Lydia has a new cousin...and I no longer have a baby, but a little girl.

    Last Friday, the 8th, my sister gave birth to her first child.  I'm so glad I got to be there.  London is the prettiest newborn I have ever seen.  Lydia loved to look at her, poke her, find her nose, ears, eyes and head.  London was her very own live baby doll.  Lydia's dream come true!  Mother and baby are doing just fine and I can't wait to see little London again.  They live in Houston so I can't just pop over and visit when I want.  Lydia and London are exactly 23 months apart.  I can see them having some good times in the future.

     Everyday Lydia turns more and more into a little girl.  She will be two in less than three weeks!  Just this week she went from only being able to say "A, B, C, D" to almost the entire alphabet.  Today I tried to sing along with her and she said "mommy no no".  I got the hint and stopped singing.  She has also learned to catch this week.  Kevin and I taught her how to catch and she LOVES it.  She will catch her ball about 90% of the time.  Must take after Mommy.  :)  She enjoys sitting on her potty, even though she doesn't always go in it.  She wears pull ups now instead of regular diapers.  She can sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.  And pretty much speaks in sentences now.  What happened to my baby!!!???

House Update

    We have been pretty busy the past couple weeks.  We haven't watched ANY tv since we moved in, except for a tiny bit of Netflix on our computer.  We didn't watch that much before we moved, so it's not a big deal to us.  I did hook up our tv and DVD player so Lydia could watch her beloved Elmo.
    Last night Kevin and I went on a date to Jakes restaurant, it was really good.  We were going to come home and get Lydia to bed and then watch a movie, but instead of watching a movie we unpacked boxes for two hours.  Maybe we'll have a real date night in a couple months.  I did manage to get the kitchen drawers and cabinets somewhat organized though.
    As I promised, here are some before and "progress" pictures.  I say progress because we are nowhere close to being done, but it's coming along nicely.

Here is our dining room before we did anything to it.

We tore out the carpet and painted the walls.  I really like the light fixture that's in this room.  It definitely says "Azalea District" to me.

It's kinda hard to see the floors that well in this picture, but we installed distressed hardwood floors and are in the process of putting down thicker baseboards.

Here is the living room before we did anything to it.  This view is looking from the front door into the room.

We tore up the carpet in here as well, and painted.  This view is looking from the doorway that you can see in the "before" pic and looking at the front door.

You can definitely see the floors better in this picture.   We have A LOT of furniture to buy still, but for now we are just using our old stuff.  I LOVE the plantation shutters.  They are in the living room and dining room.

Looking from the front door.

Here is the kitchen before.   

Before- very white!  This house needed some splashes of color so badly.

We took up all the black and white tiles and are going to redo the island and bring it back in.

Different view.  Took out all the old appliances.

We painted and put in the same hardwood floors in the kitchen.  We still have baseboards and crown molding to do in here.  We are also getting new countertops in a couple weeks and are going to get a new back door.  We left the carpet in the three bedrooms, but tore it up everywhere else.

Different view: we got all new appliances, the cabinets have a fresh coat of paint and we still have to put knobs on the cabinet doors.  There is also more countertop space to the left of this pic that I forgot to take a picture of.  

We watched our friend Wyatt for a couple days this week while his Mommy tried to get over a sickness.  Lydia and Wyatt had a blast!  They played, ran around the block a couple times, watched Elmo together and played tag.

Eating lunch is always more fun when you have a buddy to wipe your hand off on!!