Sweetie who?

When I picked Alexis up from preschool today, we decided to call Daddy and tell him we were on our way. (not intending to write a rhyme)
We chatted for a minute and I said "Bye, Sweetie!" when I hung up. 
Alexis says "you don't call him Sweetie you call him Grant.  He calls you Sweetie."
Me: "Yes, sweetie, I call Daddy Sweetie sometimes too."
Alexis: "And I'm a Sweetie too!" Followed by giggles. :-)

Pictures December 2010



Flower Mound Christmas Parade



Christmas #1

  

Grapevine light show tree



Santa!



Alexis with her Guitar from Santa



Andrew watching the singing snowmen



Alexis, Brooklyn, Becca, Mason, Jocelin, Alek & Leisl



TV at Nana's...and what are we watching? Darth Vador, of course.

 

Christmas Week!!!!!!!!!!

This was a week of very very little sleep.

Sunday the 19th, Andrew got to be Baby Jesus for the grade school kids walk through of "A night in Bethlehem".  He was chosen because he's a calm quiet baby...this was before he could sit up on his own and was teething like a crazy drooling madman.  I'm sure that Cailey (Mary) and Aaron (Joseph) were able to handle him just fine though...I heard that he was a bouncing and happy instead of quiet and sleep Jesus.  Oh well, better that than screaming. 

Monday...Ear Infection.  It's not easy to convince a baby to be still so that you can put drops in his ears.  Alexis got to spend the night at Mema's though, so at least she didn't wake up to his screaming.

Wednesday, Grant braved the task of travelling with two kids under the age of 4 on the trek up to Panhandle.  The plan was to leave at bedtime Tuesday night so they would sleep in order to reduce the number of stops; this was not the way things ended up working, but the kids did well anyway. While he was at Mimi's with the kiddos, I had a wrapping party at our house.  It was great to snack and wrap and chat all at once.  This turned into a very late night and a walmart trip at midnight.

Thursday started with the checkout at Walmart (where I found what Alexis asked Santa for) and continued with some more wrapping, a little bit of sleep and then dropping off a dog that freaked out and work for a while and then my trek up to Mimi's.

Friday (Christmas Eve) we took Alexis with Grant's cousins and their kids to see Tangled.  It was magical and fun and she kept saying that she was "Ra-pencil". 

The rest of the weekend was filled with family, food, gifts, chaos, games, and more of everything all over again and the joyous laughs of kids that have never seen so much wrapping paper in their lives.  If I had to take a guess the top gifts of the moment before we piled in the car to come home were a remote controlled car for Andrew where the remote is a rattle...he was enthralled before it was out of the box.  For Alexis it was her stick horsey, but her favorite seemed to change by the minute depending on if she wanted to read, draw, play games or run around or just flat out open more presents for the sake of opening presents.

We piled in the car and game home with a bit more fussing than the ride there for everyone (my favorite crying fussy quote was "Andrew's not letting me hear my movie because he's crying so I have to cry too.") but now we can prepare for the new year.

Cheers!

(Pics to follow in another post)

video catch up

Alexis singing Bah bah, Baby Jesus then 1,2,3, then Camel Caravan

click on below link

Alexis Dec 5

Christmas Week #1 (aka the week before Christmas)

Tuesday night was Alexis' Preschool Program.  After singing "Oh what farm it is to ride in one more soapen sled!" all weekend, we actually got to hear and see what they have been practicing.

Last year was the first year for her preschool to have a Christmas (or Holiday as they called it out of political correctness) program.  It was also the week that she had moved up in her class so it was kind of confusing for her which class she was supposed to be singing with and which songs were hers.  But she clapped her hands well and cheered happily for herself at the end nonetheless.  It was the beginning of her excited performances. Last year the most decipherable song that she sang was Frosty the snowman though it still sounded more like "crusty the snowman was a jelly happy soul."  This year we have heard the correct words to Frosty (though jolly still sounds like jelly) we have heard a very confusing version of Jingle Bells (see above) a good version of Feliz Navidad to go along with the random Spanish words that we hear from her and the requests to tell her what some words are in Spanish and on Monday we started hearing a Kwanzaa song.  The end result went something like this:
A train wreck covered in garland, fake Santa beards and cute snowmen shirts.  Alexis' songs were Happy Kwanzaa and Up on the housetop.  We really couldn't understand the kids most of the time.  There were several kids crying and doing whatever they wanted.  Alexis came back to our seats after every song to tell us that she sang and we sent her back to the "stage" every time.

Wednesday was Andrew's book exchange party at Miss D's.  We drew Adelaide's name.  I hope she likes the Little People Zoo book with various flaps to open for new surprises.  Adelaide has family from St. Louis so she had my heart the first day she had on a Cardinals shirt.  Andrew got his gift bag and went strait for the tissue paper (I'm sure he knew he was opening a present and not solely looking for something more to chew on :-) ).  He got his books from Grayson and a book and Dasher the reindeer stuffed animal from Ms. D.  He loves his Dasher.  He started drooling on Dasher as he clutched him right away.

Wednesday was also Awana Christmas party at church.  We had dropped the ball a little on helping Alexis with her verse this week, so I was not sure how she would do when I saw how long the verse was on Wednesday morning, but we practiced in the car to and from school and in the morning while getting dressed and she did a good job, though half way through it she would insert one of her previous verses and then continue with it.  So, to us, she often said "Prepare the way of the Lord, man they sins are forgiven, and he will make the paths strait."  In the end she said it close enough to the correct way to get it initialed.  The Jr. High kids that Grant and I work with got to watch one of Alexis' Veggietale movies while they munched on popcorn, pizza and candy canes.  After we got home, I began wrapping for Christmas part 1.

Thursday was Christmas Bunko and my sister and brother in law flew in late that night.  I always enjoy the once a month chance to hang out with just ladies.  Enjoyed the "left and right" version of the Christmas Story game too!

Friday, Alexis stayed home with mommy just for some girl time.  We got the house ready for our "Family Christmas Dinner."  Then she went to preschool just during their party where we met Daddy and he stayed at the party while I went shopping with "Aunt Becca" and then we had our dinner.

Saturday, we went to see Santa at Bass Pro shop.  Alexis enjoyed "driving" a pontoon boat and riding the carousel and carrying around a big fish while we waited for our turn to get in line.  Then we had family gifts or in our case, the gifts that we didn't want to travel with next week, since Santa knows we can only travel with smaller gifts.  Andrew enjoyed slobbering on and playing with his toys.  Alexis enjoyed unwrapping whether they were her gifts or not.  Then we tried a new BBQ place (we always go to a steak and/or BBQ dinner when Noah is in town).  Bartley's in Grapevine was the choice this time.  Then we went over to main street to see Santa's village and the light show.  A long, but fun week. :)

Pictures to come in a separate post.

The week following Alexis' 3 songs.

Since Alexis' performing debut, the kids have been busy with several other activities.  The week was fairly normal Monday - Thursday...though there have been two new songs to sing around the house...more on that later.
Friday, Andrew's day care was closed so he had a day with mommy.  Mommy had to get the house ready for the Sunday School party though, so Mema came over to help.  Andrew has become quite attached to the idea of having someone's face to look at and play with at all times.  While he can sit or lay for a little while and entertain himself with toys, he seems to either like to know that he's being watched or be carried around.  This did not make tasks like cleaning and preparing food especially easy.  Oh and did I mention he decided he did not want to miss a second of anything so napping was out of the question for the day.  Daddy got home with Alexis and began on the outside lights while I got Alexis and Andrew ready for pajama night at church.  Got the kiddos ready, got Alexis interested in something, grabbed Andrew and went to Wal-mart for the last few items I needed for the party only to find out that they stopped carrying one ingredient 6 weeks ago.  I raced back home, plopped Alexis in my car and shouted out the window that the lights looked fine and that people would probably start showing up before I got back. 

Drop off became a semi-fiasco as Alexis thought I was leaving her but taking Andrew.  I had to drop Alexis off first b/c Andrew needed to be fed and I had left his bottle at home, so Andrew needed to eat early before I left which meant he would need to be woken up because after a day of nothing but catnaps, he had fallen asleep in the car.  She cried and said that she didn't want her friends and the girls watching them to look at her.  I took the door stopper away and closed the door and left her with one of the teens to keep her from following me.  It was heartbreaking.  As I left I asked Mr. Buddy to check on her and walk her down to Andrew to show her that he got left there too.  She was fine and just needed a few minutes to adjust to a new crowd.  Still it left me stressed, but oh wait, I'm late for the party at my house. 

So I race home (forgetting to stop at Tom Thumb to get the ingredient that Wal-Mart no longer carries) and arrive home to find that most of what needed the final ingredient had already been eaten, so it must not have been a big deal, though it still was in my head.  And said a quick hello as I ran to my room to put on clothes that were more appropriate for visiting with people than working around my house and got ready.  I was only the 2nd to last person to arrive at our house, so I guess that means I was close enough to on time.  Good food, good discussion, kind of a flop of a gift exchange as there was not much stealing and competition this year, but I'd say the winner of a gift was the question jar which we used to continue the party until the absolute last minute before we all needed to pick up the kids.  We managed to thwart all but one attempt at people leaving their white elephant gifts at our house regardless of how hard some tried, Grant knew who to watch out for. 

I picked up the kiddos (afterall, I was blocking people into our driveway) and brought them home so that Grant could put them to bed and I could head out to one more party.  The terrible mom that I am left my phone in the car and didn't know that Alexis wet herself and woke up Andrew in the process of getting new jammies and left daddy with a screaming, inconsolable Andrew.  In the short time I was gone, I had 15 missed calls.  Since I had been driving around with my gas light on as I was in a hurry everytime I drove somewhere, I was planning to get gas on the way home.  But decided delaying my arrival home would not be the best course of action.  Got home and consoled screaming koala spud.  Neither kid slept soundly which was surprising considering how exhausted we all were.

Saturday, I was determined that we would be at the Christmas Parade.  Alexis did the things that were required of her to do "something fun" just fine...however, she was whiney and obstinant about everything else so we decided that "something fun #2" needed to be replaced by nap time.  Andrew pulled his own shenanigans while Alexis was being 3 (not good, but not really bad).  He woke up from being sound asleep thanks to the paramedic in the parade that made the siren go off right by us, so the car seat in the stroller was not enjoyable for him.  Without a sling or carrier we created a make shift one using a blanket and zipping him up against me in Grant's jacket.  This was great until he leaned over the zipper and spit up into his carseat b/c he put too much pressure on his belly after wiggling around to the marching band.  We shifted him around so that I was holding him normally but still snuggled in the jacket but he decided the jacket needed some liquid white decorations as well...at this point, Grant went back to the car for wipes and other cleaning agents that I had neglected to grab from the bag and put in the bottom of the stroller.  We cleaned every thing up, re-wrapped Andrew and let him sit unbuckled so that he could look in the gap between the canopy of the stroller and the backward facing car seat...however at this point the package of wipes was more entertaining than watching the parade and his sister gathering candy. 

Next up, Santa Claus.

My little Koala Bear

Andrew's nickname for a long time has been spud and he is spuderific; however, he is turning into a Koala Bear.  Now that he can sit up, he seems to think he needs to try to latch onto everything with all fours. 

Oh and did I mention, he's a cannabalistic koala?  He'll latch onto your arm just to gnaw on it.  He really doesn't have too discriminating of taste either; paper is just as likely to go into his mouth as a stuffed toy, food, teething ring or oh yeah his pacifier.

He can make noise now too, but if others (like his sister) are talking, he won't unless it's to cry.

Mommy & Daddy, sing with me!

Alexis sang with the preschool COMPASS choir at church this evening.  We have wondered for a while how this would go.  Walking in, she saw us and ran over to hug us and we told her she needed to go back to her class.  She was hopping up and down excitedly telling her teacher that she just saw her mommy and daddy as they walked into the church. 

When it was their turn, Alexis walked up the stairs without additional prompting but her placement on stage did not exactly look like she was with a group.  She danced like her dress was a little bell swishing from side to side and sang with all her might.  Shook her bells excitedly and told us to sing with her (rather shouted).

The overall result had my cheeks hurting from laughter and so proud of our joyful little girl who obviously does NOT have stage fright.  I'll post the video in a separate post...it's not cooperating.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

The tree is up the earliest we have ever put it up.  At least once a day when Alexis comes down the stairs, she says, "A Christmas Tree in our House!"

We still have to get the rest of the house in order again, but we are on our way to getting ready for December and all that it brings.

Alexis has started her Advent Sticker calendar and she has named the Elf on the Shelf Bob.  And I must say that Bob is already owed thanks for the quick corrections of behavior as we remind her that if she doesn't do what we say, go to bed etc, then Bob can't tell Santa that she was good.

Andrew has not been the happiest camper in the evenings and wants to be held...a lot.  One exception to this is when he is near teh Christmas tree, I think that if I sit him near enough to stare at the lights and ornaments that I may be able to put full loads of laundry into the washer without having to calm him down every few seconds.  I'll be testing this theory soon.