My New Hobby

During the past few months, I have come to terms with the fact that I have the soul of an eighty-year-old woman. Or that I am, in fact, and eighty-year-old woman in a twenty-five-year-old's body. Don't believe me? Here are a few examples, my friends.

1. I drive like an old woman. I have since the day I got my driver's license. Driving over the speed limit? Never. Avoiding freeways and busy streets at all costs, even if I'm going out of my way? Check. Police officers swerving around me in anger so they don't have to drive behind me anymore? Oh, yeah.

2. I did not learn to text until I was about twenty-two. A friend of mine from college had to sit down and teach me how to do it. I type all of my text messages like I type an English paper: correct grammar, punctuation, and capitalization. I can't help myself.

3. I have been dying for a pressure canner for a few years now, and Andrew finally caved in and bought me one for Christmas. I literally jumped up and down when I opened it! I canned my first batch of applesauce today. I don't think other young people aspire to such things.

Which leads me to my newest hobby: knitting. I just discovered it a month or two ago and picked it up again today and felt I needed to blog about it! I love knitting. It's crafty, but not too involved. I can do it while watching TV and it doesn't take up too much space. Don't get me wrong, I am still in the very beginning stages and haven't made a "real" project yet. As soon as I am brave enough, I am going to get some real yarn and knit something...real. I was talking to Andrew awhile back about knitting and he said, "Are you sure you like knitting? It just seems like an old lady thing to do." And what is the problem with that? It appears he has no idea who he married.

Christmas

We had such a fun Christmas this year! Emily and Josh came for a visit, we saw lots of family, and oh yeah...we all got sick. Coughs, congestion, fevers all around. Bummer. But we managed to have a great time anyway!

On Christmas Eve there were new jammies all around. Holly and Josie opened them before Andrew's aunt and uncle's annual Christmas Eve party. They wore them to the party, of course, and were the cutest kids there! Oh wait, they were the only kids there. Whatever. If only I hadn't been sick and had gotten a picture of them in their cute new jammies...

Christmas morning. They were far too busy to look at the camera.

Josie does not do well when she's sick. She fusses day and night and needs to make her misery known. She wasn't into opening presents at all and, in fact, went back to bed before I even made our eggnog french toast. She had probably been up for 45 minutes, and slept for another few hours.

Holly got some dress-up clothes and was thrilled with the "princesses."

Playing in their new house that Santa brought. Again, they were far too busy to actually look at the camera... Holly asks to play in her house every day. They love it!

We truly had a wonderful Christmas and loved seeing our families. We especially loved celebrating our Savior's birth and remembering all that He has done for us.

Gingerbread Houses

A couple of weeks ago, we did a little activity together that Andrew and I have come to love:  decorating gingerbread (graham cracker) houses! Andrew and I have done this in years past with some dear friends of ours who have since moved away, so I took it upon myself to stop wallowing in self-pity about our far-away friends and get to work!

It was the girls' first gingerbread house experience. Mostly they were excited to eat the candy. Josie was a little confused at first.

Holly got to work right away eating her fill of the assortment I laid out.

But then I showed her how to pipe frosting onto the candy and she enjoyed that quite a bit.

Here's how it went with Josie. I put a piece of candy on her house, and she ate it. I put another piece of candy on her house, and she ate it. Then she tore the roof off and ate that. Holly was upset that Josie destroyed her house, but to each his own. (And it was literally destroyed. She had a great time doing it.)

My completed house.

Holly's finished product. Not bad for her first time!

Andrew's house.

I have to say, this was my first time engineering and constructing the houses themselves; I did this ahead of time so we could just concentrate on decorating. The slope for the roofs on my and Andrew's houses are off; a grave error that I learned from and will be sure to correct next year.

We have had so much fun with our little Christmastime traditions this year! Holly is finally old enough to really get involved in Christmas and start to understand what it's all about.

Big Girl Bed

The day has come! Holly has been fixated on a "big girl bed" for about a week or so now, and yesterday afternoon she was insistent that she get one. So today after work, Andrew demolished her crib and put her mattress on the floor.

Okay, okay. So it's not exactly a bed. More like a mattress on the floor. But you know what? I'm alright with that. We'll get her a bed sometime in the future, when the price is right on Craigslist. Anyway, I had a whole lot of fun setting up her bed while Andrew was giving the girls their bath after dinner. The quilt is the one I (and my mom) made for her before she was born. It is the perfect size!

As you can see, Holly was thrilled with her new "big girl bed." Josie was thrilled with it too, but Holly is very possessive over it. And as I type this, she is sleeping soundly in her new bed. She did not get up once and fell asleep rather quickly, considering the excitement.

Which means that I am experiencing all of those complicated motherly emotions over this moment: excitement and pride, but lots of sadness too. Because my baby is one step closer to not being a baby, and it makes me sad. But happy. And so proud of her. And nervous, too. Because soon she's going to be a teenager and give me attitude and say I'm ruining her life. Ahh! I can't stand it.

And now I need to get off this darn computer, because there is a sour milk smell emanating from heaven knows where and I need to find it. And I cleaned my kitchen today, so surely I did not overlook some old sippy cup full of milk. That certainly never happens around here.

Quick Update

I realized I forgot to write about Josie and all her weights and measurements now that she's one! (You know, because all of you care so much...) So here they are.

Weight: 17.5 lbs (3rd percentile)

Height: 29 inches (50th percentile)

Head Circumference: Unknown, but in the 75th percentile

I never realized that her head is huge in comparison to the rest of her body until the pediatrician told me that little tidbit of information. Interesting.

Josie is walking a little bit now, which is exciting and she is very proud of her accomplishments. She wants to do whatever Holly is doing. She also wants to be wherever her mama is, climbing and cuddling, which is very sweet but makes it hard to keep a clean house. She still fits inside her Boppy, as seen above, and is the world's biggest couch potato. So she fits right in! I also saw her reaching with all her might toward the bathroom doorknob; when she is tall enough to reach it, we are in deep trouble.

Another One...

Holly had another laser treatment today. It was, I believe, number six. We had to be at the hospital at 7:30 am, so we had to leave home at 4:30 am.

Luckily, the girls did beautifully in the car both ways. And my mom tagged along to take care of Josie, which was a huge help. And the wonderful anesthesiologist and nurses let me go back into the operating room and hold Holly until they put her to sleep. Which made the entire process a lot easier for her, but a whole lot harder for me.

And the best thing of all was, Holly woke up happy. I love this little girl! She is the best patient and holds still and does just as instructed. She has rolled with the punches so well since the start of these laser treatments. I don't know how she handles things so well, because I'm a nervous wreck. She's pretty fantastic.

She's not all sweet, though. About forty-five minutes after these photos were taken, she had an epic tantrum at a restaurant filled with old people...as we ate lunch at 11:00 am. It was awesome.

For more pictures of Holly's latest adventures (and some cute pics of Josie too), check out my sister-in-law's blog post here.

Pumpkins!

We had not carved pumpkins in several years, so we decided it was high time to change that! Plus, we thought it would be fun for the girls. So a few weeks ago, we passed by a pumpkin patch and decided to stop. The girls each picked out a pumpkin.

Holly was not amused. I think it's because they had signs everywhere warning of the dangers of picking up pumpkins by their stems. We were cramping her style.

Josie loved her pumpkin so much that she ate it.

Fast forward to last night: we finally got around to carving and decorating our pumpkins! I did not plan ahead so the girls had neon pink and green paint to decorate their pumpkins, and q-tips for paintbrushes. Holly worked very hard on hers for about 45 seconds.

And for some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to give a one-year-old a q-tip covered in paint, thinking that she would surely know what to do with it. Right? It turns out she knew exactly what to do with it...put that pink paint right in her mouth.

Josie's baby pumpkin.

It took Andrew less than five minutes to pull out a power tool to help him carve his pumpkin. Let me just point out that we finished our carvings at the same time: he with his drill, and me with my old-fashioned knife. Just sayin'.

Our little pumpkin family. It has been many, many years since I carved a pumpkin so this was just to get me warmed up. Just wait until next year! Prepare to be impressed.