Dear Lilly,

Wow. I can hardly believe it's been two years since you rocked into our lives and changed our family forever. It's been a wild ride the whole two years, but I wouldn't change a thing. The morning I saw that pink line appear on the home pregnancy test, I knew life was going to change drastically. I kept thinking, "Oh God...THREE kids!? Are you sure? Can I really handle this?" Your Dad didn't even really believe me when I took him out to dinner that night and slid a note written on the restaurant napkin that said "I'm pregnant." We were both shocked to say the least. :)

And then nine months and fifty pounds of baby blubber later I had had enough and schedule a date for you to come into the world. I know...I'm the epitome of patience. Your birth was the fastest of all three...a record 3.5 hours! I can still remember how heavy and warm you were when they laid you on my chest. Wow...what an amazing feeling! In 3.5 hours I had gone from a wife and mother of two kids to a woman who had just been handed a third child, a second daughter and had no idea what chaos and absolute joy she was about to bring to me and our family.

This past year has been quite interesting, Lilly. We have watched you go from a baby who was unsteady on her feet, waving her arms around like a monkey to keep her balance to a more sure and steadier walker who fell and hit her head a lot and then ZOOM...I think that was Lilly who just flew by me at mach speed! You are by far, my most daring and acrobatic child. You run without a care, you stay right behind Abby and/or Zach in almost everything they do. In fact, this Summer was the first year in Zach's whole life that he'd even get into the pool waist deep and this, your first year of being in the big pool, YOU jumped feet first into the five foot deep end! Does that tell me anything about your bravery? Yes. Yes, it does! You taught yourself how to swing on the swing set this year, just by watching your older siblings get up and go. I've never had to show you or help you get on a swing and you even push and pump yourself. You gave up the highchair this year too. You wanted to be a "big girl" and sit in the regular seats like your sister and brother, so we let you try. However, we had to make a compromise and give you a booster set so that A) you could reach your food and B) you could still be strapped into the seat. Otherwise you jumped up and down at your own will and disrupted dinner too much. Just in the past few months you started sleeping all through the night too! Hooray! I thought the night would never be here after all three of you kids, but it is and I'm SUCH a happier mom for it. Your vocabulary has taken off too. You never seem to want to talk when other people are around so that we can show you off, but dang girl, we are impressed! You can easily tell us what you need/want, what you do NOT want (this is the big word right now, you'll hear this word a lot too as you get older, it's NO!), who took what from you and how you want them to be punished severely for the infraction. Hee hee. Well, okay, you can sort of tell us that. It comes out like this..."Mooooooom, Zachy took dat. He spanken! *wagging finger at Zach* NO! NO! Zachy!" It's too cute really.

*deep sigh*

So Lilly, I just wanted to take a minute out of the crazy life to say how much I love you, how much we ALL love you. God really knew what He was doing when he nestled you down in my womb without my consent and I praise Him for what you've brought to our family as well as what you will bring to Him. I'm sure He looks in on you and marvels at the qualities of Him that He sees in you.

I know you don't really get the concept of a birthday yet, but I hope that today you feel extra special with all the extra hugs, kisses and love you receive from Daddy, Abby, Zach, Grammas and Grampas and all the people who think you are something special...especially your Mommy.

The Scoop

So...yes, it's been over two months since I've posted here. Hold the rotten tomatoes, I have a good excuse! Okay...maybe I don't have a good excuse, but I have an excuse. I'll just say it. I've been cheating. I have a mistress and her name is Facebook. I don't know what the male form of a mistress is, so it stays feminine and you'll just have to understand me. Anyway, I can't get enough of it! Mobwars, Games, Chatting, Updating everyone on every stupid or significant thought I have, what I'm eating, what I'm feeling, what I'm doing...it's SOOO self indulgent. And how fun is it to peek in on all my friends and family to see what THEY are thinking, feeling and doing!? It's like the newest way to keep in touch without actually taking time out of my life for a real, live conversation. It figures the Information Super Highway would find a way to make interpersonal relationships impersonal, right? And yet I'm hooked.

That's not to say that my personal relationships have gone down the toilet while I spend hours massaging my computer. No, no, no. In fact, my life hasn't felt this on track in a long while. My friend Karynda and I started attending a bible study every week, um, last November? When I started meeting with these women I had become a woman that I didn't really recognize anymore. Oh, I was about the same on the outside, but inside I had shriveled and sunk down into myself. I'm sure I blogged about it awhile ago, but it was so apparent to me one Sunday when I sat in church seething while looking at all these young, adorable couples around me. I knew something was really wrong. Thankfully, when I turned my heart back toward the Holy Spirit and asked him to begin the transformation, there was no hesitation. It only took about a month of meeting with these older, godly women who truly loved and prayed for me as a sister and my heart had fully softened again. I was no longer seething and miserable inside, confused and in turmoil about how to go about life with my crazy kids and unorganized life. I was starting to reach up out of the fog and the air was clearer up there. *deep breath* It's refreshing and purifying actually. So "big props" to my main man Jesus and his Holy Spirit who is dwelling and changing and growing and all that good stuff inside of me.

So what's been happening in the Baker household the past few months? Summer's been in full swing here. We were at the pool and playing outside and eating ice cream. We were garage saling, walking around barefoot, having sleepovers and having a TON of lemonade stands at the end of our driveway. We've been vacationing, family reunion-ing, playdating and enjoying our friends. We were working and playing tennis and making financial goals and PAYING OFF OUR VAN, which feels awesome. We were considering moving out of our house and seriously looking into buying a new one, but the two homes we were seriously interested in fell through. We took that as a sign and backed off, deciding to instead take a chunk out of our savings to pay the van off and then make extra payments to the house.

At this point in the Summer we are all exhausted by each other's presence. So much so that I find myself scavaging for any quiet alone time I can. If I get up before the kids do in the morning I feel assaulted if they intrude into my time by waking up early. How dare they, right? The kids are sick of playing with each other and just plain picking on one another. You know that ol' {pointing a finger at the other just an inch away from the face} and saying "I'm not touching you, you doodyhead." Ack! Stop it! "Mom, he's not touching me and being SO annoying." If you not touch your sister again you are going to your room! Get down off the counter! Stop jumping on the couch! SHUT...THE...DOOR!!! Seriously people, I know this is stuff that the everyday mom deals with and it's no more difficult for me than any of them, but oh my gosh, school needs to start as soon as possible. I'm going to have a "Back to School" party for myself on the 24th. Not sure what all that entails, but it's gonna happen. Maybe it'll be a pedicure and coffee, maybe it'll be a Glamour magazine and bag of Hershey Kisses on the couch with no one wallowing all over me. Whatever it is, it's gonna rock to have the kids in school on a regular basis and I want to celebrate a good Summer, which means I didn't kill any of them and they didn't declare mutiny, gag and duct tape us down in the basement.

That's the long and short of the past two months or so. I'm sure that any of you who know us well enough are also following us on Facebook, but I'll try to get the juicy bits of our lives back into this blog. That's something that Facebook can't capture - the in's and out's of the really interesting parts of our life...and there are many!

Be well, Friends!

Blast From The Past

Remember this toy from childhood? I do. I think back when I had one it was called The Mop Top Hair Shop. This one I found at a garage sale today for fifty cents. The original one I played with came with a few holey-headed people, the barber chair that pumped play-doh up into the heads, a plastic pair of scissors and a few hair-do molds. This one comes with two people, the chair and a clipper that supposedly buzzes when it touches the play-doh. Eh, for fifty cents I think it was a good deal, but man, they don't make toys like they use to. I'm sure whomever I bought this from paid at least $10 for this set and it's about worth fifty cents, I think. I couldn't leave it behind though. It'll be something else they can share when we do get the play-doh out instead of the three of them fighting over two play-doh toy sets.

Sleepy Eye

Back when Scott and I actually use to "make out" I'd always come away from the breathless span of kissing with my eyes closed. It was hard to open them again and regain composure, so I'd say that he gave me "sleepy eyes" again. I loved it.

I was taking a few shots of myself the other day because 1) I felt like I need to update my profile picture on Facebook and 2) I felt particularly cute this day, but afterwards had to rethink my definition of "sleepy eyes" for myself.

I sit my camera on the shelf of my cupboard, click the timer, pose, smile and SNAP. Crud. That was an awful one. So I repeat the process a few times. You be quiet, you do it too. I grab the camera and take a look at the shots in horror. WHAT IS WRONG WITH MY EYE!? Do I have a lazy eyelid or something!? My left eye (is that my left or yours? Mine, I think.) is totally trying to close on me. Seriously people, I'm not trying to look all seductive OR drugged in this shot. No, THAT'S MY NORMAL EYE SHAPE WHEN I SMILE! Oh you see it, I know you do.









Umm, it's making me feel all weird about myself when I smile now. And how awful too because Scott already tells me that I look "b*tchy" when I'm not smiling, like I need to walk around with a perma-smile on or something. Now when I do smile I realize my one eye is looking like it wants to go to sleep on me.

I think I've read somewhere that one side of your face is dominant and apparently my left side lost the coin toss.

There's absolutely no real, solid, life changing point to this post. I just wanted to share my retarded eye with the rest of the world. You may now go back to whatever was surely more important than this.

Poo Dunnit?

It's a nice leisurely Sunday morning. I have my two cups of cinnamon spiked coffee (yea, that's my new thing...a dash of cinnamon in my grounds before the brew) while sitting on the couch. I realized I'm gonna miss the first service at church and decide to make the most of the morning by cleaning out my junk drawer, clearing off the kitchen sink window ledge and shaving Max, our old fart of a poodle. Oh yea, baby...leisure turned into git 'er done!

I get all this done, hop in the shower and get us moving out the door for eleven o'clock service. Scott got the kids in the car for me, while I finished getting myself together, and when I finally jumped in I smelled something like vomit. I said "eew, what is that smell!?" and looked over to see two seven inch long BIG turds on the floor of the passenger seat!!! UGH! GROSS!!

I jumped clear out of the van, but the poor kids are strapped in and screeching at me, bug eyed, to tell them what kind of monster is left in the van with them. Of course by this time Scott had gone ahead for work, so I had to put on my big girl panties and clean it up myself. Nasty. I have a habit of leaving my sliding door open on the van and here recently the raccoons have been coming in our garage foraging for food (which really translates into tipping over the trash cans, scratching the bags open and spreading the rotten garbage all over the floor as a buffet.) Well, I guess yesterday one had to take a big ol' poopie while he was attempting to steal whatever stale french fry or animal cracker he could find under the carseats and thought "eh, this nice vanilla coconut smelling van looks like a good spot!"

Listen, I'm all for live and let live and I don't even own a gun YET. But at this point, my motto is now gonna be: He who takes a poo in my van has stepped over the line into "I'm gonna pop a cap in yo furry raccoon tail if I see you in there again" territory.

Stupid raccoons. I once thought they were cute. I even overlooked having to clean up my own garbage they clawed apart. I also tried to overlook the night they woke us up at 2am knocking over the trash cans while trapped inside the garage. But this? This is the last straw. I'm heading over to google how to go to war against raccoons.

$50 worth of fun

Last Fall our friend Shawn handed us a Hot Wheels Jeep that his daughters had outgrown. Zach was enamoured with it, but unfortunately the battery it came with was dead. We didn't figure it was worth the money to buy a new battery right then since Winter was impending. So it sat in the garage and then at the side of the house. For the past several months he and the other kids would pull it out, hop in and take turns pushing each other around in it...always hoping it would somehow spark to life and run them around the neighborhood.

So we finally decided we'd just go ahead and get the battery now since Summer is all but here. We went through two big stores and came up empty at both. Must have been a big run on 12v Hot Wheels batteries in Reynoldsburg! I ran into a neighbor today while out and he mentioned a battery store right near us. They wanted a few more dollars for the battery than the superstores, but hey, we got the Jeep for FREE, so what's the big deal in buying the battery, right?

Next to scoring big on the big box of puzzles at Christmastime THIS was the best money spent on Zach. He friggin' loves it! Lilly, God bless her, she was just happy as can be to be the rider and giggle through the whiplash.

It's gonna be a GREAT Summer! I can feel it.

Not Too Bad, If I Do Say So Myself

I was checking back through old posts here while sitting at work. Lucky girl, right, all that time to spend lazily. Not really, just in between mad dashes of installers calling in to complete their jobs. Anyway, I came back to my resolution post and was pretty siked to see that many of them are completed or on their way to completion. Yes!

1.Go on a beach vacation with my hubby (PLANNED FOR JULY!)
2.Run a 5K (or more?) and actually condition so I can have a respectable time (IN PROCESS)
3.Get a tattoo that has some personal meaning (Rethinking this one...stay tuned)
4.Have lunch with Abby at school (DID IT!)
5.Volunteer to do something I have never done before and am uncomfortable with. (DID IT!)
6.Cut down the pizzas and milkshakes (see the lose fifteen pounds) (DID IT!)
7.Actually see Zach fully potty-trained (DID IT! This is my absolute favorite one!)
8.Drink more water and less coffee (starting today) (DID IT!)