everyday last week.  and mimi took her today.  hayes and i are going to stroll up to the pool this weekend and watch her swim - i miss swimming with my fish!

she enjoyed her pink cupcake the day after her birthday....

i should be 39 weeks pregnant tomorrow.  i can't believe she's already here!  i love my girls!!

*insert pic of me with my girls!*  we need to take some group pics! =)

obsessed.

we are just a little bit obsessed with our new family member.  it's just that she is SO soft, sweet and she loves to snuggle.

she was mostly unclothed for our photo shoot yesterday, but when it was time to put something on her i put her in this little gown that i wore when i was a baby.

sk used to wear it alot.....here she is wearing it at 8 weeks....

emily put 5 "sneak peek" pics up on my facebook page and i love them.  i can't wait to see the rest of them!  

happy birthday sarah kate!

newborn sweet sarah kate:

one year old:

two years old:

and yesterday, on july 6th, our big girl turned 3!

our photographer, emily, came over this morning for hayes's newborn session.  she also took 3yr pics of sk and took pics of her blowing out her candles and enjoying her cupcake.  i pre-ordered the dvd of our entire session so that i could have the rights to all the images and use them for hayes's announcements and such.  so i'll post better 3 year pics when that comes in!  

sarah kate is really a "little girl" now.  she's growing up and she becomes more and more animated and imaginative and hilarious by the day.  along with that comes a whole lot of drama which can be frustrating, but i also have to remember that she has alot going on in her little life right now.  she continues to be sweet to "baby hayes".  basically, i'm pretty sure the child is going to be an actress when she grows up.  it wouldn't surprise us a bit!

she has her 3 year appointment on the 16th so i'll record her stats on here after that.  

some sk-isms:

"oh my, these shoes are so gorgeous!!!" 

"this dress is just ridiculous! i wook wike a peacock!!" (with hands on hips - most of the really expressive things she says like this are scenes from her princess movies - my dad would say..."y'all are ruining her".  ha!)

"i can have a sucker?  that would be okay with you?  okay."

 "is it very complicated?"  

today she was looking at the moon and stars reflecting on hayes's nursery ceiling.  hayes's sound machine has this option on it and she hadn't played with it in a while.  anyway, she looked up at it and said, "aww moon, i have not seen you in ages!!!"  - i mean really, where does she get this stuff!?

"everybody just CALM DOWN!!!" (that comes straight from woody on toy story which she is obsessed with right now!  her aunt lauren gave her 2 and 3 for her bday!)

"where's daddy bird?? DADDY BIRD!!!  come sit in your nest!!" (trying to get trey to come sit at the dinner table with her.)

me: would you rather have pizza or papa zuzu's for dinner tonight?
sk: pizza planet!
me: trey, she wants pizza.
sk: no, NOT pizza.....pizza PLANET!!! (aka mellow mushroom).
 so that's what we had for dinner tonight=)

sarah kate was in the best mood after nap.  she was so fun, funny, agreeable, not whiny and just completely pleasant.  and it wasn't because she fell asleep during naptime and got good sleep.  and it wasn't because her quiet time just rejuvenated her.  it was because trey and i told her that if she continued to whine or to be ugly in any way that we were going to pack up all her dress up princess clothes and put them away for a while.  GASP!!!  and just like that, our sweet sarah kate was back. 

we love you to infinity and beyond, sweet sarah kate!!!  (also known to herself as, "baby bird.")  i can't believe that my baby girl is already 3!
i enjoy being your mommy more than anything in the entire world!

the day before....

there are definitely some advantages to knowing exactly when you are going to have a baby as opposed to just waiting for it to happen.  one advantage is being able to plan for childcare for your first born.  another advantage is knowing for sure that the day before you go in to deliver is your very last day as a mama to one.  so you know you should really 'make the most of it' and make it special for the older one whose world is about to be rocked a bit.  

soooo, on thursday - the day before hayes's birthday - my mom and i took sarah kate to the nail salon to have a mani/pedi.  when the maids got to our house (another huge advantage of knowing "when") we got in the car and took sk to one of her favorite lunch spots, moes, for a cheese quesadilla.  then we went and picked beau-beau up from his haircut appointment (see, that's another advantage too - so glad they could fit him in!).  after dropping beau off at home we headed to the nail salon where sk and i enjoyed a mani/pedi and mimi enjoyed a manicure.  sk was in heaven!!!  she LOVES having her nails painted and the girl even painted a flower on her 2 big toes and 2 thumbs.  

after she was all fancy and waited for the nails to dry as long as a 2year old is capable of doing such, she and mimi walked down to yobe where she enjoyed a big cup of yogurt.  

i'd say she had a really nice last day of being an only!!

we love our sweet sarah kate so much!  she has been great the past couple of days.  we've had fun!

and this little lady has a rough life!  ha!  sleepy, sleepy girl.  she is so sweet and snugly...i could eat her up!

mary hazel lucy.

she's here!  our little lady was born on friday, june 29th at 3:26 pm.  she was 5 pounds 12 ounces and was 19.5 inches long.
she is a really sweet baby and we are already in love of course=)

our hospitals in mt. pleasant now have a newborn photographer who goes around and takes pics of all the newborns.
the website is: www.bellababyphotography.com
our password is (no caps no spaces): rkl0629lucy (that's a zero in there - not a letter o)
she looks exactly like her big sis did at this age.

sk is adjusting.  she is very sweet to her little sis!

going home:

sk thought that our babies should swing together:

someone was glad to have her mama come home!!

right after her first bath:

cozy cozy!  being a newborn is tiring!

some things to remember about hayes during her 4 days on earth:
*she nurses!!!  anyone who knows my experience with sk and nursing and milk allergies knows that this is the best news!
*she likes to snuggle and be held - loves to lay on our chests in bed.
*she has a ferocious need to suck - not talking about nursing, just has a strong need and has already been using her fingers and has found her thumb a few times.  will definitely take a paci but we're not using it very much yet.
*she loves her hands!
*she doesn't love being swaddled like her sis did.  she likes to have access to those hands=)
*she's very sweet and very good so far.
*she was up all night her first night home.  whew!!! her second night home she slept from midnight until 5am which was really nice!  we'll find out soon enough what tonight will bring.  she likes to sleep all day with a few periods of wake time.
*she likes me to sing "twinkle twinkle little star" to her=)
*she had a dr. appointment today where she was deemed "perfect."  duh! (totally kidding)
*she was 5 pounds 8 ounces when we left the hospital on sunday and was up to 5.10 today!  almost back to her birth weight!


more to come about hayes when i have more time (will that ever happen??!) in the meantime, i'm posting a video here of sarah kate at the pool on saturday.  her aunt ashley, uncle jon-jon, ava and bryce were SOOO sweet to come up to spend time with and take care of her on friday and saturday so that my mom could be at the hospital some.  sk loved having them here so much and it sure did make me feel good to know that she was with them and having fun.  ashley took a video of sk swimming with jon-jon: