Abigail @ 14 months

 

I have forgotten how much I love the stage between being a baby and a toddler. Every day this little girl learns something new and she’s so funny to watch! Here’s a few new things about our baby:

- She now has 3 teeth with the 4th coming in on top. She is a little pickier than she once was but she’ll eat a lot of things I can’t get Leah & Andrew to eat. She loves fruit, and loves peas and bread. She loves peanut butter & jelly sandwiches. If I give her a full plate of food, she usually ends up dumping most of it or throwing it onto the floor once she gets bored.

- She only nurses once a day now, in the morning, and really I’m probably the one that’s having a harder time giving that up than her! She can drink milk out of a cup, but usually doesn’t (and when she does it’s a big mess) so I tend to give her a bottle or two throughout the day. I don’t think it will be hard to switch her over to a cup, though, because she loves her milk.

- She is mastering so many of her toys that require hand-eye coordination. She never focuses on any toy for more than a few minutes, though. And of course her favorite toys are the ones Andrew’s playing with. She is definitely an imitator! She observes everything her brother & sister do and gets upset if she can’t do it too.

 

- She’s still not walking, but she can pull herself up to stand (and she loves to do it!) so I’m sure it will be very soon! She loves to climb and stand up on things, especially dangerous places.

 

- She still takes two naps a day, although sometimes the afternoon nap comes pretty late in the day. She’s usually tired only about 2 hours after she wakes up in the morning. She almost always sleeps through the night and doesn’t wake up until 7:30 or 8. Even when she wakes up, in the morning or after nap, she rarely cries but just waits quietly in her bed, sometimes talking to herself, most of the time taking her socks off & throwing them & everything else in her bed over the edge.

- She can give a “high five” but doesn’t really wave bye-bye. She understands how to “put your hands on your head” and will cover her eyes if you say “Where’s Abigail?” but doesn’t really know any other body parts. She feeds her dolls and she’s starting to look at books.

- She doesn’t say any real words yet, which I believe is a little later than her brother & sister, but she coos and says a lot of little sounds and sometimes she even says them in response to a question—so she thinks she’s saying something that makes sense. She has a flare for drama so a lot of times when she makes noise, it’s loud! I have a feeling once she starts talking we won’t be able to stop her!

Christmas Eve & Cookies for Santa

 

A few days before Christmas we had to prepare our sugar cookies for Santa. Leah and Andrew helped me make the dough, then roll it out, cut it into shapes (which involved a WHOLE LOT of sugar, by the way), and then frost them. We’d already done gingerbread cookies the same, so they were pros at this!

 

As you can see, this task required great concentration.

 

Even Abigail got in on the fun. I was hoping she’d try to flatten out the dough like Leah & Andrew were doing, but instead she took it and immediately put it in her mouth! Oh well, she knows what’s good!

Christmas Eve we had a lot of things we wanted to fit in! After a nice dinner, we let the kids open one gift each plus a family gift. We had put out the gifts that were from us & from Nana & Pawpaw the night before and all day they were asking if they could open them!

 

They got Christmas jammies! They immediately changed.

The family gift was a Christmas book—The Polar Express, and a movie—Frosty the Snowman. So we enjoyed some of our cookies while we watched the movie.

Then we read the book. I tried to get a cute picture of all of them in their jammies but as usual the little one isn’t a big fan of not being held when she’s tired.

 

We put out our cookies & egg nog for Santa and Leah colored him a picture.

Then we shifted to a more Christ-centered focus. We opened the last box in our “What Jesus Wants for Christmas” set, which we’ve now done 3 years in a row. Each box contains a character in the nativity so the kids get to help set it up as we go along.

We read the Christmas story from the Bible and then acted it out. Leah was Mary and Andrew was Joseph (and then the shepherds and then a wise man). They went door to door in the house looking for a room to stay. The last stop was bed. I don’t think I’ve ever seen them so excited about actually going to bed. They knew Santa couldn’t come until they were asleep.

Santa had come and gone before 11pm!

Annual Cody Christmas Photos

 

Every year I love chronicling our Christmas with pictures of the kids. The Christmas tree provides a great backdrop to show just how much they’ve grown since the last year. This year I took an afternoon (after naptime) and got them dressed up. I bribed them with candy if they did well for their pictures. They did great for the individual shots but little Miss Busy Body Abigail would not cooperate for a group shot. So we did our family photos after church Sunday and with Brett to help me, it was much easier. They did surprisingly well!

Starting with my littlest elf who is very photogenic. I got the most of her, because I was the most afraid hers’ wouldn’t turn out because she’s so active!

    

Compare to last year:

This middle boy is always a little tricky to take pictures of because he’s 3 and he doesn’t want to do anything that he doesn’t want to do! But he did pretty good for awhile…

  

Look at that little face from last year:

 

And of course my biggest girl was all ready for her photo shoot. She knew exactly how she wanted to pose and cheesed for the camera! Looking back, though, most of the pictures of her turned out blurry. The one I was least concerned about turned out the worst!

  

And last year’s

And the outtakes of the group shot:

 

 

And for fun, a flashback from 2009:

And of course the one from last year: