I just love the Holidays

We had such a wonderful Christmas season this year. We are blessed with two beautiful healthy daughters and that's all we can really ask for. But our families spoiled us with their company and a few gifts :)

Christmas Eve was at our house and I enjoyed it so much. I had been looking forward to it so much and loved having family over. We took our time opening presents, drinking wine, and eating dinner.

Aunt Heather and little Reese

Sisters

Bria had a blast opening presents and was so nice to help Reese open hers as well.

Rocking my baby.

Bria and Grammy dancing to the new toy Aunt Sara got her

Grammy feeding her baby

Bria shared her cookie with Heather, this was a big moment because Bria tends to be a hoarder of sweets.

Making a gingerbread man

In the morning when Bria woke up we brought her downstairs to show her what Santa had left for everyone.

What Santa brought for Reese on her first Christmas :)

Santa's gift to Bria

She was pretty excited about it. Especially the candy left in her stocking.

My musical child

All ready for the Christmas day to begin

Once we had opened gifts, ate our Christmas tradition breakfast (cinnamon rolls), and got ready for the day, we headed down to my Dad's. It was a wonderful day and it was really nice to be with the family.

Jenny and Kyle

Aunt Kayla and Reese

My Dad with his 6 kids. Lance LOVES that he has 5 sisters ;)

Crazy Uncle Lance

Group photo! This is a huge task, and a few of us were sweating by the time it was all said and done.

We got home yesterday and took our tree down. I packed up all the Christmas decorations and I'm so sad the Holiday season is over. It was such a magical season and I didn't want it to end. I just love Christmas time :)

3 months

We did it, we survived the first 3 months! The newborn days can be easy at times, but overall they are hard. I'm glad Reese is 3 months, she is so much fun. It's so easy to get her to smile and she's starting to laugh more and more.

Her 'Santa Baby' onesie and tutu, courtesy of Ya-ya

Reese is incredibly ticklish. I try not to tickle her too much because she's too young to tell me to stop if she doesn't like it, but I sure like hearing her laugh and seeing her squirm.

She's lifting her head up so well when she's on her tummy, she finally likes tummy time. She is trying really hard to roll from her back to her tummy and it's super cute. But diaper changes are already challenging, isn't that way too soon?!

She's wearing 3 month clothes and size 1 diapers. I think she's about 12 pounds but that's a guess. She loves "standing" and I can't believe how strong she is, it's quite impressive. She is still not a fan of the car seat but every once and awhile she tolerates it. Reese was only waking up once at night for a little bit but now it's twice again. She takes about 3 naps a day, 2 are short and one is long. She LOVES being naked and loves her baths.

She fell asleep during the photo shoot.

Not really, that would've been awesome.

"Oh, hello there."

"Yeah, I kind of like to be the star of the picture, you understand."

"Say wha? I am too the star!"

"Are you for real?!"

"Just pretend to get along, okay."

She is liking Bria more and more and is easily entertained by her. Although she loves her mama, she is pretty good about letting other people hold her.

I'm looking forward to her very first Christmas, she's going to get spoiled!

Outside and baby laughs!!

It has been freezing here lately but it didn't rain for like 2 weeks, wahoo!! So during Reese's naps, Bria and I would bundle up and head out in the backyard. We would make mud soup, play follow the leader, kick the ball around, and walk on the little garden ledge (Bria's favorite thing to do).

I didn't take pictures of the days we made mud soup, but let's just say that I soaked her clothes in oxi clean for 2 days to get all the dirt out. But she had fun so it was worth it.

Havin' fun :)

Gotcha!

My goofy girl.

Bria has been acting out a little and I'm pretty sure it's her adjusting to having a little sister and sharing Mommy. She hasn't been playing on her own very much and requires me to be by her side all day. Which is hard to do while also taking care of a baby. So I've been trying to be super sensitive and give Bria attention and include her in taking care of Reese, it's helped a little.

Reese has been doing well and only getting up once to eat the last 6 out of 7 nights. I really like when she only gets up once :) And I do enjoy that one on one time with her, it's nice to rock her and listen to her sweet little breathing while I burp her. I smell the back of her neck and kiss her soft cheeks, I'm just soaking her up as much as I can.

My sweet Reese's pieces

Happy girl!

She is quite a happy little baby. After she eats she usually talks and smiles and coos which is so fun. Then she wants to be held and will be content in my arms, it's a wonderful feeling.

On Wednesday she laughed for the first time!!! It's amazing what a miracle that sound is, I can't get enough. When Brian got home I was able to get her to laugh again and he was so excited. I love baby laughs!!

I think I am about done with Christmas shopping, just have a few little things I want to pick up. Since we rotate families each year (we have 4 families to see which was fine before kids but it's just too hard now, so we do 2 one year and the other 2 the next) this year is with Marna and Terry on Christmas Eve and then my Dad and Anna on Christmas day. I'm so excited because Marna and Terry are coming up on Christmas Eve and we're going to have it at our house. I'm really looking forward to it, plus that means the girls get to wake up on Christmas morning at their own house and that excites me so much! After we open presents and get ready we'll head down to my Dad's. It should be an amazing Christmas, I love spending so much time with family.

I cried

So yeah. The girls were part of the Nativity play that Marna's church does every year. Bria was an adorable little sheep and Reese got to be baby Jesus. I was so excited to see the girls up there. The sheep were to come crawling in down the aisle and when I turned around and saw my sweet little Bria crawling with all the other sheep I started getting all teary eyed. Blame it on the hormones I guess. It was seriously so cute. She sat with all the other sheep and the nursery teacher throughout the whole thing (about an hour) and did AWESOME. She did better than she would've with us. What made me crack up was how much of a teacher's pet she was, she wanted to be by the teacher at all times. She does NOT get that from her Dad, just sayin'.

Love my girls!

Reese. I was a little worried about how Reese would do since she loves Mommy holding her. But the sweet little eighth grade girl that played Mary was so wonderful with her. You can tell she has younger siblings because she was just knew how to hold her and what to do. Reese didn't make a peep! Can you believe it?! I carried her up to Mary once she sat down and throughout the whole thing Reese just looked around bright eyed and enjoyed herself.

Baby Jesus and Mary :)

My little sheep!

Adorable tail

Joseph looks thrilled doesn't he? ;) Guess he's still in shock that is fiance got pregnant.

Mary and my baby Jesus :)

Bria, the sheep. The sheep came up and sang two songs with little hand motions and my heart melted. She knew Away in a Manger really well and she even waved when she saw us, LOVE IT!

I was so proud of my little sheep, she behaved so well. Oh and yeah, I didn't get the memo about dressing her in all white. I should've figured it out myself but I had Christmas dress on my mind and nothing else :)

The shepherd on the left is having a great time ;)

Joseph admiring what a great Mom Mary is :)

My purple sheep

Both my girls making their acting debut!

cuteness!

Love it!

It was terrific. I was such a proud Mommy and I think Marna was quite proud too. So happy the girls did well, it was so much fun.

After the service there were refreshments and socializing. Bria got 3 cookies and juice so yeah, she was happy. And then bouncing off the walls of course.

Proud Grammy with her son and granddaughters

Bria did great throughout the whole morning, but she was definitely ready to go by the end.

The sugar high started to go away and was replaced with crankyness so we left :)

I'm so glad the girls got to be apart of it, such a fun thing for us all.

Online shopping rocks

Bria in her TinkerBell pj's in front of the tree :)

And our beautiful Christmas stockings!

The house is all decorated for Christmas and the shopping has begun. So far I've gotten most of the girls' presents online, it's just near to impossible to shop with two kids right now. Plus, who doesn't love having gifts delivered to their front door? I'm actually excited to start wrapping all the gifts, although I don't think I'll be able to put them under the tree, that would just be too tempting for Bria.

We had a really good weekend, it was busy but so much fun. Friday night we went to Brian's work Christmas party. We just had Reese because Bria stayed the night at Grammy's, more on that later and in the next post. It was so weird just having one child, especially one that didn't talk back or run around.

Reese and I getting ready to go to the party.

Reese was an angel and just took everything in. She even slept for a little while and fortunately it was during dinner so we got to eat at the same time :) She was definitely the hit of the party, everyone wanted to see her and talk about babies, it was quite fun.

Saturday we headed down to Corvallis because the girls were going to be in the Nativity play that Marna's church puts on. You're going to want to come back and check out the next post because Reese was baby Jesus and Bria was a sheep, it was ADORABLE!

Oh, hello productiveness

Let's just say it's been awhile since I've felt truly productive. Little Reese's pieces wants to be held all the time plus she hates her car seat, so those two things make it very hard to get things done. However, today all the stars aligned and I was able to get multiple things accomplished. It all started with poop. Yes, poop. Let's dig into this story a little more shall we?

Reese hasn't pooped in 5 days. With breastfed babies that's somewhat normal, but still, it's nice when they poop once a day.

I went in to feed her at 6:25 am and while she was nursing she started squirming and grunting. I knew it was coming, I could tell she was working to push it out and sure enough, explosion. So I cleaned her up and put her back to sleep. Then went and soaked her clothes in oxiclean because you can imagine it was a blowout. I don't blame the diaper either, 5 days of poo is a lot for one diaper. By the time I was all done it was around the time Bria wakes up. I got all ready for the day which rarely happens, I'm usually in my lounge clothes until noon.

Once the girls woke up I got them fed, clothed and then headed to Target and Walgreens. That's right, I made it to two stores! I got home, did snack time, some laundry, eventually lunch and then nap time. I straightened the house a little and now I'm blogging about my productiveness.

I can't help it, it feels good to get stuff done.

My two little ladies playing together

The cutest little outfit!

Alright, now it's time to go be lazy and watch some tv ;)

Gettin' our Holiday on

It's December so it's officially safe to start decorating and making the house look all Christmas like :) We got our tree this evening and it's nice and big, love it. We went to a cute little Christmas tree farm where they had a tractor ride to take you to the North Pole and sit on Santa's lap. Santa even gave each kid a toy! Bria was adorable, she was a little shy but told him what she wanted (money in her 529, Daddy rehearsed that with her) and then smiled for a picture (Joe and Dehlia took their camera so I'll get that picture from them).

We've had a pretty busy week here with playdates and it's been nice having people to hang out with, I know Bria enjoys it.

My sweet little Reese is so smiley and I just love talking to her, she coos and gives me a big open mouth smile, complete with her daddies dimples and all. Everyone comments how much she looks like Brian and it's so true. I've come to realize she is the kind of baby that fusses before falling asleep. I hate listening to her cry but she usually doesn't cry long before drifting off to sleep. She is waking twice a night to eat and I didn't think that was bad until I went back and read the blog when Bria was 2 1/2 months old (April 2009) and she was sleeping through the night, 8-7. Wow. But, Reese doesn't barf like Bria did and I am beyond grateful for that. I rarely even use a burp rag with her. It's wonderful and I'll take her waking twice a night if it means I don't have to deal with barf.

I mean, how can you get mad at waking twice a night with this love bug?

"Uhhh, all this rocking is making me nauseous."

Perty blues :)

We have a Christmas party tomorrow night to go to and it should be fun. It's my Moms club friends that are having it and we always have a good time with them.

And I don't want to leave out pictures of my oldest daughter. We tried on her snowsuit to see if it fit, it's a little big but it'll do, hopefully for 2 years!

:)