Christmas and Other

December flew by as it usually does. Here we are at the end with no December updates or pictures. I have a lot of catching up to do. 

We started our Christmas season by decorating the house and our tree on December 1.  It was so fun and the kids loved every minute! I used to love decorating the tree with all my favorite decorative balls but oh how children change those things. Now my favorite ornaments are the ones the kids have made at school or the ones we handmade together. Our tree is very "kid friendly" these days.

(And our tree is so tiny! But I'm happy to report we bought a much bigger tree on sale after Christmas and am looking forward to decorating it next year. It's huge compared to our current one!)

 The first half of December was very very warm so we were still enjoying lots of playtime outside.

Love these sweet picture of both kids. Sometimes they are so cooperative and let me take sweet pictures. Most of the time this does not happen though!

 Love this one too of Emmy copying Jackson's pose! This girl LOVES her big brother and will follow him anywhere!

We also enjoyed the Christmas festivities at church which included the children's choir program.  Jackson joined children's choir this past fall and worked very hard to learn all the Christmas songs and his Bible verse. The songs were very simple and short and soon we all found ourselves singing them around the house and in the car! Even Emmy learned them and would sing along! It was so sweet to hear their little voices singing about baby Jesus.

Christmas was a lot of fun this year with Emmy being older. She loved the tree and by the time presents were under the tree she could tell us which ones were hers, Jackson's, Mommy's, etc.  I know I'm biased but she is so smart!

A few weeks ago I was letting her play on my Ipad (from work) and we were doing a painting app where you use your finger to "paint". I drew a heart for her and was showing her what a heart was and then she says, "Mommy, draw tri-angle" (emphasis on the "angle"). I thought I misunderstood her so I said, "a triangle?" and she confirmed again that she wanted me to draw a triangle. So I drew one and she pointed at it and said, "triangle!".  I have never shown her or talked about a triangle before (I'm sure she's hearing it at school) but I was pretty impressed!

A couple of weeks ago I decided to put a band-aid on her thumb to try and wean her from her thumb sucking. I'm hoping if we can stop her before she's two we'll be doing good! So far she's done pretty well. Sometimes she complains about the band-aid and wants to take it off but she understands so much that I can talk her through it and she leaves it on. We let her take it off for nap time and bed time and she understands that now.  However, the other day she randomly came up to me and said, "I take a band-aid off". So she was telling me she wanted to take her band-aid off but she used a 5 word sentence! That was the first time I've heard use anything longer than a three word phrase. She basically uses 2-3 word phrases to communicate but a 5 word sentence for a child that's not even two is impressive, at least to this momma!

School finally let out for everyone on Friday, December 21. That is much later than usual but after that last day we jumped into a whole long weekend of festivities.  We celebrated Christmas with different family members Saturday through Tuesday.  On Monday we celebrated Kevin's birthday and then Tuesday was Christmas- lots of parties and celebrations which the kids loved! I loved seeing the kids' faces on Christmas morning and watching them open presents.

Santa brought a kitchen:

 Santa also brought Hello Kitty band-aids in Emmy's stocking!

Christmas is always such a great reminder of how blessed we are!  

 

We had a very Merry Christmas and as always I'm a little sad when it's over. It was so fun to have a long Christmas weekend and have Kevin off of work for so many days! I've also been so thankful that we have all stayed well especially with so much sickness going around. Looking forward to the New Year!