Dear Lydia

It's hard to believe you made your entrance into this word 2 years ago, today. You have brought so much joy and laughter into our lives. Your Daddy and I can remember feeling anxious, scared, excited and overwhelmed as we were being taken into the operating room but as soon as we saw our beautiful baby girl it was all over for us! Love at first sight! You amaze us over and over again. You are God's greatest gift.

You crack me up how you make me knock on the door in the morning before I get you out of bed..."who is it?" you ask..I say "mommy" and then you say "come in"! You then immediately tell me "get me outta here". It's impossible to be in a bad mood around you. I love how you say "please" and "thank you". You just learned that green means go and red means stop and you tell me that at every light we go through. You laugh when the big kids laugh...not always knowing why, but understanding the time is appropriate. You fake sneeze when you get in trouble or are upset, just so we'll tell you "bless you". You announce to us "I'm okay" when you fall down. You love to bounce and run. You melt you're daddy's heart when he comes home from work and you tell him you missed him. You have a steal trap memory. You have a twinkle in your eye, a little mischief in your laugh and smile that will light up the room.

Lydia, you make life fun and exciting. You make me a better woman every day. Daddy and I love you around the whole world and back again! Happy Birthday little miss!

Mommy

Lucy's 1st b-day!!

Yesterday Lydia and I picked up Bill & Kelli and headed down to Covington to celebrate Miss Lucy's 1st birthday. It was SO hot out! Lydia had a great time playing with all of the kids and she really enjoyed the put the bee on the flower game. She told me this am, "I wanna play a game, Mommy" so I asked he which one and she said the "bee" game! After Lucy's party we celebrated her mommy's Birthday...what fun!

q-tips, pennies, poop and work

Things have been busy busy busy for the Meece family in the last couple weeks. We're still working on getting settled into our new home, but now we HAVE to be done by a certain date because we're having Lydia's birthday party here...so it's crunch time! Speaking of Lydia, she is certainly becoming what I would expect a typical 2 year to be. On Father's day she was playing in her playroom(Which we put a gate in front of the door so A)she's not going up and down the stairs and B)she's not throwing toys down the stairs)well she was playing really well and being super quiet. Next thing I know she's downstairs...I asked Matt if he put the gate up and he said yes. My next thought was "are all of the doors closed?"...NOPE! Well the gate was just propped against the door(it's a tension gate)so naturally she just pushed it open. Our bedroom door was open(OH CRAP!)!! Almost a whole box of q-tips had been put in the toilet and then onto the floor, my clinique foundation and moisturizer were in the toilet alond with miscellaneous hair clips and stuffed animals! There was also a glass of water on my side of the bed that she dumped...on my side!(Matt went to take a nap and called me to ask me if I had peed the bed!!) lol!

Lydia noticed me putting some change in my pocket the other day so her new obsession is to have change in her pocket. So as a reward for not putting the coins in her mouth I let her have a couple pennies to put in her pocket...as soon as she takes them out or plays with them I take them away(PLEASE DON'T CALL CPS ON ME!?). So she had 2 pennies in her pocket on Saturday and I noticed her playing with them so I asked her to give them to me. She ran away from me and put them in her mouth. I calmly walked towards her so she wouldn't run with them and as soon as I got to her *GULP* she swallowed both of them! So after 3 days and 1 trip to the ER...
We have pennies! Poor thing was probable so confused as to why Matt was so excited when she told him she was pooping!! lol! We should nickname her "coinstar"!

And lastly...I have decided to go back to working in a salon. A friend of mine(I used to babysit!!)just opened a new salon in Mount Vernon and has invited me to come work with her. It's an opportunity I couldn't pass up and I'm really excited about it. So come check us out at ESCAPE salon 360-428-8315...I start the week of July 13th.

Chocolate...bubbles and sleeping babies!

So my mother-in law recently introduced Lydia to push-pops and it was love at first bite! I'm sure more of it ends up on her then in her tummy, but she enjoys every minute of it!

Last night we had my family over for dinner. After the kids played outside for a while we put them in the tub...Addy, Lydia and Keegan(Maya just observed). They were playing and splashing and having a good time, and then I put the jets on and WOW did we have bubbles!! Keegan wasn't so sure about having a bath with the bigger kids so he got out and watched. Lydia and Addy had so much fun being covered with bubbles and making bubble beards and dumping bubbles on each others heads!

Little Maya was so sleepy that she fell asleep on the couch and Angela got some super cute pictures of her!

Keegan's 1st Birthday

Yesterday afternoon we celebrated our nephew Keegan's first birthday. Heather and Jason have a great back yard and the kids had a blast running around, playing in the sand box and swimming in the pool. Keegan got a wagon and at the end of the party all the kids enjoyed rides in it down the hill(Lydia was calling it a mountain).

Holy hot weather!!

Wow has it been beautiful weather around here. Lydia has LOVED playing in her sandbox and having a backyard to spend time in. Yesterday I set up the sprinkler and let her run through it in her diaper... she discovered that if she ran through the sprinkler then played in the sandbox the sand would stick to her! She was so dirty!







Life has been a tad crazy for us the last couple weeks with moving and me starting a job but I think we're finally starting to get into a routine. On tuesday we were getting new carpet and our new furniture was being delivered. I work on tuesdays now so my mother-in-law came to our house to watch Lydia and so someone would be here for the deliveries...well when I left our house was full of boxes, no carpet and no furniture...when I came home it looked like a home! She did laundry, put things away, organized...it was amazing! I really lucked out in the in-law department...they are so good to us!

New house

For the last 8 months we have been on the hunt for our first house. Out of all the houses I looked at we seriously considered 2 but decided against both. Out of frustration, our search had come to a halt. After hearing about the $8000 tax credit being offered to first time home buyers I re-opened the proverbial can of worms and started looking again. Well I didn't have to look very far! A good friend of mine mentioned that his parents were looking to sell/lease/rent a property that they had bought for a family member whom no longer lived there. After a couple meetings(one being a yummy dinner at Il Granio), we came to a VERY generous conclusion and now we have a house!!!! We are so excited to make it our own. It's 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, 1700 sq. ft, a nice fenced back yard with a great play area for Lydia. We feel so blessed and are amazed at the kindness they have shown us! Here are a few pictures...look for "after" pictures soon!