She loves her La La

Lanie loves ALL her cousins on both sides of our family, but she seems to have a special love for her cousin Isabel.  Isabel has always been very sweet and kind to her from the second she entered our wild family.  Mark and I have never had Lanie call people by names she just comes up with them and if they stick around then we go with it.  For several months she even called her Daddy by his first name!  She recently has gone back to calling him Daddy.  She calls my mom her Mimi and even though she calls Isabel by her name all of the sudden she has started calling her La La.  She talks about her La La all the time.  Almost every morning on the way to daycare she either wants to go see her Mimi or her La La.  This morning it was all about La La and how she wanted to play with her and see her.  Lanie is only two and Isabel is six, but it is awesome how sweet she is to her little cousin.  She tends to stay back with her when all the older cousins are playing and running around.  She always gives her hugs and kisses, and tries to make sure she is included. I love the little bond these two have and hope that it just keeps getting stronger.  Isabel is such a sweet soul and Lanie is lucky to have such a great big cousin to look up too.  She sure does love her La La :)

La La is the one in the green long sleeves with the fun funky socks!

Get in the box!

36 weeks pregnant with our second little miss (yes, still no name),  a very active 2 year old, working full time, and other activities that fill up our family calender, I am TIRED!  My students finished their big state testing last week so we are just riding out the last 3 1/2 weeks together and I am pretty sure Lanie thinks the only way I can play now is laying down.  She gets really excited when Daddy gets home because he is full of energy to play with her.  My to do list before the baby comes grows every day, my kitchen floors need cleaned, and we are currently looking for new tenants for our rental house, and most days when I get home from work I have just enough energy to get to the couch! I know that my God is a good though and everything falls into place when I trust in him. 

The thing that I am most thankful for these days is the amazing Daddy that Lanie has.  I know he works hard and very long days too, but when he gets home he is ready to go again and wrestle with our ball of energy. Last week I was in Atlanta from Wed- very late on Friday so it was just Mark with Lanie.    When I got home I had a package which was the new baby's bedding.  After opening the box I knew Lanie would want to play in it because what two year old can resit a big empty box.  If you have meet our little bug you will know she is a very determined and strong willed child.  As she was playing in the box she wanted her Daddy to get in with her.  Mark tried to explain to her several times that he was too big and that he wouldn't fit, of course she was not having it so she began to say over and over again "get in the box daddy", so being the good daddy he is he made he wish come true and when Mark got in the box she thought it was the best thing ever.  These two make me laugh everyday :)

I just wanna play!

Lanie is a ball of energy! She seriously is go go go from the second she gets up to the moment she goes down for the night.  She does take a nice nap in between, but with being 33 weeks pregnant there are times that this mom takes a nap too!  I haven't figured out how to take the naps Mon-Fri while I am at work, but with teaching highschoolers they would either not care at all or tell everyone that the crazy pregnant teacher is sleeping during class.

Saturday was a busy day as usual for the Wades.  I put some stuff in a garage sale that our friends were having so after a rough night with Lanie, she was having some bad dreams or at least that's all we can think of.  I was up bright and early to help with set up and garage sale doings.  I left the sale midway through to go to a meeting with Mark and Lanie for our church called Vision Day.  At the meeting we got to meet neighbors and other organizations that are throwing into Jacobsville and looking at the long term plan to make it a great neighborhood again.  Little miss came with us and for a two hour meeting she was really good.  It was in a gym so for the most part Mark and I separated and set up a perimeter and just let her run and play with the other kids there. While she was running around having a blast she got way to excited and stopped paying attention to where she was going and ran straight into a table.  Since she was running and I move a little slower these days I was right behind her and could see what was going to happen, but couldn't do much about it.  As soon as she fell down of course there was a cry and a look around for Mommy.  I was right there to scoop her up and reassure her that everything was alright.  It took a total of 60 seconds for her to request to keep playing.  So I kissed her ouchy and put her down and she happily continued to run expect with a little more awareness this time around.

I couldn't help, but relate this to our relationship with our heavenly father.  When we get braver we tend to run just a little to far ahead of him and even though he can see that we might run straight into some trouble, he is right there to pick us up, kiss our bumps and bruises, help us learn from our mistakes, and let us run again, hopefully with more awareness.

Lanie is reassured time and time again that Mark and I are there for her when she needs us, just like we are reassured that God is there for us ALL the time.

Pretty soon he will have two little girls to read too :)

 

Easter

Easter is always exciting for me.  I love that it is centered on Christ and his love for us. I recently read a blog from a gal and I thought it was such an amazing post.  The gist of the post was that she was at a Panera and watching a very busy father with his young daughter.  From the outside it looks like the father is annoyed, frustrated, and too busy for his sweet three year old daughter, but being a full time working parent with a two  year old I know you can't always judge the book by it's cover! So even though that part of her post bothered me the bottom she compares it to Gods love for us.

"What follows for me is realization. I’ve never felt the extreme depravity that this little girl lives with every day – and so it takes an encounter with that depravity to realize what I do have. I have a God who delights in me. He sees hope, grace and beauty in me. He sees my potential. I’m not an inconvenience to Him. When we share a table, He takes no calls."

This ladies post was a double reminder for me to forget about other things in life and sit and listen to my daughter even though I can only understand about 60% of the things coming out of her mouth and that our God loves us more than I will ever be able to humanly comprehend!

Sorry the lame picture, this gal does not sit still for pictures anymore so I take what I can get!



Our Easter relay game my Mom made up. It included a variety of group activities, a couple being the whole team running around the house, hopping like a bunny around the tree, and ABC's as fast as you can! We are a competitive family :)

Spring Break 2013

So I took a little break from posting it has been busy with a capital B around the Wade house hold.  My job always has me moving in ten different directions, but there seems to be three times a year it becomes even busier.  The start of the year, October when I hold my annual IEP meetings, and the end of the year with testing, banquets, dances, graduation, etc.
So this year when my Mom and Dad told us they were going to Destin for SB and invited Mark and I to go with them my only thought was "heck yes", I immediately asked Mark if he could get off, but the truth was Lanie and I were going with or without him!  He did get the week off and it made the trip even more fun with crazy Daddy to continually entertain our two year old :)
I haven't gone on a spring break since college and with being a teacher I feel like I should have done something with 7 years of getting a spring break.  The first year I had no money, the second year I was buying a house, the third I was gearing up for our wedding, the fourth I can't remember, the fifth we had a newborn, the sixth we thought we would have sold our house, and would be working on moving, but instead just did fun stuff around Evansville, and then this year finally got to get away :)
We had such a great time and Lanie once again rocked the 12 hour drive she just watched 12 hours of movies (hey it kept her happy so we were happy).  Once we got down to FL it was a little chiller than we had hoped, but we got three good days in at the beach, 2 good days in the pool, and lots and lots of sunshine filled days which is what I was looking forward too.  The whole crew filled their tummies with seafood every night, Mark and I got to have a special night kid free for our anniversary dinner, and Lanie got all the attention her little heart could take from Mimi and Papa. All in all it was an extremely laid back, relaxing, fun trip.  Let's be sure it doesn't take another 7 years for the Wade family to go on a spring break trip :)

Celebrating 4 years of awesome!

Found her shadow and was amazed

No fear, unless it's the shower and then she is terrified

Serious obsession with her Mimi

Being two is tough, but super cute!

Lanie has entered the wonderful 2's.  I am playing mind games with myself that if I call it wonderful then maybe she won't be terrible.  The scary thing is I have heard 3 is a lot harder ekkk!  The other day I was reading a blog by a very funny guy and he had a post called 46 reasons my child may be freaking out.  I was cracking up while reading it because Lanie does about 35 of them. Things like, I picked out the wrong pants, we can't understand what she is saying to us, she wants to do it by herself (ever though she can't), a balloon she got 6 weeks ago is suddenly gone (this seriously just happened), food is to hot even though it's yogurt, our dog looked at her wrong, she told me she has to potty but wants to go by herself but wants me to stand by the door all speaking in a language I don't I understand!

One of my good friends just told me she is going to be a Mommy for the first time.  I was so excited for her and was jumping for joy at her news.  Then I continued to tell her babies are easy, toddlers are insane!  Lanie might look just like her Daddy, but she is stubborn and bullheaded like her Momma and her and I even at two go round and round.  Mark thinks the whole thing is hilarious and just laughs at us.  That night Mark stayed home with Lanie and my girlfriend and I went out for dinner at a real restaurant that was exciting!  She asked me if I had any parenting advice and I said that I cross my fingers and pray really hard that I get something right and some days if she is safe and asleep in her bed at night then that is a win in my book!!!!!

Lanie is a fun, spunky, strong willed, full of energy, and seriously cute.  I know I am her Mom so I am biased, but really she is cute just look at some of her two year photos :)

 

Mickey Mouse Clubhouse!!!

Holy cow Lanie is two years old!  This cute ball of sunshine is the light of Mark and I's life.  It's crazy how such a small human can bring so many emotions all at one time.  In any given day I can go from frustrated to laughing at something she has done in 20 seconds.  So many big changes have occurred in the past couple months for this big girl.  She is 98% potty trained (pure torture ), moved to a big girl bed, is eating at the big kids table at daycare, and moving from the pac n play room during nap time to the cot room this week.  Along with all her big girl rewards and new adventures she is getting to go experience there is also challenges that we are learning how to navigate as parents. Most of the time I feel like we are complete failures and then other days I feel like we did a pretty good job, but I guess that is what being first time parents to a toddler is all about.  Who knew sitting during a meal was going to become a luxury, I now understand why my friends with toddlers very rarely go out to eat.  I feel like we are moving away from baby into full blown toddler and we better buckle up because I think Mark and I are in for a ride.  Pretty soon we will have to take on the challenge of newborn and toddler.  Even though everyday gets a tad more uncomfortable I think I am needing the few more months to mentally prepare for this adventure!!!  On to Lanie's birthday party pictures.  We had a small family party this year and it was fantastic.  Everyone had a hot diggity dog time and Lanie is one lucky girl to have so many people love her so much : )

Build a Bear on her birthday

Her new horse, Joey 

Birthday Party Time

Game time- classic Bozo game

Pin the bow on Minnie

She loves her doc mcstuffins set she is always making sure we are healthy