What's a girl to do?

I think Lily will be in shock this weekend when she realizes there isn't a birthday party for her to go to. No dressing up to play with friends at the royal ball, Going Bonkers, the backyard bounce house, or even the park. I'm just excited that she was able to make it to all 4 parties over the past two weekends. Not one conflicted...isn't that amazing? Not the case last year.

I am proud of Lily though. With having so many parties so close together, she finally realized that not every party is for her. She started saying things like: Emma is the birthday girl today...my party will be later...I'm not going to blow the candles out on her cake...I'm going to tell her happy birthday. It was really sweet.

Here are some pix of the birthday quadfest. You'll see that even Jerry and Jade came to a couple of them!

Anyways, I'm sure we won't see an invitation for months now. I knew June was a popular time for weddings, so I guess it makes sense that it is a popular time for conception as well!

9 Months!

Happy 9 Months, Jade! We thought you'd be crawling by now, but we've yet to see you get that belly of yours off the floor! You have mastered doing 360s on your tummy though. So nothing new to report. In honor of this occasion though, I had your daddy teach me how to upload video! So here are three old clips...all shot around 7 months I think. I'm sure they are too long and too boring for more than a handful of people to tolerate, but I love them, so here they are. Warning: You are about to hear Kerry speak her in her high-pitch baby talk voice. Multiple times. Embarrassing, I know. But, like I said, I'm sure only a handful of people will watch them anyway. Those handful of people have heard this "voice" in person. THAT is embarrassing.

This first one makes me giggle because I totally scared Jade and didn't mean to. It also amazes me that it took her 7 or 8 months to notice the crib toy that has been there since day 1. Precious.


Jade must be part boy. Or she realizes that I was sure she was a boy until the sono proved me wrong. She is all about balls. Loves them. The "ball in dish" activity came from this book. It is very dated as you can see by the cover, but it has some good weekly activities you can do with your children from birth to five years. Anyway, don't you love how her body tremors with excitement?

More fascination with balls. We were shocked at how fast she'd grab this inflatable globe when we rolled it to her.


I can't believe I faked her out once to see her flinch. Jerry pointed out how mean that was.

There was a part on the middle video that I left out where I had put the ball under the glass plate, just to see what she would do. She tried to reach through the plate to get it a couple of times. Jerry thought I was tantalizing her! I'd like to think I was challenging her.

Mean mommy. Bad mommy. Mommy still laughing.

I've been tagged...AGAIN!

Thanks, Christina, for the tag...this one is at least less painful! Kind of fun too. Plus I just learned that these tag things are called memes. I had to google that one. Learn something new everyday.

The rules of the meme are:

Pick up the nearest book of 123 pages or more. No cheating!
Find page 123.
Read the first 5 sentences.
Post the next 3 sentences.
Tag 5 people.

For me, A Mother's Heart and Shepherding a Child's Heart are never far from me. I wish I had these books memorized! A Mother's Heart was the closest though, so here you go:

My boys let me kiss them if I pretend I'm the Kissing Monster. I chase them around the house, wrestle them to the floor, and plant one on them. They even chase me to kiss me if I pretend disdain because their faces are dirty. -Jean Fleming

I can't imagine having to chase down my girls to kiss them! Maybe that is just a boy thing?

Okay now its your turn: Dale, Debbie, Kim, Kristin and Tricia.

Or if you'd like to do the meme, consider yourself tagged! Link back to me, so I can find out what book you keep by your side.

Never Wake a Sleeping Baby...UNLESS...

...at 3 AM the Texas Springtime hail is threatening to come through your roof, or windows...or worse yet...BOTH! As was the case last night, or shall I say correctly, this morning. Lily tends to freak out during storms by lying quietly in bed whimpering and shaking. Which is odd considering her nature is to be pretty loud, you'd think she'd scream out for help. I freak out by panicking, so I jumped up to rescue Lily who had already be awakened by the loud popping and cracking sound of the hail hitting the windows and roof. Jerry was going to get Jade, and as I came back down the hallway with Lily clinging to me, he was just quietly standing over a slumbering baby. At this point I could hear the tornado sirens sounding, so I urged him to break the "never wake a sleeping baby" rule, and we whisked everyone down the stairs.

So I huddle with the girls in the only windowless room downstairs...our tiny half bath...while he does the manly thing and goes to check out the weather radar. Lily is shaking in fear due to the sheer noise of the storm and so we start to pray.

Lord, thank you for being with us right now. Please keep our family and home safe. And Lord when you think the flowers, trees, and animals have gotten enough to drink, please allow this rain and hail to stop. And when the angels have had their fill of bowling, please tell them to get their balls back to the racks so the loud thundering noises will quiet. We love you, Lord. Amen.

Silly sounding I know, but Lily and I both needed the humor. Just then Jerry returns to let us know the brunt of the storm is sitting right over our town. He tells us the radar color over our area is black. Black? BLACK! Okay, I'm no meteorologist, but black? I'm used to seeing greens and yellows...even pinks and reds during a heavy rain. Never black though. That is how fast and heavy the hail was coming down. It was insane. The good news though was that there weren't any of those little circles showing rotation over us! I cringe when I see those. But the sirens were still blazing so I thought we should stay put. Jerry wanders off again and I can hear him go outside and return. Is he crazy? He returns with a chunk of hail to show Lily. Its size wasn't that impressive, considering the racket it had caused, only that of a large grape. Lily grabs it and in her best 3 AM stupor says: Ice! We can't eat it though. We have to cook it first. Then we can eat it. I vaguely remember mentioning something like that to her about raw chicken once, but never about hail or ice...she's a funny girl, that Lily.

I know I vowed not to post about the weather again after posting twice about snow in March. But considering we had hail earlier this week too, I deemed it worthy. Monday afternoon the hail had hit us as well. Tornado sirens and the whole works. Jerry knows how I freak in storms (why I live in Tornado alley I'll never know), so he was so sweet to send me a text during the storm...are you okay? get to bathroom with girls and cushions from couch. I later learned that he sent that to me while huddled in his school's bathroom with 30+ middle schoolers. In our new house it'd be pretty difficult for me to cover us with a mattress since all our bedrooms are up. Couch cushions...smart! I was the crazy one that day though...not ducking and covering, but instead trying to minimize the dings on our SUV. When Jerry arrived home, he pulled up to see half of our Xterra in the garage. Our garage has housed a few projects lately, so after pushing all I could out of the way, I could only get half of it in. Doesn't matter anyway, it took a full beating last night. Thankfully the heat of a Texas summer usually pops them out.

Why such a fear of tornadoes? I can thank my dad for that. When a I was in high school, an F4 tornado hit a neighboring city. My well-meaning dad took me for a drive through the wreckage so I could see the devastation. 3 dead and over 250 houses either leveled or severely damaged. It was sobering. To this day, I have a picture in my mind of one house that was still standing though badly damaged. They had spray painted their house number on the front, for insurance purposes I guess, and then added the words "gone with the wind". I don't know that I would have had the sense of humor to do that.

Ever since then, I think I could easily be talked into buying some sort of tornado shelter. Just come knock on my door, tornado shelter salesman, I am your sucker! Can we get the model with the crib for my sleeping baby?

The Painful Honesty of a 3 Year Old

So, as I was fixing Lily's hair for preschool this morning, we sat on the edge of her bed and she says, "whoa, that is really getting filled up".

Noticing that her laundry hamper is actually crippling due to its overfilled state, I tell her, "Yep, it looks like mommy is behind on the laundry."

This is the part I loved, "Maybe you can do that while I am at Rainbow Club, Mommy"!

Yes, Lily I could and should, or I can just take a picture of it and blog instead.

In my defense, we had one of those weekends where we were only home for a second to get the present for the next birthday party or change clothes for the next event. It was insane. Also, some of what is crippling her poor hamper is bedding which takes up a lot of space. I actually enjoy the change of seasons too, when you can get away without doing the laundry for an extra week while getting out the next phase of clothes. Or in Jade's case the next size! That child is now filling out size 18 months.

It brings to mind other sweet things that my three year old has pointed out to me recently.

Like "Mommy, you have coffee breath." Thank goodness she is the only person routinely in my face each morning post-coffee but pre-toothbrush.

Or "Mommy, your legs are pokey." Okay, spring is here and the razor will be used daily again.

Although her words can be painfully honest, she has only embarrassed me publicly once.

Flashback to last summer. I was big with Jade and we frequented Boston Market. I don't know why I craved that place so much, but we were there at least twice a week. Oh the days when we could dine at a restaurant that didn't have a playground attached. Anyway, we were enjoying our chicken and veggies when a man sat down at the table right next to us. He happened to be bald. I only hope he was deaf as well.

I'm certain it wasn't the first time she had ever laid eyes on a bald person, but for some reason she became very interested and vocal about him. And if you know my Lily, you know that she has one volume and it happens to be loud. Somehow she got the words "head" and "hair" confused. Statements like this followed and she repeated them MULTIPLE times! I still remember the way she talked then.

Mommy, does he have a head?

It don't look like he have a head.

Where is he's head?

I don't see he's head.

Realizing that her pointing, questions and observations were not going to end any time soon, I choked down my food to prepare for a fast exit. She continued with:

Mommy, why are we leaving?

But where are we going?

I'm still hungry.

But I'm not done eating.

My blood pressure is on the rise just posting about it. Life with a talking child is never dull. Painful at times, but never dull.