Ok yeah I am 2 whole weeks behind. 

Yikes.

But in my defense, I was VERY sick and dealing with acceptance of my infertility. So that's been a lot.

And I have continued to shoot every day. 

So here's weeks 18 and 19 of this therapeutic project. Thanks for sticking with me in this journey!

121/365:  Matching Game

This girl DOMINATES in the matching game. We seriously can't beat her and have accepted it.

122/365:  New Shoes

She has grown out of her old shoes and inherited new ones from a friend but those are too big. So we went shopping for "interim shoes". This is her happy place. The girl's first word was "shoe", after all.

123/365:  Animal Shelter

Her Daisy troop used some of their cookie money to donate supplies to a local animal shelter and while we were there, we got a tour of the facility and put together some fun enrichment items for the dogs. They girls LOVED it!

124/365:  Giant Centipede

Chris found this creature in our driveway and I was as disgusted as Aly was delighted.

125/365:  Tiny Dancer

She donned an old dance costume of her auntie's and put on a special performance for us. But first, she needed help buckling her shoes.

I loved this moment and this light, but I almost didn't share the photo because of the clutter.

But this is real life. I want to document every detail. The pretty light and special moment between daddy and daughter amongst the daily clutter.

Looking closely, I see:

Bins with items that are fodder for our upcoming yard sale.

Little sticky notes that Aly used to label all of the 3D shapes she could find (cylinder, sphere, cube, etc) because that's what she was learning about in school that week.

Piles and piles of books because Aly prefers those to TV.

This is real life, and I intend to document it. Shattering the sham of the perfect. Capturing the beauty and the chaos.

126/365:  Crafting

Aly wanted to make a special craft for Nana for Mother's Day. She was very purposeful in picking out her favorite color to use in her bracelet.

127/365:  Letting Go

This was the day I found out our 3rd and final IUI attempt failed. This was our last go at fertility treatment. We had decided that after 3 attempts we would accept God's will for our family. 

We would accept that He gave us our one miracle without medical intervention or scientific explanation.

We would accept that our family of 3 would stay only 3.

We would accept that we are not to raise siblings as we always talked about since we started dating.

We would accept that we are not to perfect our "man-on-man" defense as we always joked about.

I will be ok with that. I will be happy.

But this day. It just hurt to hear (and feel) a very loud "NO" to our prayers of another baby. 

I sat on Aly's bed, hugged her favorite blanket, and sobbed another prayer:

"Please, please, just take the desire away now. Help me let go."

128/365:  Yesterday and Today

After the previous day's discovery and feelings, I decided to change the letter board that I pass every day. To encourage myself to move on. Look forward. It helped a little. But this day still saw a lot of tears.

129/365:  Fort Building

Thank God for these two. Chris' reaction to our fertility news was, "Ok. I'll just spoil Aly." So he went to the baby consignment shop to discuss unloading our baby gear and while there, picked up a couple of things for his girl, including a blanket fort construction set.

130/365:  Muffins with Mom

The Friday before Mother's Day (also known as "Dia de los Madres"), Aly's school celebrated by providing a yummy breakfast for all the kiddos and mommas. We sat with several of the girls from her Daisy troop. It was good to see friendly faces.

131/365:  Never Far Away

We made another fort structure Aly just wanted to hang out there all day. Lollipop seemed worried that her tiny human was going to disappear forever, so she didn't stray to far away from the entrance, where she could at least keep an eye on Aly's toes.

132/365:  Mother's Day

I was so spoiled on Mother's Day this year! Aly made me an awesome card, picked out a beautiful bouquet of flowers (with my favorite hydrangeas), and chose a thoughtful gift of reusable Starbucks cups for me. There were several other gifts and of course my awesome hubby made a delicious meal, but this card makes me smile whenever I see it.

133/365:  Saying Goodbye

We took all of our baby gear out of storage and set it up to make sure it was all still in working order so we could bless another family that could use it. 

This swing kept us sane. Some days it was the only way to keep Aly calm. Looking at it, it seemed the penguin was cheerfully waving good-bye.

God, this is hard.

134/365:  Penguin Project

Aly was assigned a project to finish out the last couple of weeks of school. She was to choose an animal to research, answer some questions about it, and complete a poster or diorama to present in class. She chose to research Adélie penguins and daddy helped her find a couple of library books about them. My baby is growing up so fast.