Lilybeth Dooley

Lily’s the best present I could ever have.  She greeted me this morning with her huge grin.  Ah.  I’m loving this stage of her life, and mine.  It’s good to be 29!

We’re going to see the Foo Fighters tonight.  I’m excited, and I’ll have fun, but I know I’ll be anxious to come back home to my little girl, even though she’ll be asleep.  I’m hopelessly in love with my little girl.  I can’t get enough of her.

The song “Miracle” that the Foo Fighters sing is Kevin and Lily’s song.  So it will be really cool if they play that tonight.

Hi Everyone,

Lily is now 7 months old and can now pull up on the coffee table, couch, mommy and da’s pant legs, and pretty much anything she can hold on to. She doesn’t have any teeth yet, but she’s working on it.

Well, a big change is coming for all of us at the end of the week. Not only will I be entering my last year of being a 20 something, I’ll be starting a new job! I’m the new Missions Logistics Coordinator for Lake Pointe Church! I’m really excited about starting this new job. I think it’s going to be a great fit. Grandma will be taking care of Lilybeth during the day. I’m okay with this, but I will still miss my little blessing horribly! The great thing is that Lake Pointe is so close to our house. It’s only a 15 min drive, so Kevin’s mom will bring her up for lunch every now and then. It’s also great that I won’t have an hour drive home that I had when I worked for Simon.

Lily’s also getting familiar with the childcare at church. I’ve been volunteering in her classroom to make it a little easier on her. She does okay if I’m in there, but the minute I leave she freaks out. We’re working through this. Good thing she doesn’t act like this with grandma. She thinks she’s a big toy, so we should be okay.

So the Dooley family has been a little busy lately. We got through Christmas with my parents, Kevin’s busy time at work, a New Year’s Eve party with Kevin’s family and a few close friends, and a wedding. Total time of people in staying in our house… 10 days. Whew. It was a blast, but exhausting when you have a kid who’s not sleeping through the night because of all the excitement in the house. It was great though!

Check out the new pictures. The last one is the best!

Lily’s update is as follows… she can almost crawl. She can go backward, and turn in a circle. She just can’t figure out how to go forward. She loves to pull herself up by our pant legs. She figured out how to scream this week so she has been screaming at the top of her lungs in various pitches. It’s adorable! She hung out with us while we took some pre-wedding photos of her Aunt Sarahbeth. She got to take a photo with the bride, and got the privilege of wearing her tiara. We should have photos soon of the wedding. Lily was amazing the day of the wedding. She allowed Rachel, a close family friend to watch her while I helped set-up for the wedding. During the entire event, she wasn’t fussy and was in the best mood. It’s like she knew she needed to be good. It was wonderful! She even took a nap in the middle of the reception.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Years!

Check out our new pictures!  She’s soooo cute!

We had a great Thanksgiving filled with tons of carbs and sweet treats! Lily really enjoyed her sweet potatoes! She’s getting so big. She can sit up on her own now. We just sit behind her in case she tumbles over, but for the most part she can do it on her own! She is trying so hard to talk to us. She almost says hi (she has the h sound down), and when we say I love you she makes a sound for each word. It pretty much sounds like uh uh uh, but she’s trying!

Kevin had the week before Thanksgiving off and we just hung around the house enjoying some time together and enjoying the time with Lily. We have so much to be thankful this year! God has blessed us every day! It’s been an amazing year filled with lots of blessings and changes.

Their are a few upcoming changes for the Dooley’s…

Since God blessed us with our new house, He immediately showed us that their was a need for Kevin’s parents to move in with us. Kevin’s dad’s health is declining and his mom basically has to spend all day taking care of him. We all understand that this will be hard, but it’s necessary and we want to have his parents spend as much time as possible together. Kevin’s mom has also offered to take care of Lily during the day which brings me to our next change.

I have to go back to work. I don’t want to do this at all. I’m struggling with it and every time I think about it I’m close to tears. I hate the thought of leaving my little Lily. I understand how very lucky I have been to be able to stay home with her for the first 5 months and I am extremely grateful for this time, but I want more. I don’t know if this is selfish or not, but it’s been my hearts desire since the first day I knew I was pregnant with her to stay at home. I know grandma will do a great job, but I want all the firsts, and I want to experience the every day stuff. I want to be the one who handles the naps, feedings, diapers, play time, teaching. My biggest fear is that Lily will want grandma more than me. That she will get used to her so much that she will want grandma to comfort, play with and put her to bed, and not me.  I guess this is foolish, but it is a very real fear that I have.  I know I have to work, and just get over what I’m feeling, and at this point we can’t make it without me going back, but I wish their was another way.

So we went over to Aunt Cindy and Uncle Jimmy’s house for Halloween.  They had their yard decked out in tons of Halloween decorations including a blow up haunted house, coffin that my dad had made, a witch, strobe lights and more.  It was crazy.  We had a lot of fun watching the kids in their costumes and Lily was amazed by all of them.  She sat with us and watched all the kids.  She had two costumes for her first Halloween.  For the cute outfit, she was dressed up in a little cow sweat suite (since she likes milk so much).  The other costume was Stewie from Family Guy.  Kevin dressed as Peter Griffin and me as Lois.  It was hilarious.  If you look at the gallery, you’ll find a few pics.

Lily in the last few days has added syllables to her vocabulary, and has started rolling from her back onto her stomach.  She’s getting so big!

Well, we finally finished moving into our new house!  It took us almost two weeks, but we’re done!  We love it so far.  It’s been a huge blessing not to have to lug the car seat and Lily up a flight of stairs.  Mommy’s very happy about that!  We have our own place again!  We’re excited to decorate and paint and all that stuff!  For now though, we are just content to be in our own house and just chill out for a while.  We have been so busy lately it’s been crazy!

So this blog is pretty much just a list of God’s blessings. Their are sooo many to choose from, but these are the ones that have been the most recent, and tell ya’ll what’s been going on in our lives lately.

Lily got to meet her Aunt Rosie, Uncle Eddie, and BIG cousin Joline over the weekend. She did really well with them.

I have been learning how to juggle baby and working part-time for my mom-in-law. It’s truly a blessing to get to take her to work with me, but I have to juggle my time around naps, feedings, play time, ads, emails, phone calls, and printing books. I love it though! It gives me time to be with my daughter and time to be a grown up and talk to adults. We’re so very lucky that we didn’t have to put her in a daycare. It was something I couldn’t bare doing, God provided a way for us to make it work so I didn’t have to do that.

We are also about to purchase a home that will be wonderful for us to raise Lily in. It’s a basic house, but the best part is, it’s a home. I can see raising our kids there, where our Christmas tree will go, growing gardens, playing football in the yard, Lily’s first steps, baking cookies. Okay, okay, I’m sappy I know, but it will be a wonderful blessing if we get this house. We should know hopefully by the end of the week for sure.

Kevin’s job is going really well and I can’t tell you how much I’m thankful for Kevin being able to go to work every day happy and knowing that he’s doing something that matters to him and it’s what God has designed him to do. He has been working really hard lately and I just am grateful that he is able to still be happy even when he is tired!

My brother and his soon to be wife are moving down to be closer to me =-) I’m excited about getting to know my brother better, and for the friendship Cindy and I are developing. It’s going to be a trip to have them close by.

Kevin’s dad is the only one that has been able to hold Lily for a couple of weeks now besides mommy and daddy. It’s amazing and it’s been a wonderful time spent between Lily and Pa Pa.

I’ve just been so thankful for every day. God blesses us every single minute of every single day. It makes me wonder, why me? Why us God? People often wonder why they go through tragedy and loss in their lives, but lately I’ve been thinking about all the good things in our lives and think, wow God made this life for me.

Please pray for us. We are in the process of buying a house and it’s been going really well so far. We had our inspection today and we have a few things that need to be addressed. The foundation work that was done on the house still needs some more work, and the a/c isn’t working. We would love to have our own house to raise Lily in. It would be a lot safer and better environment for her once she starts crawling. Right now we live in a 2nd floor apartment and it is pretty much a disaster waiting to happen.

Also, Lily is going through a spell right now where the only one that can hold her is me. She screams and persistantly crys when anyone else holds her. This includes grandma and tonight even Kevin. We’re trying to get her infront of anyone who can tolerate holding a screaming baby. Help! I don’t know what to do.

Lily has had some more major accomplishments lately. She’s rolling to one side, she can lift her head up 90 degrees when she’s on her stomach (even though she hates to be on her stomach), she talks all the time and she’s discovered that her voice has different pitches. It’s really cool to listen to her discover so many new sounds. She has also activley started playing with toys. Her favorite is her Cat In The Hat stuffed animal. She is almost at the point where she can sit-up by herself. Yesterday she stuck her hand out to touch Harley dog, which Harley promptly licked and slobbered on. She loves to watch her.

She’s grown so much lately. Her feet almost touch the bottom of her saucer toy, and she’s wearing 3-6 mo clothes. We also see a tint of red making it’s way in. We may have a red head on our hands. She can thank her daddy’s side of the family for that=-).