Its funny how being a parent makes you see life so differently. You see every little thing that is unimportant to anyone else as being such a blessing and it can bring such joy!

If you have read any of my recent posts on facebook, you know we are transitioning Ella and Lucy to share a room. Normally I would have thought it would have been a very easy feat! But when we tried it before, Lucy would either cry because she saw her sister and wanted to play, or she would giggle and want to play! Ella would get very upset that her sister was crying and not going to sleep so she would yell for me to come fix it.

Thankfully, we were able to explain to Ella that sometimes Lucy just needs to cry a little to be able to fall asleep. She listened and repeated it back to us another day, so we knew she really understood!

I took the leap and put them to bed in the same room on Tuesday night, I was expecting the worst, but I knew that I needed to work with them on it so it wouldn't be an issue when the baby was born.

It has been such a relief! The girls have been loving sharing a room. In the mornings Ella will either try to walk out quietly and shut the door so Lucy can continue to sleep, or I will hear them in there giggling together.

I love my sweet girls!



Lucy always pops up right in front of the camera whenever she sees it. She normally smiles her huge goofy smile, but she is usually too close to the camera for the picture to turn out. She is such a happy little girl!



Ella is sporting her new haircut! I love it because it makes her thin blonde hair look much thicker! I took her to Kids Hair and her hair stylist said that her hair will be thick eventually, she could see a lot of hair still growing in.

It is so amazing to me how God truly does know us even better than we know ourselves. When you really think about it, that God created us, its almost a duh moment. But we don't often think about it. At least I don't! It is so easy for me to only think about myself and what I want and why I want it. I can easily justify it, and I try to attain whatever it is without being patient for God's will and timing. I often believe that things are in my own hands, and when I painfully come to the point of letting go, I realize that my struggle was against myself because I never held anything in my hands to begin with!

Gender disappointment was never something I experienced. When I was pregnant with Ella I would have been equally as happy with having a boy or a girl, but for some reason I knew I was having a girl. Because I was right with Ella, I was confident in knowing that I was having a boy when I was pregnant with Lucy. Besides that, in both Tim's family and mine the sequence always went girl, boy, girl, boy. I was obvious wrong, and the day I found out I was in complete shock! It wasn't that I wanted a boy more, I had just never entertained the idea of having a girl that pregnancy because I just knew she was a boy!

A few months ago we found out we were having our third child due March 4, 2011. A few months prior to finding out I was pregnant I really felt that I wanted to have a little boy! Part of me felt like God gave me that desire because he was giving me a boy. I didn't share this with a lot of people and yet everyone guessed that I was having a boy. I never made any guesses because I wasn't quite as confident in my guessing since I was so wrong with Lucy. I always did feel that everyone would be shocked when we found it we were having a girl.

My dear husband took me to a 3d/4d ultrasound on my birthday when I was 16 weeks and 4 days into my pregnancy. Our technician informed us that it was pretty rare to be 100% sure of the gender at this point in pregnancy, but we tried to find out anyway. Of course the baby didn't cooperate. The baby had the legs crossed the whole time but from what the tech could see he said he would guess 70% that it was a boy. Its funny how this is what I wanted but I wasn't as excited as I thought I would be! We waited another couple weeks and went back in again. The baby still didn't cooperate, but this time he said he was 90% sure we were having a girl. I was very aware that this could happen but I felt so stunned! The next couple of days I went through a lot of emotions. This is our last baby and I really felt like I was grieving the little boy I would never have! I wondered why God gave me that desire to have a little boy, and I really prayed about it throughout my pregnancy that if God wanted to give us a girl that he would take that desire away. I was just so confused! It was also difficult for me because Ella wanted a baby brother very badly. It took a couple of days, but I realized that God does know best and that when this baby is born I know that I will never ever look at her and say, I wish you were a boy. I could never do that with either of my girls now, not even if I tried to say it honestly could I do that. I have already fallen in love with this baby girl, and the more I think about it the more I know that God has given us such a blessing in giving us another baby girl. I look back on my questioning of why God didn't answer my prayers about taking the desire to have a son away, and I realize there were times where he was trying to but I didn't want to let go. Through the whole thing God has taught me once again that he is omniscient, something I should know by now, but he has shown me again how he knows what is best for me. And we are so thankful and so excited, even Ella is very excited!

another madlo update! i know my blog aren't always the most exciting to read, but there have been so many times where i have said to myself that i should write down cute little things that happen in my household. normally its cute things that my children do. this blog just make it more likely that it will be documented!

ella. has been an angel child again lately. we are figuring things out with her! we already knew that she was overtired when she was throwing so many fits, but what we couldn't figure out was how to get her to sleep more. if seemed that if we waited longer to put her to sleep thinking she would go to sleep better and sleep in, she would fight going to sleep because she was already very overtired. we would try to put her to sleep earlier and she would have a hard time going to sleep too! we have found the magic time is around 7-7:30. its quite amazing to have her go to sleep that earlier lately! our evenings seem much longer now! when i warn her that bedtime is near she says, "ok mommy!" she is so much fun when she gets enough sleep! :)

lucy. has been growing and changing so much in the past few weeks! she is crawling, and pulling up to stand on things now! she can clap and say yay (it sounds more like "aaaa"). if you ask her to cuddle she will lay her head on your shoulder for awhile and hug your shoulders. its precious! she is too busy getting into things to be in her jumperoo nowdays! we ended up selling the rainforest one on craigslist today. she is also in a big girl carseat now too! tonight we sold her infant carseat and bought ella a new one. lucy is using ella's now. she loves to be able to sit up and look around in it!

tim has been busy with school and work of course! he is the best husband and daddy, ever! we love him so much. :) speaking of which, it is very funny because whenever tim leaves or talks to ella on the phone, ella says "i love you daddy. i love you so much!" and she complains if he doesn't say it back. i love it when she talks to him on the phone when he is at work ;) but anyway, we are just very thankful that he is able to balance school and work and still have time for us! he manages to still have time to help around the house and let me have 1 night a week where i go grocery shopping by myself. i would love it if we could all go together, but its just not a good idea to keep ella up after her bedtime!

i have been staying busy with my work and all the other things that go along with staying at home with my babies! luckily, i have become much more efficient with my time and we are much more scheduled in our house now. i love being more schedule. i tried so many times when ella was an infant to put her on a schedule and she apparently did not approve. but she is finally doing well with it now! we are loving the weather and we try to walk to the park every day when the weather is nice! i made homemade laundry detergent today and i am very anxious to try it out! i also found recipes for dishwasher detergent and a drying aid. if it works it will save us a lot of money! i am also trying to figure out couponing. i have always been very intrigued by the stories of women who go to the grocery store and buy $120 worth of groceries for $70! Or the people who stockpile items they are able to get for free. I thought about all of the things I don't like to spend money on... Cleaning supplies and food basically. Really, who loves to spend money on those things?! If i can manage to cut a bunch there we can use the money for other thing!

The past few weeks that I haven't posted have been filled with many smiles and laughs and also many struggles that we are learning how to work through. The biggest struggle in our lives right now happen to be the stage that Ella is going through. She is quite the little girl. She can be the sweetest, most angelic little girl. She will sit on our laps and cuddle with her favorite blankies. She will talk so sweetly to her sister and they will play and giggle together. She can say the sweetest, funniest things. This is the side that most people see. But lately we have been dealing with a lot of fits. Not just small fits that pass quickly either. If she starts throwing a huge fit we tell her she needs to sit in her room until she is done crying. She will scream at the top of her lungs for over an over. When she finally stops we talk about what she wanted and how to better communicate that to us next time. We are trying to convey to her that screaming doesn't get her what she wants, and we don't understand her requests that come with screaming. Its hard to know how much of it she really takes in, she seems to want to change the subject as soon as she can. But yesterday we realized how much she does understand, and seems to really feel bad about after its over. Yesterday we were going to go shopping after Ella's nap, and Ella wanted to go shopping so much that she put herself to bed too early and then wouldn't sleep! We probably shouldn't have taken her out as she can be very crabby when she is overtired, but we did. On the way home she threw one of her awful fits. And she kicked her daddy's seat very hard all the way home. She talked to my mom on the phone later that day and offered her a lot of info about her tantrum. She said things like, "I was really really really really naughty in the car today." "I kicked daddy's seat really hard." and "I just wanted mommy and I just wanted daddy to cuddle me."

Other than those fits, we have seemed to eliminate a lot of other mini fits that have to do with her opinionated-nesss. We felt there was a fine line between choosing our battles and having a spoiled toddler, but after a lot of research we found that it is best to give your toddler 2 choices as much as possible. They do, however, have to learn that sometimes there isn't a choice. For example, instead of saying, "Do you want to go to bed? Or do you want to play?" You say, "It is time for bed now. Do you want to snuggle with your pink blanket or your green blanket?" This is suppose to help them feel more in control of their life, and it really has helped with Ella. Someone else told me that from experience she has found that if you are constantly saying no to your child or making them upset by making everything a battle, they will start to be upset all of the time by habit.

Being a parent sure is tough work, there is a lot of trial and error because there isn't a manual for each child and every child is so completely different. But we are working through things and hoping to see much more of our sweet little Ella and less major fits.

Recently Ella has been very interested in anything matching.This started when Lucy was born since they had a couple of outfits that matched. She absolutely loved matching her baby sister! The only thing matching that they have right now are their jammies, and I have found that I cannot put a pair of pajamas on Lucy that Ella has the matching one of unless Ella can wear hers too. Ella gets very upset if she knows she can match her sister but can't for whatever reason.

She has been very particular about her clothes matching lately too. Last Sunday we were getting ready to walk out the door and she refused to wear her tan coat because she said it didn't match her shoes. She told us that it matched her boots, but not her shoes. So she cried until we put her pink coat on her. She has also been very particular about carrying blankets around the house that matches her outfits. And she has to have cups that match what she is wearing! Its really pretty funny! When she was dealing with her ear infections she threw huge fits about not matching, but luckily she is much calmer now that she is feeling better.