"Bir-day!"

Today our sweet birthday boy turned 2! I cannot believe how fast these last 2 years have flown by. Hunter had a really great day, and I tried hard to revert back to my old self and take lots of pictures, which I was successful with most of the time.

When Hunter woke up this morning, James and I crept into his room and sang happy birthday to him, which he LOVED. No exaggeration here people. The kid was giddy, elated, giggling the entire time we sang. He hearts the birthday song over all of the songs he loves to sing.

Then we ran into the kitchen for some waffles - which he also loves. As soon as he got into the kitchen, though, he saw the cupcakes I had made for his class birthday party at school and immediately said, "cake!" So since it was his birthday, I couldn't resist...

As you can see, he can't believe that he's actually getting to eat that at 6:30 in the morning. He devoured it in about 2 seconds (before I could change my mind) and quickly moved on to the waffle...

Then I took Hunter to school where he had a great day with his friends, and I came by at 2:30 for his school birthday party. (This is the part where pregnant brain takes over again and I leave my camera in the car.) I'm totally sad I didn't get any pictures because those kids were sooooo cute singing to Hunter and eating cupcakes together.

After the party we rushed home and Hunter got to open a present from mommy and daddy...

Is the suspense killing y'all or what?

You know it is...

Hunter was so excited about his "play-toh" that we played with it all afternoon...

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Then tonight we went to Chick-Fil-A so our family could celebrate with us. Hunter got free ice cream because it was his birthday, and even though he'd had 2 cupcakes and waffles today, he finished the.entire.bowl...and we're not talking a small bowl here y'all. I'm sure the ginormo bites helped out with finishing so quickly.

Even Zack's amazed at my kid's mad eating skills..

Then Hunter opened cards...

and presents...

and played with Zack...

and ran around endlessly...

until he finally wore himself out.

...

Hunter, the last 2 years have been the best of my life. I continue to be overjoyed with raising you to be a God-fearing young man. I adore you, and I adore watching you learn and grow more every day. I am amazed at the blessing God has given your daddy and I through the wonder of watching you grow.

"So whenever you doubt just how special you are and you wonder who loves you, how much and how far, listen for geese honking high in the sky. (They're singing a song to remember you by.)

Or notice the bears asleep at the zoo. (It's because they've been dancing all night for you.)

Or drift off to sleep to the sound of the wind. (Listen closely...it's whispering your name again!)

If the moon stays up until morning one day, or a ladybug lands and decides to stay, or a little bird sits at your window awhile, it's because they're all hoping to see you smile...

For never before in story or rhyme (not even once upon a time) has the world ever known a you, my friend, and it never will, not ever again...

Heaven blew every trumpet and played every horn on the wonderful, marvelous night you were born."

It's a...

GIRL!!

James and I are really excited. Hunter on the other hand - well I'll let you be the judge. Here's the conversation I attempted to have with him when I picked him up from school today...

Me: Hunter! You're going to have a baby sister! Baby Charlotte is in mommy's tummy!
Hunter: shakes his head no with this look on his face...
Me: Hunter, aren't you excited to have a baby sister?
Hunter: uh-uh....banana
Me: You can have a banana when we get home. Can you say Charlotte?
Hunter: no!
Me: Baby Charlotte is in mommy's tummy. Say Charlotte.
Hunter: uh-uh...banana

That's when I finally decided to give up on the dream. I actually did get him to attempt to say Charlotte later. It came out as "shot". At least we've got time to work on the pronunciation...and Hunter's love for his sister.

Four

Okay so this is a little late, but in the words of our overly dramatic Saved By the Bell friend, Jesse, THERE'S NO TIME!! THERE'S NEVER ANY TIME!!!
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It's been a crazy weekend. I literally haven't stopped at all since Friday morning (unless you count my 7 hours of sleep last night, but really people, how is that enough for a women who's growing a human? Especially when said woman runs around like a maniac from 7 am to at least 10:30 pm 2 days in a row.)
...
Enough with my excuses. Let's get to the point already...
James and I celebrated our 4 year anniversary on Thursday. Most of y'all know that I have many, many, many, (a milllion manys) things I would change about my wedding day. It's really just a side effect of my crazy type A, perfect-day-wishing self.
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Somehow throughout our entire engagement I morphed into this person who didn't pay attention to or care about detail and just wanted to get married. (I do acknowledge that actually wanting the marriage and not just the wedding is a good thing.) So there were many things I would go back and change...photographer, bridesmaids dresses, hair style, my dress (I had 2 dresses I couldn't decide between so of course I'm going to second guess that I should've picked the other one), and on and on.
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So every anniversary James and I watch our wedding video. Now I LOVED this video the first 10 times we watched it (in case the math isn't adding up for you here, I watched that thing about 20 times the first week we got it), but then the nit picking started. Nothing's perfect...my skin's too oily, I look frumpy in my dress, it's stupid that my bridesmaids are wearing long black dresses at a 1:00 wedding, blah, blah, blah. So obviously all of that horrible regret of tiny, unimportant detail that no one even cares about crept up from deep down until the thoughts were overtaking my mind. I know. It's a little obsessive, but that's me...for better or worse. So I'm laying there obsessing, and I think to myself, would you give everything you have just to go back and have the perfect day? And that's all it took to snap out of it.
...
Because this is my everything...
And they are worth so much more than a lifetime of perfect wedding days.

We love you Ms. Hadzira!

So I never thought I'd turn into someone who blogs less than once a week, but here I am. Once you get out of the habit, it's just hard to re-find the time for it. If I tried to include everything y'all have missed I would have a day long blog post, so I'm just going to skip to the most recent...

Friday was Hunter's last day as an Explorer at LHCCEC. I can't remember if I ever told y'all, but Hunter did finally get his language burst...better late than never:) Although I know it would've come regardless, I attribute much of what he's learned to Ms. Hadzira (and the other teachers that rotated through) and Hunter's classmates. I never thought I'd love his school so much. Here's some of Hunter's latest conversation topics...

*The ABCs - He loves the ABC song and will look at you and say, "ABCD! ABCD!" to let you know he wants you to sing it with him. Sometimes he'll sing random letters with you like the P or the O, but usually he just listens.

*Twinkle Twinkle - He also loves this song. He always wants it sung right after we finish with our ABCs. He'll say "up a" and make his little diamond symbol with his hands. He calls stars "up a" because of the part of the song that says, "UP Above the world so high".

(In case you hadn't noticed, it is pretty genius that he recognizes that those tunes are the same. He's so going to have perfect pitch. I mean what else would I expect with him humming Twinkle Twinkle at such very young age...see here.)

*Shapes - He really only names circle and star spontaneously right now, but he will imitate all of the other names. He loves to pull out his shape sorter and try to push the shape through saying, "noooo. noooo. noooo." when it doesn't fit. It's really cute.

*Numbers - He's starting talking more about numbers, and Ms. Hadzira said that he'll get really upset if they skip counting to 10 for the day...so they always make sure to do it for him (they don't spoil him or anything!). On the way home from school last week he was going, "siiiix. niiiine. siiiix. niiiine" and when I was telling James the story when he got home, Hunter would say, "ten!" after every time I said "nine".

*Animals - He still loves animals...well talking about them at least. We were at Aunt Katie's house this week and every time the dogs ran up to him he'd give me the death grip and say, "hurt you! hurt you!"

We're going to miss Ms. Hadzira so much! Here's Hunter and her on Friday (their last day together)... And since that's not the best picture of her, here he is with Ms. Hadzira and Ms. Sandy...

See how sad he is to be leaving them? I think I feel more sad than he does though. I heart Ms. Hadzira.

The good news is Hunter is now re-united with his first friends (Noah and the gang) that had already moved up to the Crickets class. We're praying for an easy transition. Hopefully his friends can make it better for him!

Charlotte? Is that you?

So my sweet friend at the DPRC did a sonogram for James and I - okay I'm not gonna lie, she did two for us. i try not to be too high maintenance, but sometimes the hormones enhance that part of my personality a little - because I wanted to find out the gender early. Unfortunately, she couldn't tell for sure at either visit. We have a modest little baby in there...using either the umbilical cord or legs to cover up the "private areas". Good for her! We're getting an early start on those modesty lessons:)

As you probably guessed, we think it's a girl. Lisa (our friend who did the sono) thinks it's probably a girl, too, but she's not 100% - that umbilical cord can throw you off:)

So although this isn't the big reveal, I'm gonna share some pictures from one of our baby's very first photo shoots...

Giving a wave

A little skeleton face...we were looking at the profile and she turned really quickly to look at us. It was so sweet...and a little scary:)

I've put a poll on the side for y'all to vote on whether you think it's a boy or girl. Our next sono is on March 10, so I'll leave it open until then.

And you know you want to vote so I don't have to come on here every day and vote so it looks like people actually care:)

Parent of the Year

So apparently the more time you let go by between blog posts, the harder it is to actually write one. So as I was looking through my few pictures and thinking of stories to tell, and here's what I came up with...

*It's actually been over a month since this happened, but as I mentioned above blogging has not been a priority for me with all of the puking. Anyway, we went on one of our regular walks to the park one day and Hunter was so cute at the top of this slide that I got loads of cute pics. Since I know you're dying for it, here's a sample...

He was hesitant to go down because he couldn't figure out how to turn his little body at the angle he was positioned. So after much luring, he finally slid down head first, and y'all, it was a disaster. He skidded the whole way on his hands and was crying (no real tears though...just a look of terror on his face), but it really was one of the funniest things I've ever seen, so I did what any mom would do and took a picture...Yes. As my kid was sliding down in terror, I'm taking pictures. Judge if you want, but it was dang funny.

*We went to a super bowl party at the church, but I kept Hunter there entirely too late, so the only pictures we got were close to that of mug shots...

No our child is not drugged....just exhausted.

*We got this box in the mail earlier this week...

...my son's first response after seeing it was "pizza! pizza!" And in case that's not a big enough clue to you on how health conscious I've been lately, just look at the fruit roll ups in the background...and I guess the donuts aren't scoring me any points either.

*Here's where I redeem myself, though, people. We were all playing in Hunter's room one night this week and Hunter pulled out his Bible. (He loves books, but he especially hearts his Bible). He was reading it aloud to us - which sound something like "boodigoogifas apple gadomisuh ssssss(for the snake)" - when he suddenly stopped, put his hands together, and said, "Amen. Amen." Cutest thing ever.

So my kid may not be eating a perfectly balanced diet and living a bruise free life, but he sure does love Jesus.:)

Rockless No More

My mom was so sweet to us and watched Hunter this weekend so James and I could travel to Austin for my friend Liz's wedding. I met Liz in graduate school, and we became almost instant friends. Liz always has a crazy story or comment that brings a smile to everyone's face. She, along with my other dear friends from grad school, made those 2 years so special to me. We shared many hours studying, eating, talking, laughing, dancing, story telling (my favorite:)), and on and on.

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During our first week of grad school, we had a class where we had to stand up and do the typical tell your name, why you love speech path, blah, blah, blah. Our professor also wanted us to add our biggest fear onto our little intro. This is probably my favorite get to know you topic of all of the ones I've experienced. Favorite pizza, favorite color, shoe size, boring, boring, boring. Biggest fear...that will give us some real insight. Did I mention this professor was a genius? She was. Anyway, many of us said that our biggest fear was that we'd never get married. In case that wasn't a dead give away, there aren't many men in the speech pathology world:)

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So Liz (I think it was Liz) decided to form the rockless club for us gals who weren't yet married, but still had hope! That was six and a half years ago, and here we are (most of us anyway) today...

I'm so thankful for their friendships, and I'm so excited for Liz and Philip!

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Here are some more pictures from the night... me and my honey...I love going to weddings with James because it always makes me think of ours, and how lucky I am to share my life with this wonderful man.

me and the bride