Sorry for the lack of posting. I wish I could blame it on hurricane Ike, but seeing that we only got about 1/8 inch of rain and some wind, I guess that won't work.
Things are fine around here. Hannah is back to her normal self (mostly) and is continuing to make us laugh with her antics. I have some fun videos that I will try and post in the next two days that show some of the things we have been up to. She is full of new words and new tricks every day. I love this stage of development!
Anyway, I will put up pictures and videos tomorrow.

A bit better

Today was 'a bit' better than the past few days. Hannah is definitely down to one nap a day, but we are now working on making that nap longer than 50 minutes (which is how long she slept today). Let's hope that corrects itself when the teething subsides.

Anyway, on to more fun topics, here was Hannah at bath time today. She LOVES baths!

The spout is fascinating to Hannah. I am sure she wishes that I would leave it on until the tub overflows. She always gets sad when I turn it off and one of these days I am sure she will figure out how to turn in back on.
Her new favorite thing to do is lay down in the tub. She will occasionally stick her face underwater too.

Testing the water just to see how it tastes.

From bad to worse

Oh yes, if things could have gotten worse around here, they have. As if napping and teething issues were not enough! Hannah is really having a hard time with these molars and it has caused her much discomfort. She has always gotten really stuffed up and congested when teeth are breaking through so last night she woke up crying about 4-5 times because she was struggling to breathe. Since she sucks her thumb at night she will not breathe through her mouth, so the congestion wakes her up every time. Needless, to say, we are ALL tired now.

Today has has its ups and downs (mostly downs) where Hannah just cries out of pain and frustration. It is just really hard to watch her sometimes knowing that there is just not a whole lot I can do for her. I guess I have always taken my teeth for granted and obviously not realized until now how difficult teething is on everyone.

In some of our up moments today, we played with stickers. I got them in the mail yesterday for some advertisement, so Hannah played with them for the first time. She was quite fascinated by them and enjoyed sticking them on herself.

A half a smile in one of our happier moments today. I am praying we have more of these moments very soon!!!

Can we have some cheese

to go along with our whine?!?!
Oh, yes, we have had a ROUGH day today. My poor baby is in pain and tired and is not a happy camper. We have gone back to teething tablets today to hopefully help the problem. The molar is only about 5% through the gum, so I am guessing it will be a rough couple of days.
I hate that Hannah is in pain! Needless to say, this has caused much whining and crying today (by Hannah, not by me!). I am hoping that tomorrow is better.

One molar down...

...7 to go!!! Geez, we have just barely started! Anyway, Hannah has not had a new tooth break through since the end of April. Well, that all ended on Monday of this past week when she finally got her fourth tooth on the botoom. You can tell in the picture below that she only has 3 on the bottom. The fourth is actually there, but you can't really see it in pictures yet. On Thursday of this past week I noticed (or felt rather) a HUGE swollen part on her gums and by Sat. I could see the white coming through the gums. So, we are done with one molar for now. She has 3 more swollen spots on her gums where more are certainly coming soon. I guess we lived for several months with no new teeth and this is what we get for it.
Anyway, she has actually been relatively happy this past week. I certainly can't complain. She even was a champ with us while we watched the Auburn game on Sat. War Eagle!!!
This picture was taken on our way to Lowe's this weekend while she was enjoying a box of raisins in the car. Can you tell how much she loves raisins?!?!
Man, I LOVE this kid!!!!

Goodbye morning nap...hello molers

We officially (I think) said goodbye to our morning nap today. *sniff, sniff* I was a bit saddened by this and wish it could have lasted longer. Anyway, Hannah sat in her bed for about 40 minutes yesterday morning before finally taking a short morning nap. She then sat in her bed for about 1.5 hours yesterday afternoon before finally taking an even shorter afternoon nap. I tried to do a morning nap again today...it was no use. So, we played, read, played, ate, walked, laughed, and got bored all before the afternoon nap time. Oh my goodness, someone please give me hope that we can both make it with 1 nap time a day. I am sure it will get easier, but it was bit rough today.
To top all of that off, just today I realized that there are HUGE bumps on 3 of Hannah's back gums...so, yep, she's got molers coming! Lovely!
So, what did our time look like this morning before the nap.
She found my shoes and really enjoyed playing with them. They matched her outfit too.
It was pretty comical to see her try and walk around with the shoes on...and believe me, she tried.

We made fish faces at eat other. Hannah makes a pretty mean fish face too!
And she opened and closed the door 10,000 times. You know it is fun for her EACH and EVERY time even though it gets harder and harder for me to act surprised by the 50th time she did it. Kids crack me up like that. Sometimes it even gets funnier to them the more they do it...oh, to be a carefree kid again!
Anyway, I am hoping this nap thing becomes easier and we get into a good rhythm again. AND, that these molars come in quickly!!!!

All by myself...

While Hannah can't quite say this yet, it is quite obvious that she is thinking it...often! She loves to try and do things all by herself. She will watch each and every time I do things and then she wants to try on her own, down to the last detail. This is one determined kid. That is one of the many things I love about her!

This reminds me of something my dad used to say all the time when we were kids. He would begin a task or project with us and we would begin by all working together. Then, after watching him do it a few times, he would promptly say "your turn" and let us have at it. It didn't matter if it was using a tool, fixing something, or painting. He always gave us the freedom to try it on our own for awhile. As a kid, and even as an adult, I loved that. Well, even though I have not specifically told Hannah "your turn" yet, she seems to understand the concept.

Hannah is also starting to repeat more words as we say them. Last night as we were getting ready for bed I told her that she needed to say "night night" to her daddy and she turned to him and clearly said "nigh nigh." I wish I had the video camera out...it was adorable. Anyway, here she is saying "bye."

Princess Lea

I tried out a new hairdo yesterday and we ended up with Princess Lea. At first I thought it was cute, but after awhile it had to be done away with. Oh well, as her hair grows I will have to try some new do's.

We are back from our family adventures. We managed to see tons of family here in TX and it was great! Things got much more interesting on Sat. night on the car ride home when our 4 legged child had diarrhea...in her crate...while we were still 30+ minutes from home...at 10:00pm at night! Yah, it was not fun at all! Poor thing is still sick too. We will be off to the vet tomorrow.

Anyway, we loved spending time with Kacy, Josiah, Halee, and Skyler and can't wait to see them all again. Love you guys!

We were successful in getting a picture of all 5 grandkids for Granny and Papaw today! It was a bit of a task, but the kids did great. Papaw and Granny were ambitious today and decided to watch all 5 kids so us mommies, Kacy, Amy, and I could go and hang out together. It was a great time of adult/girl time in town. After this picture we decided to take all 4 of the older kids to take a bath together in Granny and Papaw's big bathtub....it was great!Ava (1 year), Josiah (3 years), Halee (2 years), Hannah (1.5 years), and baby Skyler (8 weeks). Aren't they adorable together?!?!

Here was bath time together with the older kids. They splashed and slipped around together for some fun times. These are such fun ages with many smiles and giggles.
Here is baby Skyler. She is SO cute and it has been great to hang out with such a little one again. I sure am going to miss these kids when we head back to Waco!

Hanging with family

We are now hanging out with Papaw and Granny at their house. Kacy and all the kids came down to Waco for a few days to hang out and today we all came back up to Papaw and Granny's house for a few days. We are having a blast with everyone! Hannah is loving playing with the older kids and it is all she can do to keep up with them. Anyway, I will post pictures soon.

Our Surprise Weekend

We had a quick surprise weekend last weekend in California. My sister in law Kacy planned an incredible surprise birthday party for my brother Joey and thankfully my dad and I were able to get away for the weekend and attend the party. We left here Friday morning and got back late Sunday night. He had NO idea we were coming and the look on his face when he walked in and saw everyone at the party was priceless. Kacy has been planning this party for months and Joey really was genuinly surprised. It was great!

Here he was walking through the front door and the welcoming party below.
There was a great time of toasting the birthday boy too. It was so cool to hear how my brother has touched so many lives. He is such a cool guy!Here was the big group of partiers! It was so fun to catch up with so many people I had not seen in years.
The happy family of 5! We were able to bring Kacy and all 3 kids back with us to Texas for about 10 days. I am looking forward to hanging out with them more while they were here. I wish Joey could have come too, but he is at home working this week.
What a sweet couple...I love this guys so much!!!!

Does this seem abnormal to anyone else?

I guess we have a new kind of normal around our house!

Fun with crayons

Since we are painting in the house right now, we have plenty of brown butcher paper around. I decided that it would make a nice canvas for coloring too. The piece we used was big enough for Hannah to sit on and color all around her, it really was kind of nice. I think I will use this method for coloring for the forseeable future until she figures out how to not color off the paper.

Most of the crayons still ended up in her mouth. When do kids grow out of this stage of putting EVERYTHING in their mouths?

Molly was in on the action too. So, we decided to draw a picture of her

I drew this picture to show Hannah what I look like at the end of a rough day...like Wedensday of this week....bulging red eyes, screaming/crying...enough said!

P.S. Happy Birthday BillyAnn...have a great one today!!!! We're thinking about you.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOEY!!!!

Today is my big brother Joey's 30th birthday! He is the best big brother a girl could ever ask for and I am SO thankful for him! Besides being my brother he was always a great friend even when we were young. I still consider him to be one of my closest friends and I hold our relationship as extremely dear to me.
So, happy birthday Joey. We love you! In honor of your birthday today we had a popsicle to celebrate. Hannah was very excited even though she had no clue what we were celebrating.

Do you like this fake smile?!?!

She was even sweet enough to try and wipe her mouth when she finished. If only I could get her to do that after every meal.

She's in the big leagues now

A few days ago I introduced Hannah to corn on the cob. She has had corn before, but never from the cob. It was messy but she loved it. At first, she couldn't figure out quite how to eat it so she was mainly eating from the ends.

She quickly figured out that she could eat from the whole cob and this is when it got really messy. I think it is great that she is so willing to try new foods (Amy - I certainly don't take that for granted!).