It's the Everyday Things

Ammely was enjoying the new markers from Grandma and Grandpa Lords.

SO much fun.

The good news:
She's getting pretty good at "please."

The bad news:
I've learned that you're never paying as close attention as you think you are.

---

I'm laying down next to Ammely as I'm trying to put her down for a nap.

Me, singing: "I am a child of God...."

Ammely looking at me with a cute smile.

Me: "And he has sent me here..."

Ammely winds up and smacks me across the face.

I take a hold of her face so that she has no choice but to look at me and hear my very stern lecture.

Me, very upset: "Ammely that was NOT nice. That was mean. It is not okay to hit. That hurt mommy. Did you WANT to hurt mommy?"

Ammely, after only a bit of hesitating and with much sincerity and innocence:  "Ummm...yeah!"

Me: Too busy laughing to continue with this particular learning moment.

---

So there I was cleaning a bit upstairs when I realize I haven't seen Ammely in a few minutes.

Where did Ammely go?

"Ammely!"

I search through a few rooms.

From our bathroom I hear a bit of a rustle, rustle.

I happen upon this scene:

Obviously. Why wasn't this the first place I looked?

She heard me take her picture. So she turned around, poked her head out, said "Hiiiiii!" and gave me a big grin.

---

Sometimes, you just work too hard. It's okay to take a little cat-nap on the job every now and then. Right?

---

We had a big day of learning important girl skills.

Like how to put on make-up all by yourself.

And how to take pictures with the camera...all by yourself.

In case you can't tell - this is me. A great shot right? It's the baby bump, nicely clothed in overalls. Ha!

Baby Girl Photo Shoot

If you've read this post about us finding out that we're having another girl, you'll be very happy to know that our enthusiasm has since grown. A little sleep and another ultrasound did wonders for our excitement at having two precious girls.
Although I feel like I should say that we were never not excited for another girl. We just weren't excited about anything. I think our reaction would have been the same had the icing been blue.

And sisters will be in our house! I never had a sister. This will be quite an adventure for me and I'm especially excited for Ammely.

After confirming at the in-depth ultrasound that this is in fact a little girl baby, we enlisted our dear and talented sister-in-law Amber to take some reveal pictures.

She did marvelous work.

Truly.

I'm SO thankful that she is willing to share her talent and resources with us, her crazy family.

We posted a few of our favorites on Facebook. You may have seen them.

And, of course, we put this one on top of the blog:

But there were SO many more. There is just too much goodness here not to share more.

Fabulous, yes? I definitely wanted these on the books. Thank you again Amber!

A Special Visit from Grandma

Grandma Breakall came to visit!

She was here for many, many important events.

She was here for Grandpa Lords' birthday - 81 this year!

She was here to watch her hometown team go to the Superbowl...and get stomped on.

43-8 to the Seahawks

She was here for the Gilbert LDS temple Open House.

She was here to spend some girl time just eating potato soup, snacks and playing games with Grandma Lords, Aunt Tammy, Amber and me.

She was here to take us to see this beauty for the first time:

And most importantly she was here for MY birthday!

To celebrate, she took us out here:

And I was able to devour an entire one of these:

The Banzai. This contends for best burger in the world. 

Plus that morning she got me birthday balloons! Although Ammely did not, and does not, believe that they are mine.

AND there was a whole tray of yummy, delectable fruit for breakfast - strawberries, pineapple, cantaloupe, watermelon, grapes and apples with a whole jar of this:

This was the first appearance nutella has made in our house because it just never seems to fit in our little grocery budget. Happy Birthday to me!

AND she took us to the mall where I got to get a few underthings essentials for the parts of me that are growing due to Baby Girl #2.

AND Ammely got to play at the play center.

An adventure that tuckered her out.

Unfortunately, after all of that there was no more time for any more adventures. Grandma had to fly back to the land of the cold and the home of her husband.

We sure love Grandma and we miss her already!

A Day of Miracles

We recently had a pretty big day in our family. In a single day we experienced TWO miracles. On January 17th we discovered the gender of Baby #2 and Ammon got Lasik.

Now both might seem commonplace these days but if you really sit and think about it they are nothing less than 

1. Creating Human Life

and

2. Giving Sight to the...seeing person that can't really see all that well.

We started the day at good ol' Dr. Layton's office where Ammon begged him to figure out the big question - boy or girl? Because he is perhaps the best doctor on the planet he did just that for us even though it was not on the itinerary. And he wrote it down prescription style and put it in a sealed envelope. 

From there we went to Mama and Daddy's house to contemplate the implications of opening and actually knowing the big secret. Scary stuff. We also wanted Ammon to get a blessing before the next big event - so thankful for a Daddy that can give Priesthood blessings (maybe that's miracle number three?).

After just a couple hours we headed off to Phoenix to give this place our business:

Daddy got dropped off and Ammely and I headed out for a drive-thru lunch and a special pick-up: gender reveal cupcakes! We had so much fun with it last time that we wanted to do it again.

Ordering and waiting for the Cupcakes

From there we went back to the office -- which turned out to be not so kid friendly. Don't get me wrong - everybody was very nice and told me how cute Ammely is and was very patient as she wanted to try on all of their glasses, or "cools" as she calls them. But there was not a single toy in the waiting area. Not one children's book. Not a TV. Nothing. Nada. The rest of the building? Mostly stairs. And glass doors. 

Hmmmm. We should have got a babysitter.

Luckily, there was a bit of green out back. A very lucky find in the midst of the business district.

So we paced the hallways. Climbed the stairs. Drank from the water fountains. Played in the parking lot grass with Ammely's car toys. Then we would do it all over again.. And again. And again as not one, not two, not three, but FOUR HOURS went by. 

Apparently Ammon's left eye was too thin or too thick or too small or too big or too something. The suction wouldn't take. And so he had to wait an hour or so before they tried it again. Most fortunately, the second time around worked and we did not have to go back another time.

Whew.

This was one long day for mommy. And for Daddy.

But we were not done yet.

We still had to get to the middle of those cupcakes.

Ammely was more than happy to help us out with this project. 

Thank heaven for little people who are excited about cupcakes. If it had been just the two of us, we probably would have left them on the counter and gone straight to bed.

After lightly sampling the white cupcake she insisted we move on to the chocolate.

What did we find out? Well, that Ammely likes chocolate frosting.

This picture makes me laugh because it so perfectly captures how this moment was for us. Ammely is thrilled but has no idea what is happening. Mommy and Daddy know what is happening but are too tired to show any enthusiasm at all.

After about, oh...60 seconds...we lost patience with Ammely's ability to get to the heart of things. So we took matters into our own hands.

PINK! 

TWO little girls to be had in our home!

Or at least, according to the doc, the next one is "85% girl." Ha!

What did we think?

Umm....well....

I think Ammon's thought was "Can't. Keep. Eyes. Open. Must sleep now."

My thoughts...."We should have waited until tomorrow. I'm so tired. This is NOT the moment it should be." 

Ammely's thoughts: "Yummy. I don't know why Mommy is smearing this pink stuff on my face but it's okay with me!"

I sent this picture off to the relatives not close enough to eat their very own cupcake the next day, took Ammely upstairs for a bath, turned on a movie, called my mom and let Ammely self-entertain until she was as ready for bed as I was. 

Two beautiful events for one single day. I am especially  glad we all lived another day so that we could look back on this day and appreciate it as such a miraculous one - I know we did not in the moment.