Merry Christmas

Picture it...

... I'm folding laundry on our bed;
Charlotte is playing the the Around-we-go right outside our door;
Caroline is circling the Around-we-go, strumming a toy electric guitar with a real guitar pick, singing a mash up of "You are my sunshine" and "O Happy Day..."

it doesn't get cuter than that folks.

Pulling Up

I realized that I don't have any pictures of Charlotte pulling up, so I took some this week.

Charlotte is an expert at pulling up now. I've seen her switch surfaces a couple times. She was pulled up on the nursery rocking chair and pivoted enough to switch to the nightstand (and fun handle). She still isn't cruising or taking steps while she's holding on to a surface.

She is very good at getting back down. She just lets go and sits right down.

I think that we were waking Caroline up from a nap during these photos, so that's why Caroline is in bed in the background. Charlotte loves to crawl in behind me when I go to tell Caroline that naptime is over. I really think she misses her big sister. In fact, I've had her fuss when I've decided to let Caroline sleep a bit longer and carry Charlotte back out of Caroline's room.

Look at this tongue. She could be in KISS or something.

I find Charlotte standing in the crib a lot more often after naptimes now.

Mmmm, chocolate mint

Caroline and I made my favoirte Ritz cracker cookies this week for a cookie exchange. All you do is dip Ritz crackers in bag of melted chocolate chips with 1/4 teaspoon of peppermint extract. Then sprinkle crushed candy canes on top. They taste like a chocolate covered oreos.... yum!


Caroline helped by sprinkling the candy on all of them.

Chocolate peppermint shakes became our other holiday favorite last year. I'd caught part of a commercial for the Chic-Fil-A Peppermint Chocolate Chip shakes and made a revised version. It's just a candy can per shake with milk (you blend that first), vanilla ice cream, and chocolate syrup. We had some whipped cream on hand this year, so I made it fancy with colored sugar too.

I'm playing around with posting to my blog from Windows Live Writer, so my apologies if some posts look goofy.

I like that it's easy to upload pictures but I think I'm losing quality somewhere in the process because the resolution is low when I import my blog to my book software.

Noah

Caroline and I were playing with a Noah's ark hand puppet book today.

I asked her if she remembered what Noah did. Our rehearsed answer is that Noah obeyed God. But she replied with another correct answer... that he put two of every animal on the boat. I told her that she is very smart - that is what Noah did. And she then quickly asked me why he didn't put three of every animal. I love her curiosity!!

Prestonwood lights

Kevin took the girls and me to see the lights in the Prestonwood neighborhood on Monday night. It was such a change to go on a weeknight this year and not be part of the weekend traffic looking at lights.

Caroline had a lot of fun searching for Mickey characters in all the yards. And she was quite happy that all the inflatables were turned one. She's needed lots of explanations when we are driving around during the day and they are not blown up. I usually just tell her that they sleep during the day. There is a snowman at the end of our street that we always must check the status of.

Once we were done looking at lights, I told Caroline that she could go to sleep if she wanted. She was fast asleep in two minutes flat. Charlotte had fallen asleep some time before.

Firsts

Charlotte had some firsts today.

She is into touching things with just her extended pointer finger right now. I got her Ann B. Dextrous toy down and she flipped this semi-circle switch with her pointer finger and then back the other direction with her thumb. It was really fun because her Granny was there when she did it. I love when a first happens when a grandparent is around.

She also waved bye-bye today as Granny was leaving. With both of the girls, waving is one of those questions at the check-up that I always miss. I don't think Kevin and I ware "wavers" so it doesn't occur to us to teach the girls to do it. But when Granny was waving, Charlotte knew exactly what to do.

Happy Birthday Kevin

We celebrated Kevin’s birthday (a day late) when his mom came in town for the weekend. It’s been nice that it’s worked out the past two years that we’ve been able to have his mom with us… and that we’ve had Christmas parties and needed a babysitter.

The girls had lots of fun having Granny around. Granny called Caroline “my angel” at one point and that’s now her new nickname.

Me and the girls are so blessed to have Kevin in our lives. He’s such a special person. I wonder sometimes how my girls will ever find a man that quite compares to their daddy. I really do think I have the best husband out there.

Charlotte updates

Well, it's been a big week for Charlotte.

This past weekend, she mastered pulling up. She'd been pulling up to her knees, but had only pulled up to her feet once or twice. Now, she's a pro. Last night, she stood herself up twice in her crib and was very vocal that she needed help getting back down.

Yesterday, she was pulled up on a step stool and the next time I looked, she was standing around the corner to the next side, so cruising may not be far behind. She also crawled onto the top of a stack of ABC floor tiles. I have to be careful or she'll keep crawling and take a header right off the other side. I'm sure she'll be climbing the stairs in no time too.

I'm also pretty sure that she tried standing by herself today. She was standing with my assistance and let go for a very brief moment.

Big things : )

On a not so fun note, we found out on Tuesday that Charlotte has the flu. So in the midst of all the fun stuff she's learning, she hasn't felt very well. Thankfully, we only had one evening where she got sick to her stomach. And I think her fever finally broke today.

Here's some fun pictures from Sunday...

Christmas at the Courte

Several of the families in our Sunday school class came to Ainsley Courte with us this evening. We decided that it would be fun to go to the nursing home as a family, so we scheduled it in the evening and took all the kids in their Christmas Pjs.

Unfortunately, Charlotte was getting over the flu, so Kevin stayed at home with her. But Caroline had lots of fun.

We took miniature candy canes for the kids to pass out. Caroline and her friend, Samuel, had learned in MOPPETS that an upside down candy cane is a “J” for Jesus, so they shared this with all the residents.

Here’s Caroline with our favorite resident, Miss Ann. If you look back at Easter pictures, Miss Ann is holding baby Charlotte.

This is Miss Grace.

Here’s Tyler with his friend, Pooh.

This is Miss Laverne. I wish I’d gotten a better picture of her because she is another of my favorites. She’s full of energy and I think in all my visits, I’ve never seen her sitting down. She often opens the door for me as we leave. She love seeing Caroline since three of her four children have red hair. Her husband called her “Elvira” because that was a popular country song in 1949 when they were dating. And my favorite thing is that I can count on her to say that “these children are our future.” It’s always so encouraging and helps me keep perspective.

I took all of our jingle bells and shakers and we corralled the kiddos for a couple rounds of “Jingle Bells.” I think everyone had a lot of fun.