all in the family

when my sister took sweet cheeks for the night two weekends ago, they all went out to dinner. she was quick to snap these two photos of the kiddos. i love how happy sweet cheeks is when she is with them. it really shows through her smile.




so i rarely check out gap but felt like browsing it yesterday. rompers! these are just so cute. i seriously remember wearing these when i was a little girl. love the pink one in the halter style.

bye bye hair

sweet cheeks has her daddy's hair color but sadly my hair texture. it consists of a thick, sorta straight, sorta wavy hair. her hair is pretty straight in the front and very wavy in the back. as it grew longer, it got more messy. i have been trying to convince her for a while now to go short but she was not interested. she just said, "i want long hair." but saturday, i won my battle. all it took was a bit of bribing on my part (yes, i believe bribing and parenting go hand in hand). sweet cheeks was promised a trip to claire's after her haircut for a purse and lip stick!


here is her before picture-




and the fresh new do which, in my opinion, was totally worth the trip to claires! i love it on her.



we went to a friend's house on saturday night to celebrate his 35th birthday. it was a great time and the kids all loved playing together. the dinner was a shrimp boil and sweet cheeks was so proud of herself for eating shrimp!

sweet cheeks on the swing




the husband stayed occupied pushing the kids on the swing

playing in the sandbox


just a cute shot

dress her up

miniboden's summer line for girls is too cute.

look at these adorable dresses(that sweet cheeks will look cute in)!



cute shirt-

now what do i do?

sweet cheeks had her first practice/game of soccer on saturday.

10 toddlers + 1 field + 1 ball = chaos

it took a bit to get started. felt like the coaches really weren't that organized, which i thought was a bit of a mistake considering the age they were coaching. so the kids got a little bored at first, unsure of exactly what was going on. by the time they started playing, it was kids running every which way for the ball or for their parents. each team was to have 5 players on the field but it would range from 3-6 at any given moment.

sweet cheeks did great though at the end. the beginning was another story. first the tears came when no one would give her the ball. i tried to explain that was not going to happen, that she would have to take the ball. once she was out on the field again, she and another girl head-butted. ouch! another round of tears sent her off the field. but then, once she got back out there, she rocked! she managed to get the ball into the goal 2 times. i think she caught on that when no one else had the ball, she would take it, run, and score. i was impressed. next week should be much better now that the kids all have a basic knowledge of the game.

practicing on the field before the game began


not sure what she was pointing at


game time- she was awesome.


we went to breakfast at mcdonalds afterwards. sweet cheek's choice. she is holding up her two fingers for the amount of goals she scored. i thought if i artistically showed this picture in part color, part black n white, i wouldn't catch so much heat for letting my child have mcdonalds after a soccer game!



**

my sister was sweet enough to keep sweet cheeks on saturday/sunday. i knew sweet cheeks would have a blast playing with her cousins for that length of time. plus, she went and saw the new hannah montana movie. what a great time she had.

the husband and i went to a friend's wedding saturday evening. due to an old camera and a few glasses of wine, this was sadly the best picture of us. the black/white made it look less blurry. we had a great time together. (though it was such a strange feeling sleeping that night at home without sweet cheeks there)

silhouette

found this on etsy at nella designs. i think this silhouette art is cute for siblings (not this particular one shown of course with the kids kissing), only children, cousins, friends, whatever.
you can pick and choose both color and silhouette. it is an 8x10 print for $19.50.

motherhood changes

i have no doubt that any mother to read this will agree that motherhood changes everything. i also will say that even though becoming a mother has been the best change i could have made in my life, it has affected so many areas i may not have expected before hand.

motherhood changes...

then: showered daily
now: every other day if i am lucky

then: hair brushed, dried, and flat ironed daily
now: hello headbands!

then: make-up in 20 minutes
now: 7 minutes tops

then: eyebrows waxed monthly
now: lucky i still have 2

then: low rider jeans
now: jeans with a waist to hide the love handles

then: clean house
now: clean kitchen

then: date night with the husband weekly
now: date night bi-monthly, 3 hours or less

then: pilates 2x a week
now: please!

then: flat abs
now: flat chest (goodbye capital C, hello lowercase b)

then: online shopping for me
now: online shopping for sweet cheeks

then: heels
now: flats

those are just a few. no wonder i rarely share photos of me.

what are some of your changes since entering the 'hood?

she said it

sweet cheek's easter was great. the bunny, which we weren't sure if it was a boy or a girl, brought her lots of goodies.

if you would have heard us talking on easter eve, you would have heard this conversation-

me: "do you want to hide your easter basket from the easter bunny?"

sweet cheeks: "no, i will just leave it out."

me: "do you want to leave it on the coffee table then?"

sweet cheeks: pauses for a moment to think. "which way will it come in?"

me: "good question. i have no idea."


she is a smart one.

just a few pictures from our holiday weekend.




in our front yard before we headed out for easter brunch with my sister, her husband, cailyn, and conley. you can't see it but sweet cheeks and phoebe have on the same dress. sweet cheek's shoes matched the flowers on the tree perfectly. they are crewcuts flops.



on her new birthday swing her aunt melissa gave to her


our photographer, sweet cheeks, took this pic of the husband and i


sweet cheeks and cailyn outside the restaurant


chasing her bouncy ball at the park


sweet cheeks and conley going down the slide



her 3rd and final outfit of the day- blowing bubbles at her nana's house

performance day

sweet cheeks had a big day saturday. it was her first ever ballet recital. i was so excited to see her perform, since during her weekly practices parents do not get to watch. i always ask sweet cheeks to do a few moves for me once we are home, but she always responds with a quick no. i was really beginning to wonder if they were really evening learning ballet behind those closed doors. perhaps these toddlers had found a way to swindle their parents into a new weekly playdate which consisted of small talk, snacks, and silly play.

so the recital was the first real opportunity the husband and i had to see sweet cheeks do her ballet at the end of the 12 week course. and can i say that it was the absolute cutest thing i have ever seen! i loved sweet cheeks in her cute recital costume. then when the time came for her "performance," as she loved to say, sweet cheeks was all smiles. i think she enjoyed us watching her.

i am pretty sure you will find these pictures at least 1/2 as cute as i did.


being a silly girl with her tutu on her head-



all smiles-



during the recital-




sweet cheeks and her cousin after the recital with their new wands-

pink cleats

a short clip of sweet cheeks when she was playing soccer with the husband and grandpa.
she seems to really enjoy it.

of course the clip begins with her in the bushes, as this one does fall quite a bit!

P-A-R-T-Y

sweet cheeks had her first "real" birthday party which included school friends, as well as family. 19 kids, including sweet cheeks, were at this party. it was a bouncy house full of toddlers in organized chaos. they had so much fun. i really enjoyed watching sweet cheeks have fun playing with everyone.

here she is with two of her cousins-





the girls going down a slide together (which they did over and over and over)


all the kiddos at the party-


birthday cake time! sweet cheeks requested tinkerbell (despite the fact that everything else was hannah montana but it was her party). the cake was actually made up of 48 cupcakes and way too much icing.


icing face-


sweet cheeks actually halted on one of her tantrums to have her picture taken with me-


little rebel going up the slide- at the age of 4, she has decided to live life on the edge!


sweet cheeks cutie skirt is from crewcuts. it was adorable on her and went well with her little "4" shirt from etsy!

**

sweet cheeks asked me personally if i would post this picture on my blog. i was happy to do so. i am pretty impressed with her letter writing these days. she actually makes small letters, no longer those huge toddler sized ones! writing letters and coloring (as this picture shows) is usually what her pictures look like. she just loves to write. we need to work on the "N" as it is usually backwards, but still really great for a 4 yo. she even gets a few lower case letters in there now.



she also did this one for me on my lunch bag-