The Halman Life: February 2012

She’s been talking about her special night forever and we finally set a date to take our baby girl out on the town by herself, no brothers allowed. Only Daddy, Mommy, and Isla Shea were invited. Her 3 words to sum up the evening…”Best Day Ever!” Isla must have given John and I a thousand kisses by the time the night was over and said a thousand “I love you”s as well! She LOVED this night and so did we. The thing that gets me the most is that it didn’t have to be an extravagant evening out, she was content with burgers from MShack and a late night trip to the bookstore. Really all she wanted was some undivided attention from Mommy and Daddy and the time alone she remembers having with us before brothers came into the picture. Hard to believe that was almost 2 1/2 years ago. It was a perfect night with our angel and I look forward to doing this with each of our babies monthly.

The night went something like this: She picked her favorite outfit to wear and had Mommy do her hair, we drove to MShack to chow down on the best cheese burgers ever and sip on the most melt-in-your-mouth milkshakes in the world, we stood in the parking lot and marveled at the full moon hanging above us in the sky, we drove to the bookstore while Isla wished on the first star she saw, and at Books-a-Million Isla picked out a book for Leo, one for Palmer, and one for herself (a wedding sticker book). We read books, looked at toys, ran around the aisles, and soaked in this special night with this amazing daughter of ours. Isla, our first born, our baby girl, we thank God that he gave you to us. We love you more than anything in the world!

This weekend was just plain FUN! It started Saturday, which happened to be this little baby’s 9 month birthday. Palmer is cruising around the coffee table, pushing his zebra walker across the room (and getting dragged by it too), eating all sorts of table food his favorites being bananas, black beans, and avocado, and he loves having me sing the “Itsy Bitsy Spider” to him (especially the ‘washed the spider’ out part).

Later in the day I asked Isla if she wanted to go get her ears pierced. I’ve been asking her on and off since she was 3 years old and I always got the same reply, “NO!” Well this day, at a ripe 4 1/2, she didn’t quickly respond no. Her answer was “will it hurt?” I was so excited that she actually might want to have it done so I told her what all mothers tell their little girls, “It’s just a little pinch that only hurts for a second.” So she agreed to go have it done and was really excited about it. Especially getting to choose her earrings. She asked me about when I had mine pierced and I told her the story of how my neighbor took me and her granddaughter when we were 6 (without my mothers knowledge). I choose a pair of gold ice cream cones and I didn’t even remember it hurting at all. Well, fast forward about 30 minutes more and this was Isla’s poor face after getting her ears pierced…it did not go quite as smoothly as my gold ice cream cone story. In fact, only one of Isla’s ears was pierced at first. They had a girl on each ear and counted down 3, 2, 1 and bang, one went in and one did not. The other one was bleeding and the girl told us we could come back tomorrow and have it redone. Yeah right, I said. I wasn’t about to get out of that chair because if I had, Isla would be wearing one earring for the rest of her life. After a while the lady snuck in the other earring and the trauma was over.

Isla looks even more like a little lady now. She chose her April birthstone, diamonds…also known as cubic zirconia at Claire’s. After the drama of “the piercing gone bad,” we ended up walking out of Claire’s without paying a dime. We took our money to the Ice Cream Parlor instead…

After a cookie dough and sprinkle cone, Isla was all better and went prancing around the turtle pond proudly showing off her newly pierced ears. She loves them! And I love the memory!

Good thing Leo doesn’t have to worry about getting that done, brother was just happy to be tagging along for the ice cream and turtle pond part.

Sunday rolled around and we had a trip to St. Augustine planned for the kids. The Black Raven, a pirate ship, goes out on the inlet and takes the passengers on a treasure hunt. Isla and Leo were beyond excited but at the last minute we got a call that the hunt had been cancelled. We didn’t want to disappoint them any further so we decided to drive down there anyway to explore the fort. It was a beautiful day and even though they didn’t get to hunt for treasure they did get to roll down hills and to them that was just as great. And Papa came too, double score!