3.5.12

Nothing compares to delivery day, and, for that reason, 5.19.10 and 3.5.12 will always be my most favorite days!

The c-section went perfectly. Truthfully, it was quite the party in there, as I made it my mission to get the medical staff relaxed (probably an attempt to just relax myself). Each time someone walked in, I welcomed them to the party, and asked my anesthesiologist to keep me informed of exactly what they were doing at each moment. She kept asking trey, "is she serious?" Of course I was, I didn't want to miss a beat on this miraculous event! Would you?

And just like that, Evy went from my stomach to my arms. healthy, happy...and beautiful. An answer to prayer.

Trey introduces Evelyn to Papa Joe and Bebe

Papa Bud and Coco bring Joy to meet Evy

our hospital stay was great, but really we were so eager to get home, be with Joy, and start this family of four gig!!

My amazing doctor released me early! we were so thankful.

A couple more pics from the hospital:

A few nights before the big day, Guinn and I made the sign above for Evelyn. He got really into it, as you can probably imagine ;)

A dissertating dad. Go get 'em Papa-Guinn!

bright-eyed and loving life!

The Guinn family is doing fantastic!! We are loving every minute.... well, except those sleepless middle of the night minutes ;)

we love you, evelyn grace!!!!

21 months (almost)!

here's what's happening in joy's world... i might not have a lot of time in the near future to jot these things down so here we go:

right now she is all about COLORS and POSSESSION :

I recently taught her a little thing about roy g biv. she took to it like mad and hasn't stopped. every color she sees she shouts it out with great pride. as we stroll the aisles of target we get quite a few laughs as joy points to random people and shouts out their shirt color. she currently knows-- red, orange, YELLOW (her favorite), blue, green, purple, white, pink, and brown.

her other favorite thing is to tell us and anyone else that's over what items around the house belong to who. i was wearing trey's sweatshirt the other day and she comes up to me and says "no, no....daddy's". as to say, "take that off, that's daddy's shirt"

she was doing laundry yesterday and each item of clothing that she put into the dryer she would call out either "mommy's, daddy's or me me me!!" she knows exactly what belongs to who around here.

oh, and anything ella has ever touched or played with, or any moment they've shared, she of course shouts out ella....to remind me that her and ella did this. or ella has these socks too, etc...

she is trying to construct sentences which is HILARIOUS!! she'll just throw out a string of words that she knows and look at me like, "you got that?" so funny. it will be something like, "mommy help me up mommy up help please?"

AND, she's attempting to potty train herself. although, i'm not ready to commit seeing that evy will be here in 19 days or less. she'll come up to me and tell me she has to go, or sometimes she won't tell me at all and just go do it herself.... i was in the kitchen the other day and heard that toilet singing it's "yay you peed in the potty song" and was like...oh my gosh, did she seriously just go pee in her potty?? walked in as she was in mid-wipe. she gave me this HUGE smile...she's always so proud of herself. she's not consistent though... which is why i'm not willing to pull the ole diaper plug. that system seems much easier at this point. once baby evs is on schedule we'll tackle that one.

we are having so much fun. there's nothing, absolutely nothing, greater than mothering my little joybird. i have a hard time falling asleep at night as the days get closer to evy's birthday. i just lay there and daydream about meeting her, holding her, introducing her to joy... i can't believe we are so close....

i do get a little nervous. i know two is totally different than one. and two this close in age is harder on the front end...but, i continue to pray for a smooth transition and look forward to every minute of having evy in our arms!!

so i just realized i haven't taken any pics since christmas!! except for phone pics. yikes! i should probably take some pregnant pictures before evy makes her grand debut...anyway, below i'll attach a few from my phone stash. enJOY!!

this is the day we got serious about learning our colors.

elmo gets another snack. oh.my.bird.

saw my ever-so-pregs shadow and decided i better snap this while i can ;)

our little valentine. she insisted on wearing her heart shirt... most days this month. we may still be sporting the heart (which is, in fact, a pajama top) in the month of march as well.

watching a serious episode of baby signing time in the media room... learning all their farm animals ;)

my high school friends insisted that we all take our pregs pics and send them to the group. so here you go. i am going to try to get a real pic sometime in the next 2 weeks!!

wagon riding our little ladies down the drag to urban outfitters.

bff ella trying on shades while her mommy shopped!

of course, birdie had to get in on the action

boots, backwards size 12 month onesie, and a little blow-drying. and why not, joy?

attempting a legging/sock combo

play picnic with ella

another smashing episode of baby signing.

headed to urban...

.

carrying out her to-go box

boots + pups + milk.

putting on daddy's sweatshirt. the same one that i was told i wasn't allowed to wear.

indoor play tent. where all imaginative dreams come true.

ELMO gets a bath.

yesterday, i was in the middle of lecturing at running class and i received this picture text from trey which read, "yikes! turned around for 5 seconds and elmo got stuffed with apple sauce!"

joy loves to "pretend" feed everyone and i guess she decided to get a little serious with elmo.

SO, after naptime, it was obvious that elmo needed a bath....something else that she took VERY seriously. i kept asking her if elmo was all done and the answer was always "no".

she demanded that we keep scrubbing... and now, elmo is clean as a whistle and smells like baby aveeno.

had to get it on video for trey ;)

2012

baby evelyn is born!

jules turns 30

joy turns 2

trey turns 30

trey becomes Dr. Guinn!!

julee runs a marathon in under 3 hours.

2012 is a big one.

i already love love love this year.and can hardly wait for it to unfold.

worth sharing....

joy can write her name. i was highly impressed, to say the least. i was trying to get her to say banana...little did i know she was working hard on a skill that far surpassed mastering "nana".

she loves to write her name-- typically we hold the crayon with her and say "J-O-Y joy!" as we write it out. she then says "aaa-den!" (again). so we do it a few times in a row and she absolutely loves it.

here she is, doing it ALL by herself. now, don't expect too too much. it's barely legible...but she gets it ;)

LOVE

it's training week for daddy..meaning early mornings and late nights. birdie was SO excited when we happened to run into him on the street today on our way home from library story time!!

photog jules on the scene...

christmas 2011, the opposite of heaven.

this title seemed a little more appropriate than what i've been calling this christmas. let's just say, that the guinns experienced a series of misfortunate events coupled with hauling-"tail" all over san an to spread the holiday cheer. one thing i know for certain, is that next year we'll be cheering from our home. all are welcome. but you can bet, with two babes, we're going to stay put and do it right this time.

the quick rundown of misfortunate events:

trey gets a cold, jules gets a cold, joy gets a cold. i literally tell trey, on our way to san an (christmas eve eve) "thank goodness we all got that out of our system" so we don't have to worry about getting sick over christmas.

christmas morning, joy breaks out in hand foot mouth disease. next day, trey comes down with the most violent throw up/throw down virus of all time....along with about 10 other family members.

back in austin, i'm trying desperately to take care of trey and joy, while literally fearing that i'm going to catch one of these things pregnant.

have to go in to draw blood at ob-gyn because joys sickness could have adverse affects on evy if i catch it.

FREAKING OUT NOW.

a few days later (new years eve), i think we're out of the woods and GUINNO, out of no where, can't walk? his foot is throbbing in pain and he literally sent me out to cvs to get pain meds while the NYE ball dropped. i missed the whole shendig.

come to find out, after a long and horrific wait of trying to guess what on earth is going on with trey's foot that he has a broken bone and will need to be in a boot (currently on crutches) for 4-6 weeks, in hopes that the fracture will heel up and surgery will not be necessary.

so, if all goes well, he will be back in action just a week or so before evy arrives.

we're gonna need 4 hands and 4 feet around here come march 5th!!

anyway, that was christmas.

a cupcake picnic

i had to document this for my future musings...

joybird has quite the imagination and is ALL about the pretend play. the other day, she thought up this grand idea that she insisted on carrying out. she runs into the living room saying "mama mama, up up!!" literally grabs me by the neck and pulls me to my feet, then drags me into her bedroom where she had spread a "picnic" blanket of sorts. she pointed and patted the ground to show me right where i was supposed to sit.

next, she went to the other side of her room and started carrying, one by one, all 4 of her chairs and placed them in a circle around me.

i'm sitting there thinking, where on earth is she going with this? after all 4 chairs are in a circle around me, she leaves the room and grabs all her favorite friends and places them on certain chairs. THEN, she leaves the room again, saying "piper, piper!" turns out, piper wanted nothing to do with this little picnic she was preparing, so she heads back and proceeds to give everyone a cupcake and a beverage. i'm serious. she walked around feeding everyone, including me. she even took puppy and tiny over to her play kitchen and washed their hands.

at one point, she kicked bunny out of his chair and placed me in it. and then, she pulled up her pottery barn big girl chair and decided that her and puppy were going to be the guests of honor (always-- since we now carry out this cupcake picnic at least twice a day)....i always know where we're headed when i see the blankets being spread and hear the chairs being drug across her room.

and today, when the picnic was over she said, asked for her diapers and diaper cream. so i handed them over and she decided to put diaper cream on all her little stuffed friends.

trey got invited to the picnic last night, was served two cupcakes and felt super-special. HA!

pictures below to capture the moment: this girl is out of control!

oh, and sometimes, she pulls out her bedtime story books and reads to everyone. she really enjoys feeling like a little-mama. obviously. i can hardly wait to watch her in the big sister role. she was made for it.

in other news, she's still fascinated by piecing together her own outfits and putting them on all by herself. i have to get pretty creative with my words in how i advise helping her. since she, clearly, won't let me do it.... she's gotten really good about understanding "no, that's the wrong foot joy", "that's on backward turn it around" i'm being serious when i say i am not allowed to be hands on. she wants to do it ALL.BY.HERSELF.all.the.time!! ahhhh! she is HIGHLY motivated by accomplishment.

the plus side, she's gotten really good at mastering these skills. and even better, she can dress herself while i'm getting dressed or doing other things...which is going to come in exceptionally handy here in two short months.

we don't always get it right. seen below. and several times a day, she'll waltz on out of her room with a complete outfit change.

she's really into the layered look right now. and that green shirt (above) is a common base layer. there is an apple on the front that, for whatever reason, tickles her fancy.

and why not sport the happy turkey day 2010 shirt on new years day 2012.

sometimes she tries to "color-coordinate" ;)

yellow leggings that were not meant to go with a backwards yellow top...and red socks. but she did it herself and she is oh so proud!

18 months!!

i guess, almost 19 now...

but, i do realize it's been quite sometime since i've posted a what we're doing/stats kind of blog.

so here we go:

we had our 18 month well-check yesterday and much to my surprise...

our little joybird is in the 56th percentile for height and 33rd for weight!!!! can you believe it? trey and i aren't the tallest of people and our little bird is tracking ABOVE average! It makes me so happy. she does get plenty of z's and, as you well know if you've hung with her, PLENTY of food.

her communication has kicked up a notch. she's building her little vocab daily with dadda still being one of her favorites. ella is rapidly climbing the charts...anytime we get in the car it's ella ella ella ella ella ella all the way until we finally see her. anyway, she has a handful of words and another handful of attempted words. it's so fun when she comes out with something new!

she's going through a serious "do it myself" stage. she has to be the one to buckle herself into her highchair, carseat, stroller (and don't even mention "do you want me to help you"..she does NOT want your help!) she tries to change her own diaper, and everyone else's diaper. be careful, she is known to come up to grown adults and try to lay them down and change their diapers. yikes!! after she's attempted to change puppy, bunny, baby, and tiny's dipes, she comes after me and i have to say "joy, mommy wears big girl panties, i don't need my diaper changed. thanks". she, of course, has to dress herself and put on her shoes...all by herself. and lets out this big gasp of excitement, sometime coupled with clapping, everytime she accomplishes something.

below = changing monkey's diaper and a failed attempt at putting on her shirt.

she's starting to get picky about what she wears. so i've kind of been letting her pick out her own clothes. i'll tell her, "go put on a pair of pants and a shirt. and i'll walk in her room and she'll be putting on a pair of pants and a shirt. typically, this size 6-12 month sing.love.dance tshirt with sparkles that she just can't seem to get enough of (pictured above)...and of course, her favorite skinny jeans.

things she enJOY's doing at home--

puzzles, coloring (she loves to color and write her name with our help), pretend cooking, pretend feeding piper, puppy, tiny, bunny, baby. changing all their diapers, changing all their clothes. pretending to put on mommy's make up, blow dry her hair, jumping up and down on the couch, asking "up, up, up" to get on the bed and jump (she's seriously going to be that little monkey that fell off and bumped her head-- i can feel it coming). rearranging all items in the refrigerator, playing chase and hide-n-seek with piper, throwing her ball, or running with it and playing keep-away, pushing baby around in her stroller, trying to put piper in the stroller, stopping off to the potty for a "potty-break", people watching out the window, reading books, asking mommy to read her books...reading to puppy, she sits puppy in her lap, puts a blanket over both of them, and reads to him (she's basically copying what i do)...seems to be a common theme.

she's really into MUSIC, dancing, the d*mn itzy bitzy spider song....every time it ends, she says "again!" so i typically repeat it several times, and when i'm over it and say "no, lets hear a different song", she marches over and pushes the ipod back button herself.

this video sums up a few of her favorite things... dancing, eating, taunting piper with food, and jumping on the couch.... and please note her attempt to count her fingers at the very end. ha!

her personality:

super affectionate...wants to hug and kiss everyone, and loves to be cuddled and held, unbelievably determined and focused...will sit and work toward accomplishing tasks with such patience until she gets it...it blows our mind. and i just love watching her light up when the mission is accomplished. she looks up at me with these brights eyes and waits for my affirmation.

she loves to please! she will pretty much do what we ask her. and always feels so good about doing it right.

oh, and did i ever show you this little gem? taken soon after i found out we were pregs

and this is what she put on for church a few sunday's back....trey and i were getting ready and we look down and, there's joy.

hair tie on the wrist. check! panties around the waist. mom's gold flats. dad's hospital no-slip sock. lovedancesing size way-too-small tshirt. CHECK!!

last sunday she made a little friend in nursery. we couldn't separate these two. they ran around the gym holding hands for about 10 straight minutes.

and then joy attempted a hug that turned into a tackle so i swiftly stepped in and played that mom-card...that i find quite hilarious because, at this stage in the game, there's this awkward learning curve of being a first-time-mom where you're like "how the h*ll am i supposed to respond in all of these situations??!! kids stealing toys, not wanting to share, learning to take turns, joy attempting to change other kids diapers!! what?!?! and your on-display before all these other moms and it's typically involving their kids too... the whole thing is kind of hilarious to me.

anyway, that's a wrap. 18 months and climbing fast. before we know it she'll be 2!!! and before that, we'll have evelyn in our arms. oh my goodness! time is flying and i can barely keep up!

signing off,

mama jules