Julie's 1st (and Reese's 4th) Christmas

Ok, I'm trying to slowly catch back up with reality, but apparently I'm about a month behind :-). Christmas itself was wonderful. Reese was finally old enough to be really excited about Santa Claus coming, but not so old that she thought of waking up early to open her presents. Santa's gifts were all very loved by Reese - including the gifts for Julie! Her favorites were a tent with a tunnel and her new baby doll (who she named Baby Happy), but her new fountain toy and bubble-making monkeys for the bath tub are also well-loved. Luckily Julie didn't mind her big sister playing with all of her new toys. She was just excited to be passed around between all of her aunts, uncles, and cousins. After opening Santa's gifts, we enjoyed a delicious brunch with my side of the family. We then opened more gifts, took naps, and had dinner with Todd's parents. It was a very fun day filled with family and presents. By the end I was a little panicked about how we were going to get all of our things back home. I still don't know how we managed to fit all of our things into the Protege.

Reese opening her presents

Reese and Baby Happy

Through the tunnel...

Julie (and Reese) playing with her new cups

My girls enjoying Christmas together

A happy little princess

Mommy and Julie

Our gingerbread house - and yes, that is a tree on the roof...

More Cookies and a Penguin Parade

The week before Christmas was filled with fun with friends and family in Cincinnati. We went in a day early in order to dodge the possible snow heading for the area. Reese especially enjoyed baking and decorating cookies with GrandJan and her female cousins on Wednesday (she was particularly excited about rolling out the cookie dough with her special "Reese Roller" - a small rolling pin just for her!). Later that night,, Reese continued visiting with her cousins who graciously volunteered to babysit while all of the adults went out for dinner at Bucca di Beppo's (well, all of the adults and Julie who can't be separated from mommy for too long since she is refusing to have anything to do with a bottle). It was a nice night away from cutting up food and eating while the food was still warm. Julie did beautifully as always and Reese had fun with her cousins.

On Thursday we enjoyed a visit to the aquarium with Grandma and Grandpa with a special "Penguin Parade" to open the day. The penguins (from Africa and therefore able to come out in the lobby of the aquarium without getting uncomfortable) were pushed around on a little penguin-mobile while a worker did a little presentation for the kids. It was cute. 

Friday was  Christmas Eve and was filled with baths and showers and Christmas dresses that I must have forgotten to take pictures of... Mass was PACKED, but we luckily found two seats in the choir loft. After Mass, we had dinner with family. All too soon it was time for Reese to put on her Christmas pajamas and head to bed while visions of sugarplums danced in her head (and by sugarplums, I mean Santa Claus and the impending delivery of toys). I will include pictures of the big Christmas morning event on my next post.  

Making cookies with GrandJan

Julie enjoyed herself, too

Daddy and Reese at the aquarium

Grandpa and Julie

the Penguin Parade!

Christmas Cookies and Caroling

Despite the large amount of traveling, the busyness of the end of the semester, and the sadness of losing Great Grandma, we've been having lots of fun preparing for Christmas. Last weekend we held our annual Christmas cookie decorating party. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like this will be the last one in South Bend. Anyhow, we had fun with icing and sprinkles and lots and lots of cookies. This weekend we went to our friend Katie's for Advent caroling and the girls had a blast. Reese "helped" Katie on the piano (we sang a few more traditional Christmas songs for her) and Julie just laughed and laughed at the singing. Here are a few pictures of our fun times: 

 Having fun in the kitchen

 Reese loves to cook

 Of course, she likes decorating even better (check out the sprinkles on that cookie!)

 Julie enjoyed the evening from her excersaucer

Todd's more "artistic" take on cookie decorating...

Reese and Miss Katie playing "Here Comes Santa Claus"

5 Months Old!

Time is flying by. I can't believe Julie turned 5 months old last week. She seems to be growing and learning more every day. She is very attentive to the world around her and tries to talk to everyone. She likes to do this thing where she blows her binky out but holds her gums just close enough to catch the very tip of it so she doesn't lose it from her mouth. She's developed her own schedule very little help from me. In fact, I tried to put her on a schedule about a month ago and failed miserably. This week I suddenly realized that she takes naps at roughly the same time every day. She's been waking up more at night, but hopefully we can fix once the semester is over. Julie is continuing to refuse her bottle - something she started just a few weeks ago - which prompted me to start feeding her rice cereal. I keep thinking that if I can get her used to the taste of formula, maybe she won't refuse to eat from a bottle or a cup and I can actually go out for more than 3 hours at a time. I can't say that she enjoys the cereal so much as she is willing to humor me and munch on a few bites. And our biggest news of all - Julie rolled over for the first time on Sunday! Well, I'm told she rolled over. I was busy in the kitchen making chocolate chip and pumpkin pancakes so I missed it. Don't worry, she doesn't seem to have noticed that she did it. She's much more interested in standing and trying to scootch forward than in rolling over.

Reese continues to amaze us (and humor us) as well. I went to her parent-teacher conference two weeks ago and her teacher told me that she can add and subtract number 1 through 10. She said, "I kept trying new numbers just to test it out, and she kept getting them right!" Other than showing off her math skills, her teacher said that she talks about Julie a lot, loves to dress up in "pretty dresses and shiny shoes," and really likes art. She has been very excited for Christmas ever since she helped my mom put Christmas lights on her Christmas tree over Thanksgiving weekend. She was bouncing off the walls when we did our Christmas trees and couldn't quite grasp why we would want to spread out the ornaments (which she called "pyramids") rather than put them all on two branches. The bottoms of both of our Christmas trees look kind of special. Everytime I look at the clusters of ornaments and garland I have to smile. I asked her recently what she wants Santa to bring her for Christmas. She responded, "He'll bring me whatever he wants to." Ok...

Otherwise, we had a great (though short) Thanksgiving with our families and even got to sneak out to see the 7th Harry Potter movie thanks to Todd's parents. St. Nick visited our house and brought Reese a chocolate mouse (which she liked the idea of more than the actual taste of  since it wasn't dark chocolate) and - the thing she is most excited about - Teddy Grahams. He also brought Julie so carrots and sweet potatoes. We'll see what she thinks about these shortly. I'll post some pictures when I try them out. Until then, here are some pics of our beautiful girls:

 Julie sitting down for her first food - rice cereal!

 Reese pretending to be a bunny (and yes, Todd is responsible for this outfit)

 Mmmm....cereal!

 Julie and Mommy!

 Reese and her puzzle

Reese and her really big puzzle

Reese helping put up the Christmas tree - can you tell she was excited?

Julie's Baptism

Sorry about the long span between posts, but it has been a crazy couple of weeks. We were out-of-town 4 out of the past 5 weekends! I am slowly trying to put my house back together, clean, and decorate for Christmas as we settle back in. Rather than writing a massive post, I think I'll catch you up through a few smaller posts.

Sunday, Nov. 7 was Julie's baptism. She was baptized in the church where I was baptized (as was Reese). We had a private ceremony which ended up being a good thing. I would have felt awful if someone else was trying to tape their child's baptism during this time. While the ceremony was beautiful and I thought it was quite moving, others may have had trouble focusing and praying because, well, we experienced a colossal meltdown from many angles. Joey, son of the godparents, was not too fond of being separated from his mommy and daddy during the ceremony at first. He did, however, eventually realize the freedom he gained from this and wandered up to the lectern and went after the Chrism before being shepherded back to his parents by Uncle Chip. Meanwhile, Reese - who was on little sleep and lots of adrenaline as she was very excited about the baptism party and her pretty pink dress - lost it. I mean LOST it. She started crying so hard that she was having trouble breathing. Needless to say, the priest elected not to preach a homily or to add any extras to the event, but he did do a great job handling the distractions. It's funny, with Reese's baptism, we have all of these pictures of her in her dress beforehand, of the event itself, and of every possible combination of family members possible. Not for Julie. We were running late before the baptism after having taken her to go see my grandmother, the event itself was a little chaotic, and with all of the crying and chaos we just didn't really take pictures afterwars. We were just ready to get to the party. Luckily Julie's godparents took a few pictures with her on their own. Ugh. Poor second child...

The party was great with yummy food, good times with our family, and a wonderful location. Here are a few of the pictures we did manage to get:

Julie's godparents (Uncle Adam and Aunt Krisitn), Joey, Todd, me and Julie

Julie squirming around

Julie being baptized!

Our happy family

Trick-or-Treat!

This year was the first time Reese was excited for Halloween. And when I say that she was excited, I mean she was EXCITED. She started counting down the days until trick-or-treating in September. Somehow dressing up for Halloween must have been brought up at school because Reese told me that she told her teachers that she wasn't going to dress up for Halloween. I thought, "Oh great, they're going to think we're some sort of conservative nuts who won't let our children participate in Halloween." So I asked Reese what she wanted to dress up as and she immediately decided on being Tinkerbell. Not that she knows who Tinkerbell is or has seen her in a movie or anything. Undoubtedly she decided on Tinkerbell because she loves her Tinkerbell dress-up clothes - a green sparkly dress and wings, what more could a girl ask for? I was of course happy because this meant that I didn't have to buy a Halloween costume :-). Of course she practiced for Halloween all month by dressing up like Tinkerbell and making the wings fly all over the house.

As with most things, the anticipation of trick-or-treating turned out to be more fun than the event itself. Reese was very excited to dress-up the day before Halloween in order to visit her great-grandmother and her grandpa, GrandJan, aunts, uncle, and cousins. By the time trick-or-treating came around, she was so excited that she was running around my mom's house. Until it came to going outside, that is. My brother and his son, Joey, joined Reese and I (Julie stayed with my mom and Dave) and we all went to my sister's house. We were outside for maybe 5 minutes before Reese asked to go back inside "to get warm." Granted it was a bit chilly. Plus she was SO excited by the 5 pieces of candy in her pumpkin - quite a large bounty for a child who never eats candy. I convinced her to go to a couple of houses with her cousins Kylie and Zoe, but only if I held her the eintire time. Joey was really cute, making my brother Adam hold his pumpkin and insisting that he open every lollipop he got on the spot so that this little Superman got to walk around with a sucker in his mouth the entire evening. It was very sweet as you can see from the pictures below.

So Reese has taken up saying, "Yessss, Sir!" in response to any question she is asked. I've told her many timese (after she has said this to me) that I am not a sir but a ma'am so she should say, "Yessss, Ma'am!" to me. Today I asked her if she wanted more food for lunch to which she responded, "Yessss, Sir! Wait, you're not a sir, you're a man!"

In other news, Julie turned 4 months this past weekend. I took her to her check-up today and she weighs a not-so-whopping 13 lbs. She is in the 95th percentile for height and only the 31st for weight. She continues to be my long, lanky, laidback little girl. She did, however, find her loud voice on Monday while visiting her great-grandmother. She is very amused by her ability to sqeal like a dolphin (or maybe more like a hurt cat...). It's fun to see her so thrilled by her new tricks. She entertained my family with her big smiles and silly giggles all weekend. I feel so lucky to have such a happy baby.

Julie cuddling up with her blankets

Julie and Papa

Looking out the window

Tinkerbell is all business getting ready for trick-or-treating

Reese and Joey

Superman's sucker

Cousin Zoe

Reese and Kylie

Big Night Out

 On Friday night, Todd and I had a big night out for my birthday.  That's right, for the first time since she was born, we left Julie in someone else's care (well, it was the first time someone watched her where she didn't stay in her carseat asleep the entire time).  Of course, by "big night out" I mean that we left her for a 2 hours and 20 minutes, not that anyone was counting... The girls did beautifully and Reese was even asleep when we got home.  I was worried about how she'd do since she's needed her mommy a lot this week.  However, when the babysitter, Kat, came, she was so excited that she didn't even bother to say good-bye to us.  Now she keeps asking when Kat will come over again to play :-).  It was really nice to get out by ourselves for dinner and to take our time.  Dinner was great - I could even eat the dessert! It topped off a wonderful day of not doing any work, sleeping in, a surprise lunch from Chipotle, roses, German beer, Hershey's kisses, and shopping all by myself.  I am such a lucky lady.

Unfortunately the rest of the week wasn't as exciting.  Todd and I are both inundated with work right now so we haven't been able to do a lot.  On Monday when I picked up Reese from school, we stayed on campus at Notre Dame and had a picnic by the library.  The weather was gorgeous as were the trees whose leaves  are now changing colors.  Todd even joined us outside for a bit.  After Reese ate her lunch outside, the four of us went to Fiddlers to celebrate one of our friend's passing his candidacy exams.  I had thought that feeding Therese beforehand would be a good idea since I didn't think she'd eat much at Fiddlers.  Man was I wrong.  She ate more fries than I did!  I guess I should have known...  Anyhow, here are some pictures of our picnic.