Just a little prayer

Today I put my faith in God to carry me through adversity, grant me patience, and open my eyes to the blessings in my life.

I pray to not take myself or my responsibilities too seriously, but to make my role as Wife and Mother of paramount importance.

I pray to learn from my mistakes and have the discipline and courage to stand by my convictions.

I pray to appreciate the home, the life, the job, and the family I have been blessed with.

I pray to cherish and treasure every single moment of Frank's and Liliana's childhood.

I pray to find healthy ways to alleviate stress, and to eliminate all unnecessary stress from my life.

Dear Lily,

Liliana Mae, my sweet baby girl, you are one year old today!  That means you are no longer a baby (but you will always be MY baby!).  You are getting so big, and yet in so many ways you are still so small and dainty.  You are an absolute joy most of the time.  You are easygoing, happy, and sweet.  But when you are not happy, you let everyone know it!  This is usually when you are tired or hungry, or when your brother keeps bothering you.  I always wanted a baby girl, and God truly blessed our family when he chose us for you.  I am so excited for the years to come, and the adventures we will share.  I have decorated your nursery with images of Paris, and I cannot wait to take you there.  I can't wait to show you the world and teach you that you can be anything you want to be.

You are not in a rush to get big and grow up like your big brother was.  You are taking your sweet time to learn new things.  Your new skill is pointing, and you point to things that you want.  You are mobile, and you do a hybrid scoot/crawl maneuver to get where you want to go.  You have absolutely no interest in standing or walking yet.  You are perfectly happy sitting, rolling, and scooting around.  You do things on your own time, and you find pleasure in the simple joys in life.  I believe you are going to be our free spirit, our dreamer, and I love that about you.  I cannot wait to see what you become when you grow up.

You are the perfect piece to our family puzzle, a true beauty, and a sweet soul.  I am so blessed to be your mom, and I love you all the way to the moon and back.  Happy first birthday baby girl!  Love, Mommy

Princess Liliana's 1st Birthday Party!

Tomorrow, my baby girl turns 1!!! I cannot believe it.  She still seems like such a tiny baby to me, which makes it even harder to believe.  We celebrated Lily's birthday on June 1 with a small brunch party at our house. I think her favorite part was the balloons and wrapping paper!  Kiersten made a bunch of her beautiful party decorations, which I really appreciated.  She wasn't too sure about the cake, but she did eat a few handfuls of icing.  We had a wonderful time celebrating with family and friends, and Lily got a lot of fun new toys and beautiful clothes.

Here are some pictures from Lily's BIG first birthday party!

Showering Baby Rylie

Two weekends ago, Ashlee, Kristin, Gina, and I hosted a shower for my sister and baby Rylie!  We decided to do Allison's baby shower and Liliana's birthday party the same weekend to make it easy on our families, only having to come to Dallas for one weekend.  The morning of the shower was super hectic trying to get everything ready and also get the house in order for showings.  I decided to take Lily to the shower with me, and it was a horrible plan.  She did not nap in the car on the way, so she was exhausted and miserable the entire shower, and she wouldn't let anyone hold her except for me.  It sucked because I felt like I missed a lot of the shower, but Allison had a great time and it was really nice to see all her friends and celebrate baby Rylie! She got a ton of cute stuff!  Our aunt Barbara and cousin Kim flew to Dallas for the shower, which was super nice.  Kim had never been to Dallas or even met my kids before, so it was so great for her to come out.

I am so, so, so excited for my sister to have a baby and to become an aunt!  Only 9 more weeks!

Here are some pictures from the shower:

Frank's "loves" age 3.5

This list is pretty accurate, although there are a few omissions and one very random entry (snake?!).  Of  course, Mommy is #1.

Girls' weekend and mystery virus = 106 fever!

Last weekend a bunch of my friends from Houston (and one from Midland) came up to Dallas to spend the weekend relaxing and lounging by the pool at the Gaylord in Grapevine.  I had been really looking forward to this weekend for a long time, and I was so excited about getting away for a couple of days.  Friday morning, Liliana woke up with a slight fever.  She has gotten two teeth this week, so I figured it was just probably due to teething.  Her fever got higher and higher all day, and by 2:00 p.m. it was up to 103.8.  She also threw up a couple of times, but otherwise she had no other symptoms.  I came home from work early and took her up to the doctor around 4:00 p.m.  By that time, her fever had increased to 105.2  The doctor was very concerned, especially given her recent bout with pneumonia, and she had us go next door to the hospital for a chest x-ray.  I was at the doctor alone with both kids, and poor Frankie had to watch his little sister get the chest x-ray.  He was trying so hard to be brave, but he was very scared of all of the machines.  The doctor saw some "streaking" on the xray and gave Lily an antibiotic shot and sent us home with a prescription for antibiotics.  She told us to call her back in the morning and bring Lily in if her fever was above 102.  When we finally got home, Lily was tired, but she drank her entire bottle and went right to sleep.  I was really torn about whether I should go meet my friends or stay home with Lily.  I decided to go ahead and go meet them for dinner, but told Frank to keep me updated.  I was only about 15 minutes from our house, so it was nice knowing I was only a short ride away if anything happened.  I had a lot of fun with my friends, but a part of me felt like a horrible mother for leaving my sick baby to go out and have fun.

Friday night was filled with good food, great wine, and fantastic company.  We played a hilarious game and drank waytoo much.  It was a nice stress relief, but I woke up feeling horrible about not being with Lily.  She had no fever when she woke up, but by mid-day it was back up to 104.5.  At this point, I told Frank I would come home, but he said he was fine and told me to stay and have fun with my friends.  I could not stop worrying about Lily, and I probably should have just gone home at that point, but I stayed.  We had a nice day hanging out at the pool and a nice dinner out, but my mind was somewhere else and I was not able to relax and have fun like I had hoped.  I ended up leaving super early Sunday morning to go home.  We had an open house on Sunday, so we went to Southlake for lunch and to look at some houses.  Lily felt warm at lunch, and she was acting very fussy, so I decided to take her to urgent care.  In triage, they took her temperature and it was 106.2!!  The nurse immediately sent us to another pediatric urgent care center about a mile down the road.  Luckily, it was not busy at all, and they were able to see us right away and get to the bottom of what was causing this super high fever.  They took blood work, tested her urine, took another chest x-ray, and tested for strep and the flu.  Everything was negative.  The blood work showed that this was a virus and not bacterial, so we were just going to have to wait it out.  Her fever came back down to normal with medicine, and (thank god) it never went back up over 101.  Today, she is completely fine!  But big brother is now sick with a fever and vomiting.  I am praying that Frank and I are not next in line.

Liliana - 11 months!

Little miss is 11 months old, which means she will be ONE in just a few short weeks.  Her big birthday bash is only two weeks away, which is mind-blowing.  Mommy needs to get to work on the planning!  Thankfully I have Kiersten to help me!!  At 11 months, Lily is...

-still in size 3 diapers and size 6-12 month clothes.  She has TINY feet!  I went to buy her a couple of pairs of shoes from Nordstrom last week, and according to her age, she should be in size 4.  I took one look at that size and knew it was wayyy too big.  She is either a size 1 or size 2 depending on the brand.  It is crazy!  I think she is going to have tiny feet like her Nana.

-mobile...but still not crawling.  She can scoot backwards and she can roll around and scoot on her bottom.  She will lunge forward into a crawl position, but she has not quite put it all together yet.

-pulling up!  We had to lower her crib.  But she still doesn't love to stand and does not seem interested at all in learning how to walk.

--talks a lot, but really only says da-da consistently.  She says mama when she is sad, and she babbles na-na-na a lot.

-Baby girl recently got a new tooth and is now up to five teeth!  She is eating like a champ, almost exclusively table food now, and she loves spaghetti, quesadillas, and fruit.

-So beautiful.  So sweet and full of joy.  And HEALTHY!  We have had no health issues since she got her tubes.  Wahoo!   Let's hope that we can keep this streak going.

We love you so much baby girl!!!!