Sweet Baby Jane

On a beautiful Tuesday morning this September 11th, we welcomed our precious second daughter into the world. Jane Eloise was born at 8:37am, via c-section, weighing 6lbs, 15oz. She is absolutely perfect and the most wonderful addition to our family. She has already brought us so much love and joy, and I feel even more complete now that she is in our lives. 

I plan to tell you all about the day she was born, and show off some beautiful pictures our friend Sarah took. But until then, here are a few of my favorite pictures from the past 7 weeks.

 My Janie Bear. 

Ryann has been the most amazing big sister. She loves "her baby". 

This is Jane. 

 This is Ryann. Twins born 3 years apart. 

 Going home!

Bronx meeting Jane. 

Wait a minute... haven't we been here before?  

Oh yeah... Bronx meeting Ryann. :)

Love every single strand of this hair. 

 Sister LOVE. 

 Starting to smile at 6 weeks. 

Easter 2012

Easter was fantastic this year. My favorite part? Ryann wore a dress! A semi-frilly one, at that. I tried for a yummy layered dress, but she took one look at it and said, "Momma... I don't like that one". Oh well, I think I loved her umpire-waist number even more. Precious.

We kicked off the weekend by decorating Easter Eggs. I bought the 'tie-dye' kit for daddy, but the instructions made it seem more difficult than actually tie-dying a t-shirt, so we just stuck to solid colors this year. Ryann had a ton of fun, and contrary to the face she's making in the last photo, she loved getting dirty. We started out using the handy-dandy egg wire, moved on to a spoon, and then just ended up using hands. I think her nail beds are still green. 

The next morning I snuck downstairs to see if the Easter Bunny came for a visit and had to snap this Christmas-morning-top-of-the-stairs shot. I actually think she may have been more excited for Easter than Christmas, since she reminded me that the Easter Bunny puts jelly beans in the eggs he hides around the house. The memory on this girl! 

I think she was pleased with her loot...

After she explored her new toys, and the goodies in her basket, it was time for the hunt! We discovered that her technique is not to go for time, but to check each individual egg to see how many jelly beans are inside. I guess she may as well take advantage of not having a sibling to compete with for the next year. I think she may soon revise her tactics. :)

Later we drove to Fort Collins to celebrate with the Shattucks. Not only did the Easter Bunny leave her a basket there as well, but he filled their front yard with Easter eggs. Lucky for Ryann both Porter and Mason were there to assist. Such good cousins. And such a great day. Hope you all had a great Easter too!

Ryann turns 3 (and world's ugliest cupcakes)

I can't believe it, but my baby is officially 3 years old. The time has absolutely flown by and Billy and I are both constantly amazed by the fact that we no longer have a little baby. It's such an amazing journey to be on as parents... watching her grow and seeing her personality develop.


This birthday was especially fun, since she could anticipate the big day. All week long she kept telling people she was going to be three and we were going to sing "happy birthday to me" to her. We also had big plans to make her feel like a big girl, including moving her into the "big girl room" (aka. the guest room), and making the switch to a big girl bed. She decided last week that climbing in and out of her bed was a breeze, so the transition was a no-brainer for us since climbing out of a bed is much safer than climbing out of her crib. Here she is demonstrating her new trick. (More to come on her new big girl bed and room later.)

We kicked off her birthday week with a visit from Nona and Grandpa Dale. The highlight of the evening was unveiling Grandpa Dale's handmade train table, complete with rolling drawers. There's no question that this was one of Ryann's favorite gifts and she and Nona started building a track right away. 

 This face says it all... "I'm one spoiled girl". 

Next came dinner (blah, blah, blah) and then... DESSERT! I mean, we were celebrating her birthday, so why not have an ice creamy creamy cake while Nona and Gpa Dale are in town?! (This had nothing to do with her pregnant mom finding every excuse in the world to eat more sweets. Honest!) Here's the cute little confection in all its ice cream glory (cookies 'n cream, if you must know). 

And here's our little cutie blowing out her candles. 

Not a bad way to kick off the birthday festivities, heh?


Now it was time to get ready for her friend birthday party, which luckily we were able to celebrate on her actual birthday this week. Ryann's favorite color is green, so I scoured the internet (aka, Pinterest) for a green cupcake recipe. Here's the somewhat attractive one I found:

Let's be honest, there's a reason green and cupcakes don't go together, but I thought "Cute enough! Let's make em!" They're basically red velvet cupcakes, but you sub out green food coloring for red. Unfortunately I only bought the primary colors of food coloring, so I attempted to mix blue and yellow to make a bright, vibrant shade of green. Instead, I ended up with world's ugliest cupcakes:

I'm going to blame it on the cocoa powder mixing with my awesome coloring skills that helped produced these lovely little boogers. I took one look at them and decided that they would make awesome Grinch cupcakes for Christmas, since they resemble his hideous green coat. Billy lovingly refers to these as SHREK cupcakes. I guess they are pretty ogre-ish. Oh well, Ryann didn't seem to care, and the finished product turned out slightly cuter. Even still, I'm hoping next year she's more into yellow.

We decided to have her party at the park this year, and take advantage of the 60-70 degree March weather we've been blessed with. One of the perks of being a stay-at-home mom, and having a husband who works in sales, is that it's easy to pull off a mid-week birthday party and skip the weekend crowds, while also helping to make our kid's actual birthday more exciting. Here are some pictures from the day. 

This last picture is Ryann's face when we were all singing Happy Birthday to her. (She wasn't a fan.) But the rest of the time she had a blast with her friends.

For lunch, we went to Panera for her favorite mac 'n cheese on the block, and later that afternoon (and the next day, and the next day) she opened ALL her presents. She was absolutely showered with love this year and it made for a pretty amazing birthday. Her best bud, Lorena from across the street, went to pizza with us and they got Ryann's favorite, "cannolis for Ryrioli" for dessert.


We finished up her birthday week by moving her into her new room (formerly the guest room). We figured, why not do it now, rather than wait for baby to come? We also wanted to be sure she fully appreciates the much larger space now, instead of thinking she's just getting the boot because the baby needs her old room.


We transitioned the old crib into a bed, only to find out that it's actually a double, not a twin, so poor Billy spent part of his Saturday running around town trying to exchange mattresses. 


So far she's loving her new room and is doing excellent in her new bed. We've definitely lucked out in that department. We still have a long way to go (bedding, paint, artwork, etc), but here are a few shots of her new space. 

Whew! I must say that was quite the week. But that, my friends, is how you do a 3rd birthday! I hope Ryann had as much fun as we did. Happy Birthday sweet Ryann. Love you sooooo much!