Sink full of snow

For various reasons we have been stuck inside for way too long. Except for going to the doctor on Monday, the girls haven't left the house for 11 days. That is too long! We could all use some fresh air. Dave took a couple of days off and has been home with us which helps. Nothing like a good man to balance out the strong wills of the women in this house. :)

So I was trying to catch up on the blogs I love to read, when I saw a great idea. Hillary always seems to be doing great activities with her kids. Today I decided to try one of her ideas ... it was a hit! Snow in the kitchen sink isn't quite the same as Morgan being able to go stomping through the snow, but it was fun.

After we made a fort, "baked" several snow cakes, and made some snowballs, we decided to make a snowman.

It shouldn't surprise you that Morgan kissed the snowman. She kisses everything. If you remember, she even kissed the caterpillar she found in the park this summer. Yuck.
Thanks Hillary! This was a great idea.

You should try it.

Adrienne 11 months

So I guess it is about time to pull myself out of my blogger's slump to update you all on my 11 month old cutie pie.

Her personality seems to come out more and more each day. She is very social, making friends with everyone from the people that come over to our house to the cashier at Walmart. Today as we were checking out she smiled at the cashier and then proceeded to talk to the cashier. What cracks me up is that she already knows the rules of conversation. I say that because she would make several sounds while looking at the girl and then wait for her to respond to her. Then she would do it again. She is starting to joke with us in her own sort of baby way - going back and forth with us mimicking sounds and laughing with us. It's great! She's not all sweet though. She also has a serious feisty streak. She lets out an emotion filled squeal that is most likely heard by our neighbors when I take her away from the recycling box. It's not mentioned in the baby proofing books, but I can only imagine it isn't safe to let 11 month olds play with glass bottles and empty soup cans. It's really too bad. She would be entertained for hours with that box if I would let her.

One of her favorite activities is pulling herself up to the dishwasher. If fact every time she hears me open it she turns on turbo crawl to get there as fast as she possibly can. She doesn't even have to be in the kitchen. She is able to hear that door open from amazing distances. It cracks me up!

Pulling herself up to the window isn't new, but I love this picture because you can see the hair that is growing at a rapid pace! I'm so excited. For those of you who don't know or don't remember, Morgan didn't really have hair until she was close to 18 months old. So it may not look like much, but this is a lot for my babies. :)

Adrienne has said her first word ... Mama. Today she said it as she was crawling to me in the kitchen. I was of course excited, but wasn't going to jump to calling it her first word. She continued to say it all day. When Dave came home from work I told him about it and of course he gave me the look telling me ya right, without really saying it. This evening she said it several times when he was holding her and she wanted to come to me. Then Dave said those magic words. "Are you going to count this as her first word?" I told him that I didn't know to which he responded. "Well I guess you should if she is looking at you when she says it." So I am happy to say that Adrienne's first word was Mama! :)

At eleven months Adrienne also:

bounces every time she hears music (just like her dad) :)

gives hugs

sleeps a 9-10 hrs stretch at night!!!

eats what we do

LOVES peas

is in to EVERYTHING

gives five

figured out how to climb stairs, but luckily I was right there so she only made it up 2 steps

continues to chew on and bite everything

likes to crawl through things, squealing when she gets stuck

joins in the wrestling matches between Morgan and Dave

continues to try her best to escape diaper changes

has started cruising

will stand for several seconds on her own

shakes her head "no" when she is discovered doing something she shouldn't be doing

LOVES her sister Morgan, following her everywhere and belly laughing over any little face.

We love you Adrienne!

Christmas treats

This weekend while Morgan was staying with her Grandma and Grandpa Chupp Dave and I decided to get domestic. We made hot chocolate gift bags for his "girls" at work.

No, he is not a pimp. Ya know, the girls in his office. :)

His mom has a hot chocolate receipt that they all LOVE. I assume it is great since they all say it is. I obviously haven't had it since the main ingredient is powdered milk. The mix is what Angie, my college roommate, and I would call "death to Sara". :)

Anyways, once Dave had the hot chocolate all mixed up, we started our assembly line. He filled the bags with the mix, marshmallows and chocolate chips. Then he handed them off to me to make them cute.

How did we do?

I even made little tags out of my scrap booking paper.

So we ended up with 40 some packs.

This afternoon I went to Keystone with the girls to hand out the packs.

Dave made beef jerky for the guys and the ladies got the hot chocolate.

Morgan played Santa saying everything from Happy Christmas to Ho Ho Ho Merry Christmas.

It was a real hit.

I hope everyone enjoyed their Christmas treats.

Some of you will be getting these too.

So act surprised when you see them. :)

The good stuff

As of Friday, December 12th, Adrienne has decided she no longer wants to eat baby food. Dave tried to feed her supper on Friday but was having no luck. She blocked her face with her hands and squealed every time he would try and go in with the spoon. We couldn't figure out what her deal was. For some reason I decided to tear off some of the pizza I was eating for her. I put the pieces on her tray and she ate it up with a big smile.

So I gave her some more.

I couldn't believe how much she ate. I guess she was tired of her fruit and cereal.

I can't blame her.

Since that day she has wanted nothing to do with the baby food. She wants what I am eating - the good stuff.

So that is what I have been giving her. Now eats peas like they were candy. I love it! Mealtime is so much easier now. It is also a lot more messy, as she still loves to rub her eyes and hair while eating. :(

This picture is after eating pasta for the first time.

She is about to eat a Nilla Wafer - a favorite treat of hers.

Adrienne 10 months

Adrienne is 10 months.

Things have changed a lot around here in the past month.

Her new skills include clapping, crawling, pulling herself up, and doing some minor cruising. It is so much fun and so much work. She is loving being able to get to all of Morgan's toys. She especially loves Morgan's doll house and all that lives in the house. Those dolls are soft enough to make great chew toys. The best part is that Morgan doesn't seem to mind. She's also pretty interested in Abbey's food bowl, which unlike the dolls, she is not allowed to chew on. :) It didn't take her long to master the skill of crawling and now she's able to work the room at amazing speeds. Morgan is a great big sister, sometimes bordering on a second mom - which we are working on, so she helps me keep an eye on her.

Another favorite lately is looking out the window. You have to imagine her patting the windowsill and saying "ahbabababa"...

Her reaction to Dave coming home from work is priceless! Saying she gets excited just doesn't give justice to her emotion. She bounces up and down and only gives him a few moments to come and pick her up before she starts squawking. If she is down on the floor playing, she crawls to him as fast as she can go. If she is in the high chair, she practically brakes her neck to see him. I love it! It has to feel great to receive such a welcome.

At 10 months Adrienne also loves to:

bite - hard - Morgan says her teeth are like shark teeth

pull all the wipes out of the container

make speedy escapes from diaper changes

go limp to avoid being picked up or redirected

run her gooey fingers through her hair during mealtime

throw things on the floor from her high chair

bang things together to make noise

grab my face while nursing

(I currently have 3 scabs on my nose to prove it)

take baths with Morgan

give kisses - when she feels like it

ride on my hip - though she rarely holds on

play with Noah's Ark - chewing on the animals one by one

sleep on her belly - legs tucked under with her butt in the air :)

Christmas warmth

I always liked decorating the Christmas tree when I was little. I just love the feel of a house decorated for Christmas. There is a warmth that seems to come with the lights and all the red and green. I hope that our girls grow up feeling that warmth in our home.

Today I brought up the kids' nativity set for the girls to play with. They really liked it. Of course anything new is always a hit. Morgan liked setting everything up and of course Adrienne was quick to "taste" all the new people and animals. :)

When we were at Jill and Eben's house we helped Jill with her Christmas decorations. Morgan LOVED it! So I was excited to have her help me this year with our house.

I have never had so much fun decorating a tree. Morgan was on a high. It was so great to see her so excited! We worked on hanging the ornaments together at first, but before long she had her own box and was going to town.

Dave has never really helped with the Christmas decorating. If he did it was only because I begged him to help me carry something. I'm sure he would say he didn't mind, or even liked, to have the house decorated, but he didn't want to have anything to do with the process.

Shocker!

Well this is what is great about this year...

he joined in on the fun.

I didn't even ask him!

It's hard to stand by and watch your daughter having so much fun and not join in on the action. So before long he had found some Christmas music on the radio and was putting his share of ornaments on the tree.

What a wonderful evening!

Of course Morgan and I were excited to show Adrienne the tree this morning. I let her touch it a while, mainly because I wanted the pictures. :) She actually stayed away from the tree the rest of the day. I'm sure tomorrow will be a different story now that I've said that. Our house is now toasty with the Christmas spirit.

So if you are in the neighborhood,

please stop by to soak in some of the warmth!

Thanksgiving weekend

Last week we took a road trip to Wheelersburg to celebrate Benjamin's 1st birthday, which happened to fall on Thanksgiving day. It was nice to have several days to relax with our family.

For the most part Morgan and Adrienne did really well traveling. We didn't even turn on the DVD player for Morgan until 4 hours into the trip! I'm pretty sure Adrienne's favorite part of the trip was the chance to explore the driver's seat.

We were driving when we did this.

Is that bad? :)

It was so great watching the kids play together. They had so much fun together! With the help of the adults' mediation skills there were actually very few squawks or scuffles. I think that's pretty impressive since the ages of the kiddos are 3 yrs, 15 m, 12 m, and 9 m.

Maybe there will be more of that to come. :)

Grandma was feeling really under the weather the first day they were there and wasn't able to love on the kids like she wanted to. This was the scene the next morning when she was feeling better.

The kids were all quick to crawl up next to her.

A little bag of Cheerios goes a long way with kiddos. I pulled them out to try to hold Adrienne over until supper. I bet it didn't even take 2 minutes for the other kids to figure out what was going on and make their way over. The job got too big for Grandma to handle by herself so Dave stepped in to help feed the birds.

Donna started teaching Morgan how to write her name. I think they got as far as M, o and r. Morgan did really well. I was shocked. I must be slacking because I had no idea that I should be starting writing with her already. I had just been working on recognizing her name. It was kind of funny because she actually became kind of obsessed with it. Jill was nice enough to share the cake beaters with Morgan.

Need I say more?
Benjamin wasn't sure about the cake at first, but it didn't take him long to realize it was pretty good stuff.

Benjamin got a lot of fun new toys and everyone was happy to help him break them in.

All in all we had a really good trip. Especially once Adrienne realized she CAN sleep at Jill and Eben's house. We did find out that both our girls are deep sleepers as they both slept through their sister screaming at different times.

Thanks Jill and Eben for making us all feel welcome as we invaded your house. I think everyone had a great time!

Once we got home both girls seemed to be excited to be home again. We had left Abbey with a dog sitter so they were also very excited to see her again. They were all over the house laughing and being silly together.

We had a really nice time with family, but it is also nice to be back in our routine again. Especially now that I have had a few days to remind Adrienne that she doesn't need to be held and personally entertained all day long. :)