Slide Show - thanks for the idea Leah!

Last days of 2007

Christmas was great fun, we had my family - Sandy, Glenn, Alex, and Jaci here from ND as well as Dave's family - Jade and Megan - here to celebrate Christmas with us. Lily liked opening presents a lot at first but then lost interested after awhile. She liked the stocking from Santa on Christmas morning too. She got a princess scooter, some bath toys, ballet slippers, some clothes, a ballet outfit, and a chest full of dress-up princess clothes and princess shoes. She had those princess shoes on just as fast as she could get them out of the box - she is definitely into 'girly' stuff...She wanted to know today if Santa was going to be putting more Tootsie Rolls in her stocking...I think she's not caught on to the whole thing about Christmas only coming once a year...it's so good, why not have it more often?

Bridget had a good first Christmas too. She liked the wrapping paper and she liked all the toys she got from family and Santa. She liked entertaining everyone with all her 'talking' and showing off her new pearly whites too. Her top teeth are now most of the way through and she can actually bite pretty darn hard now! She started eating some of the Gerber puffs aka stars a couple of days before Christmas. Lily always wants some of those if Bridget is eating them, she loved those when she was a baby. Bridget mostly just gums them until they get soft enough to swallow but she gets a few chomps in here and there...

Lily is totally out of diapers and pull-ups now - even at night! So yippee!! I went to Target last week and just picked up diapers for Bridget, nothing for Lily, felt kind of strange...now we just gotta work on daughter #2... ;-)

Found out this week that I will be taking a trip down to Atlanta, Georgia for work at the beginning of February. Dave is going to have the girls for about 4 days on his own so that'll be a wild time for him. Then will be Lily's birthday on the 18th and then we'll leave for our trip out to see the Herzog's in California. Should be a busy month!

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas!

So Lily is eagerly awaiting Christmas, she's actually only asked a few times to open the gifts. I think she forgets that they are under the tree most of the time. We are waiting patiently for my family to come down to the cities tomorrow and Lily is most excited to read Dinosaur books with Grandma Sandy.

Bridget's top teeth are now through enough to see the edge of them peeking through even when she's smiling at you. She actually has slept pretty good the last few nights, only up once or twice as opposed to her normal 3/4/5/too many times to count number. She is moving around quite a bit but not crawling yet. I'm not really sure how she gets from here to there but I can put her down in one spot and she'll have gotten somewhere else in a few minutes. Lily is learning that if she takes a toy away from Bridget, she at least has to give her something back in return. For now, Bridget's usually ok as long as she gets something in trade for the toy she was playing with. When she catches on to that deal, the fights will really break out...

Lily's last pull-ups are gone so we're diaper-free with her now - yippee!! She was a bit wet this morning so we had to change the bedding but we're hoping it'll just take a few nights and she'll be able to stay dry at night. She's done it multiple times in her pull-up before and was getting to the point where she knew when she had a pull-up on, she didn't need to bother getting up to go. So hopefully will just be a few nights of washing sheets and mattress pads and we'll be done.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Cookie Time

Lily helped me make sugar cookies on Saturday - she loved cutting them out with the cookie cutter and then putting them on the cookie sheet. We had a few that got a little deformed and we had to recut but she did a pretty darn good job all and all! Then she had some of her friends over on Sunday for Christmas cookie decorating and they all had a blast decorating cookies and then sledding afterwards. I think more decorations and frosting got eaten than cookies but that's ok too...:-) We had Lily, Jack, Jake, Dylan, Ruby, Hannah, and then the two babies - Emma and Bridget. We didn't let them get too close to the cookies though.

Lily is eagerly awaiting her Christmas visitors. She knows that Grandma Sandy is coming and Uncle (Aunt) Jaci and Uncle Alex and Grandpa Glenn. And of course, Santa too! I don't think she understands that she's not actually going to see Santa so I'll be curious to see what she says on Christmas morning about the stockings. She has decided that Santa is bringing her ballet slippers for Christmas as hers are too small for her. Of course, she also thought Santa would probably be bringing ballet slippers for Grandpa Glenn too so who knows...

I finally got all my Christmas letters/cards put together and ready. Now I just have to put stamps on the ones that go in the mail and drop the others ones off with everyone else and I'll be done...nothing like waiting until the last minute...someday I'll be better organized but not today!

Bridget has a new favorite food too, blueberry. Just like her big sister. She likes the apple/blueberry baby food. But not just the plain apple. She leans forward and opens her mouth up when you've got the blueberry food so it's good to finally find something that she likes to eat! We tried some chicken noodle baby food on Saturday too but that quickly ended up spit back up in a spectacular display so I think we'll wait awhile before trying that one again...

More teeth??

Well, we all survived my business trip to Colorado - and actually, Dave got Bridget to sleep through the night for the first time in months. So I may have to nominate him for night duty from now on...

Bridget's bottom two teeth are all the way through now and we even have used the tooth brush on them a few times, big sister Lily was happy to show her how to brush. Now Bridget has her top two teeth at least partially through too. Enough through to start grinding her teeth together...now there is a noise that will make you want to crawl right out of your skin!!. She's going to be the only 8-month old wearing a hockey mouth guard if she keeps that up...

Lily is doing a great job with potty training, we haven't had an accident since last week and before that, it was about another week so we're on the right track. We are still doing pull-ups at night but I told Lily that when the supply runs out, we're going to just to underwear. She seems fine with that so let's hope there aren't too many sheet changes in the middle of the night for us.

Lily helped me to do some Christmas shopping this weekend but she busted me hiding some things in the cart for her so her time 'helping' me Christmas shop is about over now. She's too curious for her own good!

Beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Lots of snow today! Our first big snow of the season! We had gotten just a dusting of snow last week but we got probably 5-6 inches today. Dave got to go out and try out his new snowblower and it only took him about 10 minutes to do the driveway versus 45 minutes the old-fashioned way. Lily went out with him for awhile and went sledding down the hill with the neighbors. She came in with very rosy cheeks but she had fun.

I'm leaving for a few days to go to Colorado for work on Monday so I'm busy this weekend trying to get things set for Dave and the girls while I'm gone. He's going to be kept hopping trying to keep up with both of them by himself. Lily and I went to the grocery store this morning to stock up and it was a mad-house with the snow on the way.

Bridget's 2nd tooth on the bottom is finally poked it's way through the gum. I think she's also getting some on top but they haven't poked through yet. She's still getting up every 3 hours or so at night so I hope when the teeth are through that she sleeps a bit better...

I put up the Christmas tree this week and then Lily decorated it. As you can see, she did a great job with the garland and then after I helped her distribute the garland a bit, she did some ornaments too (which she calls 'instruments'). We only lost two to breakage so far...good thing all the valuable ornaments are tucked away safely downstairs...:-)