We have a 5 year old!

It's unbeliveable that it was 5 years ago when this wonderful little girl came into our lives.

And today, she's a smart, funny, sweet and lovable 5 year old!

Hannah's 5th Birthday was Sunday, January 30th. She had been counting down the days almost all month - so excited for her birthday to get here

She helped me make her cake Saturday afternoon.

I got it decorated later that night the way she had asked - a snowman holding pink and purple balloons.

We went to get her pictures taken on Saturday night....I'll post those when they come in later this week. Then Sunday morning, she woke up and was so excited for it to be her birthday. She and Daddy played some games in the morning and then we had french toast for breakfast.

She got a couple phone calls to wish her Happy Birthday from Aunt Susan and Aunt Dawn.

We just hung out most of the morning and then Hannah went grocery shopping with me. It was fun to hang out with her! She had fun too. She brought along her baby doll and stroller and pushed it around the store as we shopped. She was excited to get a piece of cheese from the deli for her birthday and then oh, so excited to stop at the party store for a birthday balloon - she picked a giant Princess Castle balloon!

Then that evening, we had her favorite dinner - salad and spaghetti with meatballs.

And then of course cake and ice cream

And a couple presents!

She got a fur-real pet dog

And a guitar so she can act a little more like Taylor Swift!

She gave her brother some lovin - she's so thankful for him!

We all played in Hannah's room the rest of the night. She tried her new guitar out for us!

And there you have it, Hannah is the greatest 5 year old daughter in the whole world! And the best thing that she tells me is, "but I'll still love you when I'm 5 Mommy" and "but I'll always be your baby, Mommy"! Yes you will!!!!

Nicholas 11 Month Update

Today Nicholas is 11 months! Hard to believe on one hand, and on the other, it's like he's been with us for so much longer! The year went very quickly with him and he just didn't stay a baby for long!

He's really like a little toddler already. He's growing taller for sure and is just a hair over 23 pounds. He's starting to wear 18 month clothes and got his first pair of shoes this past weekend! He's really not crawling at all anymore and is now even starting to run, so it was time to break down and buy him shoes. It sort of pained me to spend the money for good shoes knowing he'll only be in them for a couple months, but we looked all around and finding a size 4 in boys shoes that aren't completely generic looking was tough, so we settled on these!

He was like a drunken sailor when he first walked in them! It was really funny how wobbly he was, but he got the hang of it quickly and now he think he's pretty cool in them, and they can help him run around and chase his sister!

He's on all regular table food now and eats absolutely anything we give him. He hasn't seemed to dislike anything, in fact I joke that he may not have that sense to tell him that he's full because he'll keep eating as long as we give him something. Hannah calls him an eating machine! He likes pancakes and waffles and sweets, but also does great with all fruits and vegetables and even meat too! We have pretty much given him all the basic stuff except eggs and peanut butter and he seems to tolerate everything well, so I'm pretty sure we're in the clear with allergies. I'll probably start introducing whole milk into his bottles this weekend and hopefully be done with formula within another month. We've been working on letting him drink from a cup, but it's slow going.

No new teeth yet, I can see them coming, but none have poked through the gums yet - lots of drool lately so they're coming!

He's really got so much energy and is just such a different personality from Hannah. He plays rougher, doesn't sit still and is very strong willed. He can throw a full on tantrum on the floor when he's mad and then snuggle up and be so stinkin' sweet two seconds later. He loves getting into the cupboards and pulling out the boxes of crackers....oh and I guess cracker is one of his "real words" of his vocabulary.

He has really started noticing the phone lately. When he sees a phone, he puts his hand to his ear. He'll do that when you tell him to say hello. And he puts other things like the remote or other toys to his ear like a phone too.

He's finally sleeping through the night!!! This has been a much welcomed victory this past month. He still cries out a couple times a night, but it's been a few weeks since I've gone in there at night since he can now more easily soothe himself back to sleep. I never thought we'd get to sleep all night again! I'm so very thankful it happened! He'll sleep most mornings until 7-7:30 and still goes to bed most nights between 8-8:30. He only takes one afternoon nap now unless he sneaks in a cat nap in the car or something.

He still very much likes his binky. We finally wised up at Christmas and bought the binky strings to attach to his shirt. I think that's what has helped at night - he can find his own binky easily.

He loves to take a bath and splashes all over the place. He doesn't have much fear, which is scary. He's a climber, which is also scary. I'm wondering how long we have before he figures how to climb out of his crib!

He's a real stinker most of the time, but then he'll flash his cute ole' smile at me and I melt all over the place. He sure put my nerves to the test this evening trying to take his picture.....that is an impossible task because he won't sit in one place for more than 2 seconds and the times that he does, of course he's not looking at me! This one was the best we could do.

Here are a couple honorable mentions

How NOT to ring in the New Year

Well, we actually rang the new year in OK, but 2011 is off to a rocky start for us.

We had the Hardins over for New Year's Eve, which was fun. None of us were too super thrilled about the whole New Year's Eve thing, but we had a nice dinner together and then just hung out talking, laughing and trying to keep one another awake!

We got to make fun of Aaron with his cool mustache!! He didn't like the reference I made about it, but as I researched further, I'm sorry....I was spot on!

And the girls had fun playing and staying up til midnight.

We pretty much called it a night shortly after watching the ball drop and everyone headed off to bed.

We were really lazy all day Saturday - stayed in our jammies all day and really didn't do much of anything productive, which was a rare, but refreshing change for me. Well, I quickly figured out why I had no energy or desire to do anything around the time of putting Nicholas to bed. My stomach started doing not-so-nice things and I got chills and headed to bed around 9:00.

I hardly slept all night fighting getting sick. I literally stayed in bed all day Sunday with a fever and tried sleeping most of the day. Tony was a huge help and handled the kids all day. My fever started to go back down in the evening, but I still felt awful.

I was off on Monday, but the kids went to daycare and Tony went to work. I was feeling better, but not great, but had a normal day of bill paying, catching up on some stuff and then grocery shopping. I picked the kids up and took them to gymnastics.

We got home and put the kids to bed and Tony got home from work and after talking about his awful day for about 10 minutes, he went straight to the bathroom and got sick for the rest of the night....YUCK!

Hannah woke up Tuesday morning with a tummy ache and quit eating her breakfast after about 3 bites and then I knew we were in trouble.....she followed that with throwing up about 10 mintues later.....more YUCK.

I got Nicholas ready and took him to daycare and I went to work while Tony and Hannah stayed home and rested. Hannah seemed better that evening. Tony, not as much.

Kids went to daycare Wednesday and Tony ended up coming home sick from work again, but the report from daycare wasn't the greatest - they seemed off. Hannah didn't each much dinner and we had spaghetti, which she normally devours, so I knew she still wasn't 100%.

Thursday, Tony was doing better, but then Nicholas had a few bad diapers and threw up at daycare at the end of the day and Hannah's belly still was not so hot - she didn't really eat anything for dinner.

Today, it was better for all, still not 100%, but we're on the mend finally - at least I hope! We hope this weekend is better and we're all feeling better for next week.

Hopefully this isn't a sign on how this new year is going to go for us because I have some big goals for the year that will take us in a much different direction. Maybe I'll share them soon to make them more concrete.....we'll see!

Happy New Year and I hope you all have a healthy, happy 2011!

Christmas 2010

We started our Christmas celebration this year last weekend at my mom & Randy's house. We joined them, Susan, Will and his kids and my Grandma. It was a nice, casual evening with pizza and salad for dinner and then opening gifts. Hannah was oh, so excited for the gift opening! Nicholas on the other hand could really care less, but did enjoy eating the paper! He really preferred to play with the door stop, which is his favorite thing to do at Grandma's house these days!

Here was the attempt at their picture by the tree together.

Hannah's favorite gift was her Tangled Barbie - which plays a song when you push the button. Note to parents - this has an annoying factor of 10 because the song is only a few seconds long and when your child pushes the button so much in less than two days that the batteries wear out, well, you can understand where I'm going!!! But she loves it!

And Nicholas sure got a kick out of his dancing alligator!

And here are the kids with their Great-Grandma!

Then we just had a busy week getting ready for Christmas. Christmas Eve was spent at home cleaning and doing last minute preparations. Hannah watched Taylor Swift's "Journey to Fearless" a few times. She absolutely LOVES Taylor Swift and I'm so happy that she does - she's a terrific role model! So anyway, she mostly loved to dance to the music.

But then she asked to let her hair down and wanted to play the guitar like Taylor. So she got Tony's guitar, which is way too big for her, but she loved to play along with Taylor. It was awesome!

So we're thinking about getting her a kid sized guitar for her birthday. She's been so into music lately so we'll probably enroll her in music lessons too - either panio or guitar, whichever she seems more interested in. She's been asking to learn, and the real interest with Taylor is a great motivator!

Then after naps, we got ready and I took both kids to Christmas Eve service at church. This was my first attempt to take Nicholas to church and it went pretty well. He only escaped toward the front once!!! I pretty much kept him busy with Cheerios and graham crackers. He loved to dance to the music! After church, we headed over to Dawn & Jack's for dinner and Christmas celebration. Here is our awesome family by their tree this year.

And since the Baker's all compete to see who can "make the blog", I'll include them all (in no particular order) since it's Christmas!!! Congratulations even though I'm pretty sure you're all making fun of me!

Here's Kendal with the kids

And Krista feeding Nicholas pumpkin pie!

This super-great picture of Hannah with Aunt Dawn.

And then this oh-so-cool and silly Uncle Jack in his snowboarding gear!!!

Sorry, John, I didn't really get a good picture of you doing anything cool?!?!

So Santa came to Aunt Dawn's right on schedule and brought some great things, Baby Alive being the one thing that was high on Hannah's list! She loved feeding her many times and going through diapers, which after the first one ended up becoming half a box of tissues with scotch tape!

Nicholas wasn't such a fan of Santa.

Oh, here's one of John with Santa.

And Hannah gave Santa some very grateful, loving hugs before he left.

We had to head back home to get ready for Santa to come to our house. Hannah left him a note with some milk & cookies and carrots for the reindeer. She left him and extra note to remind him to go to Columbus too because that's where Grandma & Grandpa Roberts were this year....she wanted to make sure they got presents too this year!

And then she went off to bed and I fell asleep on the couch and then Santa came to fill the empty space under the tree!

To my great surprise, I woke up around 8:00 on Christmas morning to hear Nicholas fussing. I let him fuss a while to wake Hannah up and while I was changing him, she got up and was so excited that it was Christmas morning!

We headed downstairs and started to open gifts. It was fun to watch Hannah's excitement and Nicholas having fun with all the paper and boxes! Hannah's favorites were here Leapster2 and her Tangled Dress, which she promptly put on and wore the rest of the day (and weekend). Her face was in that Leapster too the rest of the weekend, which made me realize it will need limits!

Nicholas enjoyed his new fire truck push/ride toy, but also liked playing with the train also.

Tony made me a calendar with pictures of the kids

And Tony once again had a Merry Kissmas!!

After gift opening, we had a special breakfast of waffles with strawberries and whipped cream - YUM!

Dad & Julia came over around noon and we hung out until Aunt Susan and Uncle Will got there around 2:00. We had dinner and then opened gifts yet again! Gee, so much stuff!!!

Hannah got the 2010 Holiday Barbie, but we'll be sorry if someday it's worth a million dollars in the box, because she's an almost 5 year old and wants to play with it!

Nicholas enjoyed his vibrating John Deere teething ring!!

Everyone headed home and we hung out playing a little while longer. Hannah and Nicholas sure enjoy being silly together!

They are the best gifts I could ever ask for! We have been so fortunate this year and got some really great things for Christmas, but our beautiful family is really all I needed this year - I'm so blessed and greatful!

Merry Christmas everyone!