Cousins!

Leah and Lucia have been enjoying their play-dates. Leah is getting better at sharing and it's fun to see them interact. Today they let me take their picture with the "Big Teddy". I think there are some awesome shots here!

Christmas on the 28th

My family had our Christmas celebration on the 28th. Poor Sassy woke up from her afternoon nap feeling sick with a slight fever. We gave her some medicine and she fell back into a deep sleep. Chris and I were pretty sure we wouldn't be celebrating Christmas that day. She woke up after 2 hours in a great mood. Luckily the celebration was at Aunt Renee's, so we knew that if Sassy had a hard time we could be back home in a matter of minutes.

We were 2 hours late, but had a nice time. Leah got a singing Ernie from her cousin Lucia, and she hasn't stopped carrying him around since. You could tell Sass was feeling a little down, she stayed close to Mama and kept her Nuk in for most of the evening, but at least we were able to celebrate with family.

Sassy is still feeling a little down today, so we had a low key day at home. Hopefully she recovers soon. Chris just remarked, "she acts just the way you do when she's sick". I have no idea what he meant by that.... Our last Christmas picture of a family of three!

Holiday Gathering at the Z's

On the 26th, we went to Baby Lukey's house to have a holiday celebration. Leah had a lot of fun playing with baby Lukey. Leah really enjoyed playing with Lukey's Christmas presents. Her favorite part of all, though, was Lukey's piano. She really enjoyed playing and singing her alphabet, over and over again. I really like the picture above; Lucas was feeding Leah a piece of apple. Leah is unsure whether this is a kind gesture, or whether Lucas is invading her personal space.

Robin and I have been best friends since 5th grade and are now both expecting girls due 2.5 months apart! How exciting!

Too bad the kids wouldn't cooperate for a picture, though.

Christmas Morning

Santa came! As usual, we do piles instead of stockings. We go in order, left to right, by age. The first pile is for our baby in the making--a GIRL!, then Sassy, then Momma, Daddy, Grandma, and Grandpa at the far end (he did get presents, Santa wasn't quite done when I took this picture).

Leah Bean really likes this blue bouncy donkey!

Ooohh--new books, too! Sassy's favorite presents from Santa were 2 new rubber duckies for the bathtub, new bath crayons, 2 new chapsticks, and a large collection of new books. Sassy had a lot of fun looking at her new presents.

After we all opened our stockings, we made Christmas breakfast. Leah has been on a scrambled egg kick and greatly enjoyed the eggs and french toast.

Trampoline

Sassy's big present was a personal trampoline. In short, she loves it. She jumps on it several times a day practicing gymnastics moves such as: scissor jumps, jumping with knees up, jumping while balancing things on her head, and jumping and ending in the splits. She has even attempted to do somersaults on the trampoline. For the first few days, she kept saying, "Thank you, Mamma and Daddy!" while jumping. What an appreciative girlie girl.

Jumping makes a girl thirsty!

Early Presents

We wanted Sassy to have a fun, non-overwhelming Christmas, so we let her open her presents over the course of a few days. Here she is opening her first present of the 2011 Holiday Season--a name and number puzzle! Sassy loves this puzzle and has completed it several times since opening it.

The next present she opened was a new Abby Cadabby outfit and "Abby in Wonderland". She loves both, and has watched her new DVD several times since opening it. This morning, she watched it twice in a row!

Leah also got a new beanbag chair for her big girl room. It seems as though brother Brain has staked his ownership over the chair, though.

Splitz--Ribbon Day!

Here she is saying "TA-DA!"

Leah finished her final gymnastics class last week. For a special treat, they inflated a bounce house for the class. Leah wanted nothing to do with this. She did enjoy the other 2 rotations they had that day (her favorite was a rock wall that had letters to climb instead of rocks--she had more fun naming the letters than climbing). At the end of the class, she got a ribbon and a candy cane. Leah has already asked to go back to "dance class". We signed her up for another session which begins in January--lucky girl!

Pants Off Dance Off

BFFs

Leah loves Brain Brain. She loves following him around and hugging him. Every morning, she looks for Brain Brain to jump into bed. We got a shipment of diapers a few weeks ago, and both Lili and Brain were intrigued with the box. It wasn't Brains idea of fun to stay in a small area with a toddler who wants nothing more than to lie on him, so we had to bribe him with a baggie full of treats.

Leah is getting good at the fake smile. It makes me smile just as much as a real smile!

Christmas Tree

The Christmas tree is up and looking fabulous. Every morning Sassy asks, "turn on Christmas tree, please!" Then she talks all about the "pretty lights". She's pretty good about not playing with the tree or ornaments, but last night a stuffed duck did get stuck 1/2 way up the branches.

Cutie

Chris and I say it all the time. Leah is the best. The most exciting news of the weekend is the Leah can READ. We were sitting in Olga's Saturday evening having Leah name shapes on her placemat. Chris and I argued over whether my sqaure was really a square or a rectangle as he and Leah both thought (it may have been a little rectangle-ish). I desided to practice letters with Sass, instead. I wrote L-E-A-H and had Leah name the letters. Then I said, "what does that spell?" Sassy's reply, "Leah". Chris and I were speechless. I know that other 27 month old kids may do this, too, but I couldn't believe she did it! We haven't even been practicing reading names, only naming upper and lower case letters (brag--Leah can name almost all upper case--V is the lone hold out, she confuses it for U). She is so smart and we count ourselves as very lucky to be her parents. We love her more than anything!

Christmas Tree Farm

We got our Christmas tree this weekend. We told Leah she was going to a tree farm to see trees and horses, and she replied, "no, elephants!" She did a great job walking around on her own (until the end when she insisted on being carried).

She liked the little trees a lot. We told her she couldn't bring her "three birds" and Kermie the Froggie so she settled for just Ernie and Elmo. Compromise.

Leah really liked the horses. She wanted to be near them, but not to touch them. When they had to leave to pull their wagon, Leah yelled, "NO!" after them. We bribed her back into the car with promises of fruit snacks. Otherwise, she could have spent the entire day 3 feet away from the horses, staring at them.

First Movie!

Considering how much Leah loves Kermie the Froggie, we knew her first movie should be The Muppets. Daddy and I both loved the Muppets as kids. We headed to the theatre on Friday.

Leah was very excited about going to see Kermie the Froggie. We went and picked out some yummy snacks to sneak into the theatre (Reeses Pieces for Sassy) and bought her some popcorn. The first 15 minutes of the movie Leah kept busy eating, which was good because the first part of the movie was low on Muppets. During the middle part of the movie, Leah was good for the most part, but had a hard time sitting in her chair. She prefered to stand and move (much like she does at home). Towards the end of the movie, Leah fell down. She was very upset and insisted we, "Go Home!" I told her we could go home, but we couldn't come back. She took a deep breath and decided to stay. She did spend the last 10 minutes of the movie rolling around on the nasty steps. Oh, well. As we were leaving she said, "that was fun!" So, I think we consider that a success.

Look at that love for Kermie the Froggie!

Thanksgiving

We had a great Thanksgiving at Autie Nicole's house. The food was wonderful and it was great to be with family. Poor Daddy got his chin split open earlier in the morning playing football. It looks a lot worse in the picture than it turned out to be. We were happy that he didn't have to go to the ER, though. We wouldn't know what to do without Daddy!

Hannah, Ethan, and Trevor all have November birthdays. Happy Birthday!

Thanksgiving Prep

Leah and I did a lot of baking this week. On Wednesday, we made cookies and peppermint bark brownies for Aunt Renee's house. We worked very hard. Unfortunately, we went to Target for some odds and ends and forgot to properly barricade Ruggie from the treats. We came home and he had eaten them all! I was so mad! We ended up having to buy treats for that night.

On Thursday we made pumpkin pie and raspberry swirl cheesecake. They were both good, but Leah was done with baking. She spent most of the morning putting her friends to sleep with a dish towel while I cooked.