one thing i adore about lily is how much she loves her family. i actually showed her a picture of me, kevin, lily, and eve and said 'look its your family!' and she said 'no!! so many people are missing!' and proceeded to list her entire extended family.

this picture of her older cousin lucy holding her really makes me smile. lucy was so proud to be able to pick her up and lily LOVED being picked up.


note: lily is wearing tap shoes that she got out of an awesome bag of hand-me-downs that lucy brought over and hasn't taken them off much since!

lily was so worn out from her weekend in dallas that she was still napping yesterday when she is usually shouting 'mommy, the clock says FOUR!' and excitedly jumping up and down on her bed.

a few minutes later i decided to crawl into bed with her and enjoy a few minutes of cuddles while she finished sleeping. i snuck under her covers and she flopped a tired arm around me and seemingly in her sleep muttered 'i love you mama' and continued to snooze.

my heart was so full and i laid there stroking her soft blonde hair and her cute little cheeks and found myself praying in whisper.

lord thank you for this child. thank you for her beating heart and for her deep breaths. thank you for her wild imagination and her trusting spirit. thank you for this awesome responsibility of being her mom. thank you most of all that she is your child first and foremost and that i have been trusted with her for now.

the longer i lay there looking around her quiet room with the fan ticking away i tried to see her room through her eyes. this is her childhood. this room will be the faintest memory of pink one day.

its just all so amazing and impossible to encapsulate.

she slowly woke up with stretches and blinks and had a sweet smile on her face upon discovering mama in her bed. definitely a moment to cherish.

A sure sign your child is a born and bred Texan...

When the weather drops below 60 degrees, she asks excitedly 'Mommy, is it wintertime???'

Eve and a spoon

yall sick of my iphone videos yet? :)

Eve 'no'

a little voice saying 'no' only holds endearment for so long. and its not very long at all, but for now, its still cute...

there's nothing like hearing the chorus of belly laughs of my three favorite people.



just a few snapshots of them goofing around before bedtime HERE

my sweet compassionate lily. i dropped her at her preschool today and looked at the bulletin board where they had put a 'getting to know you' page for each of the 8 kids in her class. i looked at lily's and it had questions about your favorite food (peanut butter & jelly) and siblings (baby eve) and also asked 'i am happiest when....'

the answers around the board were mostly 'hugging my mommy' and 'reading with daddy' type responses.

lily's? 'when i am feeding baby bluebirds.'

seriously? since when does she feed baby bluebirds?? she does have a dora story where they help a baby bluebird find his mommy, but as far as i know she doesn't spend a whole lot of time feeding them...

sweet lily. she has such a tender heart and i love her so much it hurts.

sometimes when they are sweet to each other i just want to freeze the moment forever. or at least until they fight over something ridiculous again :)



one of my favorite parts of this video is when lily says 'that IS a bed, eve!' she affirms her sister just like i talk to her. i love it :)

my sister suggested i get this printed to hang in my office...

i think she might be onto something ;)

rainy first day of school

Eve's animal sounds

oh how i LOVE me a good 3 day weekend. despite being thrown back into work in trial-by-fire fashion (2 weddings and 3 portrait sessions in 8 days) i had a GREAT weekend with family.

tomorrow is the first day of 'school' for us and eve's first day ever!! i can't wait to see how much fun they have. eve and lil have been playing pretend school a lot lately- so we will see if they think the real deal is as fun :)

and because i can't seem to get enough of little eve's teeny voice...

one lovely side effect of being a donovan is the curse of fits of laughter that really come from nowhere. once you hear another donovan in the act, you join in and eventually you all have sore sides and are out of breath and no one is sure why or how it all started.

i went in to get eve out of her bed after naps and was recording her because i think its funny that after a full 3 hours in her crib she still doesn't really want to get out. she is such a cuddle bug.

what happened instead was a fit of laughter that reminded me she really is half donovan :)


(excuse my snake noise about halfway through- its kinda scary sounding! ha!)

i'm the first to admit i love my alone time in the morning. i wake up an hour before the girls intentionally so that i can have time to sip my coffee, read, catch up on the news*, and get mentally awake for the day.

today i slept in unintentionally and was honestly bugged when lily announced over her monitor "its two circles mommy! eight!!" and my coffee was scarcely touched.

i got them up, we started our morning rituals and instead of making breakfast right away i sat down to drink my coffee and before i knew it, i had a little buddy. now this i could get used to :)





*'news' means cnn some days and facebook others. don't judge.