Miracle of Birth!!!!!!!

Today I was blessed with the privilege of standing beside my best friend as she welcomed her second baby girl into this world! Let me just tell you that this was AMAZING to be a part of! Tim was a fabulous labor coach and was so strong for Bethany! Let me tell you, this momma pushed for 4 minutes and knew what she was doing!!!! She made it look so easy, although I know it wasn't!!! As I helped hold up her left leg for all of 4 minutes, I was amazed to see this perfect baby girl emerge into the world...

Holding daddy's fingers already!
Such a beautiful girl and she looks like her big sis!

A beautiful family!!! Notice there's no sweat on her brow and not a hair out of place!!!

Sweet snuggles from mommy!

Check out this healthy baby girl! 8 pounds 14.3 ounces... 20.5 inches long. Piper is a full 2.5 pounds bigger than her sis Izzy! She, like Izzy, is perfect in every way. Long fingers and toes, sweet blonde hair, big eyes, and the cutest little nose!

Thank you Bethany and Tim for letting me share in this incredible day... and for continuing to love on your family for the rest of my life!

We love you guys so much!!!!!

A huge thank you to Chad for taking today off to hang out with our little man so that I could spend all day at the hospital!!!! I love you baby!

tot school

Nathan is 24 months (2 years) TODAY!!!

We had another great week of tot school last week! We'll take a break this week for Thanksgiving and baby Piper's birth, but we'll be back the week after! Check out what we've been learning this week!

I found a mini connect 4 game and Nathan loves putting the checkers in the slots. Great fine motor, taking turns, color sorting, patience... the list goes on! Also I noticed in many of these pictures, including the connect 4 pics, that he is using both his left and right hands... interesting!

Bottle top spelling. He loves this now that the lids are magnetic!!!

Beginning patterns with pompoms... He wasn't sure about the blank circle at the end.

We've got some work to do on the concepts of patterns... any suggestions from other moms? He's just matching the colors but doesn't understand the "what comes next?" concept.

Home-made do a dot pictures, but first with pompoms!

Plucking grapes has turned into a favorite!!!

Puzzle time. I thought these would be challenging for him, but I was wrong. My friend Amber gave me some ideas for 12-24 piece puzzles so we'll try those!

We started the alphabet this week! Nathan really enjoys painting and loved painting his letter A.

Coloring some wooden figures.

This week I started some pre-writing by asking Nathan to use the correct matching crayon to connect the red dots, or blue dots, etc from top to bottom.

Do a Dot pictures... he loves these!!!

Open ended play with balls and the bilibo... so much fun to watch him explore gravity!

Building with magnetos

This week's group tot school was so much fun! We made "thankful trees" and I LOVED listening to all the things the kids were thankful for!!! Nathan did a great job gluing his leaves down too!

gluing and color matching and shape identification

Do a Dot turkeys as well as color id.

Fabulous floam!!!

We had so much fun!!! Join us and link up your post with lots of other moms! Check out this link to link up!

Happy 2nd Birthday Nathan!!!

Happy 2nd birthday Nathan!!!! We love you so much! Here are a few pics of our big boy! Updates and details and party pics to come!

Fun pics

I took these pics as we walked down to Izzy's house one morning. Nathan picked out all of his clothes and I had to remember this fun outfit! He loves color and fuzzy clothes and hats too! The best part about this morning was that the sun was shining after 6 days of heavy rain! Hope you enjoy the pics!