Hanleys Big Girl Bed

I almost made it 4 years of Hanley confined in a crib! In August, I finally started sanding down the chipped paint on Hanleys big girl bed.
Hanleys big girl bed was my bed when I was her age. 💗 It was my princess bed and had a canopy overhead. I shockingly have majority of the pieces to the bed that my parents kept for all these years. It would have been much easier to just go spend the money on a new bed for Hanley but this bed is special to me and I knew Hanley would love it just as I did! For nostalgic reasons, I'll be pleased even if she uses it for a short time.
My friend Vanessa helped me sand away at the bed and then she also helped me paint it. I had to spend hours gluing some of the wood pieces back together and clamping the wood to make it stick. I'll admit that I didn't exactly have the proper clamps soooo I may have been using jumper cables for a car to serve as clamps! Haha it worked fine, other than the prongs digging into the paint so I had to lightly sand and repaint some areas. It beat spending money on the clamps! Coincidently, I happened to find one rusty clamp in the yard while fetching the trash and recycle bins one day.
I ordered a twin mattress from IKEA and unrolled it when it arrived in the mail.
When we finally put the bed in Hanley's room, I had several wood slats and some CSB wood to hold the mattress up, as I didn't want a box spring just yet.
I've kept Hanleys old crib mattress on the floor just in case she rolls out of bed. The crib mattress slid perfectly under her bed while she was not 'using' it.
While Hanley was in her crib, for the last several weeks before getting her big girl bed, we took the front off of her crib to get her used to the change. She rolled out for almost a week straight in the middle of the night, without ever even waking up. I would go in, scoop her up, and tuck her back in and she would never wake. Finally, I attached a railing to the side of her crib so she couldn't roll out any longer. When we set up her big girl bed, I never attached the railing and she's never rolled out yet, I'm assuming because she has much more room in a twin bed.
She loves her big girl bed so much, now we are just waiting for her birthday party for her to get a new comforter set.

Hanleys First Flower From A Boy

I got a text from my friend Vanessa last week saying she got flowers from her husband for their anniversary. While Jax was at the flower shop with his dad, he asked to buy Hanley a flower. So he picked out a single pink rose. They brought it over and it was the sweetest thing ever. Vanessa asked Jax why he wanted to give Hanley a flower and he said "because she's a pretty girl!" 💗

Selena Gomez - Hands to Myself

I can't believe I took this long to write this down...
Back in March, March 10, 2016 to be exact, a solid 6 months ago, we were running late somewhere (imagine that!). It was me and just the 2 kids and I was rushing around, trying to finish up getting ready to go. We had been listening to Pandora upstairs while we were getting dressed and ready. We finally made our way downstairs and Hanley kept bugging about having my phone and wanting to re-listen to a song that just came on Pandora that ended. Well I tried explaining to her that I couldn't 'go back' on Pandora but I figured I could find the song on YouTube. So I quickly found it, Selena Gomez' new one at the time, "Hands to Myself" handed the phone off to Hanley and I shooed her away so I could concentrate on getting ready to leave.  A few minutes later Hanley reappears wearing nothing but a pair of undies. I thought this to be particularly weird, then she asks me "mommy, who was she rolling around on her bed with?! Was that her daddy?" and at that very moment I thought 'what did I do?!' and she started demonstrating what Selena was doing in the video by rubbing on her chest... Oh my God, never again will I do that. I've learned my lesson, thank you very much; in an effort to get 3 minutes of peace to finish a task I have corrupted my precious girl.
I laugh fiercely at that story, and might have chuckled a bit through the horror the day it happened as well.

Preschool Chronicles {Hanley}

During the second week of preschool for Hanley, Conrad and I rode my bike down to pick her up like normal. Out comes Hanley, and as she is climbing into her side or the bike carrier, she casually tells me that when her and Jay are grownups, they're going to get married.
"Oh really?! Who's idea was this" I asked her. She informed me it was Jay's idea. Then comes walking over their teacher and she also informed me that the topic around breakfast that morning, was Jay and Hanley getting married. Eeeeek... Not ready for all this...

I don't even think Hanley is interested, I feel like it was all that boys idea and she's just like "oh married? OK I guess" just by the way she as talking about it. I said to the teacher "I think her dad might have something to say about this" and she said "well, he's an older boy, he's almost 5". He also runs over to me and my bike every time school is out lol

Hanley started preschool! {Preschool Chronicles}

I still can't believe it. She's been in preschool for about 3 weeks now and she loves it! She goes to the early learning program through our local elementary school. It's 5 days a week for 2.5 hours long and just the perfect amount of time for me. I didn't even want her to go, to be honest. It makes me uncomfortable and nervous but she kept asking to go to school so I figured I shouldn't deprive her any longer for my own selfish reasons.

We typically drive to school, takes 2 minutes, and I drop her off using the drop off line. It gives Conrad and I a good little one on one time together.  Typically when I pick her up, Conrad and I will ride down on my bike and that's fun!

She had started resisting me at home any time I would try to do any type of learning and that's another reason why I decided it was time for her to go. She has known now to spell her first and last name for awhile now, and has mastered writing out her H. She's been working on the A at home but since she's been in school, she's getting help writing out her whole first name every single day.