Mommy/Daughter Date

Ryleigh and I went on our first Mommy/Daughter date.  It was our special day to have some one-on-one time.  We don't get to do this much because she has a baby sister who's always around :) Ryleigh is now our middle child and has been feeling a little left out.  Jayce is the oldest and he goes to prek, played soccer, has friends to play with....Brynna is the baby, so she is always with Mommy. We wanted Ryleigh to know that she's extremely important to us and special to us so we have been trying to do special things with her.  So today, after we took Jayce to school, a friend of mine watched Brynna for a little while.  Ryleigh and I went to a bead store and made jewelry together.  It was fun and Ryleigh was excellent at it! She impressed me tremendously! She strung her beads on that wire like a champ!! She's got great hand-eye coordination. And she did awesome at creating a pattern and sticking to it. So today was not only a mommy/daughter date, but it was a math lesson too.  I love this girl more than words can say and I just hope that these little bits of one-on-one time will help her to know just how special she is to us!

 Getting ready and picking out our beads

 Starting to string her bracelet. She picked out purple flower beads and purple ball beads.

 We had a BUNCH of beads to choose from

 Loved how hard she concentrated on this project! She would even hum and sing to herself as she was stringing the beads. My heart was melting!

 Check out her beautiful work!!! She was so proud of it! And she loved that Mommy had a matching bracelet.  Now we have something special for just US!

Happy Mommy/Daughter Date! I Love you Ry, you are my sweet & special little princess!

9 months old

On December 2, Brynna was 9 months old.  I am still in shock that she's been in our family for that long.  It still seems like we brought her home from the hospital yesterday.  She's also a pretty small 9 month old, so that doesn't help the fact that I think she's younger than she actually is.  She has got quite the personality.  She is in LOVE with her brother and sister! The second she wakes up she is searching for them.  I love watching them interact.  It's pretty priceless! So this month going to the doctor was not like any other.  The doctor was kinda worried about Brynna's weight gain.  From her 6 month appointment to this one she only gained a pound, but she did grow 2 inches.  So they were worried about her nutrition.  She hadn't been eating much other than breastmilk, so it's hard for her to gain too much weight.  Since her appointment she has started eating some babyfood.  She likes the ones in those to go pouches.  She will also eat go-gurt.  She loves feeding herself, so I've been trying to find things that she can feed herself.  She's one tough cookie :) We love her though.  But in her ninth month so far: *She weighed 16lbs (15.7%) She dropped off her growth curve *She's 27 inches long (30%) *She's in size 3 diapers *Wakes up at least once a night to nurse (normally around 2am or 3am) *She has started standing! *She can stand and hold pretty much anything *She can sign "all done" *She waves "Hi", "goodnight", and "bye-bye" *She's started blowing kisses She LOVES her daddy!!!  When Layne walks in the door after work, Jayce and Ryleigh go bonkers! They run to the door, scream "DADDDDYY!!!", and give him huge hugs! I'm pretty sure Brynna has been taking notes, because she now goes crazy when he gets home too.  The second she sees him if she's on the floor, she will crawl as FAST as she can to him and then scream at his feet until he picks her up.  It's SUPER cute! If she's in her high chair eating, she will scream at him for his attention until he walks over to her.  Love my little nine month old so much!!

Christmas Lights

I Love Christmas lights and I love decorating for Christmas! So this year Layne did a great job decorating the house for me!  The kids and I LOOOVE the lights so much.  He even admitted to a friend the other night that he loves coming home and seeing the reflection of our lights in our neighbors windows. 

The kids and I also decorated our first gingerbread train.  They thought it was so much fun.  They also wanted to eat it immediately afterwards, but I talked them out of it.  I told them they could decorate a graham cracker and eat that instead so that we could save the train for everyone to see.

Christmas Tree 2012

Every year since Layne and I have been married, we have gone and cut down a Christmas tree (with the exception of last year since we purchased our home on Dec 14 and then left for TX for Christmas.) So this year we felt it was going to be no different.  We live in a small town, but since we are up north, I figured we could find a Christmas tree farm.  Well we found a farm, but they didn't have the trees we were used to.  First of all, most of their trees were 6ft and smaller.  Secondly, they only had furs.  We were used to pines...so we had to adjust :) Luckily, they grow all their big trees up in Pennsylvania and the owner goes up to that farm every week and cuts down his bigger trees and brings them back to sell for the weekend.  So I feel that we got a pretty fresh tree, but we didn't actually get to cut it down this year. The farm that we went to was nice though.  It was family owned, small town and they are hoping to have more and bigger trees next year.  The owner just didn't expect the tree farm to be so successful so quickly.  So that was pretty neat to hear. 

 The kids loved to help decorate the tree.  I did have to move several of the ornaments that they put on the tree because they were so close to each other. 

 The kids have their own trees that they get to decorate any way they want.  So they enjoyed being able to do that too.  When they were finished with their trees, I put them both up in their own rooms.  They liked that a lot!

 I love how serious she is about decorating

 LOVE this expression!!!

 Love this expression too! Thinking really hard about where to put his ornaments. :)

Merry Christmas to everyone!

November Iphone picture dump

I have so much to post about....but I'm going to start with this.  I just downloaded a bunch of pictures from my phone.  I seriously don't know what I would do without my camera on my phone.  It's so quick and easy to grab and snap a picture.  I take so many pictures of the kids that at nine months old, Brynna knows how to pose when I tell her to say cheese :) 

 We stopped at the park to kill some time before we went to pick up Grammie and PawPaw at the train station.  These crazy kiddos LOVE to swing.  I'm pretty sure their faces show their love of the swings.

 While Grammie and PawPaw were here for a visit, we went into DC to check out the Smithsonians.  The kids LOVE the museums and my parent's hadn't been.  That same day, our little peanut turned 8 months old.  She's such a doll!

 On the way back home, the kids were eating ring pops and Jayce fell asleep with his in his mouth.  Ryleigh started laughing hysterically and said that he looked like he had a binky in his mouth.  Then when he woke up she told him that she died laughing at him when he had his ring pop in his mouth. That girl cracks me up!!

 We would live at the park if we could :) And on the swings!

 In recent months, this little one has decided that she no longer needs naps.  But this happens about once a week.  She will fall asleep on the couch doing something or after we've gone to the park. Silly girl who thinks she no longer needs to take a nap. (Don't you love the popcorn in her mouth too. She was mid-bite when she crashed)

 First time these two got to take a bath together! They are loving this sweet sister time!

 Not sure what I'd do without these two.  We always have such fun at the park.  This time they piled up all these sticks so that they could have a bonfire and roast marshmallows (which were leaves on sticks)

 Ever since this little love has become a crawler, she has learned that she can have a lot of fun in Bubba and Sissy's things!! The second she spots the door open to the game closet, she's in it faster than anyone can even notice.  She's excellent at getting into things and making a mess.

 Making a list of things we were thankful for for Thanksgiving.  Ryleigh said she was thankful for Mommy, Daddy and God. Jayce said that he was thankful for Jesus, Mommy, Daddy, Ryleigh and Brayden (his bestfriend)

 I got to go up to Jayce's preschool and have a little craft time with him.  They went through what goes into a pie and the kids got to measure out what they needed for their individual pies.  Then after we were done with crafts, the pies were done and he got to eat it. He loved that Mommy came up and spent time with just him. I love my boy and how SWEET he is!!

 Jayce's pre-k class and their individual turkey feathers that they made.

 Jayce  and Daddy worked on learning how ride his bike with no training wheels.  Ryleigh tried once, but she didn't like it.  She's clearly not ready to do that yet.  But Jayce did excellent.  Our friend, Matt, gave us some great advice on how to teach him.  SO after one afternoon of practicing he was riding himself with no training wheels. He was so proud of himself!!

 We had a great Thanksgiving this year.  This was our first year to not spend Thanksgiving with any of our family, but instead this year we got to spend it with our Maryland "family."  Four of our good friends came over and we got to be thankful and feast!!

 It was this turkey's first Thanksgiving. She didn't eat much, but she sure looked cute!

 All he has to do now is figure out how to stop....then he will be an official bike rider!!