It Was A Very Merry Christmas!

Christmas this year was so much fun! It's amazing how kids can bring such life to Christmas! With it being Alice Anne's 1st Christmas and Hannah's 1st Christmas where she really understood the whole Santa thing, it was a blast!! And, my new nephew, Carter, added to the joy, too!

We headed to Waco Christmas Eve and lit the Advent Candle at my parent's church that evening. My mom and I spend most of the service outside with the kids, but when it was our turn, Hannah enjoyed lighting the candle and even shouted a loud "YEAH" after singing the candle lit Silent Night. The entire church got a kick out of that! Sarah had everyone over for a delicious Christmas Eve dinner. We spent the night at the Starr's house. Christmas morning we woke up and Hannah was over the top excited!!! She couldn't wait to see what Santa brought, but she had to wait for Mary, Jammy, Papa, Grandpop, Gigi, Granny, and Granddaddy to come over. When she walked in the living room and saw her pink tricycle, her eyes lit up!!! It was so cute! It was like she was trying to comprehend in her mind how it got there and how Santa knew that's what she wanted...he even got the pink right! Hannah had fun digging in her stocking and she did the honors of opening up pretty much everything for Alice Anne (and Baby Carter, too)! She has definitely become the gift opening queen!! Hannah played in the toys for a while and we all ate breakfast. Again, Sarah did a magnificent job!!! We then opened up presents from my side of the family. Once again, a zillion things for Hannah, and lots of paper to tear open!!! It was crazy, but she had a blast! We spent the rest of the afternoon back and forth from Brett's grandmother's house and Brett's aunt's house (who both live only a couple houses down from my sister, which is SO nice and convenient)!! We had a delicious Christmas dinner at Jeanie's house and then once again, Hannah had the pleasure of opening up every one's gifts!!

It was such a good Christmas and we couldn't have asked for more!!

Letter to Santa

The pink tricycle!!!

Daddy showing Hannah how to ride it.

Who would have thought pom poms would be such a hit!!!

Alice Anne checking out her new toys.

Hannah trying on her "big girl panties" that Santa brought.

Hannah patiently waiting to open all the presents!

Little Tinkerbell from Grandpop and Gigi.

Hannah has said from the beginning that she wanted a hot dog for Christmas, so she got just that!!!

and loved every bite of it!

"Baby Carter" and Alice Anne

Happy 2nd Birthday, Angel!!!

Today is the day. Hannah is 2. Isn't it weird that 2 seems so big, when in all reality, 2 is still very, very little. But now I won't refer to her as xx number of months old. She will just be 2, and that seems so big to me. She is every bit of an ornery 2 year old...but in some ways, she still is my little baby. She is still very much so a momma's girl. She wants so badly to be independent and big, but then she realizes that she still needs me right by her side. I like that and hope it stays like that for a long time. Brett and I love this girl more than we could have ever imagined possible. She has changed us so much for the better. She and Alice Anne make us happier than anything else in this world. Here are some fun facts about Hannah Bow at her 2 year old mark.

She loves to pretend. She loves to pretend she is cooking for us or that she is a kitty cat or a baby or that she is a princess in dress up clothes. I love to watch her little imagination at work. She loves to feed her babies, rock them, and put them to bed. She is becoming a much nicer momma now than she used to be. Her babies used to get thrown on the ground, run over, and forgotten about (and still do sometimes-but then she remembers and tells them she's sorry).

When she gets REALLY excited about something, like ice cream or cake, she will shout, "Hooray!" It is hilarious. If I say Hooray first, she will say, "Hooray Back!" Love it. It never gets old.

She loves to sing! She sings so many songs and knows most all of the words. Her current favorite songs are "A,B,C's," "Jesus Loves Me," "Red and Yellow" (compliments of Jammy), "If You're Happy and You Know It," and "Jingle Bells."

She likes TV, but doesn't care at all if we say no TV. Her favorite show and ONLY show that she wants to watch is Sesame Street. But, we have to fast forward to Elmo. That's the only part she likes. I prefer she doesn't watch a lot of tv, but there are days when we desperately turn to it.

She uses incredible manners. She generally always says thank you and please and yes ma'am, yes sir, and no thank you. She is starting to say you're welcome. We had a Christmas party the other night and she came down stairs for a few minutes. She kept telling everyone, "it's so nice to meet you" and I didn't even put her up to that! It was the cutest/sweetest thing ever!!! For a 2 year old, she's pretty darn good at sharing and she LOVES to share food!! She makes sure that all of her friends have some of her snack, which is really sweet.

Her favorite foods (besides any sweets) are any kind of fruit, tomatoes, wheat thins, pretzel sticks, refried beans wrapped in a tortilla, pizza and hot dogs (aka: chopped ham). She MUST have ice in her water. It is so funny! She won't drink water unless it's "ice water." I used to go get drinks at Sonic all the time and I would get her an ice water. Now every time we see a Sonic, she says, "ICE WAWA!!"

She wants to know what every single thing is if she does not know the word. And she wants to know what I'm doing every second of the day. I hear the phrase, "What is that?" and "What are you doing mommy" about 600 times a day. When I tell her what something is, she promptly repeats what I have just said and says "more ___". It is so cute. Today we were driving and she saw a crane and asked what it was. When I told her a crane, she replied, "more cranes."

She talks in full sentences most of the time. I usually know what she is talking about, but not always. When I don't know what she is talking about, I will just nod and say yeah or OK. This annoys her to no end because she can clearly tell that I don't know what she is talking about. She continues to repeat what she was saying until I figure it out.

She loves to wear dresses and anytime I get her dressed, she turns to me and expects me to tell her how pretty she looks. Same goes after her hair gets fixed. She will often shout, "Pretty!" She is so right, she is so pretty. She hates her hair in her face, but even more hates giving me three seconds to get it out of her face. I always have to find something to distract her.

She is THE BEST BIG SISTER a little sister could ever ask for!! She loves her baby sister to no end! She adores her and I can see the love getting stronger and stronger every day. She talks to Alice Anne, dances with her, brings her toys and gets VERY upset if Alice Anne is not included in something. She always shares with her and tries to share her food and then looks at us, laughs, and says, "Alice Anne doesn't have teeth!!"

I could go on and on. She does so many cute things and I don't want to forget any of them. I love our time together. Everyday has something new and exciting for her and I love watching her learn and change. Brett and I both love her more and more each day. We cherish being her parents. Happy Birthday sweet baby girl. We look forward to watching you grow and change this year. You amaze us and make life so fun. We love you with all of our hearts.

Here are some pictures of how she spent her 2nd Birthday. She got up early and went to get donuts with daddy and then they went to the park in her jammies!! Then Aunt Mary and Uncle Les came over to tell her Happy Birthday. After nap time, the 4 of us went to the Dallas Aquarium and then to eat pizza (Hannah's request). And, when Brett asked her what kind of pizza she wanted, her response was "vanilla pizza." This is what she calls cheese pizza b/c it has the white cheese.

And just for fun, here she is on her first birthday last year...

Christmas Playdate

We have such a fun playgroup!! Hannah is so lucky to have such good friends and Alice Anne came at a perfect time...she'll have instant friends, as there are 4 other new babies for Alice Anne to play with.

This week, Ashley hosted, and the big kids decorated Christmas cookies (yes, more sugar to add to our week full of sugar) and then we had a birthday party for Jesus...complete with party hats and cake (yet again, MORE sugar)! They had a blast and did really good with the cookie decorating!

Hannah started eating the cookies before we got the icing out!!

Chaos!!

For those of you that don't know Milam Olson, he is obsessed with any sort of truck!! It is hilarious! Anytime you see him he is carrying a truck. He bathes with trucks, sleeps with them and can tell you what kind of truck each one is. Our playdate was no different...he used his dump truck to scoop up the icing and ice his cookies. It was the funniest thing I'd ever seen!!

Singing Happy Birthday to Jesus and blowing out the birthday candles!

Alice Anne...

She's awesome...seriously, the best baby...happy, CONTENT, engaging, snuggles, laughs all day, and sleeps...I'm enjoying getting to know her better and better every day and I can't imagine life without her! She's my wing man, because she goes everywhere with me and she's a trooper!
She just had her 4 month appointment this morning and she's doing great!!
Here are her stats:
18 lbs, 11 oz (95 %)
26 3/4" (95%)...
of PURE perfection!!!

I Love You Baby Alice Anne!

Gingerbread Man for the Gingerbread House

Hannah woke up this morning and wanted to know where the gingerbread man was for her gingerbread house that we made yesterday. So, we made donuts and made them in the shape of a gingerbread man. She loved it...but was a little unsure about eating her gingerbread man! She's at such a fun age!! Now, enough sugar for a LONG time!!!

Seriously???

Yes, this is how many diapers we went through in ONE sitting before keeping one clean-for a second! Seriously, Alice Anne!!!

Gingerbread House

Another COLD day outside, so we stayed in and made a gingerbread house...while still in our PJ's!! Hannah LOVED it and was so proud of her finished product! She asked me all day long when daddy was coming home. She kept saying, "I tell daddy I made that! I made that, daddy!" She loves showing off things that she's made...whether it's a picture she's colored or pancakes she's "made."

Getting Started. She can't WAIT to get her hands on all that candy!!!

She discovered that she could EAT the candy...and that made this project even that much more fun!!

Sharing the candy with Alice Anne.

So funny...she realized that there was a gingerbread man on their pajamas and she was telling the gingerbread man that she was making a house for him.

The finished product

Showing Alice Anne the "A" she put on the side for Alice Anne. There was an "H" on the other side and an "M" &"D" on the back for mommy and daddy. I guess she forgot about the gingerbread man because she said it was Alice Anne's, Hannah's, Mommy and Daddy's house.

A Cold Day!!

Alice Anne is such a little trooper! I found out when I dropped Hannah off at school this morning that today was her last day of school until January. I guess that's what I get for not reading the notes that are sent home...I thought I had 2 days left to shop and run around with only 1 baby. So, I dropped Hannah off and started running--and I mean RUNNING because it was freezing and 28 degrees outside all day long!!! Sweet little Alice Anne didn't cry a bit-she just smiled and laughed and talked as we went in from store to store. Alice Anne, why are you so sweet?!?! After we picked Hannah up we came home and the sweet pea took almost a 2 hour nap!! Doesn't sound like much, but for her that is big time!!!

I promise, this is not how I took her out in the cold...she was SO bundled up she was sweating!!

I think we've gotten Alice Anne's spitting up and tummy problems figured out and under control. At least I'm hoping that we do-for her sake. We have tried formula after formula and I have switched back to the soy formula because she seems to like that best. I am adding some rice cereal to her bottles to make it thicker so it will stick in her tummy better and not come back up. I just started adding the cereal yesterday, but we have hardly had any spit-up since then and she seems to feel so good! I'm so glad that we hopefully have it figured out!! And I think the little baby is cutting a tooth...

___________________________________________________________

Daddy's out of town tonight and Hannah is sleeping in mommy's bed. I let her watch Elmo in my bed while I took a shower. When Elmo was over, she rolled over and was out. She's all bundled up under the electric blanket right now. I'm hoping we'll both get some sleep :)

Snaggle Tooth

We had a fun dinner w/ the Ramseys last night. After dinner they decided to come over and we thought we'd let the big girls stay up late and play a while. Good idea...until they stayed up a little too late, took a bath in the big tub and started slipping and sliding a little too much. It was all laughs and fun until Hannah stood up in the tub to tickle Ava...and bit it. She screamed...and screamed...and screamed!!! We saw the busted lip and got the princess ice pack-that always fixes every boo boo. Even the princess ice pack didn't work. Every kid falls and busts their lip every once in a while, right. Does every kid fall in the bathtub so hard that they chip their tooth? Yes, while I was rocking Hannah trying to settle her down I noticed that not only does she have a busted lip but she also has a chipped tooth!!! Yep, a chipped tooth right on the top in the front. I tried to touch the tooth to make sure it wasn't loose--she was not going to stand for that. Poor little thing! Good thing her favorite uncle is a dentist!!! He said he'd have the little snaggle tooth fixed up in no time. But, for now I think we'll just stick with "Bubbles Daddy"!

A couple of pictures of the girls having a blast in the tub BEFORE the fall.

And after the little fall...they sat on the couch and held hands. It was so cute! Holding Ava's hand helped Hannah feel better. I couldn't get a picture of the tooth. I'll have to try that in a day to two.

The Big Birthday Party

Lucky Little Hannah scores again with a pretty nice birthday party for a "nearly two year old." Her real birthday isn't until December 20th, but we were able to share a really fun party with Milam... one of Hannah's very best friends. We had a petting zoo and a pony and the kids had a blast. The bounce house was a hit with all of the little ones, the weather was perfect and we all had a great day.

Hannah got so many goodies for her birthday. Lots of dress up clothes and shoes, baby dolls, clothes, a Little People nativity set, a camera, lots of Play Doh stuff, bath toys, books, several Melissa and Doug toys, and the drumroll please...a REAL Elmo that knows her NAME!!! She was so excited about this and couldn't believe it when Elmo said "Hannah!" She was in awe!! She will be busy playing with this stuff for a long time. She is one lucky little girl. She has more than anyone could ever want or need.

More pictures to come...