in honor of my 30th halloween, pictures of us circa 1982

mollie as raggedy ann


kevin as perseus

you gotta love the long lost art of homemade costumes!

ps. don't get me started on what 4 year old knows who perseus is and furthermore actually wants to be perseus for halloween. anyone else find that bizarre? he is too cute!

happy 2nd birthday, lucy! she had a fun costume party on saturday and the whole family was decked out!

the guest of honor... lucy the 'titty tat' kitty cat

lily the penguin, mom the penguin trainer from sea world, and moon as the man in the yellow hat

GaGa the gypsy gets a little grin out of a very grumpy penguin

GaGa and batman charlie

the trainer and her brooding (sleepy) penguin

moon's awesome costume (it was all GaGa's idea of course)

lucy dives face first into her cake

moon and charlie (with curious george)

awesome pictures courtesy of erin as usual! :)

in the past year i've come across a lot of useless baby items while roaming the aisles of babies r us, but i truly have not seen anything quite this creepy or bizarre!


pillow hands... i mean its just weird.

lily has perfected the best pout ever...

its entirely possible that i'm going to hell, for at least 5 minutes.

i saw this headline on CNN.com and laughed out loud in shock:

Dogs kill Make-a-Wish horse - Pit bulls maim a miniature horse given by the Make-A-Wish Foundation to a boy with cancer.

do you think "sleep deprivation" is a good excuse for that one?

well we all survived the weekend... just barely. :) lily is finally feeling better after she spent the majority of saturday and sunday crying and grabbing her poor head to show us where it hurt. it was so sad to see, but wonderful to see a smile creeping back onto her face after all of that.

as a lovely side effect, kevin and i have both gotten sick and somehow i managed to kick that sucker after a day even though i'm feeling insanely sleep deprived. kevin still has a 102 fever today and isn't feeling so hot... and by his own admission is quite the baby about being sick. so i have two fussy babies at home.

i also lost my shit today (for lack of a better phrase) and briefly considered running away on a train with michael from the office, but returned home instead with warm soup for dinner for my patient.

lily and i escaped the house for what was a largely unsuccessful photo shoot at a pumpkin patch this afternoon. we're definitely going to have to go back because these are the best shots:

WHEN PUMPKINS ATTACK!!!

excuse me, sir, i have a question about this pumpkin right here!

nanny nanny boo boo!

these pumpkins don't taste like pie!

and one slightly cute one....

thank you so much for all of your concern, prayers, and thoughts over the past few days. they are greatly appreciated! now i'm off to bed, and yes, its 7:20. i'm THAT tired! :)

sweet lily woke us up screaming in pain on thursday night at 11:00 (yes, i was dead asleep at 11:00- i had been in bed 2 hours already!). it was such a scary sound to hear coming across the baby monitor and i literally sprinted to her room and grabbed her out of her crib. she was burning up and her temperature was 103.5

we took off her clothes and blanket, kept her naked and called the doctor. i stayed up with her all night and took her to the doctor in the morning. all of her basic tests came back clear so we were sent home with instructions to go to the hospital if she got worse. she slept all day and when she wasn't sleeping she was crying. it was so sad and terrible to see. we had a cool washcloth a la erica badu on her head just to try to cool her off.


by 9:00 last night nothing could keep her from screaming, so we headed to dell children's hospital. they were amazing and admitted her without even going to the waiting room because she was clearly not doing well. her skin was very mottled in color and her soft spot was swollen and hard.

we were there for about 4 hours. sweet lily went through blood draws, a catheter for urinalysis, an iv for antibiotics, and a spinal tap to check for bacterial meningitis. thank the good lord for kevin- i couldn't watch the spinal tap. i took one look at her tiny baby back hunched over and covered in iodine and had to leave the room.

her fever finally broke at about 12:30 and she was herself again for about 30 minutes. it was a miracle to see her smiling for the first time in over 24 hours. i took this during that time:


her tests showed a viral infection and it is most likely a viral form of meningitis. so now we just wait for her to start to feel better. she is dealing with a serious spinal tap headache and just aches when you touch her. we are so lucky that it is nothing more serious and she should be back to normal in another day or so.

it was one of the hardest nights i have had as a mom and i hope i don't have to hear her screaming in pain like that ever again! i also have been running a fever and am not feeling so great, so now i'm off to go nap with her some more. us girls are beat!

note- while i was typing this she settled down awake but quiet for the first time in a while, but then she yawned and that was enough movement to make her start crying again! can you imagine?!! :(

i'm peeing my pants over THIS!!!

truthiness and justice for all!

lily got together for a little chit chat with her cowgirl friend today...

hey! what's up cowgirl?

have you met my friend, casey the dog?

no way! i had no idea he is your ex!

yeah, you're right! he does look like he's put on some weight. haha!

**disclaimer** as you can see lack of sleep last night has led to some serious nonsense around here today!

can i tell you how much i love the sentiment behind this baby t-shirt? the whole pink princess crap really doesn't do it for me...


of course, her odds of being elected president could be tainted by her crazy conservative republican relatives, but we'll do our best to keep them out of the public eye for her campaign's sake.

lily made her first trip to the neighborhood pool today. lily looked so cute in her little swimsuit! :)

of course my camera died right when we got there, so we'll have to settle for camera phone pics for now.

too lazy to be bothered swinging her arms around, lily has decided to use her feet to swing the toys on her bouncy seat bar.

its pretty cute - check her out!




as suspected, she continues to insist on doing things her own way! i'm afraid this is only the beginning... pray for us during her teenage years. ;)

my child is completely average.

no really - she is! according to her 2 month pediatrician appointment, her weight, length, and head circumference are all right at the 50th percentile.

length - 23 inches
weight - 10 pounds, 14 ounces
(at 2 months old she has finally reached my brother's birth weight!)

she also had to start getting her vaccinations - talk about breaking a mother's heart! i hate hearing her sweet voice scream like that, but it probably sounds better than the whooping cough... right?! :)

lily has been having more and more swaddle jail breaks lately. yesterday when i went to check on her during her nap i found her kickin back with her arms behind her head like she was laying out on the beach.

gotta love a girl who knows how to relax! :)

we had a fun-filled weekend in dallas including the fantabulous wedding of mr. and mrs. meg and chris boyd. after the wedding festivities, we made a family trip to the fair to celebrate erin's birthday.

lily's introduction to big tex

GaGa and lucy

lucy loves her fletchers corny dog

charlie prefers his fingers over corn dogs

erin and lucy feeding the animals

too pooped to party

lucy and mollie


the birthday girl and mike

so tired!

a trip to the fair wouldn't be the same without laughing like 5 year-olds at boris' pig balls. they are roughly the size of lily's head. yikes!!

today is a big day. lily got her first love note!

courtesy of one handsome lincoln thomas wade :)

i have a confession to make. i am closet-challenged. its true, even my husband keeps his clothes more organized than i do. he's the one with the plastic hangers and shirts hung by category - my side is a mess of wire hangers and stacks upon stacks of folded tops of questionable origin.

i invited my organizationally skilled sister over yesterday to help me clean up my act - literally! i asked her to "tim gunn" me and she did a great job!

erin went item by item and either rearranged, hung, folded, or discarded them for me. there were clothes in there that not only pre-dated my relationship with kevin, but had labels like 'harolds' (which, i'm not knocking if its your style, but if you knew how long it had been since i've shopped there...)

now in the interest of full disclosure, erin did have a little bit of a 'tone' in her voice when discussing some of my less glamorous items that needed to be discarded, but it was nothing compared to tim gunn's verbal abuse when it comes to clothes he doesn't approve of!

i now have 2 bags of clothes for goodwill and about 20 hanging items for consignment. erin should seriously charge people for her services - my closet looks great and now it is full of only items i should actually be seen wearing in public.

thanks, auntie e!

lily is getting ready for one of her mom's favorite holidays in her pumpkin hat. so far she has perfected two looks...

trick...

or treat!

hi everybody!! happy wednesday!!

do you think it would be inappropriate to fill one of these out for lily?

tonight will be lily's first night in her own room and crib. the past 7 weeks she has been sleeping in a bassinet in our room.

this is my second really sad moment of being her mom. the first tears came when she outgrew her first newborn outfit. she just changes so much every day. first she started to smile at us, then she began lifting her head, outgrowing her clothes, and today she laughed at me for the first time.

its hard to explain, but i'm sad when she changes because i know that the time i have with her is so precious. the smallest bit of growth just breaks my heart because the moments i had with her before this change happened are already over.

wish us luck adapting to this new arrangement! ...and by us, i mean me :)

tgif!! i love the weekends! having someone else around during the day to help with lily and just having a human to talk to that actually responds verbally is a treat.

i am sad to be missing out on what is always one of the best events of the year, austin city limits music festival. to all of my festival-going friends- i dislike you very much and hope you sit around thinking "this would be much more fun if mollie was here."

i'd also like to share the cutest pictures of miss lily taken this week. she is becoming such a big girl and at 7 weeks old is already rockin her bumbo seat! check her out!

sometimes to keep lily entertained (aka. not crying) i will sing to her. i run out of songs from time to time and end up making up lyrics as i go. somehow yesterday i managed to rhyme "cutest" with "buddhist". poor child.

and for your picture of the day, i have evidence of a puppy love fest that was going on this morning...

i ask you, does THIS look like the face of a girl who is lucky enough to be out on a beautiful walk on a 70 degree day in texas in september?!!



i think not. little miss lily definitely has some cranky in her pants today.