July 24

Today was a beautiful day, so we spent most of it outside.

Caleb was also especially whiny today, so we spent even more of the day outside. 

Lily only napped for 45 minutes this morning, so I was even  happier we were spending it outside!

I got out the bubble machine, which Lily loved.

Bubbles!

Look at that face - she's a girl on a mission.

Caught one!

I'm not sure if this is a concerned/curious/frustrated face, or if she's trying to blow the bubbles away.

Front porch selfie! The big kids were trying to play golf in the grass.

Then it was lunchtime, and Caleb and Daisy had a picnic on the deck. 

They sat like this for a good 15 minutes, and ate all of their food! I will miss this so much when Caleb goes to kindergarten. I'm sure Daisy will miss it, too.

Hi, cutie pies!

July 22

I took the kids to the Botanical Garden this morning, and intentionally left the big camera behind. Our arrangement was pretty fluid; sometimes Caleb and Daisy were in the BOB and Lily was on my back in my linen wrap, sometimes Lily and Daisy were in the BOB and Caleb ran, and sometimes Lily was on my back and we ditched the stroller to explore. In situations like that, I don't want to lug my camera around, too.

So no pictures.

But we had fun, and we returned home exhausted! Lily napped for over three hours, and after some finagling on my part, I tricked Caleb and Daisy into naps in my big bed. But they were so sweaty and close to me that I had to leave the bed and go nap on the couch. Boo!

Later, they played in our little swimming pool while I made dinner. (Lest you think I allow my children to play unsupervised in a swimming pool, I'd like to clarify that I position the pool right outside my kitchen window and I watch them through the open window the whole time. They are literally four feet from me, and we talk as they play.) Lily eventually got tired of  splashing, so I wrapped her up on my back while I finished making dinner.

Some dinner prep selfies:

I have no idea why that girl is pinching my ear.

And yes, she's naked. I mean, she's wearing a diaper, but is otherwise naked.

She loves seeing her picture on the camera!

And I just realized that I accomplished my goal of taking a picture of Lily every day of her first year. That means that I can relax a little bit with the blogging! Hooray! I'll still probably post most days, but don't be concerned if I skip a day here or there, okay?

July 21

We still have rainbow streamers and lanterns and flowers decorating our dining/living/still-empty-due-to-unfinished-construction room.

I haven't yet put away all the party dishes.

We're still munching on leftover rainbow veggies and fruit and cheese.

And I realized that I committed a major party fail: I made two dozen rainbow popsicles, and forgot to serve them at the party. Bummer!

Luckily, I think Lily would be happy to eat all of them herself.

She does pretty well, considering she only has two teeth!

July 20

We celebrated our sweet Baby Rainbow with a rainbow birthday party today! My mom and Ryan came over while Chris and the kids were at church, and we spent the whole morning and early afternoon preparing for Lily's big bash. It ended up being so much fun!

I may have gotten a little bit carried away with the rainbow theme. We had:

rainbow crepe paper

rainbow lanterns

rainbow flowers

rainbow veggie tray

rainbow fruit tray

rainbow cheese plate

rainbow sangria

But it was fun!

Our sweet birthday girl.

I think this one is my favorite birthday party picture. Her cake was a gluten-free rainbow layer cake made with food-based dyes. Really. And her cupcakes also had rainbows inside!

It was warm, but not oppressively hot, so we spent most of the time outside. Lily and Jace (who turns one in two days!) enjoyed hanging out.

Thinking of all of the dads and boys who would be present, Chris set up sports stations all over the yard. I loved looking out and watching all the boys playing baseball!

Then it was time for cake. 

All we had to do was set the cupcake in front of Lily, and she got upset. We weren't even singing yet!

After we sang, Lily calmed down. It took a while, but she finally tasted her icing.

Can you tell she's thinking, "Hey! This is delicious!"?

And then she gobbled her cupcake up.

(I know it looks like she's eating a green cupcake, but I promise it was rainbow layers.

Then, with much trepidation, I cut into Lily's cake. I spent hours and hours working on this cake, and I was terrified that it wouldn't look good. But when I removed the first slice, I think I heard angels sing. It was perfect!

Baby Rainbow's rainbow layer cake! It was worth all the effort. Maybe.

We had punching balloons and rainbow bubbles for all the kids.

Sara was there when Lily was born, so we were especially glad she was there for her first birthday!

Goodness, we love this girl!

Our neighbor Mary brought over these awesome sunglasses, with flashing lights across the top. Caleb put them on and declared that he was a police officer. Get it? He has flashing lights like a police car? I thought it was pretty funny.

After everyone left, we opened some presents, ate some dinner, cleaned up a little bit...

And then Chris took Lily on her first bike ride! 

It was almost bedtime, so they only went out for about five minutes. But she loved it!

Happy birthday, Lily Clare!

July 19

Happy first birthday, Lily Clare!

You know how they always say that babies grow up so quickly? I say, not so much. I have felt every day of this year, and enjoyed most of them. The one cliche I will claim for Lily's first year is that I can't imagine our family without her. She is such a perfect addition to our (not-so-)little family, and she is just the right complement to Caleb's ying and Daisy's yang. I'm so excited for this next year, as she becomes more mobile, independent, and able to interact with her siblings on her own terms!

I spent all morning and part of the afternoon at a MOPS meeting, so I missed most of Lily's special day. Before I left, though, I showed Lily's birthday video to Caleb and Daisy. They were transfixed, and giggled at all of the silly (and some of the not-so-silly) pictures. Want to see it? It's just over eight minutes long, but I think it's really fun. Granted, she's my baby and I took all the pictures, so of course I love it.

After they watched that, they watched Daisy's first year video. That one is twice as long, so I won't bother sharing it here. But here's a picture of Chris and the kids watching Daisy's video:

It was cute to see how engaged they were!

After naps and dinner, we headed out to find one birthday cake for Lily's first birthday.

The Holocaust Museum was the closest cake, but Chris was concerned that it was a bit morbid or disrespectful to visit that cake for our daughter's birthday. Practicality ruled, though, because it was getting close to bedtime and we needed our outing to be short. Holocaust Museum, it was.

Yep - the kids were all in their jammies. Also, because it was so close to bedtime, they were pretty uncooperative. So it goes.

I love this one of Lily trying to remove the birthday crown that Daisy made for her, while Caleb and Daisy tussle for the top of the cake in the background.

And then, once we were done with the cake pictures and getting back in the car, then Caleb and Daisy decided to be cooperative. Those children.

July 18

Lily slept last night, so that was good.

She still doesn't seem to be feeling well, though.

Between her fussiness and all of the shopping I did today to prepare for her party on Sunday, I didn't get my camera out. Again.

But I did manage to grab one quick selfie.

She was entranced by her image on the camera screen. 

I'm entranced with her image now. I love this girl!

July 17

Today's pictures are courtesy of my mom's iPhone. I know - I've been lazy with the camera lately! I promise to make up for it this weekend, when Lily turns one on Saturday and has her birthday party on Sunday. For now, some pictures my mom took when she and Ryan took the kiddos to play at the lake:

This girl is a stinker, and I love her. I also love her new striped leggings - a clearance find at Old Navy!

This girl is still not feeling well. More yucky diapers, and she spent much of last night sleeping in Chris' arms. Poor baby. Let's hope tonight is better!

I may have cropped this image too much. I forget that cell phone pictures aren't as hi-res as the ones I take on my big camera!

Chris and I bought this scratchy blanket for $4.99 at Wal-Mart when we were dating, in college. It's funny that it's found a second life as a beach blanket for our children!

Goodness. Can you believe that young man in the water is my nephew? I was 16 when he was born, and he's 16 now. Weird. I still remember when he was the size that Caleb is now... It's strange to think that one day, Caleb will be that big!

The afternoon brought naps for all of us. Lily napped easily, but the (clearly tired) big kids fought it. Amazingly, the "rest in Mommy's big bed" card worked again, and I found myself snuggling and dozing with Caleb and Daisy. I'm trying to hold on to the picture of my sweet darlings, sound asleep in my bed, with the afternoon sunlight drifting in our big window, filtered through the tree branches outside. I know that all too soon, Caleb will be at school and those sweet, snuggly times will be few and far between. So for now, I'm savoring them. Yes, mama has other things to do. But I'm not going to pass up snuggling and napping with my darlings!

After dinner, I was craving an outdoor escape with my family. We headed to the ice cream shop at the river front, and I even brought my camera. At the last minute, I decided to leave it in the car. Boo. As we sat on a bench and ate our ice cream, passersby stopped to smile at us. One elderly couple got into their car parked on the street in front of our bench, but instead of leaving, sat there for a few minutes just to watch Lily as she shared Chris' ice cream cone.

After we finished our ice cream, the children ran around and played. As they played under a large ginkgo tree, we noticed its fruit littering the ground. The fruit was the size of a gumball, and there were lots of them. Suddenly, I got the idea to collect as many of them as we could find, and then go throw them into the river. (Caleb loves throwing rocks and sticks into bodies of water, and I thought these little fruits would be less destructive/distracting and kind of fun.)

It was delightful. As we stood in the golden hour sunlight, tossing green fruits into the river, I was kicking myself for leaving my camera in the car. Trust me when I say it was lovely. 

Maybe we'll do it again sometime.

Also, just for fun, here's what we were doing this time last year, as we waited for Lily to make her arrival.

July 16

Caleb and Lily were both due for well-child visits with their doctor, so I scheduled them both for today. Caleb did great; he clocked in at 40 pounds and 43.5 inches, which puts him in the 50th percentile for height and weight.

Lily, however, was another story. Developmentally, she's great. Height-wise, she's great.

But her weight...

Today she weighed 17 pounds, 11 ounces, putting her in the 5th percentile. The same girl who was 75th percentile at birth. The same girl who, three months ago, weighed 17 pounds, 2 ounces. Our doctor, who doesn't startle easily, was concerned.

We've been down this road with Daisy, and I don't want to go down it again with Lily. Thankfully, I think Daisy and Lily have very different circumstances. With Daisy, there was truly a problem that needed to be resolved, and we were able to resolve it with radical changes to our diet. With Lily, I think it's a short-term problem caused by several factors:
1. I just stopped feeding her in the middle of the night two weeks ago. That means she dropped two nursing sessions over the course of a weekend.
2. She's become super-mobile over the past few weeks. It's common to see babies' weight gain slow at this time.
3. The weird virus she's had the past few days. It's meant lots of poop, and not so much eating. On my home scale, she has consistently weighed between 18 pounds and 18 pounds, 5 ounces for the past month or two. I really think she's lost a bit from this bug.

One of the things I love most about our doctor is her passion for collaboration and education. She doesn't just tell me what to do, but she works together with me to find solutions. We talked for quite a while about strategies to get more calories for Lily, and I'm hopeful that with a concerted focus on food, we'll see Lily's weight come back up.

We go back in two weeks for a weight check. Pray for my girl, friends?

Including drive time and waiting time and doctor time, our doctor visit took 3 hours. The kids rocked it, but by the time we got home, they were ready to run and play in the beautiful sunshine! They asked to eat lunch in their "clubhouse", and I happily agreed. As I prepared my own lunch, I looked out the window and saw this:

I love watching those two play happily together!

When Lily woke up from her nap, we went shopping for party supplies, and got home in time to meet with an arborist about our poor oak tree. Then dinner and... I forgot to take pictures of Lily. Luckily, she was pretty cute right before bathtime.

Such a big girl, reading a book all by herself!

I love her funny faces.

What a cutie pie!

July 15

At 6:30 this evening, I suddenly realized that I had forgotten to pick up my camera all day.

Oops!

Sadly, Lily wasn't feeling so hot. She's had weird diapers for the past few days, and had a low-grade fever this afternoon. She was ready for her morning nap at 8:05, just an hour and a half after waking up, and didn't nap well all day. Maybe she's teething. Maybe she has a virus. Maybe she's growing. Who knows, but I hope she's over it before her birthday this weekend!

So. The only picture I have of our girl today:

She's pretty cute, even when she's not feeling well!

July 14

Things that happened today:

We played with Caleb and Hannah, and the Calebs were involved in an epic bike crash. There was blood and tears.

Lily slept until 6:30 this morning, and took two naps without screaming. I have nearly regained my sanity.

We had a lunch/juicing playdate with Jill and Naomi. I think they're Caleb's new favorite people.

It rained. Hard. The big kids and I popped popcorn and watched the storm.

Lily went down for her afternoon nap, and I tried desperately to get Caleb and Daisy to rest so that I could rest, too. It didn't work. Lily woke up from her nap just as the big kids fell asleep on my bed.

Chris showed our old house to one potential renter and one potential buyer. He said things seemed promising on both fronts.

Things that I took a picture of today:

Lily, wearing Daisy's cat purse, eating an apple. She is obsessed with this purse; when she sees it, she shouts, "KAK!" and she can put it on all by herself. She usually crawls around the house with it around her waist. Also, she suddenly knows exactly how to eat a whole apple. I love it! Don't get too excited, though; the apple in the picture is one that Daisy started. Lily didn't do all of that biting with her two little teeth.

Caleb and Daisy, asleep in my big bed. They napped for two hours this way. I love that Daisy is upside-down on the bed, and I am shocked at how big her little foot suddenly looks. I had to wake the kids up for dinner, and then they refused to eat it. Well, not really. Daisy ate only bell peppers and a few bites of rice, and Caleb took an hour and a half, but he ate his whole meal. I have such strange children.

And now, Lily is asleep and Chris has taken the big kids off on an "adventure". I think they took the BOB up to the library, and Caleb is hoping they'll get lost on their way home. We'll see how it works out.