Waiting for Santa

It probably comes as no surprise that we spent December getting ready for Santa and all the activities that go along with his arrival.

"Look! Little Christmas trees just my size. Can I pick one out?" We were feeling in the Christmas spirit so we left the garden store with two Christmas trees. Amelia was very proud of her colorful tree!

The Rainforest holiday show was a hoot as always. As you can see Amelia's class had a country theme and clearly Amelia was the cutest cowgirl in the class with her skinny jeans hand-me-down cowboy boots from her Aunt Jennifer.

Our cowgirl with her BFF Sophia.

She has enough hair for pigtails (well almost)!

There are always those kids that corrupt the other kids around them. JuJu and Poppy's grandkids were those kids while waiting for their holiday photos to be taken.....

Making gingerbread men with Georgia and Charlie.

Juliet was the only one who listened to Aunt Bobbie's directions. Charlie wanted to get his hands on Juliet's Cheerios...

Apparently in Chicago the schools have pajama day the day before Christmas vacation. I don't know this to be  a fact but Amelia's daycare did, Georgia's did and I saw a picture in the Tribune of kids at school in their pajamas that day so that seem like enough schools for me to say it is a Chicago thing....

Dear lord they were all hyper at the idea of wearing pajamas to school!

We were really looking forward to not knowing who presents were for on Christmas morning as someone couldn't be kept away from the presents and managed to pull tags off the gifts on a regular basis. Never mind that some of the wrapping paper was nice and dissolved from a teething infant...

Amelia is Three

I am in total denial that our little turkey baby is already three. I know this isn't about me, but seriously how can it go by so fast???? Literally it feels like yesterday she almost arrived on Lake Shore Drive. As much as I tried to pretend like she wasn't really turning three I finally had to accept it and celebrate her third in style! The festivities were kicked-off with early presents from JuJu and Poppy. The doll potty was a total hit and all her "friends" have been busy learning to use the potty. Next was her classroom celebration of mini-cupcakes, balloons and a round of happy birthday sang by her favorite people (that would be her classmates). For her actual birthday we had no plans and just wanted to make the day special for her. Okay, maybe my life these days didn't allow for birthday party throwing so we did try to make her feel very special. I'm thinking next year we actually need to get our act together and throw the girl a party. For the love, I'm a Christmas baby so you would think I would respect a holiday birthday and not just couple her birthday and Thanksgiving together. We will pick of the therapy bill if she discovers being a holiday baby isn't so cool.

I think she was pretty happy when she woke up to a pile of presents and balloons. So the balloons were leftovers from Randy's surprise birthday party the night before. I don't think that is lazy parenting but rather resourceful.

This picture hits at who Amelia is right now; She is wearing mismatched pj's she picked out, drinking milk from her new Walgreen's tea set that she thinks is the greatest toy she has ever gotten, has a donut she requested (but of course didn't touch) and has plate of fruit salad waiting for her (that she of course ate all of).

When people asked Amelia what she wanted for her birthday she would respond, "I think I get M&Ms." When she told Papa that on the phone I full expected a wrapped bag of M&M's. Of course that would not be good enough for Papa's "favorite oldest granddaughter." Oh she got an M&M dispenser full of M&Ms that said, "Amelia's B-Day." She couldn't do anything the entire day without getting an M&M first. We hid the dispenser when we got back to Chicago and for some reason she hasn't brought it up. I'm thinking it will be something we bring out when she has friends over, etc. However she did manage to tell her teachers about it so I know she hasn't forgotten....

Amelia's grandma's both know how much she loves her dolls these days! JuJu picked out a big sister/little sister set. Amelia has taken to little sister and likes to pretend like she is Juliet. GranAnn spoiled Amelia with red headed Bitty Baby and doll crib. Amelia can spend an entire day putting her "babies" to bed so this was a perfect present. My mom made the bedding in the girl's room so she used the scraps to make matching bedding for her new crib. Seriously, she should sell her stuff on Etsy as it is great!

Juliet liked the balloons.

Amelia's birthday fell on teh Saturda after Thanksgivign and after naps were over it hit me that I really hadn't done much in three days. I inherited from both of my parents the inability to sit still. I was going stir crazy and needed out. When I discovered that Teller's had a kid's menu with all of Amelia's favorite food I convinced Mark to take the family to Teller's for Amelia's birthday dinner. Hey, maybe Teller's isn't the logical place for a 3rd birthday dinner but it is a special place for Mark and I and happy parents mean a happy child. Right? Oh yeah, and we had two doting sets of hands to help Mark and I enjoy a dinner out :)

Yum, birthday tiramisu!

We even let our hired helpers eat and drink.

Amelia got her first Shirley Temple. Merrill and I LOVED drinking Shirley Temples as kids and feeling so grown up. It seemed only natural that Amelia would have her first one with Merrill and I. Maybe now that she is three she will learn manners......

Giving Thanks

We took a road trip to Lawrence for this year's thankful festivities. With really no options of where to eat lunch I finally gave in and let Amelia have her first Happy Meal. Mark and I were both convinced she would love it, eat every last bite, expect toys in all her meals, etc. She hardly touched the thing.... We took that as a sign of our excellent, healthy parenting. Ha. As we headed out of McDonald's I explained that we would be to GranAnn's house in two hours so she could either nap in the car or once she got to GranAnn's. Our well behaved daughter was asleep before we even got on the highway. Score yet again for us and our fabulous parenting skills (have we mentioned that Amelia has never been much of a car seat sleeper?). We were on a roll. We arrived in Lawrence to sunny weather and two girls who needed some fresh air. While Merrill and I got our nails done the girls headed to the park with dad and GranAnn. After a bit Amelia asked to leave the park. What? So not normal behavior for Amelia. Wednesday night was business as usual until my mom woke Mark and I up in the middle of the night because Amelia had a raging fever. So until Saturday we battled Amelia's fever that even crept up to 104 at one point.... We were humbled and had to admit that the McD's snub was because she had no appetite (which she really just got back today) and the car nap was her body starting to fight off her fever..... Finally we took her to urgent care on Saturday (her birthday) to learn she was on the tail end of an ear infection.

As for Juliet, she worked on her two front teeth coming in over Thanksgiving so she had her own set of issues...

Our holiday, while wonderful, didn't lend itself to many photos with two sick kiddos. Putting your "average" childhood ailments aside we are beyond thankful for our two healthy, wonderful little girls, family and friends! We had a great Thankgiving at the Praeger's, helped host a suprise birthday party for our good friend Randy, even saw a couple of friends (though not nearly enough of our friends) AND celebrated a third birthday which of course deserves its own post!

Good luck getting Amelia to take off her personalized M&M t-shirt her BFF Sophia picked out for her birthday.

The Happy Meal snub.....

Oh getting out of those car seats and playing with GranAnn never felt so good!



"Enabling" might not be in Amelia's vocabulary yet but she sure knows how to spot an enabler. After Amelia woke up Thanksgiving morning with a fever, EE turned on the Macy's parade, got her a cool rag, gave her endless cups of juice and completely soaked up a sick Amelia who couldn't get enough cuddling.

EE wasn't the only enabler.... What does a Grandma do when her fever ridden granddaughter finally says she is hungry? Well of course she gives her a homemade cookie and milk in her new tea set.....

Juliet on the other end of the spectrum inhaled all food put in front of her over Thanksgiving with mashed potatoes being a huge hit. Little miss has gotten very into "feeding" herself. She appears to be a natural....

Oh darn, did I miss Black Friday? Juliet tried to remind us by eating the advertisements. She is going to have to work harder on convincing someone to take her shopping on Black Friday as it gives me anxiety just thinking about....

Monkey Business

Our little monkeys had a grand time this Halloween season. They had three events to show off their costumes. From the neighborhood parade/party, their daycare parade and trick-or-treating they were the cutest monkeys I have ever seen! Amelia gets one piece of candy each afternoon if she has done a good job listening for the day and stayed in bed the night before. She bounces off the wall after each piece. I'm not sure how we will bribe her to stay in bed or (make a rather pathetic attempt at) listen once our Halloween stash runs out....

Our monkeys!!!

This is probably the third picture we have actually had taken of all four of us. Mark joked that with us both in Cubs hats were we going as disgruntled Cubs fans.

I suppose since we weren't giving Juliet candy she figured she would just have to eat the grass....

Naturally we had neither camera charged when we were getting ready to leave to trick-or-treat. Thank goodness for phones so we at least got a picture or two.

Yes, this picture is blurry but I thought it was a sweet picture. Our neighbor William was pretty patient with Amelia and his little brother Henry by helping them down steep stairs, waiting for them at each house, etc.

Here is Alain going to claim our little ones from a house. Neither Henry or Amelia could take a single step without a piece of candy in their mouth. Typically it was a lollipop (as evident in the picture) and they both would choose the most inopportune time to stop and open it. This is urban trick-or-treating and the sidewalks and front steps are full of people so if you stop in the middle you are likely to get run over. At about every other house one parent had to walk up to the porch and claim these two so we could keep moving. This was pokey trick-or-treating at it's finest.

The Park

Oh how we love the park in our house. It is an almost daily part of life in the big city. There is a nice ritual to heading out in the morning, coffee in hand, running into other regular park kiddos and enjoying being outside. On the days the girls don't go to daycare and it is nice enough for the park you can probably count on us making a trip to one of our neighborhood parks. Park days are dwindling so we are trying our best to get in lots of swinging before the snow. There is a buzz at our neighborhood park since the mayor lives three houses down. With the constant police protection it is the safest park in Chicago!

Juliet is following in her sister's footsteps and loves the swing.Amelia is typically too big for the "baby" swings but she loves under-dogs from daddy and going "very high" which are both harder for her to do in the big kid swings.

Eating wood chips ties with swinging for Juliet's favorite park activity.

Juliet's first ride down the slide while Kennedy (another park regular) waits her turn.

Clearly not the park. This was Juliet on a "sick" day. No, she doesn't look sick at all in this picture but she had to stay home from daycare that day because of being sick the night before. Go figure that we kept her home and she seemed perfectly fine all day! We have been battling colds, an ear infection (Amelia), stomach bug (Juliet) and (maybe) teething constantly for the past three weeks. I am pretty sure Mark nor I have had eight straight hours of sleep in the past three weeks. I'm a bit anxious about having a baby in daycare this winter and am really hoping we don't spend all winter with a sick babe!

Weekend with GranAnn

Sometimes Juliet gets in on park action now. We can get some pretty great smiles and giggles from her in the swing.



Most of the time though Juliet's park trips are spent in the carrier.

Amelia and Juliet got to have both their grandmas at their fall art fair. The theme was Space Odyssey and as you can kind of see in the image her daycare goes all out on the art show themes and decorations.

The kiddos were all supposed to wear black and then were outfitted in "hats". Juliet wasn't a big of  fan of her alien headband. The babes' art projects don't go much beyond hand prints so at each show all the infants are represented in large, theme appropriate portraits.

In addition to art the two and older classrooms do a performance. Amelia's class sang a made up song about a space ship and each kid had a "poem" read. The teacher's asked each student to tell them a story which the teachers wrote down as a poem. They were all super cute and the teachers did a great job reading them so they really showed each kid's personality. I WILL get a copy of Amelia's poem as it was about going to a restaurant and Target. :)

Afterwards we celebrated a successful art show over guacamole and margaritas (and apple juice).

On our latest trip to the zoo, the carousel was hands down Amelia's favorite part. At first she wasn't too sure about riding one of the animals and wanted to sit in the swan with daddy.

After seeing the kiddos go up and down on the animals she just had to go again but this time with mommy.

And because she could she went a third time and was specific that GranAnn would take her and she would ride the panda bear.

A beautiful fall day at the zoo made for a happy little girl!

Sleep in September

September was devoted to sleep training in the Lang house. I am not a supporter of the cry-it-out method or at least I wasn't until Baby J moved in. When at six months old she could easily wake up six times a night and a good night was only two night wakings we finally accepted that she wasn't going to figure it out on her own. I suppose we put sleep training off until we just couldn't function in our sleep deprived states any longer. I realized it was time to reclaim our nights when I had the following dream. I dreamt that I fell asleep at my desk. Mind you we don't have offices and are in an open, bustling studio environment. Falling asleep in such an environment would be very difficult. Not only did I fall asleep but I continued sleeping for two hours. When I woke up and realized what time it was I started asking the guys that sit around me why no one woke me up. My work neighbor, Eric simply said, "I figured you really needed the sleep." So after my dream and many recommendations from co-workers, strangers and our Pediatrician we devoured Happy Sleepy Habits Health Child and got to work. I don't want to jinx ourselves but I will say that I get why crying-it-out has been the go to for parents for so many years and that is because it works....

While Juliet is learning to sleep, Amelia continues to express herself via clothing. There is no doubt that her accessories of the summer were her cowboy hat and open toe, pink ballet slippers with a large bow or as she calls them, "my park slippers"

This fall is looking to be about her movie star sunglasses and Dorothy shoes.

The girls had their first ever school portraits taken. Hilarious is what the pictures are. I can't quite figure otu why these pictures make me laugh so much but it must be the "grade school" picture style on a toddler and infant. Or maybe it was the looks on both girl's faces....

While sleeping might not come natural to Juliet, eating sure does. The girl LOVES baby food. We almost have to feed her with two spoons so there is no downtime while refilling the spoon.

And as always September ended by celebrating Daddy and Poppy's birthday. As has become our tradition the Lang Family headed to Barnaby's for a pizza birthday dinner. Nope, I didn't take any pictures as dining with four under four doesn't allow for time to pull out your camera.