Alia Singing

The ABCs and Jingle Bells ...

Christmas Video

Sorry, I didn't have time to make this fancy, but I wanted to share a little bit more of our Christmas morning with you. Enjoy!

Humpty Dumpty

Max's has been doing a funny little laugh type sound, but today he broke out into a full on giggle. It was awesome!

Christmas Morning!

the "before" picture

Super Max taking his first nap of the day while we got started opening presents.

Alia modeling her new apron from Aunt Kelly. Aunt Kelly made us matching family aprons and a bib for Max. They are awesome!

Can you tell I am excited? Here I am opening my favorite gift of the day ... a necklace with the Alia and Max's birthstones in it!

Max relaxing and enjoying his gift from Papaw and Mimi

Alia taking the big sheep for a test ride. Both kids were pooped out from all of the excitement.

Jason investigating his new cookbook.

Alia playing in her new kitchen.

Christmas Cookies

Our family tradition is to make sugar cookies and decorate them on Christmas Eve so that we can choose a few of our favorites to leave out for Santa. Alia was a big help in cutting out the dough but once there were some out of the oven with frosting on them she lost all focus and had to sit down to taste test. The funny thing is that she has developed this weird thing about getting her fingers messy. So she really wanted to eat it, but wanted us to feed it to her!

Please enjoy this rare moment where Max is sleeping!

Gingerbread House

Jason and Alia assembled and decorated a gingerbread house on December 23rd while Max and I battled the sleep monster. Jason said that every time he looked away, Alia was sneaking candies and frosting. She clearly had a very good time!

Grammy to the Rescue

My mom came out for the long weekend for Alia's birthday party. She was a huge help! She cleaned the entire upstairs of my house for me ... bathrooms, dusting, vacuuming ... the works! She was also a big help at Alia's birthday party. She helped me get all set up and then took care of Max the entire time so that Jason and I could flail around and mingle. On Saturday afternoon, we left her in charge for a couple of hours while Jason and I got out of the house for a little grown up time. It was wonderful!!!

Video from Alia's Birthday

Alia's 2nd Birthday

Today we celebrated Alia's 2nd birthday with friends at Munchkin Playland. We had a little froggie theme! The kids were able to play and eat cupcakes and get their crumbs all over the floor and it wasn't at my house :-) Alia was a little shy at first, but really got into the whole birthday party thing as we started to open presents at the end. (I'll post some video soon.)

Carson and Abby really wanted to show Alia how to dig into that cupcake. Alia didn't eat it until everyone stopped looking at her and telling her to eat her cupcake!

Then she got a little silly ...

Alia was very excited to open presents and loved all of the new toys that she got!

We attempted to get all of the kids lined up for a picture!

Presents

Here are a few pictures of Alia enjoying some of her early birthday/Christmas presents ...

A baby doll from Papaw and Mimi

A piggie bank from Grammy

Dora pjs from GG Becky

Max - 3 Months Old

It's hard to believe but Mr. Max is already 3 months old. We don't have a doctor appointment for another month so I don't have any stats for you, but I can tell you what he is up to these days. Max still enjoys eating every 2 hours all day, but gives Mommy a little break at night and goes 3-4 hours in between feedings. He is still on his acid reflux medication and it definitely helps. Mommy and Daddy experimented with taking him off of it for a week and we learned just how much it was helping him. Sleep is still not Max's favorite past time. He takes lots of little cat naps during the day, but nothing longer than 35 minutes without a LOT of effort from Mommy or Daddy.

Max is very into his hands right now. He loves chewing and sucking on his fingers and trying to reach out and grab things so that he can put them in his mouth. Max loves playing on his play mat and sitting up on Mommy's lap to watch big sister play! Max has also starting laughing a lot, but it is the funniest little sound you ever heard!

More family pictures

The Polar Express

On Saturday, we battled heavy rainfall and high winds on our drive out to Hood River to ride the Polar Express train to the North Pole to meet Santa Claus. Alia was very excited, but so excited that she didn't nap that day and talked for about 4 hours non stop before we got there. Once we got on the train and she calmed down a bit .... she relaxed a bit too much! She fell asleep before we got to the North Pole and missed meeting Santa. He left a bell for her though and promised to come to our house Christmas Eve and bring her presents because she was such a good little girl. (Max fell asleep at just about the same time, so when Santa came to our table on the train Jason and I both had sleeping kids in our arms ... kind of funny!)

On the train with Daddy and pretty excited about the "coffee" cups that got to drink our hot chocolate out of.

Max and Mommy waterlogged but happy to be on the train.

a view of our car on the train

taking her first sip of hot chocolate

sleepy little girl

Play Time at our House

Here are a couple of short video clips just showing what play time at our house looks like these days.

Water Slide

Another session of swim classes has come to an end. Alia has really made some progress this time around, but even more important is how much fun she was having. As many of you know now, on the last day of class they get to go down the big water slide. There were no tears this time, but we still couldn't get her to go twice in a row.

Christmas Songs

Alia is REALLY enjoying singing Christmas songs with Mommy. Here are two of her favorites ...

Family Photos

I'm having some technical difficulties in getting these pictures to upload to the blog. This is the only one that I could get so far, but I'll post more as soon as I can!

Meeting Mr. Claus

Today we stopped by the mall to say hello to Santa. We weren't sure how Alia would do. Last year, there were tears and Jason and I had to be a part of the picture too. Alia was very excited about Santa until she was face to face with him and then she got a little nervous. Then Santa made a very good move .... he gave her a treat (a candy cane). I'm pretty sure that's the only reason we were able to get her on Santa's lap without any tears. We couldn't really get a smile, but that might have been asking too much. Max was very agreeable to the whole thing since he'd just had a bottle. Feed him and he's a happy guy! I think that this picture is hysterical! What a great little memory of Christmas this year :-)

Thanksgiving 2010

Our Thanksgiving day tradition is to start the day with cinnamon rolls and then put up our Christmas tree. It was so much fun to wake up to my two kiddos in their matching Christmas pjs this year. Alia was very excited about the cinnamon rolls and was a great little helper when we decorated the tree (Max slept through most of that). Later in the day we went over to our friends house where we had Thanksgiving dinner. Alia enjoyed the turkey, playing with Charlie the dog and with her friend Nick!

Our Little Cutie

Max - 2 Month Check Up

Today Max had his two month check up with Dr. Nash. He is now 12 pounds, 15 ounces (77%) and 24.2 inches long (88%). Everything looked good during his exam. We are very excited that the acid reflux meds that we started last week appear to be helping Max out. From the very first day of the medication he started having longer chunks of sleep at night between feedings and having much more happy awake time during the day. He still likes to eat every 2 hours during the day and isn't a big fan of sleep in general, but things are certainly getting better!

Max likes watching his big sister play, playing on his play mat, listening to Mommy and Alia sing songs and even doing some tummy time now and then! He is smiling all the time now and can lift up his head when he's laying on his belly.