Pictures

Giving Makinley a hug before heading out to swim.


Climbing into everything these days.


Believe it or not, she already likes to play dress up


I was actually taking a picture of our new car...the hug between father and daughter is just a bonus.


Playing with daddy's key chain collection with Zoey.


Yep, still cute as ever in hats. Most of my favorite pictures of her include hats.


She does this for pictures a lot now...she says "freeze!!" and throws her arms up.

Camera trouble

If you know me, you know I'm not the best at figuring things out on the computer. So I still haven't been able to figure out why my pictures stopped uploading properly. I have asked David to figure it out tonight...I've got a few cute ones I'll put up tomorrow if he can figure it out (which he probably will in about 2 minutes). So this is officially my first post without a picture or a video :(
Gemma seems to be hitting those terrible twos a little early, so the last couple of weeks have had their challenges. I've had to step up and actually be a parent...geez! It's funny though, there are days when I hope our next baby is different in some ways, (i.e. knows how to use an inside voice, has less of a stuborn streak), but other days I hope for another Gemma. She does the cutest things! She recently started saying "Hi mommy, I missed you" when I walk in to get her up in the morning. Doesn't get much cuter than that!
Last night was a little rough for me. I got maybe 3 hours of sleep. I was having a hard time falling asleep to begin with, but on top of that, David was jolting awake every 5 minutes...yes I timed it, and yes he does this quite often (mainly when he's stressed out). That went on until about 1:30 a.m. and then Gemma woke up for some reason. So I went and laid down with her, thinking I would get more sleep with her than with David...ha! At 3:30 I finally gave up and gave her a cup of milk. She was either hungry or thirsty, because she downed that glass and quickly fell asleep. The upside to all of that, is that I had lots of time to think...I'm fairly certain I know what I'm going to do in the nursery now hahaha. I have it all decorated in my head. In addition to that, we've also narrowed down our name list from about 20, down to about 5...Progress!!
I'll post pictures tomorrow...

Summer fun

Even with the terribly hot weather, the summer is flying by. It hit me the other day that if baby #2 gets here when Gemma did, than he or she will be here in under 8 weeks...woah!!! I'm not ready yet! I haven't even started on the nursery, and we definitely don't have any names picked out yet. At least there's not as much to do this time around.

Gemma is loving summer! There is nothing more fun to her than going to the pool. We will definitely be getting a pool membership next summer. Thankfully, even without a membership this summer, we've still been able to swim a LOT, and she gets more and more brave every time we go. She is no longer content to just sit and play in the shallow water...she wants to swim...or jump off the side...or float on her back...or practice kicking. Really, she's happy as long as she doing something that doesn't involve letting her parents relax. Ha! It's fun though, I was the exact same way as a kid. I HATED it when my dad wanted to lay out in the sun, I wanted him to be throwing me in the air, or racing me from one end of the pool to the other.

We were in Branson on vacation last weekend, and I only took about three pictures! I took the nice camera, so of course I didn't want to be taking it to the pool. I'll have to take a bunch of pictures in the next couple of months to make up for it :) Gemma had a total blast, was a total rock star the whole time, and got completely spoiled. The girl loves to shop!! She got several little things that kept her entertained during the trip. I think the most "interesting" thing she picked out was a spoon with a penguin attached to it, which she refers to as "Walka". It's hard to explain how she does it, but she tends to pick weird names for her favorite toys. She currently has "Walka" and "Okie". Thanks to uncle Jeff, she also learned a new word/phrase on vacation....."Oh Snap!"
Here's Gemma in her bed. I've tried and tried to get a picture of her sleeping but they just don't turn out well, and always wake her up. I guess this is the best I can do. It's also the only picture that uploaded from the ones of I've taken this month. I'll post the rest when I figure out what went wrong.

Big Girl Room

For those of you who don't have facebook, and haven't seen pictures of Gemma's new room...here they are. I've changed a couple of things since taking these pictures, but not much. She absolutely loves her room! The first couple of days, she ASKED to take a nap. I bought her a little ottoman with a lid, that serves as a night stand, and also stores all her stuffed animals. I think that, and her pink chair in the corner are her two favorite items. We put up rails on either side of the bed for naps and bedtime. We had one hand-me-down rail initially, but it wasn't working properly, so after two nights of her falling out of bed, we got another new one. So far so good!
She takes a bath almost every night these days because she gets so sweaty during the day. So our routine after her bath is drying her off in the bathroom, and then she runs naked to her room. She thinks this is sooo funny. The first couple of days after switching her room, she ran to her old room, and was confused as to why her door was shut. So I explained she needed to go to her new room. A week later, she is still doing the same thing, but now it's just a game to her.

So far this has been one of the easiest "transitions". I thought I would be sad to see her in a big girl bed, but I think it was just as exciting for me as it was for her. I loved decorating it, and then seeing her get so excited about it. She definitely looks so small in her bed when I go in to check on her and kiss her good night, but it's not sad.

I tried taking pictures of her actually in it, but I just managed to wake her up