"I'm 2!!"

Paisley is very proud that she is 2, and if you ask, you'll know very quickly how old she is! So I can remember in a few years what you were up to at 2 years old Paisley, here's what life is like these days:

1. You know how to sing through your ABC's, with just a few improvisations during the "hard" parts like L M N O P.
2. You know your full name, although when you say it, you leave out a few syllables here and there and it usually comes out as "Pai Ree Gibswing". I think we'll call ourselves the "Gibswings" for a while b/c it's cute.
3. When you do throw a little fit when life doesn't go your way, you don't stay frustrated for long, and when you realize your behavior is not OK, you immediately say 'Sorry momma' or 'Sorry daddy'.
4. Like any 2 year old, you like to say no. But, you always say "no, okay", "no, okay"... I am not sure where this comes from.
5. You still sleep in your crib and love it. No attempts at climbing out yet. You're still not a deep sleeper.
6. You love to take showers. We could leave you in our shower for a LONG time and you'd be happy playing with your toys, just filling up legos with water and pouring it out... We do, of course, supervise.
7. You like to eat "snacks". You'll get up from the table after dinner and say to mommy "time snack?". We've got to work on this one - you know, eating your meals so you aren't hungry right after dinner.
8. You've got a sweet tooth - especially for ice cream. When you see a picture of ice cream on a puzzle or coloring book or something, you say in a really loud voice, "mmmmmm, ICE CREAM".
9. You LOVE your Grandmas and your Ree Ree. Since you spend one day a week with each of them right now, you pretty much know the way to their houses by heart, know exactly where we are when we pull up, and you probably know exactly what you can get away with at each of their homes. Your Papas (Mike and Doug) are pretty special too.
10. You REALLY dislike getting your teeth brushed right now. You want to brush your teeth all the time, but only if YOU are doing it... :) It is a big struggle, but hopefully we'll get through this soon.
11. Life is immeasurably better with Paisley in our family. These 2 years have been so incredible, I can't wait to see what God has in store for this year of your life sweet girl!

Can you believe how tall she is? I did one of those silly height predictors & it said she was going to be 5'7'' based on her height and weight now - who knows. I have a feeling she's going to surpass me for sure.
Paisley loves all things Dora and Diego right now, so we decided to do a Dora birthday party for her. A local bakery in Plano did this cake for her - it turned out so cute! She loved it. We also had a bounce house courtesy of one of our family friends, but it ended up being just too hot for any of the kids to play on it.

Mike is wrapping up his summer school classes right now & will have a short break before getting back into it for the fall semester. He's taking 5 classes, 2 of which have labs, so he'll be in Denton on Tuesdays and Thursdays for 10-12 hours. So proud of him!!

Paisley is going to be starting school as well at First Baptist Lewisville after Labor Day. She'll go 2 days a week from 9:30 to 2:30. Mike and I are really excited for her. She seems to be the type that will excel in school, so it will be good for her to have this extra exposure to other kids & lots of learning.

Other than that, with a house on the market, much of our time is spent keeping the house clean, rearranging our schedule for the occasional showings, and praying for a buyer - if the time is really right for us to make a move. If we do end up selling the house, we won't be moving far. When we bought this house, we intended to be here for about 5 years, and we want Paisley to be in a different set of schools when she gets to that age.

Praising God for such a healthy, happy 2 year old & looking forward to all of the ways Paisley will continue to enrich our lives.

Love you all!!

Happy 2nd Birthday & all the other stuff we've been doing in the last 2 months!

We've been totally lax in updating the Paisley blog... total bummer, or in the words of Paisley, "BUNNER DUDE"... Funny :). Here's what we've been up to:
...Returned home from vacation at the end of May...
...Mike started summer school with several classes- a very heavy load considering it's the summer session...
...Bumped along in June with few pictures to document what we were up to... I am not sure I remember...
...Decided to put our house on the market & in the process (and with the help of lots of family) put down about 800 square feet of new flooring...
...Celebrated Paisley's 2nd birthday! (the most important part of the whole span of time)...
So here are a few photos of our time this summer... (in the opposite order in which they actually occurred since Blogger is irritating like that...)

The weekend before Paisley's birthday we took her to lunch at the Rainforest Cafe and then to the DORA Live!! show at Nokia Theater. That was part of her birthday present from mom & dad. She LOVED the Rainforest Cafe, and here she and I are playing with the cool butterfly balloon creature someone made her.

During the fourth of July weekend, we put down new flooring in almost the entire downstairs area of the house to prepare to get it on the market. Fun times. My mom and dad, Mike's dad and both of my brothers (and sister too) helped us out more than we could have imagined. It was a huge job, but it got done, looks great, and we are oh so glad we are now finished with it. Here's a picture of the new floor going down.

And here's a quick look at what we were ripping up.

Paisley decided she wanted to wear ALL her bows. She's not a huge fan of bows & it's a real battle for me to get her to keep a bow in for any extended period of time. She says a lot in the mornings when we are getting ready, "wear a bow today?", but she's just kidding... she doesn't REALLY want to wear that perfectly cute bow I would have picked out just for the outfit she was wearing that day...

Here's Pais with her Uncle Devon. She adores her Uncle Devon, as you can see here. She loves that he is so tall and throws her up in the air and tickles her and gives her big bear hugs and kisses. She loves her Uncle Ian this much as well, just don't have any picture proof. I think they might like her a little bit too... This is one of my favorite things about my siblings as a mom - it is just amazing how much they love her & care for her. It's awesome.

Birthday pictures to come... :)

Vacation, Last Day!

Our last day was spent at the beach & pool. It was a great end to our trip. Nothing exciting to report, lots of lazy time spent reading, sand-castle making, cheeto eating, etc. getting ready to come on home.

Paisley had several large strawberries at lunch, and her face and bathing suit got their fair share of juice. 

We went out to the beach that night to see what we could catch with the net. Paisley caught lots of shells and Mike caught a crab. 


It turned out to be a great week after once crazy start. Back to work tomorrow for Mom, and back to the normal routine for Mike and Pais until class starts next week. Bye for now! 
 

Vacation, Day 5

We took a break from the water on Monday morning and visited a local zoo. Paisley had a good time, enjoyed getting to feed some of the animals and listening to what had to have been the loudest donkey ever. She's admiring the ducks here
Once the sun was headed down, we got our suits on and headed down for some more fun in the water. 


Paisley and Mike got in the pool Monday night as well - the water had been a little too cold, but it was warming up as we wrapped up our trip. This particular pool had a zero entry, so Pais could play by herself in more than half of it. 
She thoroughly enjoyed the fountains

Day 4, Video

Vacation, Day 4

So sorry Heather for the break in posting the rest of the pictures from our vacation :) The internet connection in our condo was so incredibly slow that I lost my patience and decided to wait until we got home. So, Sunday we spent more time at the beach, and it was probably the most crowded day of our trip. The weather was great. So, here's Paisley getting ready to head down to the beach with her coverup and sunglasses. Paci had to stay behind...

Paisley learned the awesomeness of collecting shells on Sunday, and we spent a lot of our time doing this: Sitting at the edge of the shore digging for shells together. Usually a beer in hand for Dad/Mom. 

Here's the catch of the day:
Paisley enjoyed the shade under the umbrella with all of the sand castle-making stuff.
And, here's the crazy girl enjoying cheetos. Or teetos, if you're Paisley. She ate her weight in cheetos. 

Oh, and here's Paisley at dinner Sunday night. She has her paci because, as we sat down to eat on this lovely patio (I am exaggerating a bit), amongst a pretty quiet group of 8 or so tables, Paisley stood up as best she could in her high chair and yelled "SIT DOWN". Awesome :) Such is life with a toddler, right? 

I am uploading a short video from our Sunday beach day and I'll post that next - Paisley is discussing her seashells. She apparently thought they smelled good... Goofy girl!

22 Months Today!

It's hard to believe we'll be celebrating P's second birthday in a few short months. Lots of moms tell me that this age - really 18 months to 2ish - is one of their favorites. And while I haven't seen what's yet to come, Mike and I are truly enjoying all of Paisley's personality traits these days. Since I am a bad mom and have not kept up with a baby book per se, I want to make sure I am keeping track of Paisley's milestones along the way, if nowhere else, than on this blog.

So, P, here's what you've been up to these last few months:

1)learning your colors: you've mastered quite a few, including pink, blue, red, white, brown, yellow, orange, purple and de-um (green). You love to attach the color of something to it when you point it out - like your "de-um froggy", which is your most favorite stuffed animal right now.

2)Speaking of, you sleep with froggy every night, and he keeps you company by singing songs, talking about hands and feet and dancing... You can play for a very long time with him in your crib before you fall asleep. And just for the record, his music drives me nuts sometimes!

3)I think this is partly due to Dora, but you can amazingly count to 11, and we've even heard you count backward from 5 a few times. Whenever you, me and dad are out somewhere, you want us to each hold one of your hands while you say "1, 2... 1, 2..." and then you very adamantly expect us to lift you up for a big swing through the air. It's quite cute, and good for mom's arm muscles.

4)You aren't much of an eater. The doctor's been on us about your weight gain issues, and you are a very skinny almost-two-year old. I'd have to say, of all issues I thought I'd run into as a mom, this certainly wasn't one of them. I guess you're just going to inherit Aunt Heather's body type, and that's fine by me, considering she's so beautiful. If you could emulate her behavior as well, that'd be awesome! :) When you do eat, you expect dip, either "ranch dip" which you will ask for by name or ketchup, which you will also ask for. You'll dip anything into those 2 items, and I mean anything. When there's a meal had without dip, we can forget about you being much interested.

You love to tell all things "night night" before bed - colors, toons (cartoons), stickers, books, Mack and Shelby of course, and mom and dad too. You still give big open mouth kisses (guess we'll have to work on that one at some point), you say "wuv you" a lot, and when you give hugs, you will lean into the person, but you don't really feel its necessary to hug with your arms quite yet. :)

Love you baby girl! You make life so much fun, every day. I can't imagine life without you, and thank you for helping mom and dad remember what's important!!