Baby Sarah

It is amazing Sarah is sleeping... on something other than me!

Lately Sarah will only fall asleep while I am holding her. And then of course she wakes up as soon as I put her down in the bassinet. So out of desperation for sleep, I just put her in bed next to me. Which is fine until I wake up sandwiched between Andy and Sarah and can't move. This is also creating problems for nap time. Her naps are usually in the car sear or the front pack while we are running errands. However if we don't go anywhere--- no nap until 3:30 when she passes out from exhaustion. So now I am checking out all kinds of books and reading up on the Internet trying to figure out how I can get her to fall asleep on her own... in her own bed. Because until I figure something out, I know she is just getting accustomed to falling asleep on Mama.

Other than all that, she is a sweet baby. She has started smiling, so hopefully I can get some pictures of it. We go to the doctor on Tuesday so I will find out how much she weighs. I swear, she is already 20 lbs. :)

Cousins' Christmas Party

A few days after Christmas, my mom and I took the girls up to my sister's house for the Cousins Christmas Party. The drive was actually pretty bearable since Emily got a portable DVD player for Christmas. We did have to stop to buy some more DVDs because we could only take so much Elmo. And Sarah is a dream baby in the car.

The kids had drawn names for the present exchange and they got gifts from Nana. The "favorite" present was the drum set for Nick from Nana. All the kids took turns being "rock stars."

Me and my lovely sisters and mom (and my crying baby)

Leah fixed Leland and Emily's hair, as well as her own headband style. Too cute!

The other kids missed out on the hair styling, but they are still cuties!

Emily LOVED some Uncle Todd. She could not get enough of him!

And she loved banging (I mean, playing) on the piano with Lucy.

We stayed at my Aunt Barbara's house (or Baba, as Emily called her). That is always a treat, but was a special treat this time since was cousin Joe was home from Yale. I don't think I had seen him since my wedding, five years ago.

Christmas!!!

I am feeling very slack about not posting about Christmas yet, since my sister Christine has already posted about her Christmas, and she takes weeks to post! (love you Steen)

So here it is...

On Christmas Eve our old neighbors stop by for lunch. We invited our other neighbors over too and had a fun time catching up and seeing the kids play. We sure miss you guys!

Christmas Eve continued with our 3rd annual tradition of having my mom and Larry over.

We had a yummy ham dinner...

danced to Christmas songs...

snuggled with baby Sarah...

read the Christmas story...

and worked on Emily's present until the wee hours of the morning!

So Christmas morning was the big reveal of Emily's dollhouse that Andy (with some help from Larry and his tools) has been working on for weeks. It was a hit! Emily loves it (and so do I) and we play with it all day.

Sarah got a Bumbo seat!

After opening presents and breakfast, we headed down to Andy's brother's house to have Christmas with the Morris'. There was lots of yummy food and even more presents. We didn't get too many pictures except these two. Emily got a rocking horse that she loves to ride!

This is all for now, but I still have 2 MORE Christmas celebrations to write about! And will try to post more pics of the doll house with all the detail work done and

Pre-Christmas

Once again, I am behind... before I post about Christmas, here are some things Emily and I did before Christmas.

She painted some Christmas sun catchers I got at the dollar store. Very worth the dollar spent since she painted them for hours....

But she did take a break to spend some quality time with Baby Sarah.

We also made some gingerbread cookies. I wasn't sure if she would get into it, but she loved it. We had a lot of fun even if the cookies weren't that yummy.

Christmas Parade

A few weeks ago we went back to Andy's hometown for their Christmas parade. His dad was the grand marshall and led the parade. We picked up my sister Layni and met Andy's family there. The parade was really good - we were impressed and the kids got tons of candy. However Emily didn't really enjoy the parade. She was glued to my lap after the first fire truck siren. She reacted the same way she did to the 4th of July fireworks, her head buried in my chest while peeking out to watch the show.

Andy had a fun time taking pictures with the new camera. He took a TON of pictures of the parade, but here are just a few of the family...

Seriously???!

Last night Andy changed Emily's diaper before bed time. This morning when he changed her when she got up, he realized he had put on Sarah's size 1 diaper on her the night before. Seriously???? My two year old can fit into a size 1 diaper??! He said it was a "little snug," but didn't think much about.

And don't think Andy changes diapers all the time, it was just my lucky day!

When Emily was little, we joked with Johnny and Jennifer that she made whole milk while I made skim milk since Simon was much bigger than Emily. I think I got whole milk this time !!!

Check out our chunky chunk....

1 Month

I tried to take some pictures of Sarah on her 1 month birthday. It really didn't go so well... this is the best one I got.

Of course, then Emily wanted up on the chair with Sarah.

Then Sarah so nicely told me she was done with the picture taking (notice the middle finger)! Maybe next month will be more successful.