beautiful days

Yay for "shun shi" (LG's word for sunshine)! We have loved the chance to get out and enjoy this beautiful weather.

Aunt Bethy and Uncle Mark stayed with us Thursday night. Here they are catching up on Olympic figure skating Friday morning. Lydda Grace was fascinated!

We picked Aunt BekBek up from her office and went to the park for a little while! So fun! Jon and I took Lydda Grace out Saturday afternoon to play.

Today we had a special treat, Lydda Grace's friend Zoey came over to play for a few hours in the afternoon before night church. They actually played together which was so cute!!

They also sat next to each other and read, then they started babbling back and forth and laughing at each other, it was sooo funny!
We had a quick supper/snack before church.
We will definitely need to do this again soon. Lydda Grace had so much fun with Zoey (who she calls something that sounds like "yo-yo")!! It was so precious to see these sweet girls sharing toys and laughing together, Jon and I just enjoyed sitting and laughing with them.

our sweet girl

Here's our girl Valentine's morning eating her heart shaped pancake bites, (she's really into "yarts" these days) and for the first time, bacon, which she loved.
And Valentine's afternoon where she is "ree"ing and "rahk"ing... two favorite pastimes of late.
And this is yesterday when we played with rice. We were working on her learning to scoop rice from one bowl into the other. She got the idea but got really upset when the rice spilled (which happened often). Then she would ask me to help and we would pick it up.... piece by piece :)

NOW I am going to go clean the bedroom! (see post below) no more excuses!!!

procrastinating

That's what I'm doing right now... I'm blogging instead of dealing with this....

I just went through all my clothes trying to sort what I will hopefully be able to wear soon after the baby is born and what can be stashed for next winter, etc. In the meantime Lydda Grace discovered the bag of toys that are currently rotated "out of play," played in the clothes, found my old journals and starting pulling papers out of them...

Even though she's good at making messes Lydda Grace is also learning to help, which she LOVES to do. "Hep, hep, hep" I hear it all the time! So sweet! The other day I asked her to put Dada's t-shirt in Mama and Dada's room. I thought she'd throw it in the floor. She put it in the right drawer AND closed it (sort of). YAY!
So now she's napping and I'm off to clean the bedroom.... or to write another blog post first.....

28 weeks and baby 2 update

Dear Baby Wylie 2-
We love you so much and are so excited about your arrival in just 3 short months!
I'm sorry I haven't posted many pictures of you growing in Mama's tummy, but your big sister keeps me busy!! Don't worry, once you arrive we'll take lots and lots of pictures of you and post them here for everyone to see.
Love,
Mama
I have felt so bad about not posting lots of news and updates about Baby 2. Every time I think about getting Jon to take a picture of my belly I am usually in my pjs by that point and not feeling super photogenic. A few days ago Lydda Grace was playing in the mirror and I thought- "that's how I'll get a picture of baby in my belly!" So here I am at 28 weeks, though Baby is actually measuring at 29 weeks (note to self... stop eating so much ice cream!).

One thing I do want to share is that this baby has a partially blocked kidney that we are just keeping an eye on until he/she is born. We really have a peace that the Lord can totally fix this issue before the baby is even born (which is apparently relatively common). We'll be having another ultrasound in about 6 weeks and will meet with a pediatric urologist then to review options for what happens when the baby is born. At this point all we can do is pray and wait for the baby to arrive. Please let me reiterate that this is really not a huge deal and we are not worrying, according to our OB if the baby is going to have a problem then this is the kind of problem you would want to have. It's a good exercise in patience and trust.

One of the hardest things about this kidney issue is that we are having a LOT more ultrasounds which makes is VERY tempting (for me, not for Jon, he's the strong one) to find out what we're having. So far we've held out and are excited for our little surprise to arrive!! :)

I'll set up a poll so we can start getting some votes for boy or girl!

snow time

All bundled and ready to go outside! She didn't know what to think when we put the plastic bags on her feet, but I'm glad we did because the snow really covered her feet!
This was right after we got outside. Jon made her a snowball to hold.
I think Lydda Grace was a little overwhelmed at first and a couple times she really didn't want to walk unless she was holding our hand.



Here she is with big ball that some students apparently rolled last night. She said "ball, ball, ball" about as much as she said "no, no, no" because she had seen students making a snowman last night and saw them rolling out the balls and was quite excited.

snowy day

Today was Lydda Grace's first snowy day! I tried to talk it up to her all morning and we even tried cutting (I did that part of course) out paper snowflakes (she just wanted to throw all the bits of paper on the floor and eat them). We read lots of books and waited for the snow to start!

Lydda Grace is turning into quite the bookworm and I am constantly hearing, "ree, ree, ree" throughout the day!
At 3 something it started to snow so we went to look out the glass doors near our apartment (we don't have good windows inside for her to see out). She kept saying, "no, no, no" which in this case meant "snow." (At other times it might actually mean no, nose or snowman). When I tried to bring her back inside she cried!! So we bundled up and went to visit Jon at work -- he has to work late so he missed the snow action... :( After dinner we ventured out again to get a few pictures before the students come out to play tonight and churn up all the pretty snow!

This first picture might be an all time favorite. She does this "O" expression a lot when she's excited or amazed about something and this snow certainly qualified!

We're hoping to get out a little tomorrow with Dada and will post more pictures then!

prayer for friends and lately at our house

I have been so behind on blogging lately. Here's what's been going on...

First I want to ask for prayer for my college roommate Meredith and her husband John. He was doing training for the Air Force and long story short has now been diagnosed with a virus that has cased a legion in his brain and is causing him to be agitated, lose memory, etc. The doctors are confident that anti-viral meds and therapy should help but this is a really tough time for their family as she is out there caring for John. Their blog can be found here.


Lydda Grace came down with a rash earlier this week and we think she's allergic to penicillin. In the process the doctor was not happy with wheezing in her lungs so we're doing nebulizer treatments. She looks kind of miserable in this picture but she seriously is a champ at this now as long as we read to her while it's going on.
Here we are making homemade pizza. Lydda Grace wants to "heh, heh" (help) all the time now so we let her help with rolling out the pizza dough. Anytime I'm in the kitchen she will do the sign for help and say "heh, heh" until I come up with something for her to do!!
Here we are cuddling with DogDog. Lydda Grace has been really sweet about cuddling lately while we play or read. She loves to play "itty, bitty baby" and will lay back in our arms and let us rock her. I haven't decided if this is a good thing or not since in three short months there will be another itty bitty baby in our arms. We are hopeful that she will have a smooth transition with the new baby though!!