Preschool!

 My sassy four year old is off to her second year of preschool!  At a new school with new friends and lots of excitement.  I am way off my game and forgot to take that first day of school pic, aside from the picture above.  whoops.  Also note the exact same outfit in all of these. She is obsessed with this combo and I pick my battles, so it's whatever she wants when it comes to clothes.  She LOVES school.  Loves Ms. Teressa, loves her friends, and loves to do her homework.  I'm a little in love with her.

Ivy turns {THREE!}

This spirited, spunky, spoiled chick is THREE!

The calendar in my head was off, so when Clint and I realized it was her birthday the day had already begun.  Whoops.  Thankfully, she's three and didn't recognize that we had forgotten to play anything or do anything for her.  We ended up baking brownies together and playing.  Grandma Shari made her an awesome cake the week earlier, so technically we just celebrated in advance.  wink, wink.

We love this girl.  This picture sure melted me.

 Making her own birthday brownies cuz mom's a slug and forgot!

 Dear Ivy, please stop growing.  Stay little and push strollers and carry babies for forever.

 Aside from turning three, this is what's up with Miss Ivy lately.

We are potty training and it went great for about a month.  And then she got so corked up she refused to poop for basically a month.  Lots of enema's and swear words later, we are back in diapers on a full Myra lax diet trying to get her bowel situation under control.  It's been a nightmare.  With the medicine, she still tries to hold her poop and ends up sharting all over her undies ten times a day.  It's been so hard on both of us.  She also refuses to sleep alone.  She'll sleep on me or next to me all day and night without flinching, but the second I'm gone, she's awake.  It's so crazy.  I've never dealt with this before and I so do not appreciate it.

 

I kind of love that we get to nap and sleep together so much.  I never did this with my other kids (for good reason!) and always had other babies to worry about.  Since Ivy is my last, I've been able to just lay with her and be ok with it.  It's pretty awesome.

Playing at the park and she tooted/pooped everywhere.  So we tossed her clothes in the trash and used a piece of trash to sit on on the way home.  Roar.

Charlotte is SEVEN!

 My little Charlotte girl is SEVEN!

The older my girls get, the more I wish time would just slow down.  Not that I'm not excited for the upcoming years, but I feel like I'm just not ready to say goodbye to these carefree, easy-to-please, ice-cream-fixes-everything- type of years.  You know?

We do parties every other year for birthdays, and this year was a no-party year.  Charlotte got to choose two friends to take out to do something fun and her immediate response to who she wanted to take was "Kate and Kinsey!"  I love that.  I'm so glad my girls have many of their cousins close by.  She chose to play at Makutah's Island, eat at Barro's pizza, and have a sleep over.  Easy peasy.  It was wonderful and she had so much fun.  I love this kid.

 We did our annual birthday celebration at grandma Shari's with another awesome cake.

 When I asked her what kind of treat she wanted me to take to her classmates at school on her birthday, she asked for fresh fruit.  HA!  

And for her daddy daughter date this year, she chose to get ribs at Texas Roadhouse and picked out some jewelry at Toys R Us.  She is our little prim-a-donna and I love every second of it.

{First day of SCHOOL}

Year two at ALA for these beauties.  They still hate the uniforms (as do I...), but we are happy with the school and are anxious for another great year!  Sage is going to Ms. Tatge's class in 3rd grade, and Charlotte has Mrs. Maxwell for 2nd.  They each have a few friends from last year in their classes, so they are both excited!  As always, I'm a ball of nerves the first few days of school thinking about them being away from me.  But they always come home so happy.  

Back to School Father's Blessings~

 I've never had a summer where I honestly dreaded school starting again.  But man, this was the year.  The girls got along so well this summer.  We didn't travel, but we swam, we played, we slept in, we just enjoyed being home.  I truly hated to see them go back to school.  We prepped for our new school year with our annual father's blessings.  Oldest to youngest, and man it was special.  I felt all the feelings and am so grateful for my amazing man and my amazing girls.