December 6

Day 6 Advent activity: Go to a pajama and popcorn party at church.We were already planning to attend this preschool family night at church, so it made for an easy activity. The kids were supposed to wear pajamas to the party, and the girls got to wear their new Christmas PJ's!

The girls also received a package in the mail today from Mimi and Papaw. Inside was a Christmas book that plays music...a huge hit with Audrey! She spent some time reading the book and singing to Isla this afternoon, it was really cute.Who is that baby sitting up in these pictures? Surely not my little baby Isla!She sat up by herself for a solid 5 minutes today! She had the boppy pillow around her, so that was maybe providing a little support. But really, she was doing it by herself. I couldn't believe how long she stayed there!However, sitting up was not even Isla's biggest accomplishment today. This morning, she rolled over, from back to tummy, for the very first time all by herself! I didn't even see it. Isla was playing on the floor on her back and talking to herself. Audrey and I were sitting on the couch reading books. I looked down to check on Isla, and she looked like this:It was a big day for Isla...she is growing up so fast!

December 5

Day 5 Advent activity: Get out and read our Christmas books.This was an easy one. All I had to do was go into the basement and pull our Christmas books out of a box. Then we spent some time reading them this morning. We'll keep them out now and hopefully continue reading them until Christmas. I'm thinking I want to add a new book to our collection this year...any suggestions on good children's Christmas books??

I'm not sure I could have handled anything more complex today. I was up with Audrey most of the night last night, as she was crying and complaining of an earache and was pretty much hysterical most of the night. I have never seen her like that before, and I know she has never spent that much time awake in the middle of the night before. We were both exhausted today.

The nice thing about having a sick three year old is that she can tell you exactly what is wrong (unlike a sick baby/toddler who cries and cries and you just have to guess at what is bothering them). Audrey kept saying over and over again that her right ear hurt. Daniel took her to the doctor first thing this morning. Sure enough, she had a bad ear infection in her right ear. So the doctor gave us an antibiotic, and we've been rotating the ibuprofen and tylenol with Audrey today. Though she was very tired, her ear seems to be feeling better. We'll see what happens tonight.

December 4

Advent activity day 4: Delivering Christmas cookies to church members.

So we're on day 4, and I have already changed the plan twice! We were supposed to make a Mary and Elizabeth craft (which would have been perfect because we learned about that story in Sunday School today as well). But our small group did a service project, and that took up pretty much all of our day! We baked over 500 cookies, and then packaged them up and drove around delivering them to various church members.

Here is a picture of Audrey and Cael delivering cookies to their Sunday School teacher Miss Peggy.
Also, Daniel took a picture of Audrey reading the Advent book tonight.

December 3

Advent Activity Day 3: Put ornaments on the Christmas tree.

According to the schedule, we were supposed to go to the Christmas parade today. But I ended up scheduling a few photo shoots this morning, so our plans changed.

Yesterday, we put up the fake tree in the basement. We have the fake tree to hold all the ornaments that don't match the decor for the real tree in the living room. I really like having a place to hang my childhood ornaments and ornaments we are given and ornaments that Audrey makes. I just don't want them on my pretty tree.

I got out all the ornaments yesterday, and Audrey just loved them. She wanted to play with them. She carried them around with her. She slid down the stairs with them. She played songs on her toy guitar and sang to the ornaments. They were like her new best friends. She did NOT want to hang them on the tree.

So I let her play with them yesterday, then made today's activity--hang them on the tree. It totally worked, and she hung them all with Daddy this morning while I was at my photo shoots.

Also, I did remember to get out the Advent book and read it with Audrey before bed tonight. So we're back on track.

In another news, Isla tried her first baby food today! Yummy green beans!

First bite...
Not so sure...
A few bites later...
And she likes it!!

December 2

Today's advent activity: get a Christmas tree!

Our activities were a bit dampened today because both girls have snotty, congested noses. Last night, Audrey just would not sleep. She kept waking up crying and wouldn't settle down because her nose was stuffy. The way she was acting, you would think the girl had never had a stuffy nose before. For some reason, she just could not settle down to sleep and it was a very long night. But then she woke up and she was happy and energetic and ready to play all day long.

Isla slept really well last night, but then she was a mess when she woke up. We ended up taking her to the doctor because she was just inconsolable for several hours this morning. I was worried she had an ear infection, but her ears looked fine. Just a red, irritated throat and a lot of congestion. She was up and down all day, and she has barely eaten anything.

So, despite a sleepless night and a rough day with the baby, we did venture out to get our tree.

Normally it takes me forever to pick out a tree, because I want to find the perfect one. Today, it was cold and the girls weren't too excited about this adventure...so I picked one out in record time. I was afraid we would get it home, and it would look horrible. But it is looking like it will have a nice shape. I still need to trim it and decorate it (obviously!), and I think it will look pretty good! And it smells great right now! =)Also, we went to a birthday party tonight and got home after bedtime. Again, I was in such a hurry to get Audrey to bed that I forgot to read the advent book with her. Two days in a row now. I'm such a failure.

December 1, part two

How is it possible that this tiny, skinny, fragile little newborn..
has transformed into a roly poly, happy, healthy infant??Isla is 6 months old today, and it is unbelievable (as always) how quickly she has grown. Check out those legs! They were so very skinny when she was born and now she has humongous thunder thighs!

In the picture above, Isla is showing off her latest trick...grabbing hold of her feet and playing with them.

I wish I could freeze time right now, because this is such a fun age with Isla. She is such a happy, content little girl. She smiles at pretty much everyone who looks at her. She squeals and coos and likes to talk to us. She is extremely interested in all her toys right now. She loves to shake rattles and tries to eat everything.
Isla got two teeth in the past two weeks, and I'm guessing from the amount of finger gnawing and drooling going on that more will pop up soon. She is eating cereal like a champ, and we need to start adding some more solids into her diet.

She is still waking up at night one time, usually between 3-5 am. For a while she was sleeping through the night, but she has given that up for the past month or so. Right now, we usually feed her a bottle and she goes right back to sleep. One of these days, we probably need to get serious about getting her to go back to sleep without the bottle. But she really doesn't eat very much in a day (though you can't tell by looking at her!). I'm not sure she is quite ready to be done with the night time bottle yet.
She is still not rolling over but she's close. She just needs a tiny little nudge, and then she can do it. I really think she will conquer that skill in the next month or so. As long as she is meeting other milestones, I'm not too worried about her rolling over. She will do it when she wants to do it.

She is very close to being able to sit up on her own. Yesterday, she sat up by herself for 8 seconds, which I think was a new record. I'm happy to see her right on track with the sitting milestone, since she has been a little behind on a few other things.

As I was picking out clothes for Isla this morning, I remembered that Audrey wore this purple shirt in her 6 month pictures. (Yes I'm weird and remember odd things like that). So I decided to put Isla in the same outfit. Then I just had to do a comparison picture with the two of them side by side, because I am addicted to making these side by side pictures.

December 1, part one

We started our Advent boxes today.
This year I just set the boxes up on our bookshelf. They are supposed to be hung on ribbon with clothespins, but at 10 pm last night when I started this project, I decided sitting on the shelf would work just as well. Audrey likes them. When she saw them this morning, she said, "Aw, they are so cute!"

For December 1, we made an angel ornament. This craft is from the e-book, The Truth in the Tinsel. It was super easy and took about 2 minutes to make. The craft coordinated with the first page of our advent book that talks about the angel Gabriel coming to visit Mary.The only problem is I forgot to get out the Advent book tonight before bed. Daniel was gone, and I was so eager to get two tired girls fed, bathed and in bed that I totally forgot about the book. It's only Day 1, and I have already messed up the plan!