She has been so sweet about the baby coming. She says the cutest things!

Abby: I really want baby sister to come out now!

----

Abby: I want to hold the baby all by myself.
Me: Well, you can hold her, but I want you to sit on the couch with a pillow.
Abby: Yea, with a pillow because I might drop her on her head, and she would cry, cry, cry.

---

Abby: Baby sister is going to be itty-bitty (she shows how small itty-bitty is with her thumb and index finger), and I'm going to teach her how to paint.

---

Abby: Is baby sister going to sleep in my room or her room?

---

Me: What do you think about the baby?
Abby: Well, I'm going to teach her how to watch a movie, probably Mickey Mouse Club. She'll sit in her high chair to eat because she's too small to sit at my little table with me.

---

Me: You'll teach her how to read books and play with your toys?
Abby: No, this is my purse.
(hahaha!)

---

Me: What will you do if the baby cries?
Abby: I will feed her.
Me: What do you think she will drink?
Abby: Milk
Me: You think she'll like milk?
Abby: I think so. It's better than apple juice.

At 32 weeks and 4 days.

 

I have found that this baby bump is a GREAT place to set my phone or a plate while sitting on the couch.  Besides just those things, Abby has a nice built-in seat :)

Ok, so this summer has been grand because we’ve had no real schedule, nothing major going on, do whatever we want kinda days.  But that’s wearing on me now.  It was nice for awhile, but I tend to like to be more scheduled.  Come fall, besides having a new baby and figuring all that out, we are very scheduled.  Our weeks usually go like this:

Monday – MDO

Tuesday – Play date

Wednesday – Bible Study

Thursday – MDO

Friday - (open) sometimes a Play day

I love that!  This summer has been nothing like that.  While we’ve had fun, yesterday was enough for me.  I’m “one of those moms".  That’s you’re forewarning.  I am in no way opposed to T.V.  I actually love that she will sit there for a good 30 minutes and watch a show.  But after a period of time, I feel guilty about it.  I am in no way saying that stops us, haha.  We definitely watch T.V. everyday, but I really do try to limit it.  She is obsessed with two shows from the Noggin channel right now – Little Bear and Little Bill. 

I had to tell her no Little Bill yesterday because she was deliberately disobeying me.  (As I typed that, in my head I heard Mufasa say to Simba “You deliberately disobeyed me.”  Anybody remember that part?)  Meltdown city!  I didn’t give in, though.  And ohmigosh, she actually had to play with the thousands of toys she owns.  What a tragedy!  And it was in that moment I decided…we need activities.

I got online (and the dork-ish side of me was really excited about this!).  I found this website with all kinds of preschool type lessons and templates.  So yesterday, for about an hour and half I got busy and planned our day.  I had to cut things out, buy her own kid scissors, stick glue, and construction paper.

The lesson combines all kinds of different things.  Shapes, colors, matching, coloring…and she got so excited about it when I told her last night.  I even made us a schedule, and this is what it looks like:

1.  Wake-up:  A prayer to get us started (we had a rocky start yesterday, so this part will help us get started in the right direction)

2.  Get Dressed, Eat breakfast, Brush teeth/make beds

3.  Reading time.  She got to pick 5 books that I would read to her.

4.  Move & Groove/Music Time (our VBS cd and I found YouTube videos of The Hokey Pokey, The Wheels on the Bus, Apples and Bananas, Old McDonald Had a Farm, etc.)

5.  Coloring, learning, and tracing the letter H.  Coloring a house. 

6.  Memorizing a scripture.  Granted this will take a while, but I learned this when I taught 1st grade Sunday school.  Take index cards, and write one word per card that reads out the whole scripture.  We started with Colossians 3:20 (in the NIrV version) “Children, obey your parents in everything.  That pleases the Lord.”  haha perfect starting, don’t you think?  Since she can’t actually read the words, I put numbers on the back of each card.  I hid the cards around the room, she found them, then had to put them in number order.  There were just 11 words in this particular scripture, and lucky for me she can count to 15, so that worked out perfect :)

We’re about to leave for the library because we’re going to check out the book “The Shape of Things” that apparently goes along with this lesson.

When we get back there are a few crafts we’ll be working on that deal with all different shapes. 

For example:  showing how a panda can be made out of circles or hearts. (This is just my Key to look at.  I’ve cut out all the pieces for her to make these.) Matching shapes and gluing – most of these shapes she knows, but I through in on a different activity a hexagon and a parallelogram.  I’m also getting cotton balls for this one she she can have clouds above the balloon.

These are just pieces cut out.  I’ll give it to her not put together, and she’ll have to figure out how to make the shapes look like this house.  And I have so many stickers, so I’m going to get out my flower ones for her to put wherever.  This girl LOVES stickers!

For the house coloring sheet, I just put a little color in each of the spots to have her follow through with the color I chose.  I think she did pretty good – I could tell she got a bit tired of it by the trees.  But I’m so excited about her roof and windows.  She’s usually more of a scribbler.

My excited student!

Diligently coloring!

I’m excited to see how her crafts turn out later!!

As much as I HATE to be brief, I feel like that’s the only way I’m going to make it through this post (or else I’d have to be posting hundreds of pictures!!  And I know family would love that, but I don’t have that much time to work with here before the sweet munchkin wakes up!)

Things that I meant to post from April -

Sea World with the dolphins:

 

My mom and I visiting Peyton and Shelby in Hattiesburg:

Then Abby drove them into a bush!  The look on Peyton’s face, and how fast he was to hop out (instead of telling her there was a reverse, haha!!) says to me “Those crazy lady drivers!!”

Her daddy started talking to her later, and she lit up!  So sweet!!!

Abby was so excited to hold Shelby herself!  She’s going to be such a fab big sister!!

 May -

Abby’s 3rd Birthday!!!  Princess theme through and through.  My house exploded PINK!  It was awesome, and she loved it!!!

Wearing her princess shoes, of course.  Cutest thing I remember her saying that morning:  We got her all ready, but there was still like an hour or so before the party actually started.  She walked out in her dress and said “Where are all the people?”

Mother’s Day:

 

Memorial Day Weekend (My 10 year high school reunion!)

My friend from HS – Ashley

The next day was family picnic day at our high school – sadly I didn’t take one picture of the people I saw there.  Just pictures before we left the house.  Nice, I know.

Swimming at Nana and Pap Beasley’s – Crawfish Boil time!

June -

My first baby shower in Bossier hosted by one of my long time best friends, Michelle, and her mom.  Unbelievable food, unbelievable decorations!  These ladies rock!

Abby’s first swim lessons:

3 yr. old check-up!  She did sooo good.  She had no idea shots were coming, but she handled them like a champ.  2 tears and she was good!

Clifford the Big Red Dog Reading Camp at church:

First movie in a theater – Toy Story 3!

Father/Daughter sweetness…I couldn’t pass up posting these!

Abby’s addiction to “red baby.”  Clever naming, wouldn’t you say?  I tried to give her other names, but she wouldn’t buy it.  She did find another baby that she chose to name Mary.  Mary got booted to the side rather fast, though.  Red baby is her true love.  Other babies names in our house:  yellow baby and big baby. :)

July -

VBS: Whew it wore me out.  All I got was a picture of my group…they were great, but they were tiring!!

The Ege’s visit: (and we get to enjoy Aidan’s 4th birthday!!)

 

II’m in love with this picture.  They look sooo sweet!

Whew, I’m not sure how brief I really was??! (56 pictures in this post..um, yikes!)  I have SUCH a hard time trying to dwindle down pictures.  I love them all!