Lucy has funny sleeping habits

The other day I checked on Lucy Jo in her nap to find this:

She had fallen asleep crying. I guess that she was standing too. Of course, I had to lay her down after taking these pictures (she moved her head between pictures) and that totally messed her up. She never went back to sleep. :-(


Isn't her little hand cute?

Look out world...

Lucy pulled herself up on the furniture for the first time on Tuesday. Seems early to me but honestly I can't remember when the big girls did it for the first time. This girl is determined. I'm thinking she will be walking a month earlier (at least) than Lindsay and Leslie (Both started at 11 months exactly). Here we go....

More Snow! More Snow!

Record Snowfall in Dallas! Over 12 Inches in 24 hours!

Snow! Snow! Snow!

Big fluffy white stuff is falling from the sky! No Snow day though! And the PERFECT snowball/snowman making snow. So after dropping Lindsay off at school, Leslie and I went to the back yard to mess up the perfect snow and make ourselves a friend. Hope she doesn't get sick from not having a hat on!! Tsk Tsk mommy should have made her wear it!

Lindsay had a big day today and got her hair chopped off! She has been wanting it for a while now, I thought she might change her mind after I made the appointment but nope, she was as excited as she could be! She had just enough length to donate her hair to Pantene's Beautiful Lengths program. I've heard that they use more of the actual donated hair, where Locks of Love sells some of it off. They also require 2 less inches than LOL so they were a better fit for us.

Playing With Leslie

Yesterday Leslie and I played her favorite game: cooking in the kitchen with Mommy. She really loves this and has grown quite a bit. The only problem we have when Leslie cooks is eggshells in the batter. That's why we always make sure she breaks the eggs into a cup first, then I inspect, and she dumps. :-) It works for us.

Today I decided to let the laundry and dishes sit where they are and play with Leslie...I forgot how bossy she is!!
We played puppet show...she told me what to say and where to sit and what to do! And then she decide we were done. Then we played magic show...she wasn't happy with me when I didn't repeat what she wanted me to say exactly as she wanted me to say it. Then we played teacher. I think I did better there and got a good grade. She told me she was going to tell my parents how good I am at reading. I'm sure they will be proud!

Update on the 100th day of school...

Well today was the day. We ended up with a 100 piece puzzle for Lindsay's project. We mounted it on a board with tacky stick. Hopefully it made it to her presentation in 1 piece, not 100!
Lindsay was willing to dress up like a 100 year old lady...well...sort-of. She let me do her hair in a bun and sprinkle baby powder in her hair. I tried to make wrinkles with brown eyeliner but she didn't like it so I had to take it off, but not before taking a picture! She also wore a pair of clip on earings and a (plastic) pearl necklace from Great Grandma Walker. She looks so cute!

After we got home from dropping Lindsay off at school Leslie wanted to celebrate too:

Leslie got more on her face than her hair I think!

100th day of school

Lindsay has to come up with a project for tomorrow's 100th day of school. Our first idea was 100 jumps with her jump rope. Glad we tried that out first....her little post-pneumonia lungs couldn't handle more than 50. So plan "B" is getting 100 pieces of candy and sharing them with the class...hopefully this is a good idea cause I am all out of ideas and it's due tomorrow. When did I become a first grader?

Has it really been 7 months?

Lucy Jo is 7 months old!!?? Our sweet little baby is crawling (albeit a pretty scrappy flopping the legs and pulling forward with the arms crawl) and starting to make da da da sounds. She even crawled her way over to the couch and looked like she was trying to figure out if she could pull herself up on it. This one is not content to be the only family member sitting in one spot. Why miss all the fun?
Lucy's favorite playthings are tags. She will completely ignore the toy and go for the tag on the toy. She even ignores the pretty tags on her taggie book and goes right for the product tags.
A surefire way to get Lucy to smile and maybe even laugh is to have her sisters run back and forth. She thinks this is the best entertainment ever. Peek a boo is a close second.
Lucy Jo is our little bit. She is tall but pretty skinny for her age. This creates a clothing problem for me. She is mostly still wearing 3-6 month clothing but even some of those pants fall off of her waist. She will often crawl right out of her pants. For them to really stay on, they has to be 0-3 months but then they are certainly not long enough. I have a feeling this will be a problem for her for the rest of her life.
Lucy has a few nicknames around the house: Lu Lu, Jo Jo, Lucy Belle, Lucy Lu, Belle, this girl is probably really confused about what her real name is.... even then we really never call her Lucille Joann! :-)

We are now a family of five..and other things that have happened since my last post.

So I realize that we haven't been updating much in a while. Life has been pretty busy, to say the least. The last post was the beginning of summer, and now we find ourselves at the end of summer and getting Lindsay ready for first grade! Where does time go?
Anyway, June was a busy month right down to the last day. After school got out, we had one quiet week, then Uncle Brent came for a little visit. Really, it was work but he got to stay for the weekend and play with the girls, Lance, and Debra in the pool. The girls really loved having Uncle Brent around! That weekend, I turned 33. And moving right along...We had a visit from Lance's Aunt Cathy, also here on business but a great visit as well. The week of the 21st-26th, we had VBS, which the girls loved! I was crazy and had volunteered to teach. After thinking I was going into labor after the first day (I was 38 weeks pregnant) I figured out that I was just dehydrated and made it through the rest of the week just fine. The girls loved it! And REALLY enjoyed the music and activities. They are still singing those songs at the top of their lungs all around the house! That week, Lance and I also Celebrated our 10th Anniversary. Being overly pregnant, we settled for a simple dinner to celebrate. We'll have to do it up real good next year! The last week of June brought our last visitors for the month, Mom and Heidi, coming to help us whith the arrival of Baby Lucy.
Which brings me to July, which started with the birth of our third little princess, Lucy Jo (Lucile JoAnn). For details on her birth, if you haven't already checked it out, you can take a look at Lance's blog (www.lancebauslaugh.com), he was there blogging, twittering, and anything else you can imagine in social networking while I was laboring and delivering a baby. :-) It kept him busy! Lucy Jo came into the world in a hurry, and we have been enjoying our beautiful baby girl every minute since. The fourth of July weekend was spent mostly taking care of baby girl, but Lance and the girls (along with Grammie and Auntie Heidi) got to do a lot of swimming. Lindsay participated in the local Fourth of July parade with her Girl Scout Troop, and They all enjoyed the Melissa Fourth of July fireworks. Having baby around took a little adjustment on the two older girls' part but they have come through pretty well. Lindsay is a responsible helper and Leslie is endlessly kissing and loving on her baby sister. The rest of July was pretty much spent locked up inside. With the heat, going out with the baby was not really an ideal situation. The girls have been playing all day long with each other every day, with very few altercations. Two of their favorite things to play are "Food Network Star" and "Design Star." Can you tell what mommy likes to watch? They love it too and will sit and watch an entire show about making delicious food or designing an amazing room with me. At the end of July, we celebrated Leslie's 4th birthday with a small family dinner of her request: pig (pork roast) and green beans.
When August came, we had a visit from Papa Jim and Auntie Heidi just in time for the joint birthday party for the girls (maybe the last year we will get away with that!). Lindsay says it was her best birthday yet, as we celebrated her 6th birthday. The party was planned as a pool party, but a torrential down pour turned the party into an impromptu house party. Thanks to Papa, and Aunties Heidi and Debra we were able to quickly think of games to entertain 15 kids and their parents and clean up the house in order to make it acceptable for guests.

The summer has included some exciting events such as Lindsay losing her first, then her second tooth and learning about the tooth fairy. And both girls learning how to really swim (we have taken FULL advantage of our neighborhood pool once again this summer). Leslie followed Lindsay's lead in this area and has been a true swimmer for a couple of weeks now.

The summer has calmed down a little in the last few weeks. Thankfully. We are currently getting ready for Lindsay's first grade year and Leslie starting to work on pre-k curriculum with me at home, as we did when Lindsay was 4.

Lucy is now 7 weeks old! Time has gone so quickly. She is just now starting to smile at us, and has recently started to notice that there are interesting things too look at all around her. Lucy has been just as easy and content as her sisters. She is still waking us up at night, but we trust that this will be over soon as it was for the older girls at around 8 weeks.

So that is us, hopefully It won't be another 3 months before my next post! :-)

A busy couple of weeks...

The last couple of weeks have been busy for us with a fairy princess birthday party, Daisy patch ceremony, Lance and the girls going to South Dakota for a wedding, Lindsay's Kindergarten field day and graduation. Unfortunately, our digital camera showed up to the wedding broken (it won't focus) so we only have a couple of pictures from that and my mom has all of the pictures from field day. Aunt Debra loaned us her digital for Graduation but we had a hard time getting good pictures there too. So we will have to be satisfied with the following:

Fairy Princess!

Daisy Patch Ceremony- She was excited to get a patch none of the other girls got- Cookie Mom!

So much fun to dress up! Thanks Aunt Kristin for doing their hair.

Not a great picture but can you see how shy she was? She was worried because she hadn't seen where we were sitting and didn't think we were there.

Lindsay and the best Kindergarten teacher ever! We are really going to miss her.

Our First Graduation.

It's hard to believe that it was 9 months ago that we walked our little girl into a classroom and left her in the hands of a wonderful teacher. Wow! That was probably one of the hardest weeks of my life. I still fight the urge to keep her home with me because I miss her so much (so does her little sister). In 2 weeks, Lindsay will be graduating from Kindergarten! The girl has grown so much in the past 9 months and is learning like crazy. Her favorite subjects in school are reading, math, art and music. Music especially, and she has received complements from both teachers and fellow students on her natural talent in music. Her teacher went as far as to say that in her almost 30 years of teaching she has not seen another student so naturally gifted in music. We are hoping to get her into some sort of music lessons next year, hopefully piano.
In reading she has blossomed. She is about in the middle of her class (a great place to be!) in her reading level. Her struggle here has been confidence. Lindsay does not like being wrong so that holds her back from trying and being OK with making mistakes. When I work with her at home I am trying to really let her know that it is OK to make a mistake because sometimes you have to make mistakes first, so that you can learn. I think this is going to be a struggle for the rest of her life- she is a bit of a perfectionist.
In math she has completely surprised me- math was never a good subject for me. I vaguely remember counting apples on trees in Kindergarten- they are doing full addition and subtraction. The other day she wrote a number down and asked me what she should subtract from that number. She wrote 10 I said, "subtract 5." She said "that's easy, 5" Then she wrote 6, I said, "3." She just gave me a look and said "mom!" It so easy all I have to do is do it backwards and I know that 3+3=6 so 6-3=3. Well, excuse me, doing it backwards???!!! I guess I need to be a harder quizer. :-)
So now she is at the end of Kindergarten, I'm glad that we didn't wait another year to put her in. At almost 6, she is more than ready for first grade and is excited about the coming year. Though she will tell you she wants to stay with Mrs. Merchant forever, until she graduates high school (to tell the truth so do I). I don't think Mrs. Merchant would go for that. You can almost see the change in her pictures. The one at the top is her original school picture 3 weeks after school started. She was still to shy to smile for the stranger behind the camera and was dealing with an eye infection that makes for a bit of a heartbreaking picture. By Spring though we have a very confident little girl. And her graduation picture, taken last week, shows how much she really loves school now. I think she might pull a muscle with that smile. You should see the other pose, the smile is even bigger, if you can imagine.

Leslie is Worn Out

Tonight Leslie had a hard time with Dinner. I think she was just tired. On a side note... Katie told her to finish her dinner. She was going to sit there until she was done eating. Katie told her that she stays up late and Leslie should, "try her!" :-) Those comments were several minutes before this video. Also, do you like Lindsay's singing? She is upstairs in the SHOWER!

On the Princess Farm...

So recently a friend referred to us as the princess farm. I'm embracing it! With all of the little princesses around...why not? Anyway, it's been so long since we posted anything here or put pictures up so I thought I better update a little. Here's what we've been up to:

Lindsay loved Upward basketball!

Leslie slammed a dunk!

Leslie likes to pretend she's on Ace of Cakes.

We had a green party for St. Patrick's Day.

It snowed! Can you see it?

Lindsay worked hard on her powder puff derby car.

She came in 2nd for her troop, 18th over all.

Uncle Bobby and Auntie Heidi came..Bobby braved the animal farm with the girls.

Lindsay and Leslie haven't figured out that egg hunts are competitive, you snooze, you lose!

We made a cute treat for Lindsay's class.

The girls had fun on Easter in their pretty dresses from Grammie and Papa Jim.

We've been slacking off!

Here is a slide show of pictures from December and January. I haven't been good at taking pictures at all, in fact I have very few pictures from when the Bauslaughs visited in January for Lance's birthday. What was I thinking?

Lindsay's selling cookies!

In an earlier post, we announced that Lindsay is a Daisy Girl Scout. She loves every meeting!! Now it is cookie time for Girl Scouts so Lindsay is in the business of selling cookies. She's learning very important goal setting and money management skills. If you are interested in purchasing cookies either for yourself (if you are local only please!) or for Project Troop to Troop (where purchases go directly to US Troops home and abroad as well as USO and American Red Cross) please email us or give us a call!

Lindsay Starts Basketball on Saturday

Update on Leslie

She is doing much better now, thanks for the emails and the calls. Leslie was sick for a little less than 24 hours so I guess it was not that bad. She's eating and keeping things down today. She's really clingy to mom today though, I guess I can handle all the hugs and cuddling. Lance decided not to go on his trip. If he does get sick, he does not want to get everyone else sick too.

Sicko

Leslie is sick today. She started throwing up after breakfast and has gone downhill from there. She is not keeping even water down at this point. Please pray for her to feel better and to be able to keep something down before bed tonight. She's so sad and lethargic, I just hope it goes away soon. Also, Lance is leaving for Chicago tomorrow night for a very important couple of meetings and a stomach flu is about the worst thing that could happen for him right now.

Thanks in advance for your prayers.

Decorating the Christmas Tree

The Friday after Thanksgiving was reeeeeaaallly cold and damp so we decided to stay in our PJs all day and decorate for Christmas. The girls loved decorating. I only moved a couple of ornaments that were crowded on the same branch. For the most part, the lower branches were all decorated by the girls.