Merry Christmas!

I'm a little late, but from our family to yours, we want to wish you a very merry Christmas!  I hope you all had a wonderful day!

Our Christmas, while typically chaotic, was very nice.  The church looked absolutely gorgeous with all of the trees and poinsettias set up, and I was pleased that Judith was really good during the service!  She was also relatively well behaved yesterday, and enjoyed opening all of her presents.  She's been having a blast playing with them today while I work on catching up on some of the house work that I let slide the past couple of days.  Hooray for distractions!

Of course we're very grateful and counting our blessings that Judith is doing well with her disease right now.  That is probably the best Christmas present we can get.

It's rare that I get a picture with Judith since I'm usually the one behind the camera, but thanks to a friend, I was able to get a great shot of the 2 of us on Christmas Eve!

Christmas Time Is Here

The last 2 days have been exhausting, and battling to try and get the bactrum into Judith didn't help our stress levels, but we still had a good time and made some good memories as a family.

Christmas eve was more insane this year than it was last year.  Judith and I hung out at her godparents' house during the first service, and then we joined John at the church for the 2nd service.  We took some pictures before the Youth Chime Choir had to rehearse, and I was pleased that I got a good Daddy/Daughter shot:

I was surprised that Judith didn't fall asleep during the service, even though she was clearly tired.  She stayed awake through the whole thing, and overall was well behaved.  Once we took her back to her godparents' place and got her into her jammies, she fell asleep and stayed asleep until we were done with the last service and went to pick her up.

Earlier in the day, I was worrying about the weather because they were calling for some mixed precip to fall during the evening and into the night.  While we did get a bit of sleet, it was mostly snow and regular rain, and travel wasn't too hazardous for us.  The end result was a very pleasant surprise: we ended up with about an inch and a half of snow, and woke up to a winter wonderland on Christmas morning!

Judith was kind to us and slept until 7:30.  I would've loved for her to have slept longer since John & I didn't get to sleep until 2, but at least we got 5 hours in, and that's better than nothing.  I made cinnamon rolls and hot chocolate for breakfast, which is something I'd like to turn into a tradition.  Judith was playing and running around the living room with pieces of her Nativity set; she grabbed baby Jesus, and correctly told us who it was:

Buster and Lady were relaxing along with us (Lady was actually taking a break from chasing the pieces of Judith's Nativity set), and were eagerly waiting for breakfast to be made so they could catch a few handouts:

After breakfast, we opened presents.  Judith was able to open most things on her own this year, but she still didn't quite get the whole concept.  I think in another year she'll really get it.  In any case, she was a very delicate unwrapper this year, and would pull small shreds of paper off her gifts then hand them to us.  Silly girl.

Hugs for her new stuffed Minnie and Mickey!

After presents we squeezed in her morning Vest treatment, then headed to my parents' and grandparents' places to do the gift exchanges with them.  Judith got a lot of neat things, including a stuffed Daisy:

Now we have half of the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse characters in our house.

Green tinsel garland makes a fabulous boa

My mom made Christmas dinner this year.  I feel bad because Judith barely touched the food, even though it was things we know she likes.  I'm hoping that by next Christmas, she'll have grown out of this picky phase.  Anyway, after dinner we had 2 more rounds of presents.  By this time, Judith was starting to lose interest in the whole thing, and didn't really want to nap, either.  We ended up helping her open most of her stuff because she was basically done and more interested in pulling the candy canes off my parents' tree:

I felt bad that things were a little rushed at the end, but we knew we had to get her home and put her to bed.  It was for the better, because both John & I were exhausted, and my parents were pretty tired after having to do so much at their church the night before.

Overall, it was a good holiday, but we can't wait for next year when she'll hopefully be more into the whole season.

Christmas 2011 (lots of pictures included!)

I finally have some time to share our pictures from Christmas!

We had a great Christmas Eve - it was so nice having Judith home this year, and I was super excited to take some pics of her all decked out in her holiday finest!

You can't make me smile.

nom nom nom!

Wait, you're not supposed to eat shoes?

I'm surprised at how well Judith did throughout the service, considering I took her to the middle (7:30) service, and that fell during her normal bedtime.  She had a meltdown during the preludes because I wasn't around, but after I rang the bell piece I went back to her godfather and calmed her down.  She was great for the rest of the night, and fell asleep right after communion.

Christmas Day we skipped out on services since we had Judith out so late Christmas Eve (we took 1 car to church to help save gas, and we didn't get home until a little after 1 - Judith did sleep at church though, so she wasn't completely off schedule).  My grandparents came up in the morning to help me get Christmas dinner started, and they had fun playing with Judith:

Judith had fun with her great-grandparents, and also had fun sticking her hand in the dogs' water bowl and splashing around.  That happened twice that day, and both times she soaked her cute Christmas jammies.  Silly girl.

Anyway, after chowing down on an amazing dinner of ham, mashed potatoes, and green bean casserole, we opened presents:

Check out this big girl standing all by herself, no support!

Judith got so many awesome gifts!  A bunch of stuffed animals were included, and now it seems the zoo is officially full.  She also got some great onesies, a bunch of new books (including some Olivia books - I love it!), and some money for her savings account.  She has so much stuff that's new, and she can't make up her mind what to play with at any given time haha!

John & I also got some great gifts.  He got a Canon PowerShot (in a nice blue, close to Conrail blue haha!) so he can take pictures, and shoot some video that we can actually upload to the computer - his video camera is ancient, and we can't get the connector cables anymore, so it'll be nice to be able to post videos every now and then.  He's also going to get some DVDs that he wants, along with some new music.

I am enjoying my early Christmas gift of a Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens for my camera (that's what I took all of these pictures with), and I got the Nintendo 3DS that I wanted, along with 2 games: Super Mario 3D Land and Mario Kart 7!  The 3D part is what's taking the longest to get used to, and right now I have a very shallow depth set until my eyes adjust.  I'm also enjoying the circle pad - it's a feature I've been looking forward to having on a handheld.  I'm enjoying the games so far, and I can't wait for the new Animal Crossing and Paper Mario to finally be released!

We're thankful that we had such a great and semi-relaxing holiday this year!

It's A Christmas Eve Update!

I know I haven't been around much in the last week.  Things have been a little busy with rehearsals and getting things ready for Christmas.  My birthday was on Sunday, and I've been enjoying my gifts!  I got a new winter coat from my parents, and bought a new camera lens plus all 7 Harry Potter books with the money from my in-laws (well, part of that was Christmas money too, so I treated myself early!).  So between taking pictures with my new lens, taking care of Judith and the dogs, and burying my nose in books, I lost track of time and forgot to post!

I have to say that I've been enjoying the Harry Potter books immensely!  Believe it or not, I never read them before now (I was kind of bucking the trend for quite a while), and in retrospect that was one of the dumbest things I've done.  Thanks to many of my awesome mommy friends constantly talking about the books and movies, I finally caved and began reading them.  I'm hooked!  I'm getting ready to start the 4th book, and can't wait to get the movies with the rest of my birthday money!  I'm still kicking myself a bit for not reading these sooner (I had a major "WTF self?!" moment after reading the first chapter in book 1), but I'm glad that I'm remedying the error of my ways now!  Hopefully once Judith gets older, she'll decide to read the books herself, and will enjoy them as much as I am enjoying them!

One source of frustration this week has been with the sippy cup.  When Judith was sick last week, we didn't force the sippy on her as much and just gave her the bottle - that way she could use her energy to fight off the virus rather than burn the calories fussing about the sippy.  As a result, we had some minor regression.  So this week I was working with her to get her back to where she was.  She was only taking maybe an ounce or 2 at a time from the straw sippy, and I kept second-guessing our decision to keep working on transitioning/dropping bottles (as a side note, it's not the sucking part that she's having problems with - she can get liquid through the straw fine.  It's the intake that was concerning me).  For some odd reason, I decided to give the soft spout sippy another try, and the little stinker took to that right away!  The past couple of days, she's downed at least 2-3 ounces with each meal.  Talk about easing up on the frustration!  I'm thrilled that she likes it, and while shopping with my mom yesterday we picked up 2 more cups - 10 oz size this time, so we can fit an entire can of Pediasure in it.

We also had a surprise this week: remember when I mentioned before about Judith getting ready to cut one of her upper teeth?  The one right beside the upper front left tooth?  Well, it cut through, and the surprise part is the tooth in the same spot, but on the right side also cut at the same time!  When I felt/looked at her gums, that tooth definitely did not feel like it was anywhere close to emerging, but after a quick swipe I noticed it was there!  Her total tooth count is 5, and the final upper front tooth feels like it will come through in the next week or 2.

I am getting excited for tomorrow!  I know Judith probably won't be super enthusiastic about Christmas this year, but I can't wait to see her open her presents!  This year is a far cry from Christmas last year, and John & I are grateful that we can celebrate Christmas at home with our beautiful little girl.


John, Judith, Buster, Lady, & I would like to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas and a joyous holiday season!

Tis the Season

I have a love-hate relationship with this time of year.  I love the holidays (having 2 birthdays to celebrate - mine and Judith's - helps too... as much of a pain as gift buying can be haha!), but I despise the germs.  It's turning into an interesting time when we're out in public, and it's going to get super interesting at home now that it seems like both John & I are getting colds.  I'm really hoping that Judith will have some protection since she just finished round 2 of antibiotics on Saturday, but we'll have to wait and see.  In the meantime, we're doing extra hand washing/sanitizing, and are trying to keep Judith away from our faces.  Thank God for the Synagis - she'll have some protection with that.  But I can guarantee the first moment I notice any symptoms I'll be on the phone with her pulmonologist to find out what our next step should be.

We finished decorating the house for Christmas on Saturday.  The tree is up and decorated, and looks nice in the corner of the living room!  We haven't had the 6 ft. tree up for a couple years, and it felt good putting it up again.  Judith really hasn't been super interested in touching it, but loves looking at it - so far, the herding away from the tree technique has worked just fine.  We'll see how long that lasts - we intentionally avoided any breakable ornaments this year just in case.

1 Year Pictures & Random Party/Holiday Stuff

I know this is the 10,000,000,000th time some of you have seen these, but I'm AWing all over the place, so skip this part if you don't want to look again.  ;)

I got Judith's pictures!  Here's a sampling of the shots:

Judith is such a ham!

Party prep will be in full swing once we get through Thanksgiving.  My mom & I decided to make the cupcakes instead of buying them.  I'm glad I have a reason to use the Pampered Chef easy decorator that I got a couple years ago and haven't taken out of the box yet (you can guess how often I get the chance to bake, let alone do fancy decorating).  I need to get the rest of my pics loaded to Shutterfly, and send them to Target for printing so I can make her photo timeline.  Paper products and decorations need to be bought.  Thank goodness we decided to nix the idea of an organized theme and are keeping things super basic - I'm not a very crafty person, and I'll be the first to admit that I keep putting all of this off to deny the fact that my baby won't really be a baby anymore in just under 2 weeks.

On top of all of this, John & I decided we want to do Christmas cards after all this year.  I need to dress up the peanut, get the dogs positioned, quickly put Judith down, and pray everyone stays in their spot for more than .5 seconds so I can snap a good shot.  I'm definitely not crazy enough to attempt this alone, which means I'll have to wait for John to be here and we'll have to do it in the evening.  I need to get this done, and I want to have everything created and ordered by the end of the week so my neurotic self is sure that people will get the cards in time.  This whole process will be interesting to say the least.