Christmas morning!

Christmas morning did not dawn early in our household. Sleepyhead Charlotte did not roll out of bed till almost 9:00. We leisurely made our way to the family room to unwrap presents.


Here you can see Charlotte with one of her new Groovy Girl dolls and her dollhouse. We had high hopes to have the dollhouse ready for her in the morning, but a stomach bug waylayed Michael and so it was still boxed. She kept saying, "I want to play with this. Open the box," etc.. Michael said it wasn't ready and he had to put it together and she sad, "I'll help you." Broke his heart. So in between waves of nausea laying on the couch, he assembled little by little so that it was done when the rest of us got back home.
Charlotte also got a motorized Firetruck with a little Firefighter dude. The Firefighter makes an excellent "daddy" in the dollhouse.

Sarah definitely enjoyed this Christmas - a far cry from last year when she was just four weeks old and mostly just slept it away. She got some neat balls that you hit with a hammer, some more Little People (one of them is the "Mommy" in the dollhouse alongside the Firefighter Daddy), and a cool zoo stacker thing.

Truth be told, her favorite things were the bows. She carried them around all morning.

In this picture she's got a little bit of all of stuff surrounding her.

Christmas Afternoon

After finishing up at home, the girls all left to head to Bridget and Tom's. Poor sickie Michael stayed home to sleep on the couch. We skipped our morning brunch with his dad because their household was also dealing with this ugly stomach bug.

The morning was not without some drama. Charlotte decided she didn't want to get dressed, annoucing, "I want to wear my pajamas to Grandma and Grandpa's!" At least I convinced her to wear her brand new (brown and pink pig fleece) jammies rather than the ones she slept in. Sarah looked adorable, as always.



Mia couldn't wait for us to get there and right away wanted to open presents.

Mia got some neat paper doll cutouts for Christmas.
I'm not sure who had more fun playing with them - her or Kristen...



Mia was diligent in trying to console and entertain a somewhat fussy Sarah who was a wee bit nap-deprived.

Christmas Night!

We came home and Michael was much better! Like I said, he had managed to put the dollhouse together.

Charlotte LOVES it! It's ALL she wants to play with. To get her to bed we had to drape a blanket over it and tell the dollhouse, "Goodnight!"

Christmas Eve

Charlotte and Mia



The three little girl cousins in front of the tree.


Jumping on the trampoline.


Sarah showing off her dance moves.

Me and Kristen



Sisters and cousins


Us and Grandma Linda

Each of the girls opening one of the gifts.

Daredevil in the making

Sarah's new thing is to stand on this little blue chair. Usually she stands totally upright ("Look, Ma, no hands!!"), Mega Block in hand, and watches me to see what I'm going to do. And then giggles hysterically when I tell her it's time to get down. She scares me. I'm in for it.

Kinda preppy?

Sarah looks really cute and even a little bit preppy (dating myself here) in this outfit.

She has progressed to walking about 90% of the time. No longer content to crawl since she's on the floor anyway, she stands up everytime and just goes goes goes. Although not pictured here, she seems to have to walk everywhere with a Little People in one (or both) hands.

Mmmm Hot Cereal

I seem to post a lot of pictures of Sarah eating. :) Well she is cute. Sarah and eating has been a challenge. The girl is fickle fickle fickle. One day she likes something, the next day I get some serious head-shaking and nose-turning-up at the same exact thing.

One constant has been Kashi Hot Cereal though. She really likes it! And it's good for her, so I am happy.

This is her eating breakfast this morning.

Swinging... (in the house!)

Charlotte's *thing* seems to be that she likes to swing. It seems to help with her Sensory Processing issues. I don't fully understand it, but it does something. We've been trying to figure out the best way to get a swing set up in the house, and finally decided on a sturdy high quality porch swing frame (which we've weighted down with 4 50-lb sand bags). It's been a big hit. She loves to swing. She goes in there 5-6 times a day. Her preferred ways are either on her belly or on her back. She's working hard and making herself lay flat out on her back while swinging. She is one strong little girl. She also likes traditional "big girl" swinging too. The great thing about the porch swing is that when Charlotte doesn't need it anymore, we can move the frame outside on our patio and have a porch swing!

Beautiful Pictures

Here's all the rest