New Potty Eve

It's been a really nice end of 2010 here today - the temps have been in the 60's, although a bit windy. We made the most of that and spent most every waking minute outside until the sun had set.

Lots of playing ball in the front yard......(we really should get her something to aim at!)Drawing on the sidewalk and driving her car around...
But a HUGE part of today has been spent partying. That's what you're supposed to do on NYE, right? Well, Lilli wanted to have a potty party. I think she ended up going on her little potty about 5 times today (4 of them tonight after supper). Our biggest struggle has been her telling me RIGHT after she goes (and I mean RIGHT after - like the diaper is still warm), so our biggest hurdle is the notice.
But she LOVES this little potty we got her earlier this week - when you go it sings a song, and it also has a "flush" lever (she loves to flush our toilet) and it has a thing where you can put toilet paper on the side (but we don't have it on there now because she just wanted to make huge messes with it). It's the toilet singing that gets her. She LOVES to hear it sing when she goes, and that has been a huge motivator (along with the sour gummi worm and sticker treat she gets).
So after dinner tonight she just wanted to sit and sit and sit on it, even though we kept telling her she could play and just run over when she needs it - she finally convinced herself to play and she ran over several times to use it! Yay!!! And then she wanted to show several of her dolls how to use it too! HA!
She kind of started taking after her brother Pippin - every time we take him for a walk he'll go just a little every few minutes, to the point where we tell him he can't possibly have anything left. That's sort of where she was - just trying to go so bad for the little party and to hear the potty sing, HA! At this rate it would take us about 5 hours to just go to the grocery store, so along with timing we've got to work on not having to go every 30 seconds. But I think this is a great start!!! I really don't have any expectations of having her trained for several more months, but if she can piece it all together sooner we are all for it.

I know, it's wild and crazy times around here this New Year's Eve!

Happy New Year!

Twas the Night Before Christmas

One last Christmas Eve post.....

After we ate some leftover Lilli was playing with all the toys she gotten that day, along with the stuff she already had - here she demonstrates accepting everything the season has to offer - baby Jesus right next to Santa, Mary and a Wise Man! Ha!Every year (even before Lilli) we've always read Twas the Night Before Christmas. Last year she fussed through most of it (we got started a little late) but this year she listened to most of the story. I think all the pictures of her buddy Santa helped!

Pippin had to get right in on it too.....
Afterwards we put out the cookies she had made on the 23rd for Santa. Pippin was in hot pursuit of the little girl with a plate full of cookies!
She left them by the living room fireplace, just like last year. I figure before too many Christmases pass she'll want to leave them at the fireplace in her own bedroom! I bet that will be pretty exciting for her one day - how many kids have a direct doorway for Santa to enter their room??? (On a side note, I can't believe I didn't decorate that fireplace or hang stockings last year??? I always put garland out on the mantels...)
We also left her little spinning Santa (who she always keeps sunglasses on) by the fireplace. She had to give him a hug before going Nighty Night.
Someone else was on HOT pursuit of the cookies once she walked away. Of course Brent was right there with the camera to shoo him away - in his older, crotchety age Pippin has become quite bold.
And here was the scene on our deck Christmas Eve with the snow coming down! Reporters say it was the first White Christmas Nashville had had in 17 years - since I wasn't in Nashville 17 years ago I'm really not sure when my last white Christmas was, and I really don't remember having any.
That's all for tonight, this cold is getting on my nerves!!! Last night (and yesterday) I just felt awful like my head was splitting open, tonight my nose is just running like crazy and I don't have much of a voice. I feel better but am just so tired! Hopefully it will clear up in the next day or two with some rest (yeah, right! Like that's possible!)

Christmas Eve

We spent Christmas Eve with our families at Brent's parents' house. Lilli and I had a lovely drive down sitting in the backseat watching Elf and having snacks while Brent chauffeured us. Once we got there Lilli was fast friends with Madison playing on the computer. Then Lilli moved on to playing reindeer games with Great Granny.

The three cousins (and Santa) were the first and easiest to pose for the annual Family Picture.
Brent will have to photoshop Pippin in since we left him home alone for the day. Thankfully there were a few of us non-red people to help the colors blend!
Just hanging out with her presents....
She eventually wondered off and had Grandma help her open one. She didn't understand having to wait until they were all passed out, and as slow as she is she for sure needs a head start.
I think it took forever for her to open her presents. Every package had to be completely opened and played with before she could move on to the next one, and each baby doll given a bottle immediately upon opening.
The poor little thing was passed out before we even passed the Hardees near Brent's parents' house on the way back. She kind of had a fitful sleep - we think she was still jumping on Aunt Becky's new trampoline all the way home!
And every single toy has been played with since we've been home, too! Both new babies are regularly stripped down to their skivvies and dressed and re-dressed and fed and napped on a continual basis!
Thanks for all the great gifts!

Books and Treats

Here's some pictures for Grandma Carden of Lil in her Reindeer Jammies listening to her Hallmark book. It's kind of hard to see that it's the book because she can't really hold the cover up where you can see it since it's a larger size.

She always likes the first page where you say her name the best.
I'm not sure that she ever sat still long enough to listen to the entire book. Anything electronic gets a workout from page to page and since we don't want Tornado Lilli to tear it up we never let her have it for extended periods of time.
Lilli loves to help around the house - from putting up groceries to cooking, wiping the floors when something gets spilled, and ESPECIALLY using Windex. One of her "chores" is helping fill up Pippin's treat jar when I buy him new treats. It's also one of Pippin's favorite things for her to do, too.
He gets tossed more than a few treats.
That's all for tonight. I've got a cold coming on so I am going to rest and hope to make it a short cold. There's still lots of Christmas pictures to come.

Christmas Morning

We have had a full, fun Christmas Day! And a White Christmas to boot - probably between 1-2 inches on our deck. According to the news this is the first White Christmas in Nashville in 17 years! It's really made it very pretty outside.

We kept the gift pretty low key this year. Brent's office has cut out bonuses, I didn't get a raise this year and my whole Christmas bonus went towards the broken water heater. And, we don't really need more junk in our house as we try to declutter!! So we kept Santa gifts to somewhat of a minimum. I think kids get WAY too much stuff these days anyway.Pippin got a new bed from Santa, Lilli got a little train table with an battery powered train that we had found on a deal site in early November for $30, a little "real" computer we found for $8 at JCPenney, a few Hot Wheels and little cars, a digital camera (a small one without a zoom that Brent found on a mega sale), and a Thomas the Train track and train Walmart had on special the day after Thanksgiving.

We turned all her train stuff on and then sent her in after she woke up this morning. I know she didn't understand why there were toys in there but she was super excited about the new train table.

Pippin got right in his new bed, and tonight he fluffed it and took one of his naps in it.
She played with her train table for about 4 straight hours this morning, running all her different cars around the track. I don't think she's EVER played with something that long!! It came with a little lid so you can use it as an activity table or even a "kids" table if you need to.
She would just squeal when the train came around.
She really liked all her gifts and has played with them all day today. I'll have to share some of her digital camera pics later - she took about 160 pictures today and they are hilarious. She LOVED having her own camera and she saw my camera on the couch tonight and brought it over to me so I'd have my own camera, too. I think this will help eliminate a LOT of temper tantrums over her wanting my camera! I may take her Thomas track back, the track is just awful and it won't stay together, but she LOVED the Thomas train and played with it a lot on the train table, so I may need to check and see how much just a little Thomas train is since I got the whole thing on a really big special on Black Friday.

More Christmas weekend pictures to come later, but for now I think I will put this little present to more use!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from our family to yours!!

And since it's snowing outside, it just might be a White Christmas to boot!

Date Night!

This past weekend we asked Stephanie to come over and watch Lilli so we could have our monthly date night. She's so sweet and she brought Lilli a Christmas present. It was great to give her a little practicing unwrapping, too!!!It's her very first Disney princess doll! Somehow she knew it was a princess and said "Princess!" super excited when she saw it. (She also screamed for about 5 mins when Stephanie started pulling up outside, then Pippin got all excited and knocked Lilli down. The two of them certainly know how to make someone feel welcome!)

She's been carrying her doll around all the time this week! (And calls her Belle.) Sometimes she has to sit at the table with us, sometimes Belle just chills in the stroller. But she is well loved already.

For our date night we met Adam and Julia for some burritos and uninterrupted conversation. It was SO nice having a normal size purse and just our own trays to carry to the table and all the simple things you forget about! I guess we ran our mouths so much we forgot to take any pictures, so the only one I have is their taillights as we were leaving, HA! I know they'll love that one...
After we ate Brent and I went to Target to do some shopping. We've done all our shopping with Lilli (which really hasn't been bad at all) but it was nice to be able to look at things together at a more casual pace. We really didn't buy much else, but it was nice to confirm we're happy with what we have. Of course we did remember to take some fun pics there!
Does this one remind you of anything?
As always, it was SO nice to have a date night and especially with friends.

Now to wrap the little one's gifts! Brent helped me wrap our family presents tonight while we put Rudolph on for Lilli - which really didn't interest her at all and she managed to write on at least one present with marker, as well as herself and the rug and squeezed about half a bottle of Vixen Mint Antibacterial Lotion on her feet. Maybe next year's Dec date night will just be us taking a few rolls of paper somewhere quiet and wrapping away!

Cookie Day 2010!

Last year we started our tradition of baking sugar cookies for Christmas, and Lilli was MORE than excited to continue it this year.We've made sugar cookies an unknown number of times together (pretty much every holiday or birthday) so she really is an old pro on what to do. We wore our matching Mommy and Me Lifeway aprons again this year and it really fit her so much better!



She loves making the stocking cut outs because she thinks they're boots and she is completely obsessed with wearing boots right now.

You know she's concentrating really hard when she has her tongue out!
I love this one of her sweet little hands!
Major concentration. She was COVERED in flour.


Pippin was available for clean-up.
And next year we will probably put a towel down in the nice antique chair she cooks from!
Sprinkles are by FAR her favorite part and she POURS them on!
I think this will be the one we frame for the kitchen. We framed a sweet one last year of her doing the sprinkles and we want to add one each year.
This is my "hurry up and take the pic because entire bottles of sprinkles are ending up on my cookies" look.
Lots of red sprinkles this year....

And of course sneaking a few!
Our cookies turned out great and we gave pretty much all of them out to her Sunday School teachers, some friends and her classmates/teachers from daycare so we'll be making another batch this week for SANTA!