God Gave Me Today.

To my sweet girl right before your sister is born,

God gave me today.

He gave me a day to soak you all up. To spend every second of the day playing with you and laughing with you. This has been a hard year. And as the year has gone on, I have been able to spend less and less time with you because of all the pain I have been in during this pregnancy and from resting so much trying to make sure that your sister did not come too early.

But, God gave me today. I woke up this morning in so very little pain. Something that hasn't happened in months. I slept well last night. Something that hasn't happened in weeks. When I woke up this morning, I knew I could actually do things. I felt it. I knew that today I was going to get a day to enjoy spending time with you.

We had so much fun together today, Lilly Belle. I took you grocery shopping at Trader Joe's and to the bank. I got to pick you up to put you in and out of your car seat multiple times today. I held you a few times today. I haven't been able to pick you up in months. You are getting so heavy. Or my arms are just that much weaker. Probably a little of both. I let you push a little cart at Trader Joe's and you loved getting to help me shop. You always love shopping there with me.

We sang in the car. I haven't driven out of the Celebration area in months. If we go anywhere further, Daddy is driving. It usually really hurts me to drive because of the muscles I have to use to move my foot from the gas to the brake. It didn't hurt today. So, we sang in the car. We sang loud. We sang your favorite songs, "Uptown Funk" and "Don't Let Me Down". We danced and sang at the top of our lungs. And laughed.

When we got home you painted pumpkins. I haven't given you very many activities to do in the past few weeks because walking around our home to get things all set up for you to do school or crafts just has hurt too much, or I'd start having contractions just walking around. Not today. No pain. No contractions. You loved being able to paint.

You told me you weren't tired and didn't want to take a nap. So I let you stay up. You had about 30 minutes of quiet time playing in your room and then I decided I just wanted to keep up with our fun day.

We went out...again! We delivered two Usborne packages to friends in town and then I took you to the park! I don't remember the last time I was at the park with you. I pushed you on the swings and caught you at the bottom of the slide. You ran around just laughing and laughing. I can hear your belly laugh still as I pushed you on the swings. It was the best.

We came home and since it was just 4:45pm, I decided we still had time for fun. So, we baked some cookies together. You wore your apron and your chef's hat and we baked. I let you do it all. I snuck you raisins and chocolate chips teasing you that you better not eat them which you thought was hilarious. More laughing. I still had no pain. God gave this time to us today, Lilly Belle. After we were done baking I thought we might as well make a homemade pizza together, I mean, you already had your apron and chef's hat on, so why not?!

We all ate dinner as a family and you were thrilled when Daddy commented that whoever put on the cheese and pepperoni made his favorite part of the whole pizza! You told him that he can be your best friend too and you got down and ran over and hugged him.

After dinner, I was still in no pain, so we took Cogsy and the 4 of us went on a walk to get the mail. Our mailbox is at the other side of the apartment complex so usually you and Daddy go alone. Well, you and Daddy always go alone. Tonight...I went with you. You were so happy.

We came home and Daddy did bath time while I took just a few minutes to sit down. Still no pain, but my legs were getting really swollen. I am definitely not use to moving this much or being outside this much in the heat. I went in to wash your hair and then... it was time for bed.

You usually put up such a fight at bedtime lately. You get crazy or you get fussy or you cry or come out with random excuses 4 or 5 times before usually an hour (sometimes more) finally going to sleep. You don't let me sing to you anymore. You like your stories, hugs and kisses, but do NOT like when I sing to you and rock with you. You haven't for like the past year and it made me so sad for the longest time. Lately, I haven't even really thought about it because it's just not part of our routine anymore. Tonight though, you snuggled up with Daddy as he read you one of your new books. You gave him the best goodnight hug and whispered in his ear, "you are my prince, Daddy." And he told you that you are his princess. He hugged you tighter and gave me a smile that told me it meant everything to him. Then he told he loved you and said goodnight and you came to sit on my lap in the glider. You snuggled up and I read you, "The River." And then you asked for another book so I read your new lift-the-flap book about Space. You never complained. You never got frustrated. You just snuggled in and let me hold you tight as I read to you. Usually while we ready lately you get silly and want to read to us with made up words or you flip the pages all around and go crazy. Not tonight. You just snuggled in.

When I was done reading, you just sat there all snuggled up in my arms. I asked you if I could sing to you. You said, "please sing me a song from Wicked." (You are a little obsessed with witches, Hocus Pocus, and Wicked right now) So I sang you, "For Good," which I used to sing to you every night. You didn't budge. You let me hold you so close and you were just all curled up and snuggled. Your hair was still so wet from your bath and I soaked up the smell of your baby shampoo that we still use on you. You continued to want me to sing to you. I sang "I See the Light," "Do Re Mi," and then I thought for sure you'd want to be done listening, but you just curled in tighter. I asked if I could sing you the song I sang when you were a baby and that my Daddy sang to me. You were sucking your fingers so you nodded yes. I sang you, "Sunshine on My Shoulders." As I was singing, Daddy walked in, and gave me a look that told me he totally understood what was happening. He whispered "I love you. Soak this up," to me, and I cried quietly as I sang you the rest of the song. When I finished singing, I looked down, and you were sound asleep. I sat there with you for about 20 more minutes just rocking you and thinking about how I cannot imagine you not being our only baby. You have not fallen asleep in my arms in, well, I don't even remember the last time. Daddy came back in to see you sleeping and saw that I was resting my head on yours with tears rolling down my cheeks. He rubbed my arm and told me how much he loved me and reassured me that it is all going to be okay. That you are still my baby and always will be my baby...

For the past 3 years and almost 3 months, it has just been the 3 of us. We're such a team. And now, your sweet baby sister is going to be born any day and everything is going to change. I know it is only going to change for the better and we are all beyond excited, but still, it is going to change and sometimes lately, I get sad thinking about you not being the baby anymore. And since I've been in so much pain for so long both mentally and physically, sometimes I feel like I have lost even more time with you. It crushes me.

But...God gave me today.

He gave me you. I have missed you so much, Lilly Belle, but today, God gave me you. He gave me a day to soak up every moment with you. I'm not sure if I will wake up tomorrow and have all my pain back. I don't imagine that this will last. If it does, then that is truly the most incredible gift. The gift of just a little more time just the two of us. Today was such a gift. I love you, my Lilly Belle. You'll always be my little best friend. Always!

Love,

Mommy

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Thank you, God, for such a beautiful day. Thank you for letting it end the way it did, with my sweet girl sleeping in my arms. Thank you for giving me the strength to pick her up as she slept and lay her down and tuck her into bed. Thank you. I will never, ever forget this day or night. Ever. I enjoyed every. single. second. Thank you.

Lilly Belle Does Preschool | Good Night, Gorilla Unit

We were really excited to start the Simply Learning Kids Good Night, Gorilla unit with Lilly Belle. Living next door to Walt Disney World Resort, we have a lot of learning opportunities and resources for her. We are Disney Annual PassHolders and visit Walt Disney World Resort all the time! When we saw this book on our literature unit list, we knew we wanted to do a lot at Disney's Animal Kingdom to teach her more about Africa and the animals who live there. Our plans were changed a bit with really bad storms and using some of our time to babysit for our friend's kids on Labor Day. But, we still had a lot of fun with the unit and she learned a lot!!

Key Process Art. Lilly Belle was given some old keys and paint and was told she could do whatever she wanted with them to make art. Once she realized she could use the end of the keys to scrap the paint, she really enjoyed this. Before then, it frustrated her a bit.

We had a busy morning with her 3 year old appointment and in the top right picture she told me, "I. Am. Exhausted!" and then lay on the table like this...

I made her some really neat playdough using Jell-O. She has played with it a lot over the past two weeks! We talked a lot about the 7 continents and found a really cute little kids rap on YouTube and she can now tell you all 7 continents and where they are. We keep hearing her singing it to herself at night while laying in bed, it's adorable.

Lilly Belle loved this! I "hid" her alphabet flash cards around the house and then we closed all the blinds and turned off the lights. We got her a flashlight and she had so much fun going around the house to find each of the letters. She wasn't allowed to remove the letter until she told us the letter or asked us what it was and repeated it for us. We played this a couple times this week and I noticed her remembering more and more letters. She can now tell us most of their sounds as well.

We made her a keychain filled with old keys and then we made some animal cages for her TOOB safari animals. She really enjoyed putting them to bed in their cages and locking them up. She has continued to play with the keys since we gave these to her. She loves dramatic play! She is so good at it too. Her imagination is beautiful.

This craft was adorable. She loved making the gorillas and G was a letter she has had a hard time remembering so I was glad to have it as our letter of the week for her.

I have started adding a lot of educational YouTube videos to our daily learning. With my limited activity, we unfortunately watch more TV than we normally do. Usually we try to limit her to 1 hour/day and now sadly sometimes we have the TV on for 2 or 3 hours/day. It's never her jus sitting staring at it, except a bit in the morning, but I love knowing that what is on is educational and that she is engaged and learning. She loved playing her drum along with these African Drummers and Dancers! Before our unit I spend a lot of time searching YouTube for videos that I think she will learn from and enjoy.

Our time together at our preschool CO-OP, Bloom, has been interesting with her. She is always so used to me being the one leading the group for really all of our activities together. I have always been her dance teacher. I was the owner of FIT4MOM here and taught 95% of the Stroller Strides classes she attended. And now, I am the owner,  director and lead teacher at Bloom, her preschool. For her, she wants to lead too. Which is beautiful and amazing in all of it's own ways, but I really would love for her to just be a kid and PLAY and participate. Her favorite thing to do during school is...her own thing. When I am leading circle time, she is off exploring or re-organizing our "classroom" to her own liking before the kids get to begin playing. I am hoping that as time goes on that she will begin to participate more and more. My mom asked her after school, "how was your day at school?" Her reply was, "I was good. I did whatever I wanted to do." Yep...true statement. Not necessarily to my liking. I'm okay with her exploring and playing, of course, but I also want her to learn to listen and follow directions when it is appropriate to do so. She just turned 3...I probably need to cut her some slack ;)

This flashlight glitter craft irritated her. The glue wasn't squeezing from the bottle very well and the glitter was slow to come out of the shaker...I pretty much ended up completing this one for her. She LOVED the silly eyes matching activity though!! She also really likes to do her Stamp It, Poke It, Write It worksheets.

Seeing all of her art and worksheets displayed on her door makes us all so proud and happy. She really loves to just stand in front of her door and look at her work or to show anyone who comes over. A new activity that she has really begun to enjoy is drawing! She draws on her doodle board almost every night while trying to fall asleep. It is her favorite quiet time activity. She will sit in her room just belly laughing and cracking herself up at her drawings! Every now and then, one will just be too funny to not share with Mommy & Daddy so she'll run out to ask us to see. I take pictures of them when I can because they are definitely pretty funny! I love it!

She has loved to practice cutting. She is really good with a scissors and enjoys using them. She rocked this cutting and sorting activity out. Sometimes she will get a bit bored with our worksheets and activities so I have to work at adding some challenges to them for her. Another fun activity we did was taking her little safari animals and making animal tracks with them and then giving them all a bath. She loved the bath part! She sat there giving her animals a bath for a good 30 minutes.

 I was blown away when we did her Letter Sound Clip Cards this week! I did NOT know that she knew her letter sounds. I would ask her "What letter does Key start with?" and she would just put that clip right on and give me a look like..."mom...really?" She did them all in less than 5 minutes and got them all correct without hesitation. We have not pushed reading or her letters really because I feel it is so important that it is something she does in her own time (especially because she JUST turned 3), but she is off to a great start. It's fun to see her enjoy it so much lately.

I made her a little cutting center because she has enjoyed practicing her cutting skills so much. She has construction paper with different lines, some paper straws, and foam with different designs. I will always change these up for her a bit. When she's in the right mood, she really likes having quiet time with this activity.

One of her favorite things is when Matt does school with her. He is now working from home full-time, but is at his computer with his headphones on for most of the day. Of course she will run up to him to show him things or ask him questions and he helps us as much as he can, because that is why he's working from home, but she craves his attention when he's done working for the day. They baked a cake together to practice math. Math is going to be his thing with her because it's not what I am best at, but he is very good at it. She loves math time with Daddy.

Even on the weekends she wants to do school and Matt and I have to get really creative coming up with new activities for her. We are homebound a lot lately because of my current pregnancy limitations so we do a LOT of school time. Which she loves. We made a little science experiment for her by adding vinegar and food coloring to glasses and then putting popsicle sticks and q-tips inside to see if the color would dye them. She loved it!! We kept them there all weekend and she loved going to check on them throughout the day.

We took a family outing to Animal Kingdom for a few hours. We had her play the drums in Africa, and then spent a LOT of time at Rafiki's Planet Watch. While we were there she met Rafiki, Chip & Dale, saw a snake show as well as a parrot show. She was very interested in the parrot and even stayed after the show to ask the trainer some questions that she came up with. Her big one was "who teaches the parrots how to fly?" And then, "How come this parrot's mommy did not teach him how to fly?" We were probably in there for an hour just learning. I love RPW!

Here she is touching one of the parrot's feathers. She talked about the parrot for the rest of the weekend. We also then took her to see Festival of the Lion King. She was incredibly sad because we were sitting in the front (I'm in my wheelchair) but was not chosen to dance around with the kids in the parade. There were lots...and lots of tears!

We've been sneaking in a few apple activities here and there too as we are now in September.

She half loved this project and half didn't care at all. I think it overwhelmed her a bit to think she had to sit there and cover the entire continent with noodles. I helped her a lot to fill it up and then she was cool with it.

The cutting activity turned into a HUGE hit! She was only suppose to cut the animals out of their strips of paper. She then wanted to sort them, so she put them all into piles by match. She then wanted to count them all so we made them into a graph. She then wanted to glue them, so I got her a blank book and we turned it into a counting book! She loved it and we loved watching how excited she was to learn and the hard work she was putting into this project.

Here she is at our 2nd week of Bloom for this unit. In the top left photo she was doing our Group Cooperative activity for this month which is to take pool noodles, find the matching poms, and push them with the noodle to their matching colored mat. She much prefers to pick up as many as she can of  the colors and bring them over to the mat. One of the sensory bins for this month is water beads with some safari animals and scoopers and she could sit her for the entire 30 minutes of center time and be perfectly happy. We really need to buy her some for here at home!

The highlight of school this week were the two police officers who visited us. Lilly Belle was not shy at all and loved telling them as much as she could possibly think to tell them. Which included telling them that when she turns 4 she will be a Jedi, that she had a Cinderella birthday, that her Uncle Clint is a detective, and that she does NOT like to ride her scooter down hills!

Matt thinks of some fun things to do with her. He's good at going into our homeschool drawers, finding something, and making a fun activity for her. They sat there tracing the rug design with the beads for a while and then played some serious living room basketball together after work one day.

Lilly Belle did such a good job at her 3-Part Cards! She did this in about 5 minutes and was a little bored with it so I asked her to tell me what letter the all started with as well and not just have her matching them all.

A couple times this week I failed a bit at prepping our curriculum and having it ready for her, or she did not want to do what was planned so I got out our file folder box that I worked on all summer filling with busy activities for her. She liked both this scarecrow match file folder game as well as this finish the pattern activity. The playdough has continued to be a hit and I've tried to find as many different ways as I can to have her play with it. She sat on the kitchen table playing with playdough as she watched a 45-minute documentary about climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro.

It was another amazing 2 weeks of school with her. We are really loving doing preschool at home with her. She is learning so much! I am so thankful to have this time with her.

Lanese, Party of Four

There has been a new discussion in this house...one that I didn't think would happen for years and years. It is looking like our family will be a family of four, instead of having four children. My pregnancy with Lucy has been extremely difficult and it has taken quite a toll on me and on our family. From early hemorrhaging to my severe Symphysis Pubic Dysfunction, it has not been an easy time. I went from being an extremely active and independent person and a mom who always had Lilly Belle out and on the go, to being about 85% housebound and reliable on Matt. I haven't slept in weeks which doesn't help. I have had few moments where I have been able to just enjoy being pregnant. And add on top of all of that our miscarriage that happened right before becoming pregnant with Lucy.

...At this point, we are just counting our blessings and thanking God that we have an incredible little girl and another about to join us. I have had my moments the past few days with lots of tears and grieving for the family I had always dreamt of; the one with 4 little kids running all around. But when I am in a place of calm and am able to really see things clearly, being a family of four doesn't look so bad either... It is actually a lot more realistic for OUR family.

So instead of looking at this in a negative light, I have decided to find the fun and joy that will come to our family from Lucy being our "baby". Matt and I have talked a lot about travel and all the places that will be a lot more manageable for our family to go together with it just being four of us. Top of my list right now is a California vacation that includes San Francisco and Disneyland. I also have my heart set on another Disney Cruise, a trip to Hawaii (because we've never been), and big dreams of a European vacation. I have really fun visions in my head of taking long weekends with my girls up to New York City every year and making it a tradition together before Christmas when we could shop and see tons of Broadway shows together. And of course, many more visits to Seattle and Wisconsin to see our families!

I see our girls getting to be in so many more activities. Lilly Belle is begging to go to dance where she can wear tap shoes and I'd love to get her in some acting and piano lessons as well. Before we know it she will be old enough for soccer, too! When Lucy is born I cannot wait to get her into Kindermusik classes like I did with Lilly Belle and I plan on doing some Mommy & Me Yoga with her too. Our girls will have so many more opportunities with us only having to pay for two of them instead of four.

Dreams of owning a home that we can all fit in comfortably seem a lot more reasonable with visions of a family of four instead of a family of six.

We can help the girls pay for college and with two girls... that's two weddings one day. I'd love to be able to give them the weddings of their dreams. Seems a lot more reasonable with two kids than four.

I have literally never in my life wanted only two kids. I have never, ever been the mom that says, "I want two kids." Never. It has literally never even crossed my mind. I've never even had the thought or idea. I've never pictured it before, dreamt of it before, or hoped for it before. But, as pregnancy taught me with Lilly Belle and is now really teaching me with Lucy...I am not always the one in control. Some things I really have to leave to God. And he is practically screaming at me that my body cannot do this again...

For some reason, the only time I feel like crying about it is thinking of family pictures. When I see our family pictures in my mind, I see four little beautiful children with their arms around our legs, and now that vision is changed to two and it's just a lot to take in.

Matt loves the idea of two. He always has. So for him, this isn't so difficult. The only difficult part for him is seeing me so heartbroken knowing this is it. And what's hard for me is seeing him so okay with it. We started our family pretty early even though we weren't in the best of situations financially. But we did that because we planned on having a big family and didn't want them all so close together. So now here I am at 28 years old, still so young, and my body is making the decision for me that I will be done having children. That's a lot to take in.

Things could still definitely change in a few years. I know enough to not make crazy decisions at 30 weeks pregnant. It's not like we're going to go to the doctor after she's born to make this a permanent decision, but... as of now, it is looking like this is it for us. And, there is a lot of beauty in it. It just would have been a lot easier if the decision wasn't being made for me and feeling so out of control.

Tonight Matt had tears in his eyes as he sat with me as I cried and cried on our couch about all of this. But he just said, "I just want my wife back," because I have not been myself for almost a year now. I've been in a dark place. Our miscarriage was in December 2015 and since then I have not been the same. Not by choice, but just by circumstance. I am in constant pain and am forever exhausted because I cannot sleep. It is 2:55am right now and I've been up wide awake since 1:15am. I went to bed at 11pm. I don't feel an ounce of tired right now, but in just 4 hours, it will be time to start the day. I'm just not handling it all so well. I miss Matt too. I miss Lilly Belle. I am not able to pick her up and can barely get down to hug her and hold her. The two of them are my world. And not too long from now, Lucy will join our team. That's what Lilly Belle calls us; a team.

I could write all night, but I'll end on this. I found this quote on Pinterest:

"The only thing making you unhappy are your own thoughts. Change them."

Life will be beautiful with our two precious little girls. Lilly Belle already tells us practically everyday that Lucy is her best friend. I really hope so. These two little girls are a gift to one another. And they are for sure our biggest blessings!

Now to rest and soak up Lucy moving all around right now and to try to fall asleep again...

The Joys of Homeschool

A couple nights ago, Matt was worrying about me. I was taking my nightly bath (the only time I'm not in pain) and he came in and asked me out of no where, "What makes you happy right now?" My immediate response was, "homeschooling Lilly Belle."

For the past 7 years I have owned a business (or multiple). I still currently own Main Street Dance my preschool dance program. I am also the Director of the preschool co-op I created this year, Bloom. But for the first time in Lilly Belle's life, my biggest time focus is HER. That makes my heart so incredibly happy! Main Street Dance is for her. Yes, I love teaching children. I always have and always will, but I continued to teach one class/week for the time being because she gets to go to dance class every Friday afternoon with her friends. Bloom was created 100% because of her. I wanted her to have a preschool to go to this year but we feel very strongly about homeschooling her right now as well. We wanted her to still get the social aspect of school, but in a safe and controlled environment - so...I created Bloom. It is now the highlight of our week and even though we have only just finished our third week together, there are new friendships growing and it is very exciting.

With owning FIT4MOM, so many of her friends are still babies and toddlers. She was always the oldest (or close to it). We always joke about how it must be sad for her that none of her friends can talk back to her ;) Does she love and adore her baby and toddler friends? YES. 100% yes. She is like the big sister. But I knew she was craving more. She loves being with kids her age and loves even more to be with kids who are even a bit older sometimes. She now gets that with dance class and Bloom each week.

I have loved getting to spend so much quality time with her. Does it stink that I'm in so much pain during the day? Yes. But I know that is temporary and this new life we have together is not. This is our lifestyle now. I get to be home with my girls literally 24/7. The amount of time it takes to prep things for Bloom can easily be done during naptime or when she is in bed. And, I've been teaching dance for so long (over 15 years) that I don't lesson plan anymore - I just head to class and teach. I feel out the kids that day and do what works.

My main focus has been homeschool with Lilly Belle. She is loving it. She asks for school all day long. When I run out of activities for the day, she begs for me to think of something else we can do together. Now that we have officially started our school year following the Simply Learning Kids curriculum, our days are so much more structured and relaxed. I can plan for 2 weeks at a time and feel so prepared for what the next day will look like. She doesn't do well when she is bored. Sound familiar? She loves learning and working on new things.

Every night before I put her to bed, I prep school for the next day. I set it all up on our buffet, which serves as our school storage for 75% of our school supplies. I find that our school day goes so much smoother when I'm not rummaging around in between activities trying to set up the next one for her. If I can keep things flowing one activity into the next, she does so well. She learns more and is a lot more focused. We pause in between activities only to clean up and put away what we were working on and grab the next activity in our plans.

We always start with circle time together. I sing songs to her, show her the calendar, read her our curriculum story, talk about our bible verse, and maybe one or two more things while sitting in the living room. Then we get up to do our curriculum activities together. After those, we read another story or two that goes along with our curriculum and we watch some educational YouTube videos about the subject we are working on. I've also been trying to get her to do some yoga, but it hasn't been working out to well with her broken clavicle right now. That part will have to wait...

We usually do school for 60-90 minutes in the morning and then I reset our buffet with new activities while she is napping and then we do school for sometimes 2 hours+ after she wakes up again. The afternoon time is usually things like play dough, busy bag type activities, playing games together, painting at her easel, or I make up little learning games for her to play - like rolling a dice and having her jump that many times.

I can't really take her out anywhere right now and she can't go to play at a park or anything too active because of her clavicle, so this has been working out so well for us right now. We are really loving our time together. We were watching The Jungle Book this afternoon and she asked me what happened to his mommy. I told her that he didn't have a mommy and she replied, "That's sad. I wish he had a good mommy like I do." My heart melted. I have had so much mommy guilt with not being able to really move and not having as much patience as I usually do, but she still thinks I'm a good mommy...

So when Matt asked me what makes me happy...it was an easy answer. Getting to be home with Lilly Belle. And even better, getting to teach her and watch her learn...and grow with her. I am so thankful that we are in a place that I get to be with her as much as I am; that I am finally a stay-at-home mommy. That makes me happy...

This stage of motherhood is a season. I don't know how long we will homeschool her. Right now, we know that it will be for sure for this year and next. We are about 75% sure we will homeschool the girls through elementary school, and about 50% sure we will always homeschool them. We don't know what the future holds, but for right now - this is working so well for our family, and my heart is full.

Lilly Belle Does Preschool | Little Blue Truck Unit

We have officially started homeschooling Lilly Belle and it is for real the best thing ever. I love every second of getting to watch her learn and grow. I feel really thankful that we are in a position right now that I am able to stay home with her to teach her and that together we can be the main influences in her life. She is learning so much more than what is just in her curriculum. She asks to do school all day long. We are constantly playing, reading, and learning together as a family and we are all really enjoying it.

We are following the Simply Learning curriculum and it has been such a blessing for us; especially in our first year of homeschooling when we were not 100% sure how we wanted to go about building her curriculum ourselves. We decided on Simply Learning for many reasons, but the main reasons being that it is created by a mom who has the same values and goals for her girls as we do. It is a modern literature based curriculum meaning that we are learning all subjects surrounding a different book each unit. She has everything there for us from worksheets and activities, to science experiments and crafts to enjoy together. From there Matt and I are going to add even more to the curriculum for Lilly Belle since she has been begging to do school after she wakes up from nap even though we spend our morning doing school time together. Our afternoons have been when she does the activities that I have created for her. Anything from painting projects to fine motor skills activities. Matt works with her on math a few nights/week. Last night she learned about more Vs less with him as he grabbed a giant handful of stuffed animals from her bucket, and the two of them traded back and forth talking about who had more and who had less. He's good at making it a game for her. Lilly Belle and Matt also started a new tradition this week. Each night he is reading a chapter out of the "Who Was" series to her. She chose Who Was Walt Disney as her first book telling us that it says her name on the cover. She knows she is named after Walt Disney's wife, Lillian, so she thinks the cover of the book has her name on it when she sees the word, Disney. The books are definitely above a 3 year old level, but she has shown a real interest and is actually picking things up from each chapter when he asks her about what he read to her.

Our first unit was on the book, Little Blue Truck. Here is a recap of our last two weeks with our first unit together. Our second week was a bit interesting as Lilly Belle broke her Clavicle on Sunday morning and then got pink eye followed by a sinus-type infection that has resulted in fevers as high as 105.2 degrees all week. She has still asked to do school, but for the first few days of the week we did not follow the curriculum, we just did what she was in the mood to do.

We made Ooblick for the first time as well as "mud" this week. She really loved playing with both.

Lilly Belle has been extremely interested in drawing people lately. They get pretty detailed and it's been so much fun watching her drawings get better and better. She also really liked washing her scooter while I washed our stroller out on the patio. We had a lot of fun cooking together too!

Sometimes we will finish all of our curriculum plans for the day and she'll ask to please do more school so I come up with as much as I can for her. On this particular day she wanted to do an experiment so we talked about color mixing and I let her play with food coloring and water to see the colors change.

We had our first two weeks of our preschool co-op, Bloom. I will write more about this later, but when deciding to homeschool Lilly Belle I could not find a co-op that fit our family so...I created one. And it has turned into quite a beautiful little school! Lilly Belle had to miss week #2 because she had 104.7 fever that morning, but I still went and Matt stayed home with her here. We then did school as a family together that night. She really loves going to school and being with her new friends. I have my fingers crossed that she will get to join in next week. She will most likely have to miss one more week though because I don't want to risk getting anyone sick.

I love watching Matt do school time with her. He teaches her in such a different way than I do and it is really so awesome to watch her learning with her daddy. She gets so excited when he's done working for the day and puts his computer away. She asks him right away if he will do school with her.

The two top pictures below show they worked on some science. They read her Usborne flashlight story learning all about apple trees and then drew an apple tree on her board and asked her to draw where certain things were. She also really liked her habitat matching game that I found in the Dollar Spot at Target a few months ago.

She is starting to be able to recognize her numbers 1-10 now. She knows 1, 2, 3, 4, and 8 every time. The rest she hesitates a bit or guesses. This was the first time she was able to complete a number sequence puzzle alone.

I am so excited about our next literature unit; Good Night, Gorilla. We have some really exciting activities planned for her at Disney's Animal Kingdom and Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge that will tie into the unit for her to be able to experience. That was one of the big reasons we chose to homeschool her instead of send her to preschool. We want her to experience her world and not be stuck behind a desk. I want her to see the world around her and want to learn all day long.

I'll try to do a post with all my lesson plans for the next two weeks for the Good Night, Gorilla unit.

I'm sure I'll have a night or two in my near future where I'll be up all night and have plenty of time to blog...!

Pregnant with Lucy - 28 Weeks and The Truth

I haven't blogged at all about Lucy. I announced we are pregnant again and then stopped there. I write to her often in her journal, but haven't blogged here about her or my pregnancy. That's probably because it has not been all that wonderful. It has actually been a bit of a nightmare.

Week 5: threw out my back - couldn't take any medicine - chiropractor helped a bit

Week 9/10: hemorrhaging - thought we lost our baby again - modified bed rest / no activity until they were gone

Week 14 - Present: severe Symphysis Pubic Dysfunction

I have now been pregnant for 9 months (with a few weeks in between pregnancies) and still have 11.5 weeks to go. It has not been an easy 9 months. I love Lucy so much. I try so hard to soak up all of her kicks and rolls as much as I can because she may have to be our last baby.

We always thought we would for sure have at least 3 kids and maybe 4. I always said for sure 4, Matt always says maybe 4. But 3 was always for sure. I just don't know if I'd be able to do this all over again and that crushes me. I love being a mom. I've wanted to be a mom since I knew I could be a mom. I've dreamt of my family with kids running all around for my whole life. In my dreams though, I could run around with them. I could pick them up. I could walk.  I could move. I could sleep.

Not being able to move without pain is really hard when I have Lilly Belle to take care of as well. The mommy guilt is no joke. It is depressing. I've never felt more sad, alone, and depressed in my life. I have always been very active and have used exercise as my stress relief. I dream about the day when Lucy will be about 6 weeks old and I can go for a run, hell, even a walk, with my girls.

I have a wheelchair so that we can go out and do things as a family. The wheelchair makes me so angry. I lose all freedom when I'm in it. Matt likes to get me out of the house and for us to go to Disney together and will push me all day if I let him, but I cannot stand it. Last week we went to Epcot and I really wanted to go on Soarin'. Matt couldn't go with me because Lilly Belle is not tall enough. Usually if I have to push myself or do something with my wheelchair, I won't go because it makes me feel awkward and I don't like all the stares and how uncomfortable it all feels. We asked the cast member if Matt could push me through the line and then get out of line with Lilly Belle and they said no, I'd have to go alone. I really wanted to ride, and I was sick of not being able to do anything, so I told Matt I'd go try. Well... the entire cue is on carpet... up hill. The cast member sent me through the FastPass line, so there was a LONG line ahead of me with no one there - just open space for a really long time in front and in back of me and...I got stuck. Right there in line, I could not push myself up the hill on carpet. I wasn't strong enough. I felt weak. I felt embarrassed. I felt like I had zero freedom. I cried. Right there in line. I cried. Kids ran past me. A whole family passed me. And then, a man saw I was stuck and said he was pushing me the rest of the way. I asked him to just please turn my chair around so I could wheel myself back but he didn't want me to miss the ride because of the line, so he pushed me the whole-rest-of-the way. It was so kind of him. But all I felt was extreme embarrassment. It was awful. I went on the ride and loved it so much. Afterwards, I got back in my wheelchair and went to start going only to realize... all up hill on carpet again. The man, without asking, came back, told me he was pushing me, and pushed me all the way back to Matt in the waiting area. Matt and I both thanked him so much. Then he walked away and Matt kissed me and told me how proud he was of me for doing that on my own. I cried because I felt so helpless and stuck and powerless.

I miss feeling like myself. I miss feeling powerful and strong. I miss feeling freedom. I miss not being in pain. I wish for like 1 minute of the day I could walk without pain. Just for a minute. I wish I had patience with Lilly Belle like I used to. I wish I didn't lose my temper so much. I never used to yell at her, ever. Lately, I've been losing my cool more than I'd ever have liked. It makes me feel terrible and awful. It's hard to be in constant pain and also keep my patience all day long. I miss not having to think about picking toys up off the ground or if I really want to do that load of laundry because of how much it will hurt afterwards. I wish I didn't sigh and want to cry when she asks me to get up to take her potty... again. It hurts to much to pick her up. I miss not counting my steps around the house to remind myself when I'm taking to many. I wish I could get into bed to do story time with Lilly Belle. I wish I could sleep. It is 2:30am right now. I'm so tired, but it hurts so much when I lay down. Shooting, burning, stabbing pain all day long in my groin, butt, and pubic bone. Every step I take feels like someone is stabbing me in my groin. I can literally feel my pubic bone separated. I can feel there is a gap where there shouldn't be one. Sometimes I cry when it is time to go to bed because I know sleeping is going to hurt so much and that I'm going to be up all night. Sometimes I cry in the morning because I'm so exhausted and in so much pain from sleeping. Sleeping is the most painful thing of all. When my legs are together on my side, even with a pillow between them, it literally feels like my pelvis and pubic bone are being crushed. I lay in bed at night taking deep breaths over and over again until I either fall asleep because I'm just so tired, or like tonight, I get up and just decide I'd rather bet tired and stay up all night than be in that much pain. I can't breath when I lay on my back and my legs get so jumpy when I sleep propped up that it feels like bugs are crawling all over my entire body.

Today was my last grocery shopping trip. I've been able to handle the pain of grocery shopping because I can hold onto the cart. Most days I just decide I'd rather get out of the house and be in pain than be stuck in here. Today was the last day of that. I was in so much pain by the time we got to the checkout that I was literally talking myself through it all: "just finish putting the groceries on the belt, you just have to pay now, you just have to walk to the car, okay now carefully put Lilly Belle into the car, you're almost home..." I got home and told Matt that the only times I'll be leaving the house now are on Wednesday mornings for Lilly Belle's co-op preschool, Friday afternoons when I HAVE to teach my preschool dance class (money is stupid), and then only when Matt can take me out in my wheelchair. That's going to be REALLY hard for Lilly Belle too. She needs to get out of the house just as much as I do or we turn into crazy people.

I am angry because I always imagined really soaking this time up with Lilly Belle before we become a family of 4. I'm finally a stay at home mom. Something I have dreamt of my whole life, and yet...I can't even go to the park with her. I can't pick her up. I feel like I'm losing all this time with her. I already cry every time I think about all the time I missed with her when she was born and I had 8 million things going on. And then all the time I missed with her when we moved here and I had another 8 million things going on. For once, my whole world is just being her mommy and... I'm gone. I'm so far gone. I'm not myself. I'm angry a lot because I'm hurting so much. I'm sad a lot. I'm tired all the time. I'm not the mommy I want to be. It crushes me.

This has been a nightmare.

But then... Lucy will kick me. In the moments when I just want to cry because I'm in pain and so done, I'll feel her move and I'll remember that this is all worth it. I'll picture this amazing baby growing inside of me and wonder what she looks like and wonder what hilarious things she is going to do to make us all laugh. I'll wonder if she'll be quiet and shy or if she's going to be outgoing and talkative. I daydream about holding her and nursing her and how she is going to smell. I get so excited about little things like seeing her in all the cloth diapers we've been stocking up on or watching Lilly Belle help her when she's crying. I think about all the nights I'll GET to be up because I'm in nursing her. In no pain. Just holding my sweet baby girl and rocking her and singing to her and just soaking her all up. In just 11.5 weeks (or maybe less...I won't let it be more) she will be in my arms and all the pain will all be gone. Or, on it's way to being gone. Everyday after she is born there will be less and less pain, until one day, there won't be any pain and I'll be able to walk. Then I'll be able to run... and dance!

I cannot wait to play with Lilly Belle on the playground. I cannot wait to pick her up and swing her around. I can't wait to be able to lay on my side to snuggle up to her when she sleeps with us at night. I can't wait to skip with her and chase her around at Disney again. I cannot wait to hold my girls... both of them... together... at the same time!

I have to remember that I am so lucky that this isn't a forever thing. There are so many people in this world who live with pain all day everyday and it won't go away for them. There are way too many people who need their wheelchairs 24/7 and won't ever get to walk again. I get to walk again. I am lucky for that. My freedom gets to come back. This isn't forever. This is eleven and a half more weeks.

I have to just make it through this. And one day, I'm going to forget how much this hurt and I'll probably do it all over again. Because, at the end of the day... that sweet baby that will be in my arms at the end of this is going to make our lives even better. Right now, I cannot imagine anything being better than being just Lilly Belle's mommy - but I know that we are going to love Lucy just as much. That is so crazy to me. We will have TWO little girls to love with our whole hearts. TWO little girls that we'll look at and want to just burst because we love them so much.

Eleven and a half more weeks and I'll have my Lilly Belle and my Lulu BOTH in my arms! Until then, if I cry or seem like a crazy person... just remember it's because I've probably slept for maybe 2 or 3 hours the night before and I'm in a lot of constant pain. I'm not trying to be crazy or impatient or get frustrated so easily or be extra sensitive. It's just really hard.

I am so incredibly thankful for Matt. I could literally not have ever done this without him. He is there everyday to make sure that I'm as comfortable as I can be. He gets me dressed. He helps me in and out of the shower or bath. He helps me with everything. He is working from home now to help me. He pushes me in my wheelchair in 95 degree FL humidity just so I can get out of the house. He helps me with Lilly Belle. He gets mad at me for getting off the couch when it is something he could easily get for me or do for Lilly Belle. He is literally there for me 24/7. He sometimes even has to pick me up out of bed. He is constantly telling me that I'm his rock. He's told me that now for almost 8 years. Now though... he is mine. I've never felt depressed before in my life. I've had anxiety before, but never depression. He is getting me through this though. He won't let me lose myself. Even in my darkest moments, he makes me feel like I'm special and beautiful and even sometimes a little bit strong again. ...

This is all almost over. I'm going to try to sleep again now. I've got a comforter and a bunch of pillows out here in the living room and I'm going to try to sleep on the couch for a couple hours before Lilly Belle comes out here crying and asking me to "please come back and sleep in the bed..."

It's almost over...

Adventures in Preschool Homeschooling

Wow, I really stink at blogging. I really want to be better about it and spend time on it because I love looking back on old posts. Especially the ones of Lilly Belle.

Lots of changes are going on around here: I am 22 weeks pregnant with our daughter, Lucy. I am now a Stay at Home Mom. I am just teaching my dance classes 2 hours/week. We sold FIT4MOM - more specifically, are in the process of selling. We have decided to homeschool Lilly Belle for preschool this year. I created a preschool co-op called, Bloom that now has almost 50 moms signed up in our FB group. My PSD is so bad that I can't do very much physical activity, and by physical activity I mean I cannot move without lots of pain. We are moving in September to a town next door to where we currently live, into a 3 bedroom condo. We are still in our "Year of Savings", which is why we are moving. I haven't blogged about it, but we have been going strong!

THIS post is going to be about our newest adventure...homeschooling! We have not officially started yet, we are just doing things here and there this month and the beginning of next month until we officially begin mid-August. Most of it right now is just Lilly Belle and I doing activities together here at home that don't involve me moving around (or very little) and that she is learning while doing. I'm trying to avoid 4 months of movies and TV as each week that Lucy grows more and more, I can move less and less and am using my walker and wheelchair more and more.

I wanted to document some of the fun things that Lilly Belle and I have been working on together. It is fun for me to watch her grow and learn. I feel so lucky that I get to be here with her to watch her learn so many new things and discover her world.

This is one of her favorite games. She got it last year for Christmas. We found it in the dollar section at Target. You are suppose to use the spinner and put that color and number of underpants into the wash machine, but we make up our own rules.

This specific time, she went and got this game out and told me that SHE was going to tell me how to play. I asked her if she was putting all the purple underpants together. Then I saw her put down the yellow ones. I teased her and said, "Is that purple??". She said, "No, it's yellow. Look, they are the same KIND of underpants." ..... okay smarty pants!

She then sorted all the underpants by type as I sat next to her just watching without saying a word. I was pretty impressed. I'm always pretty impressed...

Lilly Belle has discovered she can draw faces now. She is slowly getting rid of naps. They are slowly becoming shorter and shorter. Her new thing now is that while she is trying to fall asleep, she brings in her magnet drawing board and will draw people as she gets tired. This specific drawing is of Daddy. He has a head, hair, a mouth, two eyes, AND two legs. The other day she drew a face with glasses as well!

Sometimes in the afternoons I am in a lot of pain, so I will end up putting a movie on. I can't handle the mommy guilt of her just sitting watching a movie even though I'm struggling to grow a human ;) so I will put her work table in the living room, give her a pile of worksheets and her cookie sheet and then she works on her worksheets while watching her movie. Then my mommy guilt goes away...

I found these oversized tweezers in the school section at the Dollar Store and she has really enjoyed playing with them. The first couple times we brought this out, it frustrated her with the little ones so she ended up picking them up with her hands. I'd ask her to use the tweezers, she would get frustrated and throw them ALL on the floor like a crazy person, I mean...2 year old. Now that she has gotten the hang of it, she likes to play with them, but NOT if I tell her how to sort them. She likes to just "free play" with them. I'm fine with that.

We only do worksheets if she's watching a movie or if she asks for them. Sometimes she will wake up from nap asking, "Can we do school activities?" and that means worksheets. I have found TONS online and have been printing them out for her to work on. Some of them I've also printed and laminated on cardstock for her to use over and over. Some, like this one, I've printed multiple copies of because I enjoy looking at her progress each time she does a new one.

THIS is gold. I have been spending hours and hours and hours putting together activities, file folder games, and small work games for her to do once Lucy is born. She has not gotten to play with ANY of these yet, even though she's been asking while she watches me print, cut and laminate them all day everyday. I'm laminating everything so that we can use it again with Lucy one day. And if I'm lucky, any future babies after her ;) This picture is only about 1/2 of what I have in the file box now. Once we move, I will have more space because we are using one of the bedrooms as our office / play / homeschool room, and I will organize this a bit differently. For now...gold!

Lilly Belle LOVED this activity. I cut it all out and wrote the letters on it for her. She did the gluing and spelling as much as she could. Anytime she gets to use glue, she's a happy girl. We have had this art hanging on our living room wall for over a week now and she can now recognize all the letters in her name. Prior to this project, she only knew "L" consistently. She likes to run over and shout out the letters. "L" is HER letter. We've told her she's going to have to share with Lucy, but she wasn't having it ;)

Watching her do her worksheets in sometimes under 30 seconds, hold a pen like she's been doing it for years, trace letters perfectly, and talk like she is 15, always makes me wonder, "what else can she do?" So I've been trying some more challenging activities with her this week. She is NOT a fan of patterns at the moment. This is her first introduction to them. I know she can do a simple AB Pattern, but when asked to do it on an activity like this, she flips out. "I can't! I don't like this! I will try tomorrow, okay!" She is used to things coming easily to her and numbers, counting, and patterns have been difficult for her so far. I feel bad for her because that is where I struggle as well and it made school so hard in high school. Thank goodness her daddy is so good at math!!

It took so long to make this for her. I LOVE doing it, but I love doing it because I'm always so excited to get to watch her play with the activity I've created for her. This time, she played with this for maybe 3 minutes before deciding it would be a lot more fun to just decorate the refrigerator with these new magnets. It took a couple deep breaths from me, and then I was fine with it. We moved on and I'll try it again with her in a couple weeks. It's all laminated, filed and ready to go for next time! 

Here was another pattern activity we tried. I created the pattern cards in a program called Canva. Then printed them on cardstock, cut them and will be laminating them for her. I found her Velcro popsicle sticks I made for her last year so we got those out. I thought she would love this, but I should have known... patterns. These pictures were literally about as long as she did this activity. I started with a regular approach. Did an example for her and then told her she could try. She immediately said, "NO." So I asked her if maybe she could try to do it super fast and we could race! That was this photo...

I saw she hated it so I pointed out that one of them was a rainbow. She was interested but was frustrated that the sticks did not fit under the card under the appropriate color. She wanted them to all fit underneath the card. She also did NOT want to put them in order from left to right. I think she was doing it to piss me off though ;) No, for real. I'm pretty sure that's why she was putting them down randomly. She was whining this entire 5 minutes we had this activity out lol. I didn't make her try any more after this. I put it away, gave her a hug and asked her if she wanted to color...

Life with my "Threenager" these days...

Lilly Belle can do her Do a Dot worksheets like this spot and dot one, in under 30 seconds. It's kind of crazy. I have to have like 15 printed out for her and she just flies through them. I get these out for her sometimes when she's in a bad mood or frustrated with something. It makes her feel good when she's so good at them :)

I found these awesome story pages at the Dollar Store in packs of 5. I am going to copy them and print them out for her in stacks because she LOVES it. It makes me so happy because when I was little and in preschool and kindergarten, I always chose the Writing Center when we got to choose. She loves to draw and write and then have me write on the back what she wrote so she can show Daddy. This story was about her best friend Lucas, his house, and his family.

She was drawing a "roof" and "stairs" that belong on his house.

We made sun catchers the other day and she did so well with it. I wish I would have just let her finish when she was really done and then made another in a few months to see the change in her attention span. I might actually have her make another one so I can check that. She filled it about 3/4 way and then said she was done and only ended up filling it because I made it a game with her.

These I am so excited about! We don't work on numbers much. I don't like them. She doesn't like them. But, they're important and it is really important to Matt that she start to know her numbers a bit more. As of today, she only recognizes the numbers 1, 8, and 10. She can count to 10 correctly. She can count to 20 by making numbers up, like "eleventeen" and then mixing all the teen numbers up and saying them as fast as she can and then shouting "TWENTY!" She doesn't like to slow down. She likes to do things FAST. (sounds like someone I know..... oops!)

 Found these printables at: www.alittlepinchofperfect.com

This was the first time I got these out for her. I just want her to start becoming familiar with how the numbers look, and hearing them all. She's never really heard anyone count past 20, so I'm going to start with this very... very slowly. I had her count to 10 and point to the numbers. She has a hard time with one to one counting. She counts faster than her finger or points faster than her words. She helped me count and point to 10. Then, for the teens, I had her search through the pile for each number to add. I helped her when needed, which was for most. Then she got to put it on and I'd read the number to her. Then we counted and pointed to 20. Then we did the same with the twenties excepted even more assisted by me. She just likes putting the numbers on the card. I am hoping that she can count to 20 by the time she is 3 1/2.  I know that once she is mentally ready to memorize numbers, it will happen quickly, so I'm not pushing it, but I am going to continue to make it a part of our day for her to be hearing the numbers aloud and to be seeing them as well. Repetition!!!

I've always dreamt of being a teacher and our hope is that one day I can be one. I am really enjoying teaching Lilly Belle. Her and I are having so much fun together and really learning a lot from one another. Today we bought a magnifying glass at Toys R Us so next on my list is for her and Matt to go on some nature walks and find bugs!! :) I'll get to go along soon enough... and it will be even better because Lucy can come along with her big sister too!