Sabbatical, and a Little Taste of What We've Been Up To

Hmm...I suppose I took a little bloggy sabbatical.  I didn't intend to, but with all the other stuff going on, I didn't have the inclination to blog.  Thankfully, it's coming back.  We have some fun stuff to share with you.

It has been lovely here in the evenings, so after dinner we've been playing in our back yard.  Usually, this involves a lot of "On your mark, get set, go!"  and games of catch with the beach ball for the big girl.  The little girl just loves to try to do whatever Sister is doing.  Last night, John got in on the beach ball action.  And, this is what happened:

Yup, that's our beach ball stuck in the top of one of our live oak trees.  If you look very closely, you can also see one of Penny's toys lodged underneath it.  Clearly, the dog toy failed miserably in getting the beach ball out of the tree.   If you ever wonder what love looks like, it is this:

When the rocks and dog toy failed to dislodge the ball, John dutifully climbed up the prickly tree and shook that ball loose.

Cora waited ever so patiently and offered plenty of timely advice - "you gotta get that beach ball, Daddy!" and "you climb up the tree, okay?" 

The babecita wasn't too terribly interested in the whole scenario.  But, she's still pretty cute if I do say so myself!    

Cora wanted to get in on the photography action.  These are some of the better shots.  Not too shabby, eh?!

More to come on other exciting adventures!

It's the End of an Era

Our sweet little Carysita is definitely a full-fledged walker, if not a runner!

Considering her self-appointed job seems to be hiding different objects in places throughout our house, nothing is safe.  Turns out Carys is an excellent teacher.  She branded this lesson in my brain last week.  This is how it all went down:  One morning Cora happened to sleep late.  I thought I would sneak a quick shower in before she got up, so I let Carys wander around the bathroom and play with toys.  This worked out great until she disappeared into my closet.
          Fortunately, she wasn't gone for long and promptly came out.
          Unfortunately, she had located my shoes.
          Fortunately, she only had one shoe at that time.
          Unfortunately, she was headed straight for the toilet.
I'm guessing you can see where this is going!  Fortunately, I was able to save said shoe from a watery death.   I doubt it looked pretty as I hurtled out of the shower risking death on the slippery when wet tile, but I saved the shoe nonetheless.  I'm sure you can understand why I constantly live in fear of finding somebody's lost treasure in the loo.

With that thought always in the back of my mind, I'm not sure why I was so surprised at her actions tonight.  Carys was all ready for bed, but before she went down for the night, I wanted to put some things away in her closet.  I had totally forgotten that beloved Perdita was on top of the dresser.  Carys was puttering around in the bedroom when I heard the scraping of Cora's stool on the wood floors.  When I turned around, Carys had finished pushing the stool up to the dresser and was in the process of pulling herself up using one of the knobs on the drawers.  She grabbed Perdy, sat down to step off, and triumphantly walked away with puppy's ear in her mouth.  Forgive me a proud mama moment, but OMIGOSH, SHE JUST SOLVED A PROBLEM ALL BY HERSELF BY THINKING THROUGH THREE SEPARATE MENTALLY AND PHYSICALLY CHALLENGING STEPS!  HOLY MOLY! Okay, proud mama moment over.  And, now reality sets in: OMIGOSH SHE REALIZED THAT SHE CAN REACH THINGS THAT ARE OVER HER HEAD WITHOUT THE ASSISTANCE OF AN ADULT! HOLY MOLY!  Lock up your cookies, keys, and cell phones.  Babecita is on the loose!

A Whole Lotta Random

The title pretty much describes these last few weeks.  We're back in our weekly routine after the craziness of the holiday season.  And, while we haven't really done anything monumental, we do have several noteworthy things that I don't want to forget.

First and foremost, we officially have a full-fledged walker.  Miss Carys has been taking steps for the past 6 or so weeks, but as of this past week, she now spends more time walking than crawling.  I'm having a bit of mommy melancholy about the whole situation. I mean, on the one hand, I was so excited for her to start walking - especially in order to spare the knees of all of her pants and dresses!  But, now I find myself missing her cute little slap crawling.

I'll have to get some video of her walking about.  She's such a funny little creature.  She can walk pretty fast, but she manages to do so while keeping her upper body perfectly still.  It's almost like she's walking around with an invisible walker!

I am also amazed to report that Carys is in the process of tripling the amount of teeth in her mouth.  She's been working on her molars for quite some time, and the poky little things are finally starting to pop through. She is also getting her remaining four incisors.  She will very soon have 12 sharp chompers.  Sister better watch out!

The big news for Sister is all about gymnastics.  This past week was especially exciting because Cora finally mastered the 'seat drop.'  (A seat-drop is a skill on the trampoline where you jump, drop down on your bottom and back on your feet with one swift move.)  We've been working on this since August, and she just couldn't quite master getting her feet back under her.  It would be the understatement of the year to say that she was excited on Tuesday when she popped back up off her toushee.  And, that small (huge!) success seemed to motivate her for the rest of the lesson.  She was more focused and tried harder than any other time that I can recall.  It's funny because whenever I observe one of my student teachers I also subconsciously observe the students to try to figure out which one is most like Cora.  This past week, at a local high school, I saw a sweet girl, small in stature in a Spanish class.  When she got up to leave, I noticed that she was wearing a t-shirt for that school's gymnastics team.  Ding, ding, ding!  We have a winner!  I had to laugh at myself for thinking that way.  High school is still a decade away.  Besides, who can think about high school when we have the Olympics to focus on! ;-)

Things My Child Has Eaten Today

Or at least, things she has attempted to eat:

dog food
an acorn cap
a live oak leaf
Penny's chew bone

This is in addition to all the other 'usual' toys, foods, and family members that she puts in her mouth.  Apparently, the idea to let them try it once, and they won't eat it again does not apply with a certain 1 year old.  To make matters worse, she is now dexterous enough to open up the lockable container that we store the dog food in.  It is very disconcerting to have your child's and your dog's breath smell exactly the same.  I'm just sayin'!

One Year Well Check

Carys had her one year well check on Thursday.  Knowing that it would mean shots, I decided to wait to take her until after our Christmas break.  Even still, we decided against the flu vaccine.  Cora always had a terrible reaction to it, and since the girls are home with me, we didn't really see the need to put Carys through that.

I was curious/anxious to see her stats.  Carys has been wearing the same size 6 month pajamas for quite some time now, and considering that she is a year old and that Cora had a bit of a difficult time gaining weight, I was uncertain how this would sit with Carys' pediatrician.  Here are her stats:

Height:  27 1/4 inches (less than 5%)
Weight:  16 lbs, 10oz (less than 5%)

It turns out that even though she has grown an inch and a quarter, she has lost a couple of ounces.  I guess she has Cora's freakishly wonderful metabolism after all.  She eats like a horse, but apparently, she is active enough that she doesn't gain weight that quickly.  In fact, despite being a full pound and a half heavier at birth than Cora was, she is a little over a quarter of a pound lighter than Cora was at one year.  Funny how things work out.  Our little chubilla doesn't fit her moniker anymore.  Dr. Mitchell was not too concerned at this point.  She has enough weight for her height.  (It would have been cause for concern if her height was of a higher percentile than her weight.)  But, I guess when you spend your days climbing on top of the coffee table, you tend to burn more calories!

Due Date Anniversary

Well, Carysita, we were supposed to be celebrating your birthday today.  I think we all know how that plan turned out!  Happy Due Date Anniversary, sweet baby girl!

 January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

 September

 October

November

December

Fri-Deja Vu

Cora - 2009


Carys - 2012

Worth a Thousand Words?

Here is a sampling of Cora's photography:

Daddy and Carys

Mommy and Daddy

Her feet and her finger... poor girl!  She gets her knack for having a finger in the lens from her mother!

 And, her thematic photography:

Her series on the dinner rolls...

And, her series of Buttercup, her cousin's toy horse:

They have a certain artistic appeal, no?!  It's going to be fun to see what pictures she comes up with next!

Christmas, Take 2

On the day after Christmas, we took off for San Angelo to celebrate with my family.  There were 10 of us staying in my parents house.  No big deal conceptually...there should be plenty of room.  But, I am a chronic over-packer.  Our car looked like we could possibly be heading out for a month long expedition.  And, now that there are 4 girlies among my brother and I, the big girls got to enjoy alternate accommodations to leave space for the pack 'n plays in the bedrooms.  In other words, they got to sleep by the Christmas tree.  Cora didn't quite get the magnitude of this task since she can only read her name.  But, her older cousin Hannah, did a little bit of present rearranging trying to seek out the ones with her name on it.  Coincidentally, she happened to have the largest gift under the tree - a giant stuffed dolphin.

 I'm pretty sure she likes it!

Miriam knew what to do with her stack of presents.  She may have been the most enthusiastic of all the girls when it came to unwrapping!

 Cora and Carys both got some really fun things.  Some of the highlights include musical instruments for Carys and a kid-tough digital camera for Cora.

 Cora took about 200 pictures over the course of the next few days.  (Wonder where she gets her pathological picture taking from?!?)  She is not an expert at capturing her subjects in the pictures, but bless her pea-picking heart, she tries!  After she attempted to capture someone with her camera, she would exclaim "Good cheesing!"

One of the sweetest moments was when Cora opened up her Mema outfit.  (My mom makes each of her grandkids an outfit for Christmas.)  She saw the blue satiny princess dress and hugged it tight.  It was so cute.

After the toy bonanza had been unwrapped, the girls spent the rest of the weekend trying their very best to be kind and share the bounty.  All in all, they did pretty well!  Thanks, Mema and P-pa, for a fun Christmas celebration!

Christmas at Home

This was the first time in a few years that we have spent Christmas day at home.  Last year was an incredibly special Christmas with our brand new family of four, and this year was also very exciting since Cora really got into the Santa Claus magic.  We set out cookies on Christmas Eve, and wouldn't you  know it, Santa came to our house shortly after the girls went to bed!

It's a good thing Santa had those cookies to fuel him because putting together the wagon turned out to be a bit of a chore.  Thankfully, Santa and his helper persevered, and this was what waited for a couple of little girls come Christmas morning.

 Our little scientist had been pretending to use 'maculars' (binoculars) for almost a year now.  We thought it was a good time to get her some of her very own.  These are especially handy for spying birds on the bird feeder that Dado made for the girls.

Carys' favorite past-time (other than banging objects on tables, chairs, the floor, etc.) is putting things in and taking things out of bags.  So, I Santa found this cute shopping bag with plush groceries for Carys to put in and out to her heart's content.

After opening gifts, John made his super special cinnamon toast for breakfast, and we all got ready to go to church.  I was a little apprehensive about the service because there was no childcare for the girls.  But, to my surprise, both girls did pretty well.  I ended up taking Carys out of the service about 10 minutes before it ended, but all things considered, that's pretty good endurance for a 1 year old!  

We had a beautiful and special Christmas at home and at church, but above all we are thankful that 

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16