five years later...

July 4th, 2009

just five years later...
we have these two gorgeous little girls.

Quinn ~ 3 years old & Andie ~ 2 weeks old
Our big 5th wedding anniversary was spent snuggled with these two (and some ice cream :)).

This little one loves being in front of the camera lately, so we just rolled with it. :)

Hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July!
And Happy 5th Anniversary to my amazing husband and loving daddy of these sweet girls!

andie ~ two weeks.

It's been two weeks since this little angel entered into our world.
Two blissfully perfect weeks.
We are all madly in love with our new little girl, Andie.
She is perfect in every way, and her big sister is quickly becoming obsessed with her.
Quinn is incredibly gentle with her and loves to look at her little nose and ears and toesies.

I have yet to post Andie's birth story, so I am working a little backwards here.
The story of her journey into the world will be written and shared soon.

At two weeks, Andie is truly an angel of a baby.
She is giving a big "take that!" to every single person who said "Oh, just wait for the second one to come!".
It's no secret Quinn was an incredibly easy baby.  If it is possible, Andie has topped the charts of what I could ever imagine a dream little baby to be.
We have yet to bounce or sway a crying baby.  She is such a happy and content girl all the time (well all of the two little weeks of her life :).
We hear from Andie little coos and fusses only during the day when she is ready to eat, and always like clockwork.  And if you caught that "only during the day" part, then I should add that not a single night have we had this little one wake up or crying.  I have to wake her up to eat (since the day we brought her home).
Currently, Andie eats every 2 hours during the day and at night I wake her up about 3 1/2-4 hours. Which means she eats about 10, then I wake her close to 2am, then about 5:30/6:00am.  I guess some people would consider that waking just once a night, but we sleep in till at least 7am around here.
How did we bring home a baby that already knew the difference between night and day?

Andie is also back up to her birth weight and already growing and changing right in front of our eyes.
She is a little rockstar when it comes to breastfeeding.  Considering she dropped a little more weight than normal at the hospital, she has caught back up quickly.  (7lbs 8oz at birth - 6lbs 10 oz going home)

On the day Andie turned 2 weeks, the summer July weather is a little confused and gave us a Fall feeling day. :)  So she is sporting her first long sleeve top today.  She also is making some fun brand new sounds and a little talking that Quinn loves.

If anyone is staring at the picture above of our little Andie thinking "Deja Vu - that looks just like Quinn as a baby" - you are not alone.  While of course they are their own little unique selves and have little differences we notice at this stage, the similarity between them as newborns is amazing.  Even down to the same little two red line beauty mark on their foreheads.  We will post some baby picture comparisons of these sisters.

At just one week of age, Andie already had a brand new cousin.  She lost her status of the newest little grandbaby rather quickly. :)
Here is Andie at 2 weeks and her little cousin Noah (Drew & Kristen's) at 1 week.
We can't wait to meet him!

Happy 2 weeks to our sweet little Andie Ainsley!
You are such a joy for us, we love you so much.

finding the perfect name.

Todd and I are a pretty good little duo when it comes to naming our munchkins.
Finding the perfect little names for our girls has been a pretty easy process for us.
The route to selecting Andie was very similar to choosing Quinn, and it all just seemed meant to be.

It's pretty clear now that we really like simple, unique and sporty names for girls.
The teachers in us definitely also lean towards names that are easy to pronounce and less likely to have many multiples in classes over the future years, as well as can't be connected to past students of ours. :)

Girl names come easy to us.  Boy names not so much.
We have never come up with even one boy name, really.
We must have always known girls were coming our way. :)

Quinn Avery ~
When we chose Quinn, it was definitely more popular for a boy name and unique for a girl.
It is slowly gaining popularity, but we still get comments constantly on Quinn's name.
Choosing Quinn's name was simple, we just loved it and we were done searching.  We had her name selected when I was about 14 weeks pregnant and we were convinced she was a girl for sure.  Her middle name came easy too.  I always loved Avery, we liked how it sounded together and we just said "done". :)  No need to complicate the process by adding a whole list of choices when you know there is one you love.

Andie Ainsley ~
Arriving upon Andie's name was a very similar journey.  I mentioned it months before we were pregnant as a name I liked, Todd was okay with it (this happened with the name Quinn too :)).  After discovering we were pregnant, Todd came home from officiating a volleyball tournament and said he saw a name on a team roster that he liked.  It was Andi.  I smiled to myself but played along that it was a great name idea.  I eventually filled him in that I had suggested it months before. :)  Once we realized we both loved it, just like Quinn we were pretty sure that was a sign that it was meant to be.
This time around though there were a few more things that led me to the name Andie.
One, I loved Kate Hudson's character in the movie How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days - Andie Anderson.
So cute and loved the named Andie from this role.  This sparked the name for me.

Two, I am an 80's girl, so when we had selected Andie and I realized that the name Andie was also from an iconic 80's teenage movie - Pretty in Pink - it was just another little sign for me.  And who doesn't love Duckie, the loyal friend who had always been in love with her?

And three, when my parents selected the name Lisa for me - it helped that there was a Lisa who was a student that they knew that was incredibly sweet and kind and thoughtful that was attached to the name.  One day I realized that I did know of a student that had gone through school that we knew who went by Andi and she was just the same in my eyes (the sweetest, most down-to-earth, kind to all, mature girl) - it was only fitting a similar connection be made in naming our 2nd daughter.

How did we decide on Ainsley for a middle name?
Well, I like to joke that we look through the baby books and stop on the A's once we find something we like. :)  Hence, why both of our girls have "A" middle names.  There is a bit of truth to this too.
Because Andie is more commonly a boy's name, I wanted something more feminine for a middle name.
I did like the double A and we decided to start there.  We stumbled upon Ainsley, loved it and kept in stride with our usual "if we love it so much why try to keep looking?" motto. :)

And Andie Ainsley it was.

sisters.

moments I have been dreaming of forever...

Quinn is head over heels in love with her baby sister.  It didn't take long for her to get used to her little noises and rare cries.  She loves to lay on the floor with her for playtime or Andie's awake time and watch her do her tummy time.  She asks to hold her and to help with her paci, and she is great about saying she is done before just stopping. :)  Quinn's little sleep schedule has been a little off, but it's quite understandable when something as exciting as a new sister arrives.  Fortunately for us it is just taking her longer to go to sleep, not waking in the middle of the night.

These girls have so many treasured moments ahead of them.
We can't help but to dream about those moments already and know watching them will be one of the most incredible joys of our lives.
We are all on cloud nine around here with the arrival of this incredibly sweet and amazingly content little baby girl. 

andie ainsley.

She is here!  
Introducing our newest little bundle of adorable squishy cheeks.
Our sweet baby girl, 

Andie Ainsley
June 18th, 2014
9:39 a.m.
7 pounds 8 ounces
21 inches

We are in complete bliss with another beautiful daughter.  
Big sister, Quinn loves her little baby Andie and has adjusted well to all the little sounds she makes. :)

So in love with our new little peanut. 
More to come on Andie's birth story, her name and the first week of her life.

our little dancer.

For the last six months Quinn has been taking a weekly dance class.  It's ballet, but truly just a creative movement class for 2 1/2 and 3 year olds.  They are little and adorable in their tiny tights, ballet shoes and pink tutus. :)

We were deciding between dance and tumbling for her to build balance and coordination and start her first independent activity.  Well this girl LOVES music and to dance so it was just a natural fit for her at this stage.  It is amazing how much we have seen her grow during this class, mostly as a student.  She has loved it, and looked forward to it every week.  When it came time for the recital we almost opted out of it thinking she is little and shy, it may be expensive, and it's very close to baby time.  But...boy are we glad we made the decision to have her participate in it, and it didn't end up being very expensive at all.  She was in absolute little dancer heaven!  First, the show theme was Toy Story so that made it even more exciting.  Quinn loved practicing her dance at home, took it pretty seriously for a little 3 year old, and loved being on stage.  She was truly a little showstopper when it came time for her "concert" performance last night.

We were SOOOO proud of her.  Mommy was crying (9 months pregnant here) and smiling so huge the whole time because she was so into it all (just watch her little booty shakin' in the video).  The whole experience has been so great for her and brought out a different side of our girl we haven't seen yet (well I should say that she has been shy about showing others).  

Here are a few pictures and videos from both the Recital and the Dress Rehearsal.
Quinn's little group (the youngest dancers in the show) were "The Snake in Woody's Boot" in Toy Story 2.

The Videos (sorry the lighting is a little bright on stage for our camera)

Video #1 - Dance Recital (Quinn is on the left, closest to her teacher "Miss Lisa"
Quinn definitely pulled out all the stops for "concert" night.

100 0402 from Lisa on Vimeo.


Video #2 - Dress Rehearsal (Quinn is on the right)     
100 0401 from Lisa on Vimeo.

At the end of the whole show, all of the girls go up for their final bow.
Quinn was just as excited about this part as her little dance, and it was just another opportunity to be part of the show and be on stage.  She was sitting up there for a long time enthusiastically clapping for ALL of her cast mates (there were a lot of them!)

So proud of our little dancer.