12 Days of Christmas, Birthday Style

Tomorrow, March 1, officially starts the countdown to my 30th birthday. Yes, it's true. I am turning 30 on March 12th. I'm not really dreading it, but I will miss being able to say that I'm in my twenties. Plus, I love telling people that I'm in my twenties and Chris is in his forties! Ha! In 12 days, I can't say that anymore. To mark the occasion, I will be doing a countdown to my birthday. Isn't that big-headed of me? To think that you all care that much? I mean, I know you care, but 12 days of hoop-la over insignificant me? Oh yes. 12 fun-filled days of facts and memories to bore and entertain you at the same time. I will be doing it in the style of the 12 Days of Christmas song because it just seemed appropriate. Enjoy.

Pulled Pork and Snow Ice Cream

This last week we had a few inches of snow! It is pretty rare to have snow here, so we made the most out of the few hours we had. I collected some of the snow and made some snow ice cream, which is always a huge hit. Sydney loved it!

Savannah even had a tiny bite and she seemed to like it, too.


Just prior to the snow ice cream, we had dinner. I had made pulled pork sandwiches. I am no Paula Deen by any means, but I can make pretty good food. I enjoy cooking, and pulled pork is so easy and tasty and it sounded great on a snowy day. Sydney has always been a picky eater. Always, like from the second she popped out of the womb. It is consistently a battle to make her eat. She has started shredding up her food, I assume to make it look like she's eating, which of course she isn't. This was her pulled pork sandwich when she was done shredding it.

Little stinker. If she was 10 years older this kind of thing would make me concerned, but for now, it's just another ploy she uses to get out of sitting down and eating. Of course she had to eat it, all shredded up like that, before her snow ice cream!

And on a completely different topic, here is a recent picture of Savannah with a new hairbow.

I saw something very similar on a hat (and not hot pink) in a picture of Kate Middleton recently. I am so excited for the royal wedding and couldn't resist this bow when I saw it.

One of These Things is Not Like the Other

Sydney loves to have tea parties with Chris when he gets home from work. Which is really sweet, but it's also the time I need Chris to watch Savannah while I'm finishing up dinner and when Savannah is at her crankiest. So, Savannah has joined the two of them for their nightly tea parties, which I think is just darling. Here is what they look like (of course as soon as I snapped this picture, Savannah held up a toy to her face).


Ok, now what's different in this picture? Check out Savannah...

Chris put her in the Bumbo chair (which he consistently calls the bimbo chair just to annoy me) and she can totally arch her way out of it! You can see in the picture she is almost out of that chair!
Here is what she looks like when she sits nicely in it.


I am so blessed to have Chris as a husband, he is such an amazing father. He never complains about doing "girly" things with Sydney. He cherishes those moments, too.

What We've Been Up To

My mom recently went to Hawaii for business and brought back this dress for Sydney. It's huge and outrageous, which is why Sydney loves it. She also likes it because she thinks it's like the dress Taylor Swift wore in the "Teardrops on my Guitar" music video, and Sydney loves Taylor Swift. She wears it all the time and I had to laugh as she was helping me sweep the other day wearing her Taylor dress!


Last weekend we got a new stroller. I am so excited to push Savannah around in it when she's a bit bigger and the weather is a bit warmer. As I write this, it's a balmy 28 degrees outside!



I have recently introduced a sippy cup to Savannah. I give her a bit of water when she's in her high chair. It took a few days for her to get it, but every time she gets a sip of the water she looks so surprised!


She's not usually a messy eater, but she had a particuarly squirmy meal and ended up like this! What a cutie.

Savannah had her 6 month check-up yesterday and she weighs 14 lbs 3 oz, which is 2 lbs less than Sydney did at this age. She is 26 3/4 inches long, which is 1 inch shorter than Sydney was. She is so little, but with the fabulous chubb on her legs and cheeks. Love it!

Monday Monday Monday

1. We got a new stroller this last weekend. It was very bittersweet for me. I have been wanting to trade in my big huge travel system stroller for a smaller (and cleaner) one, but not for a few more months. Well, Babies-R-Us, or Mecca to us mom's, was having a promotion that expired today where you trade in your old stroller and they give you 25% off. TWENTY-FIVE PERCENT!! That is huge! Coupled with some gift cards I'd been saving, we only paid $40 for a $140 stroller. And it's PINK!! Hee hee! These are the fun things you get to do and buy when you know you're done and the stroller only has to last through the current baby. It was so sad for me, though, to see the old stroller go. I pushed both my babies in that stroller. It was my FIRST stroller as a mother and we have traveled many miles together. It has held my coffee and my purse and my babies in relative comfort and ease. But, I am looking forward to creating many happy memories in my new (PINK!!) stroller.
2. In my on-going efforts to be more organized, I purchased and assembled a small clothes hanging rack to use for my Pass It On stuff. If you're not from here and you have no idea what Pass It On is, I'm not going to try and explain it so just move on to #3. I have all my clothes hung, organized by size, and hanging right next to my computer so I can easily enter and tag everything. Sweetness.
3. I'm really excited for today's Oprah. It will feature Celine Dion with her new twins and a bunch of other mom's with multiples. Now, while I don't have twins (seriously let's take a moment to thank the Good Lord here because OMG, I would go crazy)my best friend does and I have helped her enough to get a good idea of how hard it is to have multiples. I just live vicariously through Melissa's experience of raising twins as I listen to her shout her phone conversations to me over the background noise of the twins screaming, shrieking, and destructing things in her house (they destroyed her laptop keyboard a few weeks ago, halarious). I love those boys dearly and Melissa does a fantastic job managing the stress, so it will be interesting to see how Celine Dion measures up. I like Celine, though, despite the Titanic song, because she breastfeeds her babies and a lot of celebrities don't.
4. I have a new windshield in my car. Goodbye, money. This is from just over a week ago when I got hit by a goose as I was driving home. Stupid, dearly departed animal flew up out of a ditch and straight into my window. I looked behind me in the rearview mirror and saw nothing but a bunch of feathers everywhere, which kind of made me laugh. I actually was grossed out, crying, and laughing all at the same time. I stopped laughing when I realized my windshield had been shattered on the upper right side. I could hear the glass breaking as I kept driving home and the break just got bigger and bigger.
5. My friend Patti, who also does Miscellany Monday and gave me the idea, is preggers and raves about a place called the Pita Pit. I kind of have an issue with any word or phrase with the word "Pit" in it (arm, Brad, etc), but it sounds pretty good. I'm going to have to check it out. That and a place called Five Guys that my sister highly recommends. While in Eugene last weekend we checked out a place called Dickie Joe's. It's diner style and it was SO GOOD!! I highly recommend the onion rings with homemade ranch.
6. I ran out of my floor cleaner. I have been reading a book about going green and thought it was fortuitous timing. I mixed vinegar and water and mopped my floors with that. Um, can you say amazing? And CHEAP! I swear my floor has never been cleaner and it doesn't smell because it evaporates with the vinegar. 1/4 cup of vigenar to 3/4 cup water on my pergot floors. Wonderful.

Picture Hodge-Podge

Before you look at this first picture, I have to clarify something. I know that it is very dangerous to bring your baby to bed with you. I know that blankets around a baby are a huge risk for SIDS, especially when those blankets are around their faces. So even though this looks bad, it's not, I promise! Savannah sleeps in her own crib, swaddled, on her back, with no blankets. This was taken one morning when Sydney brought a blanket in to our room while she was watching some TV one morning. She wanted to "tuck in baby sister" so we laid Savannah on the bed, only for a minute, to take this picture. Aren't they cute?


One day last week it was bright and sunny so I bundled up the girls and took them for a walk. When I saw bundled up, I mean it, it was literally 40 degrees outside! But us sun-deprived Oregonians hadn't seen a sunny day in so long that there were tons of people outside, in shorts, doing yardwork or washing their cars. They had to be freezing!


My mom and I took the girls to visit my sister on campus last weekend. Sydney thought this mail slot in the door was halarious!


Savannah sat in the high chair for the first time yesterday! She is getting bigger so quickly. I wish time would slow down!

Valentine's Day Festivities

Valentine's Day this year was lots of fun. It was Savannah's first V-Day, and Sydney's first since starting school, which means her first time exchanging V-Day cards. I wanted something really original, something different than the store-bought kind. I didn't even think about it until a week before her class party, otherwise I would have ordered some from Melissa, but she has been so busy with orders lately I knew I couldn't add one more thing to her plate. I looked on Etsy and found some ADORABLE little cards from a shop called Delightfully Noted. I chose these because they came with a little purse with Sydney's name on it. They were so cute and she had so much fun passing out her little cards!




As if a Valentine's party at school wasn't enough excitement, that afternoon Sydney and Madison went to a friend's birthday party at Jump It Up. If you've never been there, it's 2 big rooms full of bounce houses and inflatables. They were SO WILD and had such a great time! Savannah just mostly hung out in her stroller for the party, she was a little unsure of all the noise!

Valentines Cookies

In my family we have a long standing tradition for Valentine's Day. My mom has always bought us the yummy cookies from Beaverton Bakery with our names on them. This was an exciting year, of course, as it was Savannah's first V-Day cookie, which I ate for her.



Here was Sydney in 2007 with her first cookie.


I gave Savannah a little taste of the frosting.

Of course I didn't let her actually take a bite, but she got a little taste of her first cookie here and she loved it!

Thanks for the cookies, mom!

Monday

1. I watched part of the Grammy's last night and am looking forward to watching the rest today. Let's face it, this tired mamma can't stay up until 11:30 anymore. I liked what I saw for the most part except for that weird song by Bob Dylan and Hilary from Lady Antebellum's new bangs. I don't like bangs.
2. Did you know that today is Oregon's birthday? Happy Birthday, beautiful state of mountains, valleys, rivers, and beaches! I love Oregon and could never live anywhere else (hint, hint Marilyn).
3. It pains me to know that I will never have another child. Let me clarify, we are done and compeletely happy with our two girls and I don't really want any more children. But, the thought of never having another child feels kind of like a death, you know? Just knowing I won't, even though I don't want to, is hard.
4. I still really want chickens and Chris is not giving in. At all.
5. I love snickerdoodle cookies more than just about any other dessert out there. So.Stinkin'.Yummy. But last week I had two occasions to have some of the red velvet cake at Costco and oh my gosh, it changed my life. AMAZING! And on coupon right now, so even better. The problem is I don't really have the occasion to buy one right now because it's so huge (it is from Costco after all) that Chris and I would have to eat it every single day and we probably wouldn't even finish it in a week. That is too much cake.
6. Sydney was singing in the shower, which she usually does. She was singing some Taylor Swift (Mine), some Kelly Clarkson (Since You Been Gone, which she shouts at the top of her lungs), and then all of a sudden I hear this: "Five...five dollar...five dollar foot llooooooonnnng." Ah the power of advertising.
7. Savannah sat in the high chair for the first time this morning. She looked so little sitting in that big chair! I'll post some pics soon.
8. Happy Valentine's Day everyone! Chris and I thank God often for bringing us together, giving us two wonderful daughters, and giving us wonderful family and friends that we love!

Just Chillin'

I was getting ready yesterday and Sydney wanted to watch TV in my bed while I was in the shower. She got herself all snugged up in the covers, propped up by all the pillows, and I couldn't help but laugh and think that she looks like the princess from The Princess and the Pea here!


While Sydney was snugged up in bed, Savannah was hanging out in her bouncy seat, having a great time!

Savannah 6 Month Pictures

Tomorrow my sweet little baby will be 6 months old! I took her in yesterday for 6 month pictures and they turned out so cute.






My absolute favorite picture from the whole session! I got this one blown up pretty big for a nice big frame.

Sucker Ring

when we did Christmas with Melissa and her family, they included some sucker rings in Sydney's gift bag. They are a huge hit and work really well when I need to bribe her to do something!

This was taken when she was still sick, so you can kind of see her chapped upper lip. Poor baby, but this made her feel better!