A Tooth story

The past month or more Charly has been accompanied by a loose tooth. She almost never wiggled it but anxiously waited every day for it to fall out on its own. YEAH, that was going to happen.

Just a few days ago I began to lose hope that that darn tooth would ever come out.....so she picked a stick (above) which was to help whack it into our hands. TOTALLY KIDDING, I just added that pic as a blog bonus, LOL.

Anyhow like I was saying, I was starting to think it would never fall out....

As we were getting ready for church on Sunday I hear Charly scream out with excitement "MY TOOTH FEEL OUT!" I thought maybe she found a piece of food or something and mistook it for her tooth. Oops, I was wrong and sure enough she had her tiny tooth in the palm of her hand.  (If you click on the picture below you can see that her adult tooth was tired of waiting for the opportunity to come through and chose a different route to poke through. A route which looks to point toward her tongue instead of straight up.)

Lucky for me I got to play tooth fairy for Charly that night which was actually really great. It is not very often Charly WANTS to go to bed, although now that I think of it she went to bed around 10:30. We stayed up late kicking Rochelle's and Nate's butt in Monopoly, but that is beside the point.

The next morning she awoke to find a crisp dollar under her pillow, Nate and I decided since it has been 20 years for both of us since we lost teeth we should account for inflation and not give her 50 cents like we originally planned.

Yeah, I know, we're good parents like that. He he he

To know or not to know

As I approach the 17 week mark on our third pregnancy I am faced with a choice. A choice that was so easy to make with Charly but slightly harder with Piper and tempting with this one.

Do we find out what we are having?

Now this choice wouldn't be such a hard one to make if we had gone with our original thought that we weren't going to have a sonogram but with recent feelings I have been having  we both decided we would opt to have one.

My feelings are probably based on the fact that this pregnancy I feel completely different than I did with the other two. Something feels off' so after chatting with Nate and our midwife we made an appt. with a clinic Amanda (midwife) refers to for ultrasounds. I'm sure everything is fine but we just want to have a scan to make sure there is a baby in there, LOL. As if all this nausea was not enough proof. But in all honestly I would be comforted to see the baby is growing the way it should be. I'm sure the reasons for me feeling weird about it is because it is just a totally new pregnancy experience for me. In some ways it feels like this is the first time for me.

So here I am wondering if we should go ahead and find out what we are having. I'm anxious to know! Nate can go either way so really it is all in my hands, why does that always happen?

Who wants cake?....Piper "not me."

It was a day of normalcy around the Campbell house as we waited for Nate to get home from work so we could all dive into the cupcakes Charly and Rochelle helped make. For sure this year would be the year where Piper completely goes wild with her personal sized cake made especially for her. I just couldn't take it anymore and was dying to see how she would react this year. 

(The birthday wishes above were written on our homemade chalkboard ...it's about 5'x8' and the coolest thing ever!)

I let out a small sigh when again for the third year in a row she didn't even touch her cake....not even a lick! For the record, this girl eats cake, just NEVER her own birthday cake. Next year I'm thinking a giant bowl of spaghetti with four candles in it would be perfect for her to dive in to.

Of course like any newly three year old girl would be she was dying to dive into her presents which included lots of cowgirl stuff and some really cute Converse that match her personality perfectly.

While the whole experience of celebrating another year of our awesome daughter's life is a great one it just wouldn't be complete without a grumpy birthday girl. Why does that always happen? She must be growing, growing, growing because this whole week has been challenging in the grump department.

Like always, Nate knows ways to cheer her up.

And for that he shall have a kiss, LOL (Looks like I need to have a mini photo class/session with Rochelle)

So happy birthday our sweet little firecracker who has brought so much joy into our lives! 

Side note for the grandparents: The past few months/year Nate and I have been thinking about curriculum for Charly and we finally feel good about a fusion of Rod and Staff supplemented with Discover the scriptures. (Click the links to see more info on both if you'd like).  Charly is really into math right now and when I was looking through the lessons she may go through the first grade level pretty quickly but that is all stuff we will have to figure out along the way. She can't wait to start 'school' in a couple of weeks and to be honest I'm excited to have a guide to go by with her, this should be really exciting for all of us. It just feels like a huge weight has been lifted to actually have found a curriculum that seems to be ideal for us and what we want for our children. Oh, and even though I'm against pushing schooling on young children, I'm picking up the preschool packet for Piper (only 20 bucks) so she will not feel left out. She is always wanting to do what Charly is doing anyways and of course for her it won't be as 'rigid'.

We will start back in a couple of weeks through July and August due to the nasty heat and I'm sure we will take off the whole month of Dec. and Jan. after our new little addition makes his/her arrival. How nice it is to be flexible.

A Little League of Their Own

This past week we have all preparing for Charly and her all-star game...all of us, except for Charly. She mostly looked forward to seeing all her friends and chatting in the dug-out than the actual game which we think she still doesn't really understand. She is no pro but this little girl played her little heart out and ran as fast as she could to get two home runs which, to her, are when you get to run all the way around the field regardless of whether or not you were the last hitter. We won't tell her what a home-run actually is, it would break her heart.

Piper, my mom, Rochelle and of course Nate and I were her cheerleaders the whole time encouraging her to get ready and watch for the ball even when she held the catcher position, a spot she didn't enjoy. But seriously look at how cute she is in her little outfit, she was the tiniest little girl (and cutest) out there.

The umpire kept having to direct her to the right spot.

Her team of all girls (only 2 were boys) fell out of the championship running when they lost to a team of all boys by two runs on Saturday morning.  After a celebratory shout the coaches took the kids to lunch afterward. (I had a migraine and threw up in the only bathroom the restaurant had...but that is beside the point.)

We were so blessed to have been a part of this team, her coaches were amazing and were really passionate about teaching the girls the game. More than once they took time out to help Charly with her throwing and always encouraged these kids, I really appreciated that. We really hope next year we can get on a team with coaches as great as these men were.

PS I should not forget to mention that even when playing at 10 in the morning this Texas heat was a brutal sauna....is it fall yet? I'm starting a fall countdown. Who's with me?

Back from the dead.

Almost 16 weeks later and I am slowly rising back from the dead AKA all day sickness. This pregnancy has proven to be even worse than when I was pregnant with Piper, something I thought I could never get through and here I am still alive and day by day getting my normal feelings back along with some other new ones.

I fear I may become that pregnant woman who moans at every ache and pain as they come. Nate teases me that this is my payback for always judging mothers in the past for doing that same very thing.  My feet are retaining water, I feel aches in my belly and headaches all the time now.  All new experiences to me which I will blame the nasty Texas heat and humidity for, LOL. Nate and I secretly are hoping there are two babies growing so we can get more out of one pregnancy...that or next time we conceive we make sure we are VERY wealthy so we can hire a maid and a butler to tend to my every need. 

A gal can wish can't I?

There has been so much going on around here, I don't even know where to start and I am pretty sure there will be a lack of info due to the time I have taken away from blogging. Good thing I have rekindled my relationship with my camera the past few weeks, hopefully these pictures can tell a better story than I may be able to.

As you can see, Nate is still bringing home insects for the girls to explore.

The girls went to my mom's house for a week last month and we made the switch off at the Memorial day celebration at Kristy's family lake house. It was weird not having Piper or Charly for the first time ever. I didn't get much accomplished while they were gone and I think I may have lost some braincells from watching so much reality TV. Eh, I guess that can happen once every six years right?

A few days ago while Charly was reading to me we noticed it was very quiet and here is the sweet scene we came upon.

This year seems to be hotter than ever down here so Nate picked up a pool for the girls. The only decent time to sit out there to watch them is after 8pm which means mosquitoes are out and you get bit. *sigh*

With the occasional fight between these three, they are having a fun time for the most part. Rochelle really does play a lot with them when she is here.

After Charly's T-ball practice this past week we had fun with ice creams and a hose party in the front yard, I just had to add the picture below because I love the look when Charly's eyes cross....it's so dang cute!

She is doing so awesome in T-ball and is very excited about being a part of the all star team. We get to go to OK this weekend to watch her team play. She is getting in lots of practice with Nate while we wait. 

This summer we are discovering Charly's many talents and watching them blossom. Today we did a photo walk with Rochelle and walking right beside me was Charly snapping with my back-up camera  Even though we were only out for 40 minutes we had come fun around this little town. It was so hot!!! Anyhow, click here for those shots.

While I know this blog post was probably a little all over the place I assure you the next will not be. Hopefully this will be enough to catch everyone up on the fun that's been happening here. The way things are going I should be able to post more often but I feel like the fact that I just said that will jinx me and I will get another wave of sickness again. 

Cross your fingers!