Say Cheese!

This has become our new favorite thing to do EVERY time we leave the house! 

Lainey: "Mommy, take a picture a me." 

Me: "Baby, I don't have my camera." or "Baby, my camera's in my bag." or whatever other excuse I can use to hurry her along while we are usually in a hurry to get to school. 

Don't get me wrong...I'm excited that she is actually wanting to get her picture taken, but it's at the most inconvenient times, ha!  Oh well!  I won't complain...I mean, just look at that face!!

Here's what's going on these days with the Tosics.  I have given up on keeping a good record of our Lainey Boo, so I will try to recap for myself to the best of my ability.  Lainey turned 2 1/2 on March 19th, and yes I keep up with that stuff because my half birthday is very important to me so Lainey's will be important as well.  She talks about pee peeing on the potty, but has only really gone on there about 3 times.  We are actually encouraging this because we do not want to potty train her before our big vacation.  I'm pretty sure we could fine about 15 books out there telling us we are being bad parents right about now, but hey--we're playing the selfish card and trying to make this trip as easy on all of us as possible! 

Lainey still loves going to school and lately has also run into her class at church.  She talks about school and church ALL the time!  If you ask her where a train or plane is going, she will 9 times out of 10 tell you it's going to church. :) 

The cutest thing ever is to hear this girl tell us she lubs (loves) us.  (She's still having trouble with her V's being B's, but the psycho teacher in me is not worried about it quite yet)  She loves to be tickled by her Daddy, but she HATES having her hair washed these days.  It's the craziest thing.  The thing she does love about bath time though is that she gets to spend time with her Daddy and her dragon hooded towel she gets to wear at the end.  Her favorite colors right now are pink and purple.

When we stop at a red light, she is extremely impatient and wants it to turn GREEN!! GREEN!!!

Lainey is definitely an encourager.  She is always telling us "You can do it!" and "Go Mommy!  Go Daddy!"  

She has great manners!  We can always count on her to say her please's, thank you's, and excuse me's.  Truly a Southern Belle, as much as I hate to say it!  She can keep those attributes of a Southern girl as long as she doesn't have a crazy drawl. 

I love writing about the wonderful things, but I think I need to write about the not so wonderful times too.  Many tears have been shed over an embarrassing moment with my child.  She is an EXTREMELY active and strong-willed young lady, and we are really not sure how to handle it.  We are trying, but there are certainly days when I feel like I honestly don't know what to do with her.  Pair that with the extreme guilt I feel since I am blessed to have a healthy baby girl when so many others have sick children or would give anything to have my independent woman, and you have ONE HOT MESS of a mama!!!  For every bad day though, we have a great one that puts things in perspective.  As a dear friend laid it out for me the other day--Lainey has had her own agenda since the moment she was conceived.  I had never really thought about that, and it is SO true!  She's a stubborn little fighter and has been since day 1.  She knows exactly what she wants and will do everything in her power to get it.  She is absolutely brilliant...and I can honestly say that is an unbiased statement.  She is the light of our lives and we are loving every minute...good and bad!