2009 is just around the corner

I cannot believe another year is about to come to a close. I don't remember time going this fast before little one came along. It seems just yesterday that we brought her home and now she is a walking, talking little dynamo. I keep reminding myself to stop and enjoy everything, whether it is playing playdo, doing puzzles and trying to get back up after the "all fall down" in Ring Around the Rosie. These are the best things in my life now and they are not going to last long.

We are actually going to ring in the new year without little one. We are going to a New Year's party that starts at 8pm (little one's bed time) so we have a neighbor girl who is going to come over and watch some TV while little one sleeps. (Hopefully, she will be asleep even with all the fireworks that usually happen.) I am sure we will celebrate with the east coast and be in be long before the official new year. (After all, little one will still be up at the crack of dawn.)

I believe little one is a firm right-hander now. She still uses both hands for eating and drawing but she always seems to start with her right hand. I am happy with this as I would have no clue as to how to teach her anything with the left hand.

We are in the process of changing schools. Little one has been at a pre-School out of the Methodist church. We have been very happy there and little one has thrived. However, she is always the oldest one in her class and we believe is this holding her back. The new school is a Montessori school, where they have several ages together. The littler kids learn from the teachers and from the older kids' examples. Today is our first day at the new school. This will just be a half day...then another half day next week. If those "test" days go ok, we will formally make the move. We have not told the old school yet but will do so after little one settles in. I do feel bad about moving her but I believe it will be best for little one in the long run.

Managed to do one more page. This is going to have to be it for Christmas. I have yet to finish last year's book. At last count for last year's book, it was closing in on 120 pages. I thought about leaving some of the layouts out but just could not decide which to leave out. I don't want to miss a single smile or cute thing. At the rate I am going on this year's book, we could top 200 pages,,,,so am cutting off Christmas as of now.

After Christmas Fun

One of these days, I have to figure out how to post a video. Little one is such a talker these days. We are getting quite a library of her singing and saying repetoire - abc's, going through all her animals and making their associated sounds, Bingo, etc. Last night, I actually got her to spell her name. She knows who she is (first and last name). And, as she loves the Bingo song so I just substituted her name for Bingo. "there was a family who had a girl and Rilee was her name-o...." Now, the next step will be to just ask her to spell her name...but I think that will be awhile.

Every day seems to bring something new. Yesterday, was a two-fer. She spelled her name and counted to five on her fingers. (She can actually count to 10 in both english and spanish...but I believe that is just memorizing words.) Yesterday, she actually raised up one finger and said 1 and so on. Was quite cute watching her try to segrate her fingers to do the counting.

Friends of ours with their 14 month old twins came over on Sunday for some chili and kiddo playtime. They had purchased a play stroller for their little ones but they are not quite ready for it. So, they brought it over for Munchkin to play with for a few weeks. Little one LOVED it. She has been pushing one or another of her animals around since the stroller came. When it goes back home, we may have to purchase one of our own.

Speaking of purchases, Santa (in the form our (hubby and my) parents) were VERY generous this year. We are looking at what to purchase with these Christmas funds. We have about decided to purchase a kitchen for little one and possibly a flat screen TV for us (we want to be able to display our computer screen on this TV, and our current TV won't let us do that. My family bought us some Spanish lessons on DVD so we want to do these together and also have kiddo participate. So what better way to do all that but to hook it up so that the TV displays the lessons.)

I head to the UK on Saturday, which stinks as I miss our four day weekend. (Work is out Thursday and Friday for the new year celebration.) Will hopefully have some time to scrap some pages during the trip.

Merry Christmas

I hope one and all had a great Christmas full of family love and laughter.

We had a great day. This is only the second time in about 15 years that we have been in our own house for Christmas (we usually visit our parents - either his or mine). While we miss spending time with our parents, staying home and having our own little family Christmas quite enjoyable.

We took little one to the children's mass on Christmas eve. Little one heard the priest calling all the children to the front for the sermon. She decided that she wanted to go up as well. As we were sitting near the back, she strode to the front and nicely sat down with the rest of the kids. She was so determined to do this. She sat through the entire sermon with rapt attention to the priest and the other kids. (I followed her up and sat in a pew behind her. I could not believe 1) that she would actually walk up by herself and 2) that she would sit there for the entire sermon. She is just growing up too fast.)

We had dinner and a playdate with one of little one's friends. The two little girls just played and played. The adults sat at the dinner table and chatted. We could hear the girls giggling and giggling and giggling some more. Every now and then they would come out. One time they had tiaras on their heads. Another they had stethoscopes around their necks. We finally left at about 9pm with the little ones showing no signs of slowing down.

Christmas morning found us all (hubby, me, little one, Nola and Barney [ our visiting dog]gathered around the tree to see what Santa had brought us. Little one found her stocking was filled with fun stuff. The first thing she pulled out was the stuff to make bubbles. Well, that put a stop to the rest of the festivities as we had to go and make bubbles for awhile. Little one helped us all unwrap our presents. She loved ripping the paper and opening all the boxes. She did not really care what was in the box. Santa even remembered Nola and Barney, even though they had not been especially good dogs the last couple of days.

I now have plenty of new material to get some scrapping done.

Never knew pee could be so exciting!

Hubby and I were sitting on the floor playing with kiddo and the dogs (yes, dogs. We are dog sitting for a friend while they are out of town so we have two little four legged critters underfoot - Nola and Barney) and all of a sudden little one says, "I have to go poo." I promptly asked, "do you want to go sit on the potty?" And...off she runs to the potty. I take down her pants. Take off her diaper and she sits on her throne. I give her a book. She reads. We chat about potty. She asks for toilet paper (she loves to wipe her bottom, whether she does anything or not). She talks to Grandma on the telephone. Then she gets up..and voila...there is pee in the toilet (not poo...but..hey...pee is good too.) Our first success with the potty chair. Woo hoo!

It was a short lived success. After our bath, I was holding her as I took her over to the diaper table and she peed down my front. Oh well. I choose to focus on the success.

Are we bad parents? Neither hubby nor I have purchased any Christmas things for the little one. We have always cycled her toys. So, we plan to just wrap the "hidden" toys and put them under the tree for her Christmas. At this point, she will likely like the paper ripping the best anyway.

I finally got a little scrapping done. This was our visit to see Santa.

Credits to Sir Scrapalot's Merry and Bright Kit from My Scrap Shop.

Santa

Remind me not to wait until the last minute to go see Santa next year. First, as anyone who knows me knows, I hate crowds. I do not go to the mall...unless absolutely forced. For the kiddo, however, I will do anything, even brave the crowds at the mall.

I assumed that crowds would be at a minimum toward the end of the day. So last week, we tried heading to the mall at about 7pm (Santa is there until 8). The line wrapped twice around Santa's house. It seemed to be moving fairly fast so we stood in line. After about a 1/2 hour and moving very little AND little one getting very impatient, we headed home without accomplishing our task of seeing Santa. Today, we decided to try the opposite end of the day. We showed up about 10 minutes before Santa arrived. Of course, everyone else had the same idea and the line was wrapped around 3 times! We stood in line for about an hour and a half. Little one was bored, tired, hungry and whiney by the time we got to the main event. Never fear though. These guys are professionals. Santa took charge and started throwing a stuffed animal back and forth with the camera guy. This got Little Miss's attention and actually a small smile. Voila!

The weather has been bouncing between hot and humid (70s) and cold and damp (40s). It seems to have settled in on the cold end, unfortunately. (I am not supposed to complain as my sister said the high was going to be -7 where she lives. Brrrr.) To keep warm thoughts alive, I finally finished one of my summer pages of little one enjoying the slide at the pool.

We are staying home for the holidays. Only our second time to stay at our house for the holidays in the 13 years we have been married. It will be kind of nice not to have to pack up and face the holiday travelers. But, we will be missing our families. I have a quick trip to the UK the week of the 5th. Then we will head to hubby's family city for the wedding of one of his nieces. Hopefully, the weather up north will be a bit more moderate than it is now.

Happy holidays to one and all!

Timber!

Little one was wearing a new outfit that her Aunt P bought her for her birthday. This outfit has a top with pockets. Little Miss thought it was the absolute funnest thing to put her hands in her pockets then say, "Where's my hands?" Of course, then we would have to search for them and eventually find them to shriek's of laughter. Well, two nights ago at Kindermusik, she put her hands in her pockets and while positioning herself on my lap turned torward me to ask the question. She overbalanced and, because her hands were in her pockets, fell forward and landed on her face. I knew she had not hurt herself because she looked up at me after the fall and gave me this face, like she knew she had done something silly. I could not help myself but laugh (she, of course, started crying...I think more from embarrassment than anything). OK, bad mom. Should not laugh at the kiddo....but....come on, it was funny! Guess you had to be there.

Have to get kiddo to see Santa this week. She knows Santa and can HoHoHO.

Don't Tell

Don't tell. I am writing this from work. I never do non-work stuff at work but I am worked out right now. We have been having a mad rush of last minute things - budgets, sales, etc. I am finally at the point I can breathe again and I just need a non-thinking break. So here it is.

Little one just about has all the words down for Jingle Bells. Next, we will be working on Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer. I love Christmas songs. So having her sing along with me (or me sing along with her) is great fun.

The whole house has colds right now. I am sure it started with our very own germ incubator. She is always bringing nice things home to us. Hubby has it the worst. I have just lost my voice and have a bit of the crud. Little ones nose is running a bit but she seems no worse for this. She is also FINALLY getting another tooth. I have been saying this for over a month now but I finally saw it yesterday. This is her lower left eye-tooth. So this will be tooth number 13. Yeah. Am thinking that it is time to go to the dentist.

I don't think I gave the results of her two year old checkup. The stats - ht: 33.5" wt: 27lb 6.5 oz, hd: 19". The only worrying thing is still little ones eating habits. We still cannot convince her that meat is a good thing. She likes fruit, some veggies, dairy, pasta (ok...only if it is the mac&cheese variety) and Dino bites (which are essentially chicken nuggets). We have tried about every meat possible (fish, beef [ground, pureed, etc], chicken, turkey, etc) to no avail. As I was worried about her diet, I insisted that they do a blood test to see if things were OK. Turns out she is anemic. The iron number is supposed to be 34 or 36 and she is 32. So, she is on iron supplements right now. We will go back in for a blood test in January to see if things are better. Until then, the doctor says her weight is fine so we should just stick to our guns and serve her what we are eating. If she does not want to eat it then she can go to bed hungry. Easier said than done..but needs to happen.

We are at the point of putting away her high chair. Grandma bought her a booster seat over the T'day holidays. With this seat, she can sit at the big table with us to eat. She is so proud of herself when we all sit together for meals. I cannot believe how big she is getting!

Total Kid Day

Today was the ultimate day for and about the little one. A normal Saturday, dad took little one to J.W.Tumbles class. This is a kid gym where the munchkins can run and climb and play to their heart's content, in a padded environment. (I was not feeling so hot so mutt and I stayed in bed to catch a few extra zzzz's.) On the way home from Tumbles, they exercised the slide at a local park. Lunch. Nap. Birthday party for a two year old from from Kindermusik. The party was at a place called Little Gym. Another kid focused gym with a focus on gymnastics. The kids got to hang and bounce and roll around. On the way home, we decided we would "stop by" the local tree farm for our first "real" real Christmas tree. (The local tree farm was about 30 miles away...but, as we were in the car, why not and off we went.) The tractor pulled us in a hay wagon to the trees. Little one LOVED the tractor. (We have a book about a tractor so experiencing a real tractor was so much fun.) While dad was picking out the perfect Charlie Brown Christmas tree, little bit and I played hide and seek among the trees. Shrieks of laughter made finding little one a breeze! (The only bad thing about today is that I forgot the camera...so no photos of all this fun. Bad mommy!)

Tomorrow is going to be a similar day as tomorrow finds us as yet another 2 year old birthday party and dinner with Grandma Johnny.

I am trying to find a good photo to use for our Christmas cards. The problem is that there are too many good ones. I have to get this done THIS WEEKEND!!!

Finally finished one page of little one. This was made with Sir Scrapalot's Be Jolly kit from My Scrap Shop. Great colors even though I don't have Christmas photos yet. The stitches and the overlays were from MCA Designs. The layout was from a template I found on Simply Sarah's Designs. Love multi-photo layouts...as I take too many photos to just show one.

Little Miss is Two

This was a weekend of celebration. First my 13th wedding anniversary on the 25th. Second, Thanksgiving. Finally, little one celebrated her second birthday.

What started out as a small family affair, ended up being a fun, loud, kid filled celebration. Attendees were the three neighbor kids and their folks; a co-worker, his wife and their twin 14 month olds; a couple from church and their 2.5 year old girl and 2.4 month old boy; plus my parents and sister with her teenage boys. The little ones played outside on the swing, played inside (stick the nose on the clown, drawing, reading and playing with the toys). Everyone enjoyed cake. While the birthday girl did not blow out her candle, she did blow (something we have been working on). Too cute.

I cannot believe two years have passed so quickly. Little one is a running, talking, singing, non-meat eating, 12 toothed wonder child (at least to me). I love every day with her as every day brings something new.

The house has been loud and fun over the last week. Since everyone left, little one is asking, "where's Grandma?" "Is cousin P sleeping?" etc. As you can see from this photo, little one had fun with her cousins.