Rockin' Reindeer

I've been a little busy (or maybe a little lazy) so I haven't written much lately.  But I thought I should get at least one more post in before Christmas.  So I wanted to share the video from Kaelyn's Christmas program last week.  She did an amazing job and looked absolutely adorable as a reindeer.  We only took video of the songs her class was in, so this isn't the whole program.  You're welcome.  Hope you enjoy!

Cookie Time!

One batch of Christmas cookies down.  Kaelyn was an amazing helper every step of the way.  Or, at least until I let her eat one and then she got distracted by Matt playing the golf game on Wii (she likes to "help" him swing and tell the ball where to go).  She had a hard time waiting for the dough to chill but was super excited when she got up from nap and it was finally time to cut and bake them.  And she didn't need to wait for me to tell her what to do or help her.  She remembered from last year and dug right in.

Mixing.

Baking.

Decorating.

Eating. Finally!

 Yum!

Sorry, buddy.  Only crackers for you. Maybe next year.  You're so cute though. 

P.S. She wore her apron for about eight hours straight. Even to nap.

Lights, Paper, Christmas!

So, I think our Christmas decorating is pretty much done for the season.  We don't have a ton of store bought Christmas decorations but since we'll be spending Christmas at home this year, I definitely wanted the house to feel more festive.  Well, thanks to my recent addiction to pinterest I was able to add a few inexpensive, homemade decorations to our trimmings.  Homemade and inexpensive are good vocabulary in our house right now.  Not only because we're always trying to save money but because a certain 2 1/2 foot tall resident has a very long reach and a case of the grabsies.  I'm pretty convinced that with a little more crafting time I could have decorated the entire house using mostly paper and some lights. 

Have I mentioned how much Kaelyn loves Christmas lights.  After lighting the tree we had two extra sets of lights that didn't match, so... of course there is now a set hanging in her bedroom and our bedroom.  Kind of reminds me of decorating our dorm room in college.  Festive none the less.

Sorry, I don't have a picture of the lights in our room because they're around the bed and I'm too lazy to make the bed but too ashamed to take a picture for you to see our unmade bed.  Maybe if you come to visit I'll actually make the bed and you can see how cute they look.

I used some cheap Ikea frames, a free printable I found through pinterest, scrapbook paper (50% off! even cheaper), cookie cutters and twine (also 50% off!) to make these beauties.

And then I found some cheap labor to make these paper ornaments to hang from our dining room chandelier (aka, the light in our kitchen).

You can also see the paper Christmas trees she made on the back door.

And then one day while I was trying to ignore Brennan's cries during nap time, I became a little obsessed with making paper snowflakes.  I wish I could take all the credit for them but I followed some templates found on other people's blogs.  The snowflakes themselves turned out pretty cool, but I didn't get quite the effect I was going for hanging them from the fan/light in the living room.  Too bad I'm too lazy to take them down and try hanging them somewhere else.  They'll probably still be hanging there at Brennan's birthday party in March.

I've pinned about a million more projects I thought would be cool to do, but I don't think I'll ever actually find the time this year.  Maybe I'll deck the halls with some more paper crafts next year.  Now it's time to focus on baking!

So, the lesson here is paper + lights = Christmas.  Oh, and I guess a tree and some stockings help a little.  :)

'Tis the Season

I love Christmas.  The whole Christmas season.  Please don't ask why, no one quite knows the reason.  (Sorry, couldn't resist.)

Really, I love the entire time from Thanksgiving to New Year's. I love the decorations.  The music.  (Ok, maybe not all of the music, but enough.)  How cozy everything feels.  And best of all, I love spending time with family.  That family time has changed a lot over the years.  Especially now that we have kids.  It's gotten even better.  It is soooo much fun to be a witness to kids' joy and amazement around this time of year.

A little taste of a big family gathering over Thanksgiving.  Most of my aunts and uncles and cousins on my mom's side and all of our kids were in the same house.  Kaelyn loved having so many kids to play with.

 On Saturday we went to cut down our Christmas tree.  The past couple years we used a fake one.  Since we were always traveling over Christmas it just seemed easier.  So this was Kaelyn's first adventure to a tree farm. Which one is dressed more appropriately for cutting down a tree?

Kaelyn wanted a little guy.  I had to resist the urge to “make” her pick what I thought would be a perfect tree.  The tree she chose is a little shorter than I would have picked but it really is quite beautiful, and actually the perfect size for our little house.

After several hours trying to get the darn thing to stand up straight and not fall over (next time I'm investing in the $45 tree stand, it's gotta be worth it) we had to wait until Sunday to decorate. She gasped at every ornament as she took it out.  She was so excited to decorate the tree she got a little weepy when I kept telling her to wait until I finished putting the lights up.  I let her put three up while I was still doing the lights but she just couldn’t wait to do the rest.  She was so excited to show Dada when he got home from the store.  She said to me, “I think Dada will say ‘Wow Kaelyn! What a beautiful tree.  You and Mama did such a good job.’”  Even though we struggled a little getting the tree up, it was all worth it.

Saturday night we went to check out the festivities downtown Franklin.  Even though he didn’t really know what was going on, Brennan got excited and giggled as we watched the “Lighted” Holiday Parade.  Seeing him smile with his “hillbilly” teeth and hearing him giggle is one of the best gifts I could get.  (Corny I know, but still true.)  We decided not to wait around for an hour for the downtown lighting ceremony, but did drive to see the Indiana Masonic Home grounds lit up which was absolutely amazing.  Kaelyn still gasps every time she sees lights on people’s houses.  Driving around she says, “Mama, Mama look at the colorful lights!” The colorful ones are her favorite. The excitement in her voice is another one of the best gifts.

So, when I tell people I don’t want anything for Christmas I mean it.  OK, mostly.  I mean there’s always stuff I want, but I know I can live without it.  And quite frankly, our house is so full of "stuff" right now I don’t know where I’d put any of it.  And it's about to get even more full with all the kids Christmas gifts.

Rock-a-Bye Baby

We've had lots of Christmas preparation and activities going on around here this weekend. But I'll have to tell you about that another time because we're also hitting a big milestone tonight.  A sad milestone. Tonight will (probably) be the last night I rock my baby to sleep. <insert giant sad face with tear here>  We've been talking about it, dabbling at it and putting it off for months now and it's finally time to pull the trigger.  The plan is to start letting Brennan "cry it out" tomorrow night.  Oh wait!  That means I still get nap time tomorrow to rock him!  I may just rock him the full two hours to suck every last minute out of it.  Who cares if there's laundry to do.

I thought we were going to start last week after we got back from our Thanksgiving trip, but, well, it didn't quite happen.  He actually slept through the night two nights in a row. But now he's back to his same old routine waking up at night.  So, since he has nine month check up tomorrow (oh my God, my baby is nine months old!) I figured I could put it off until then, you know, so I can get the doctor's advice and all.

And now it's out here, on the interwebs, for all to see.  I'm committed.  No turning back.  Unless, of course, the doctor advises me to keep rocking him.  I wouldn't want to ignore a professional's advice.

I keep thinking I'm not going to be strong enough to do this.  Unfortunately for Matt, I'll probably be sending him in to calm the crying a lot because when those hands reach out to me and grab at me, I may just give in and pick him up and rock him. Somehow I managed with Kaelyn.  But it only took her three nights.  And this is my baby boy.  And since we're not planning on having any more kids it makes me sad to think I won't get to rock any more babies.  Oh, I'm sure I'll still get to rock him once in a while, like if he's sick.  But you know, it's not quite the same, knowing that when I go to put him to sleep every night I'm losing minutes of valuable cuddle time.

I should be looking forward to this, I know.  If this is successful it means no more "wrestling" and fighting him to go to sleep.  No more going back in when we're in the middle of watching a movie and he wakes up.  And hopefully no more 2 a.m. wake up calls.  These are all good things that will probably improve the quality of my own sleep which will in turn improve my moods and ability to be a good mom during the day.  But it still makes me sad.  And first we have to get through, possibly two weeks, of very poor sleep and listening to my baby cry.  Wish us luck!

Looking so handsome and very grown up at Thanksgiving

In other big Brennan news, he's getting quite good at throwing a ball, he can now do several of the motions to "Wheels on the Bus," his favorite song, and he's been saying what sounds a lot like "Dada" lately.  Next thing we know he'll be walking. (Yikes!)  Is it possible to simultaneously love and hate watching him grow up?

Being goofy! Hopefully this means he'll have a good sense of humor like his daddy.

****UPDATE**** 12/6/11
Based on what the doctor said yesterday and B's personality we decided not to use the Ferber Method of crying it out that we more or less used with Kaelyn.  Instead, we will put him in bed awake but sleepy and stay in the room patting his back and comforting him (without picking him up) until he (eventually) falls to sleep.  I would say last night went pretty well.  Although I may have messed up a little.  After night-nights and prayers in Kaelyn's room I decided to rock him for two songs to settle him down.  I knew he was already pretty sleepy.  He fought me and cried until close to the end of the second song and then started to settle in.  I put him down as quickly as I could but it was so dark in his room I couldn't really tell if he was still awake or had fallen asleep that quickly.  When I laid him down he let out one tiny cry and then was quiet.  Success!  I guess.  Then he woke up right as we were going to bed.  Matt went in and was able to get him back to sleep in about 10 minutes without picking him up.  Then he woke about 2 o'clock, which is when I would usually feed him.  The doctor did say to keep doing the feeding if I felt like he was actually hungry.  But to me, it's gotta be all or nothing.  Or, at least I had to try to do it without picking up, rocking and feeding.  I knew he would fall asleep while eating so I felt like we'd be erasing any good we'd done if I immediately gave in to feeding him.  He cried pretty hard for about the first 5 minutes and then started to settle down.  Then, he would lay down for a bit, sit up and then stand up occasionally with a little bit of crying.  But he didn't seem to be starving so I stuck with it.  For close to 2 hours I stuck with it.  In the last 20 minutes he started crying pretty hard again and would immediately stand up when I would try to lay him down.  Then, he must have just been exhausted and fell asleep.  I'm pretty proud of myself for not giving in.

Now I'm exhausted.  After being up with him for 2 hours it took me at least another hour to fall back to sleep.  And I woke up to crying about an hour later.  But, he actually went back to sleep on his own by the time I got to his room.  It was 6 o'clock, his normal eating time.  But I wasn't about to wake him back up.  So I went back to bed for another half hour and he kept sleeping.  He woke up a little around 7 but Matt got him back to sleep.  And then he slept until I had to wake him up at about 8 to get ready to take K to school.  And so far today naps have gone pretty well.  Same routine with a quick rock and lullaby and then put him in his crib still awake and pat until he falls asleep.  I think it was less than 10 minutes both times til he was asleep.  I think he's still pretty exhausted from last night.

Some Assembly Required, Batteries not Included

As a rule, I don't particularly like toys that require batteries, make artificial noise, are made of plastic or are very commercialized (read: Disney Princesses).  I much prefer soft, plush toys or classic wooden ones.  They just feel more wholesome and genuine (not sure if that's the word I'm looking for but I'm a little brain dead right now so it will have to do, you know what I mean).  Also as a rule, I want my kids to be free to pursue their interests and develop their individual personalities.  I don't want to suppress or hold them back from what truly makes them happy.  And right now the thing that seems to make Kaelyn the happiest is princesses.  Especially Disney Princesses.  So, when my brother called me while Christmas shopping for the kids and asked if it was ok to get her the Disney Princess musical vanity, for the sake of my daughter's happiness I said, "yes."

And then I took the thing out of the box and saw how many pieces it came in I seriously considered taking it back.  (She got to open her presents from them early since we won't see them on Christmas.)  Only problem was, she already saw it. And there was no way she was going to forget it.  So, I spent the better part of nap time today putting it together.  At least the part I wasn't ushering one child back to bed or trying to rock the other back to sleep.  Since she didn't stay in bed, Kaelyn knew I was putting it together and it was the first thing she asked about when she woke up.

(Notice the new princess jammies she got from Maya too.)

Naturally she needed to get out all her princess paraphernalia to play with it.  The cape and wand were already with her at nap.  Maya gave her these over Thanksgiving too.  These were homemade and not Disney, big pluses in my book.  She also had to have her tiara on and her new princess brush.  Later she also insisted on wearing Rapunzel dress, long hair and Rapunzel necklace.

The next challenge will be finding a home for it that is not our living room.  I hope the gift give realizes that we will be "gifting" this to their children in the future, whether or not they have any girls.  Lucky for them it will come assembled. (Really, she loves it guys.  And we still love you, even if you do give our kids obnoxious gifts.  I'm sure I was guilty of giving a few myself.)

And so begins the Christmas season. Do you think the musical vanity will help her forget the Disney Princess castle she wanted to ask Santa for now?  Santa thought he was done shopping but I don't know if Mama is quite ready to teach her a lesson in disappointment this Christmas.  I have a lot more to say on the topic of Christmas but I think I'll save it for another day.

Funny Faces

Since my last post was a little verbose, I'll take this one in the opposite direction.  Here are some blurry, yet funny faces.  I hope they make you smile.

P.S. B has four teeth coming in on the top now, for a total of six. Ouch!

Have kids, will travel

 After Kaelyn was born we said that we weren't going to let having kids stop us from getting out and going places because one, we love to travel and two, all of our family is out of state.  So we knew we'd at least be traveling to Wisconsin and Virginia several times a year.  I'd say up until recently we really stayed true to that.  Before Kaelyn was four months old she had been to two different states and one foreign country.  That's probably more traveling than I did the first 16 years of my life.  She rounded out her first year with several trips to two more states.  I've lost count of how many times she's been on a plane.  And, while traveling with a baby and then a toddler was never a breeze, I'd say we had gotten the hang of it. And then along came number two.  I still don't want to be stuck at home, but the thought of traveling with a 3 year old and a baby honestly frightens me a little.  So, poor Brennan will probably think we were sheltering him compared to his sister.  Until last week his travel adventures included two trips to Wisconsin and one to South Bend.  And sorry to tell you Buddy, but it doesn't look like you'll be leaving the country until after your first birthday.

So we decided to expand his horizons a little and last week we took the trip to Savannah to visit Nana and Pop and see their new house they'll be moving to next summer. This is what the trip started with:

 My hand-dandy packing list.  Matt always tells me to calm down and not stress when we're getting ready to go on trips.  Next time I'm just going to show him this list again.  This doesn't include clothes plus I think I added a few things the morning we left that weren't on the list.  I don't think I stress but I'm constantly doing mental checks, writing things down as I think of them and trying to figure out when things are going to be packed (most not until last minute) and how it's all going to be organized and work out.

And then we got a sweet ride for the trip (yes, I just called a minivan sweet).

I was actually ready to join the minivan mom's club when we pulled out of the driveway.  It had all the bells and whistles.  DVD player, automatic doors (which Kaelyn called magic), Sirius Satellite radio, park-assist, seperate climate controls, built-in sun shades in the back, blind spot notification and about a kajillion cup holders.  I must say all the extra space was nice too.  I don't think we could have fit all our gear in either of our cars.  Maybe Matt would have had to leave his clubs behind (like that would ever happen).  It was definitely comfy for the 14 hour drive and definitely helped that I was able to climb in the back seat to entertain Brennan and keep him (somewhat) happy most of the trip.

So anyway, we got to Matt's Aunt and Uncle's house in the middle of the night and it was a bit of a struggle getting both the kids back to sleep.  Needless to say, we were all a little exhausted the next day.  We went to see Nana and Pop's new house, which is undergoing a facelift and then finally checked-in to the rental house in the afternoon.  Kaelyn was a bit confused with all the different houses and the fact that she thought we were going to be staying in a hotel the night before.  The house was beautiful, but the view was the best part. 

Not bad, huh? Kaelyn loved going down to throw stuff in the "magoon."  There were tons of turtles sunning themselves on the banks and peeking their noses out of the water.  We also saw some cool heron-type birds (not exactly sure what they were) every day.  And one morning when Rudy started barking I scolded him for barking at the morning runner only to look out in front of the deck to see a six point buck standing there. Thankfully there were no gator sightings, though we were told there was baby who lived there.

 I thought this tree was absolutely beautiful.

Love all the Spanish moss blowing in the breeze.

Anyway, I'm sure that's what you all really care about.  Unfortunately I didn't get a lot of good pictures of the kids on the trip but here are a few highlights.

Friday we took the kids to the aquarium.  Brennan fell asleep for about 5 minutes in the car and called it his morning nap.

The aquarium was a little smaller than we had expected and only took about 15 minutes to see everything, but Kaelyn didn't seem to mind.

Don't you think seahorses are so cool? They were my personal favorite.  Kaelyn liked the turtles.

Since we had some extra time to kill we ran around outside by the water for a while.

Then we went downtown to have lunch at Aunt Laurie's restaurant (for those of you who don't know Laurie is Matt's aunt and the name of the restaurant isn't Aunt Laurie's, it's Debi's Laurie's Restaurant).  Did you know they filmed a scene from Forest Gump there?  That meant absolutely nothing to Kaelyn, but she loved waving out the window to all the people walking by after the parade.

Saturday's itinerary included a golf outing for Pop, Dada and Kaelyn, swimming with Nana, Mama, Kaelyn and Brennan, a fancy dinner at one of the country clubs, a sick mama and an Irish win.  I'm going to blame being sick but with all the great photo opportunities this day we only got pictures of the golf outing. And the kids looked so cute dressed up for dinner too.  I'm really kicking myself on that one.

Sunday was pretty low key.  The older boys went golfing and the ladies stayed home with B so he could nap.  We took a walk by the "magoon" again (I kept trying to call it a lagoon but luckily I had Kaelyn there to correct me.  What would I do without her?) and then after afternoon naps went to Aunt Laurie and Uncle Hal's for dinner.  It was fun to see Matt's cousin's who we haven't seen in a while.  Kaelyn had a blast running around with the other kids.

Oh, did I forget to mention the actual drive?  Let's just say Matt did an awesome job driving the whole way there and back  Kaelyn watched more movies than I care to admit and I may win an award for the most verses of "Twinkle, Twinkle" sung in an hour.  The van was amazing for the trip.  I don't think we could have done it without it.  Good decision by us.  But now that we're back I think I'm quite happy with my little Ford Fusion and I'll hold off on joining the minivan caravan for awhile.  Maybe next time I'll be brave enough to try flying with two kids.