What to Teach our Daughters

I saw this on a friend's Facebook page and just loved it. 

WHAT TO TEACH OUR DAUGHTERS

We need to teach our daughters
to distinguish between:

A man who flatters her
and a man who compliments her.

A man who spends money on her
and a man who invests in her.

A man who views her as property
and a man who views her properly.

A man who lusts after her
and a man who loves her.

A man who believes he is God’s gift to women
and a man who remembers a woman was God’s gift to man.

And then teach our boys to be that kind of man.

~ Author Unknown

How To Keep A Toddler Busy

Climbing Skills 101

Justin witnessed Lily climbing up onto her changing table the other day so when I saw her in action, I quickly grabbed the camera.  I made it in time to capture her process of climbing up so she could be changed.

Step 1: Begin Ascent

Step 2: Demonstrate how to do a perfect pull-up

Step 3: Almost there!

Step 4: Victory

As you can see, she's pretty proud of herself!  

We're anticipating the crib will be her next attempt at practicing those mad climbing skills.

Beautiful Winter Night

I'm not usually a fan of winter weather but when the snow gracefully falls at night and creates these kinds of pictures, I'm in awe of the beauty that God creates!

Yogurt's My Favorite

Rockin' the Sweater Dress

Can you tell how hard it is to get a picture of this busy girl?

Lily @ 23 Months

I don't want to forget this so I figured I better record it on here.  Otherwise, I'm likely to scrawl it on a piece of paper somewhere, only to find it's made its way to the trash and I'll be kicking myself someday for not keeping track of all the amazing things my little almost-2-year-old daughter did.  SOOO, to save myself from all that drama, here we go.

In the past month, Lily's memory has blown me away!  My brother Travis came up during the middle of January to go to an ISU basketball game with Justin.  So you can imagine my surprise when this conversation played out around the middle of February when I went into Lily's room one morning:
Me - Lily, do you remember who's coming to visit today?
Lily - GaGa! (Grandma)
Me - You're right, Lily.
Lily - And Trav?.....No, he at basketball with Daddy.

Whuuuut?  Her brain is capable of that at this age?!  So apparently the last connection she'd made of thinking about Uncle Travis was of his coming up in January and she voiced it a month later. 

Another time her memory caught me off guard was one afternoon as we were getting in the car, she pointed to my "Prayer Warrior in Eli's Army" bracelet and asked - "Mommy sad?".  She had remembered that earlier in that week when I found out that Eli had died, I was crying and had talked about the bracelet.

She said the closest thing to a real first sentence a couple of weeks ago: While pointing behind the couch - "Jax's bone back there."

She can now count to 10.

She can sing the alphabet although certain groups of letters are strung together. :)

She can point out a few colors: yellow, green, orange, black and white.

Well, these are just the bigger things that come to mind but she is doing so many new, funny and super cute things that I feel terribly inadequate in my ability to write them all down.  I want to savor it all!  Because this thing called 'time' keeps speeding up, by golly.  Does anyone else have a hard time believing that my baby girl is going to be 2 next week?  Bam.  You blink your eyes and they're all grown up.  Kinda puts it all in perspective for me....some minutes, hours, days might be long but the years sure are short.

Valentine's Day

This year we kept things low-key since Lily has been down-n-out with "the crud".  Justin picked up some Olive Garden on his way home and we enjoyed an evening in.

Our delicious dinner and the Valentine Lily made for Justin.  

It was the first day she'd felt like doing anything with this sickness and she was so excited to give it to him when he walked in the door!

Dessert: Chocolate-covered strawberries with a glass of wine.  

Justin whipped these up himself.  Do I have a great man or what?! 

Justin knows his little girl well.  A card with stickers inside = win.

Daddy and his Valentine sweetheart

Of course Lily wanted to share her stickers with Jax too. :)

Waterbabies

Well, that's the name of the class even though I don't really feel like I have a "baby" anymore.  We just started attending a swim class at the Y that's designated for those 6 months-3 years old.  Lily's the oldest with the rest in the group being 9 months and younger.  She seemed like such a big girl compared to her classmates!  I pointed out a little 7 month old girl to her that was chillaxin on her back while her mother helped her float around.  Lily didn't care; she despises being on her back!  But her favorite part was when the instructor had her sit on the side and then jump into my arms.  She had a lot of fun counting to 3 and then splashing into the water.  I'm pretty sure we did that about 30 times and she never failed to erupt with giggles every single time!

This way to the pool?

On the Ladder with Daddy

We're in the process of making some changes in our living room, thanks to the help of my friend, Teresa.  I do not.....I repeat....do not, have an eye for interior design so I'm thankful there are people I know that do!  Once we're done, I'll post some 'before' and 'after' photos of the makeover.  Til then, enjoy these of Lily being a helper to Daddy as he relocated our curtain rods.

Tickling Daddy's feet is helping, right? 
Well, I guess it depends on who you ask!

Come Back, Spring-like Days!

February started out warm and lovely.  These pictures were taken on February 1st and we were able to go on a family walk (without coats on!) when Justin got home from work.  I'm looking forward to more of these days coming up soon.  A girl can hope, right?

 When she's wearing anything with pockets, she likes to use 'em.  Love her.

 Of course we had to stop and say hi to our neighborhood buddy, Tess.

Spotted an airplane

She was pretty happy to find a pinecone

I love this picture.  Wanna know why?  This is a picture of obedience.  We've always told Lily that she needs to stay on the sidewalk and she'll only go so far in our driveway and then turn around.  Well, I noticed that when we're on a walk and we come to the Durango that's usually parked right on the sidewalk a couple houses down from us, she'll slowly walk around the hitch as carefully as she can in order to stay on the sidewalk.  Discipline training is worth it! :)

Happiness.