A few random pics

No real theme to this post, just some randoms from the last couple of weeks. Amelia has been sitting up by herself for a few weeks now, but sometimes she still loses her balance and topples over on her head, so my solution is to surround her with pillows or her boppy and throw some toys in front of her, and she'll occupy herself for quite some time. Look at our little red head playing like a big girl.

The child pretty much hated her bouncer and swing, and really hasn't been a huge fan of the exersaucer and jump-a-roo, but now that she can sit up, she loves to just hang out with her toys. Who knew? We could've saved some money and room in our living room, which has been taken over by Amelia's stuff. I'm thinking it's time to move the swing out since she hasn't gotten in it in like 3 months.

Our cousin, Megan is having some work done to her car and she got a super-fun convertible to drive in the meantime. She dropped by and Amelia just had to have her photo taken in the car. Megan shot these with her camera phone.

Y'all know about my baby's and my mutual love of Britney Spears, so we pretended to be Britney and Sean Preston riding in the convertible.

Amelia just loves Megan. Maybe because they are almost the same size?

But not as much as she loves her mommy!

We went to hear a local band, The Colonels, play at Co-Lin's spring fling tonight, and the theme is Western, so guess who insisted on donning her western apparel?

I got the cowboy hat and boots at my baby shower and have yet to have an opportunity to let Amelia wear them, so this seemed like a great time. Here she is enjoying the band with Daddy, who did not wear his western-wear, ha. He's wearing his "I just got done teaching class" outfit. He's also wearing his "I didn't realize my wife was taking my photo" face. Sorry, Cliff.

She didn't hate the band, it was just bright outside. Although they were a little loud for her taste, so we had to move further away.

After just a few minutes, she got so tired that she fell asleep sitting straight up in my lap! One second she's looking around at everything and chewing on a toy, the next thing I notice, she's passed out sitting up. Love it.

I think this may be a record on this blog, but I have just completed a post featuring a series of photos and Amelia is bowless in every single one! Don't worry, t's just a coincidence. There's no way we are giving up on bows. They are here to stay. At least until she's big enough to jerk them off her head and refuse to wear them.

Easter photos

I'm out of control and I know it. I can't resist buying cute outfits and accessories for my baby, and I can't resist taking and posting a million photos of her in those outfits and accessories. If you aren't interested in seeing tons of Amelia pics, you should leave this blog immediately. But you know that already. So here we go...

We had such a wonderful weekend. The weather was nice most of the time, and we got to spend a lot of time with our sweet girl and with our families. Friday night Cliff and I left Amelia with my parents OVERNIGHT and went out on a date. We had a great time, but of course we missed our girl. I couldn't wait to get there Saturday morning to pick her up and take her to her first Easter egg hunt! Of course I had a precious outfit planned to coordinate with her Easter basket. I even made a bow to match! Yes, I now make bows. More about my new hobby later. But what do you know, the little princess fell asleep and missed the whole thing.

This is the only pic I got in her egg hunting outfit. We'll have to wear it another day and take photos. I will say this, there was monogramming involved. Oh don't you worry, we have not seen the last of this dress! Luckily she had another chance to hunt eggs Sunday. We got up extra early to swing by Memaw and Papaw's house before church to let them see her in her Easter dress. Every time they come by to see her she is napping, so we were glad they got to see her awake and happy.

She really was happy, even though it doesn't seem that way from the pics. Y'all know how she is about cameras.

The only thing I love more than a giant pink bow is a smocked dress! Oh my goodness, having a baby girl is my dream come true. It's like playing baby dolls every day, but better.

Here we are on our first Easter as a family. It was chilly, so we didn't spend time trying to get a shot with Amelia looking at the camera. Who knows how long that would have taken.

After a wonderful church service, Cliff and I were responsible for cleaning up after the Lord's Supper, so luckily Aunt Katie came to worship with us and she watched Amelia while we finished up. Guess what they did to pass the time!

This was on the playmat in the nursery. Aunt Katie gets way more smiling pics than Mommy. I'm telling myself it's because her camera is faster, and not because she likes her more than me. Everyone knows she's a mama's girl!

How precious is this with the cross in the background? A real Easter photo. Love it.

After church we went to visit my grandparents. (Did I mention how long our day was? We squeezed in two sets of grandparents and church. I was pretty proud of us.) After a yummy lunch, we got ready for the egg hunt. She was awake this time! But no smiles for my photos. Awake and smiling would be asking too much.

I couldn't narrow down which photos to post, so bare with me. Get ready for a bunch of photos of Amelia and her Easter basket. Again, I'm out of control!

I know my toes are under here somewhere. How can I get to them?

Since you took my egg away, I'll try to eat my dress.

Yes, that is a petticoat under her smocked dress. I seriously wanted to eat her more than my plate of poppyseed chicken in that dress.

Here are the men with their girly Easter baskets hiding the eggs. My daddy is the one holding the tutu basket, ha! I stole this pic and a couple more from my cousin Tess's facebook album.

After a quick wardrobe change, it was time to hunt eggs.

Amelia and mommy wore matching pearl bracelets for Easter.

Amelia and Grammy. She's trying to get into that basket!

Here's Amelia with some of her cousins after the egg hunt. She's still trying to chew on that egg.

Janie wanted a pic with Amelia. (Another stolen from Tess. Thanks!) She and her sister, Josie are always so well mannered and Janie tapped me on the shoulder Sunday and told me, "I think your daughter is very pretty." Ha ha. I told her her that I think she (Janie) is very pretty too!

Me and Aunt Mare swinging.

Just when you thought the smocked dress and basket photos were over, I tried a re-shoot yesterday in the yard hoping for smiles...

But no luck. Then Aunt Katie came over and got this grin on the couch. Look at that slobbery face!

The Easter bunny brought Amelia a new swing! She already had her pjs on, but it was still light outside, so I put her in the swing for some late evening playing, and yes, we got a couple of smiles. Aunt Katie's fast camera work to the rescue again.

I love that evening light. Maybe we'll try to save all our photo shoots for 7 p.m.

Ok, that's it for now. Now we're back to our reality of work and daycare. We're so lucky to have had this time off this past weekend. No more holidays left this school year, but when school gets out in May, Amelia will be home with her daddy every day! And mommy will sadly be at work. However we have a new schedule and I'll be off at lunch time on Fridays, so I can't complain. And I always have the evenings and weekends with our little monkey. I love having so much daylight when I get home from work. More 7 p.m. photo shoots to come, I'm sure!

I hope you all had a great Easter, and I look forward to seeing your kiddos' photos too!

Piggly Wiggly prunes mishap

Ok, I said I'd be back later with egg hunting and Easter dress photos, but I just had to tell you about what happened to me yesterday. I'm already looking back on it and laughing, so I know in a few years, when I share this with Amelia, it will be even funnier. However, it was NOT funny to me at the time yesterday.

We've been having some "poop issues," if you will, and I had to stop at the Piggly Wiggly on the way home from work yesterday for prunes. I usually try not to stop anywhere between work and home because if Amelia is not screaming in the backseat, she's asleep and I'd like to keep it that way. She's always so tired after a long day of playing at school. Anyway, she's screaming by the time we park, so I get her out of the carseat and carry her in on my hip. She's not quite big enough to sit up in the cart, and she's not a huge fan of lounging in the carseat on top of the cart, so on my hip she went. I went straight to the baby food aisle and before I could locate the prunes, she spit up ALL OVER HERSELF and me. Of course I have no wipes, so I walk over to the wipes aisle (why couldn't they be on the same aisle?) and open a pack to rescue us from the disgusting situation. I made sure to hold onto the wrapper so I would remember to pay for them when I checked out.

After our clean-up, since it was 5 p.m. by this time and I was in the worst possible place when you're hungry, I walked around picking up various food items I couldn't live without for dinner. (pound cake, strawberries and cool whip, plus a Lean Cuisine, ha) After grabbing a few more essentials, I go towards the counter, baby getting heavier on my hip. I realize then that I have no form of currency at all to pay for my stuff! Oh no! I had taken my debit card out of my wallet to pay for a Kelly's Kids catalog order and left it at home. I never have cash, and I had just written the last check in my wallet the day before. So being a former grocery store employee, I walked around the store to put all my groceries back instead of just abandoning my cart. UGH!

My spit-up covered baby was getting heavier by the second and was ticked off when I put her back in the carseat. I was feeling so desperate, because as I said we were having "poop issues," which is probably why she was so cranky, and I really NEEDED those prunes, which meant I would have to go BACK to the store after going home to get money.

Luckily my mom called during my desperation and said my dad happened to be in town and he picked up the prunes for us. I didn't get any pound cake, and I ended up eating frozen pizza for supper, but at least Amelia got her prunes! She wasn't a fan, but I forced some down her. We'll see if things "come out" a little bit better when I pick her up today.

Oh the joys of being a mother! I've been pretty lucky so far not to have any major breakdowns in public, but I came close yesterday in the Piggly Wiggly. Luckily I can laugh about it today, and hopefully provide you all, and someday Amelia, with a laugh too!

Edited to add: Allison, you're not the only one who's asked me about the open wipes. The answer is, I put them back on the shelf! That's right- I opened a pack of wipes and left them on the shelf at Piggly Wiggly. I had intentions of coming right back to pay for them, but when my dad brought me the prunes I completely forgot about them! Don't tell anyone at the Pig that it was me! Oh, and for those wondering, Amelia is much better. The prunes did the trick!

Trike-a-thon and the Easter Bunny

Friday's Trike-a-thon was a big success. With your help, Amelia raised $355 for St. Jude! Even better, her classmates combined to raise over $3000 for the hospital! Amelia was very excited to have been able to help raise so much money for such a great cause. She wanted me to thank all of you who donated.

I also wanted to let you all know how grateful I am for your generous donations and your support of Amelia. (I am embarassed of my poor photo quality when I have photogs like Lindey and Amanda who read my blog from time to time! My camera isn't top-notch, but it's not terrible, but really the flash sometimes makes Amelia look weird when we're inside, so I turn it off, which sometimes makes the pics fuzzy. Thank goodness I know some good photogs to get our frame-worthy shots :)

Here are a few pics from Friday:

All the kids lined up and ready to go. The big kids are in the front and the little ones brought up the rear.

This is Amelia's class. Taylor is in the back left, Brooke is on the right, and Braxton is cheesing in the front. That's Amelia bundled up in her stroller on the right. Her other classmate, Megan is pictured below in the stroller .We had such a beautiful weekend, but Friday morning was super chilly, so the kiddos all had to get out the winter gear again. You can't tell, but Amelia is wearing a sweatsuit for her first athletic competition! Even from a distance you can see her big navy blue bow, ha.

She was so excited she just passed out on the stroll from the daycare to the football field. She missed the whole thing!
This is my friend and co-worker, Erin getting Bryce all ready for his big moment. Bryce just loves Amelia. We go to church together and I work with his mom so we see each other a lot. He always wants to give Amelia hugs and kisses. He's known me all his life, but these days, to him, I am "Amelia's Mama." Come to think of it, I'm pretty much known as that to everyone now! She's definitely the star of the show wherever we go.

I tried to get a pic of our friend Jax, but he was just too fast for me on his trike! He was having a great time. His mom is my friend Neisha.

There's Jax whizzing by on his second lap around the football field.

And here's Amelia at the end of the marathon. She started to wake up, but when she saw my camera, she pulled her blanket over her face! LOL. A diva at 5 months old. We've got a long road ahead of us!

Because I'm too lazy to start a whole new post, I'll throw these last few pics at the end here. We got another wear out of the bunny dress at church today. Here's Amelia with her buddy Braxton in Sunday School. He's also in her class at school, so they're great friends.

After church Amelia attended her first birthday party for a friend. Braxton's older sister, Ainsley was the birthday girl. And guess who showed up at her party...

We got to meet the Easter Bunny! Amelia was more interested in hanging out with her boyfriend, Trent. Notice a pattern that most of her friends are boys? Daddy's not crazy about that, but it's not our fault she's one of the few little girls at church!


And finally, here are a couple of cute pics I shot after school one day last week when Amelia was in a particularly happy mood. We like to play in the guest room sometimes. I thought her outfit matched the shabby chic quilt, ha.

I don't think I've blogged yet about her little lamb that she sleeps with named Lovey. I'll have to save that for another day. Anyway, my dad got her a giant Lovey and she just loves him!

So there's your Amelia fix for the week! If I don't post again this week, I know I'll be back soon with photos from our first Easter egg hunt and in our pretty dress for Easter Sunday. Of course, I can't get too caught up in all the fun photo ops without remembering the real reason for Easter, celebrating the resurrection of our Savior!

Easter photos

All I wanted was a smiling photo of my baby in her bunny dress holding a bunny. But of course, she knew that this was what I wanted so she refused to cooperate. Ok, I'm thinking I'm giving my 5 month old too much credit. I doubt she sabatoged her photos on purpose.

Even though Amelia was grumpy, Amanda managed to get a couple of cute ones. No smiles, but we're getting used to it by now. I really want everyone to know that Amelia is a very happy child and does smile all the time! We just have no proof of it, ha.

Checking out the bunnies.


The gray one wasn't very nice, so we got rid of him.


Trying to give the bunny a kiss!



The closest thing we got to a smiley pic

She wasn't very gentle with the baby bunny. Poor thing.

This pretty much sums up how she felt about the photo shoot. I can't help it, I think crying pics are cute.

Another almost smile. Daddy was holding her up in the air.

Thanks again, Amanda! We'll have to try again another day!