Bath Time

Today Paytie and I played around the house all morning and afternoon. During bath time I decided to take some pictures of her and I realized that my camera would take black and white pictures. Payten does so good for the camera these days.... she just lets me take pictures of her and cooperates really well. When she was one years old I couldn't get her to sit still and pose for two seconds. The older she gets the easier it gets.....the easier everything gets. She has been so good lately and she listens to us better than she was listening a few months ago. I have been praying for her attititude and I really think God is hearing my prayers! It is so hard being a parent b/c there is so much to know and learn all the while you are trying to be a loving parent and still disclipline all at the same time. I hope I am making sense. My problem is staying consistent. One day I will absolutely not let her get away with anything and other days I will let things slide. I know that is a big no no!!!!! I am learning! Payten always has so much fun during bath time. She never wants to get in the bath tub but once she is in the water she is just fine. She loves it when I take a bath with her. Everyday she tells me that she wants me to take a bath too, so normally I do. It makes it faster b/c I don't have to give her a bath and then take a shower...I get us both clean in about 15 minutes. :)

I love her little outie! So Cute!

She loves to drink the water out of the faucet while in the bath tub. She will try to drink the bath water but I let her know that the water is yucky! So I turn on cold water and she will drink it and sometimes she will hold aa bunch of water in her mouth and turn around and spray it at me! She finds it really funny.....I find it rather gross! :) This morning Payten woke me up around 7a.m. I was soooo exhausted and knew that my body needed more sleep, so I told her to go play and I would get up soon. I never went back to sleep but I did enjoy lying there for another 45 minutes and listening to her play with her dolls and stuffed animals. She lines them up on the wall and says, "Hi friends..." She is constantly talking to her "friends". I really wasn't listening to what she was saying, but when I got out of bed I saw all of her friends lined against the wall. I thought it was pretty cute. She has the best imagination. Well, the pools open tomorrow morning so we are off the the pool in the morning. Payten is so excited she can hardly contain herself. Early this evening she was showing me how to doggie padel and kick her legs like a frog. I think she is going to remember how to swim! I will post pics of the first trip to the pool this weekend. Enjoy the pics.

Fun With Friends

We have had a pretty fun couple of weeks. We have taken many trips to the park, Meme came to visit us for a few days and spent lots and lots of hours playing outside with the neighborhood kids. Last night we had the old "B-Ville gang" over for grilling out and games. After we ate we all decided to take Payten and Camden to the park. Camden was not sure if he liked Payten's jeep......after a while he started to cry in hopes that his parents would get him off a.s.a.p.!!!!! Payten is our little monkey. She has been climbing on things since she was 6 months old. She can climb all the way up this thing and back down all by herself. All the moms look at me like, "aren't you going to help her"... but she can do it just fine by herself. Actually when I do try to help her with things she says, "Mom, I can do it." She is Miss Independent.

My mom bought her a huge chest full of dress up clothes. She loves to put each dress on over and over again. She tells us that she is a ballerina and will put her arms in the air and twirl around. I am sooo excited b/c she is going to start dance in July. She is going to LOVE it!!!!! Her dance recitals will be pretty amuzing to watch...I am sure! No telling what she will do when everyone is watching her!!!! Meme came to visit us last week. Once again we went to Cheesecake Factory and ate at lots of other good places too. We got lots of good bargains too!!!! Mom and I bargain shop and try to see who can get the best bargain. I think I beat my mom this time when I got a $200 pair of jeans for $35!!!! I was pretty happy! We went to Marble Slab and brought home ice cream s couple times. Payten is enjoying cheesecake ice cream with cut up strawberries and bananas in it in this picture. It was soooo yummy!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thanks Meme for buying us all kinds of goodies while you were down. I am LOVING my new makeup and Paytie likes all her new clothes. We love you lots and lots! Miss you. Paytie loves to sprinkle baby powder all over her after getting out of the bath tub. She always makes a huge mess. Most of the time I have a towel down for her but this time I wasn't paying attention and she was going to town on the baby powder. Luckily it all came up very easily!

I kept trying to make Payten smile at the camera and she would have nothing to do with that. All she could think about was the toys at the park. I don't know what I was thinking dragging her away from the park to take a couple pictures in the flowers!! :) The pictures above are from the "Farm Park" We go there every Wednesday with my friend Carla and her four kids. Payten loves going and they also have water fountains to play in but the past couple times we have gone it was a little too windy and the sun wasn't out either times. Hopefully it will be nice this coming week....I hate the rain and clouds.

Big girl haircut and her new favorite thing

Yesterday Payten got a "big girl haircut" as she calls it. She was soooo excited to get her hair cut just like mommies. She was so good the entire time. She just sat there so still. She also LOVES to ride her jeep. She rides it every day twice. Once in the morning and then once in the evening. She loves to play outide with all her friends. She has so much fun and Matt and I hope it wears her out so when she comes inside she will go right to sleep.....that rarely happens! :) Well, I would type more but we are meeting some friends at a farmyard park for some fun and a picnic in one hour and we are still in our p.j.'s. Hope everyone has a great day!!!

Happy Easter

We had a very relaxing Easter Weekend. We played outside a lot of the time. Payten is really getting into riding her jeep. She is an expert driver now. It took her a long time to figure out how to steer the wheel. Now she is a pro. She just takes off....there is hardly any traffic on our rode so it is nice that she can drive around in the street. Easter day we hid Easter eggs in the back yard. We filled all the eggs with Starburst jelly beans. Payten was really excited to see what was inside of the eggs. She loves her Easter basket too. She has been taking it with her everywhere. She had so much fun finding the eggs in the back yard. We have about 50 Easter eggs strung around our house. She has been enjoying playing with them. After we played outside for a couple hours I started feeling sick to my stomach. Matt had the stomach virus last weekend and I thought that I was lucky enough to not catch it....well I guess I wasn't that lucky! I threw up about 15 times yesterday and then into last night. I thought I wasn't going to make it! :) Praise the Lord I got through....I feel better. My stomach still aches a little bit. Hopefully I will wake up tomorrow feeling 100%. There is nothing worse then having a temperature and feeling achy all over. I hope everyone had a better Easter day than I did!! Here is a picture of Payten and Daddy. Payten is soooo blessed to have a Daddy like Matt. Everyday Payten always asks for her Daddy and is so excited to see him when he comes home. When I was sick he entertained her the entire day and they slept together upstairs in the game room while I was downstairs not feeling so well. :) Matt is always so patient and loving to her. Thanks Matt for being such a wonderful Dad.

Saturday night we all got dressed up and went to the Easter service at Second Baptist Church. It was so nice to actually go to a church service. Since I work at the church on Sundays I don't get to go to a church service. I really enjoyed sitting next to Matt and listening to a really good message. Payten was so excited to wear her Easter dress. She begs me all the time to wear it. She didn't want to take it off that evening. I think she would live it the dress if I would let her. She is so funny. The other night we kissed her good night and closed the door. We heard her making noise....Matt went down stairs to see what she was up too.....she was in her closet taking all her clothes off of the hangers and playing dress up. The next morning she came and woke me up and she had a skirt on over her pj's. She is constantly getting into my jewerly and makeup ALL the time. She is a true girly girl!

My Little Sunshine

It has been a while since I have updated my blog. Things have been going really well these past couple weeks.......although Payten has decided she wants to throw some MAJOR fits just to test my patience.... and Matt's too! We have been very relaxed in our schedule and I can definitely tell it throws her off. The past couple days we got her on a rountine again and I can already see a huge change in her behavior. What a difference a little routine can make!!!!! We have been enjoying the nice weather by playing outside a lot, going to the park and taking walks around the neighborhood. I can't wait for the pools to open up so we can go swimming everyday!!! (well almost everyday.) I am anxious to see if she can swim all by herself. One of the last times we went to the pool last summer she swam all by herself, without floaties, and kept her head above water for over a minute. I hope she will catch on and learn to be a really good swimmer! Grandma Jan and Papa Mike came to visit us. Jan helped us plant flowers one day.... and Payten got a special flower just for her. The next day she decided to pick the flower and then she got really upset because she couldn't put the flower back on the stem......I promised her that a new flower would start to grow soon and within two days a new Daisy started to grow. She loves to look at the flowers that we planted. Thanks Grandma Jan for helping us..... it was nice to have someone helping me that knew what they were doing. :)

While we were planting flowers my next door neighbor found an unexpected visitor in his garage. He didn't want to kill the snake and I knew I wasn't going to do it so Jan volunteered herself and killed the snake with a shovel. I got some great pictures but I figured I would need Jan's permission first to post them. :) All the neighborhood kids came out to see what was going on. The kiddos ended up disecting the snake for atleast an hour. Payten was sooooooo interested in what was going on. Why are kids soooo fascinated with this kind of stuff? Anyway....it was a very entertaining afternoon. Below are some of the faces I captured while all this was going on. This face is Payten's, "Don't touch me" face.....she has soooo many facial expressions. I was chasing her around the house with the camera and she let me know she was not in the mood to smile. "Leave me alone" she says! :)