9 months

My little love bug turned 9 months old earlier this week. I can't believe it. She surely must hold the record for speed crawling and she can walk and walk and walk...as long as she is holding on to something. She got her first tooth a few weeks ago on Nov. 20th and the second one decided to show up on her actual 9 month birthday, the 8th. No more little gummy grins from my baby girl, for Christmas she got her 2 front teeth! Developmentally she is thriving. She is making all sorts of noises "buh, buh, buh, dah, dah, dah" and so forth and she loves to grunt. She has started making a cute little funny face as she blows air out of her nose. She is too big and independent for baby food anymore, she only eats big girl food. Lots of fruits and veggies, pasta, cheese, eggs and an occasional peanut butter sandwich (which our pediatrician was less than thrilled with). She claps her hands and waves and is growing like a weed. All that big girl food is catching up to her. She weighed 18 lbs and 14 oz and measured 27 and three quarters inches at her appointment this week. Dr. Matt put her in the 50th percentile across the charts!!! YAY!

I can best describe Kiersten these days as Leah's little shadow. Wherever big sister is, Kiersten wants to be too. If Leah is still napping in her room with the door shut, Kiersten will crawl down the hall to her room and bang on her door and I have a video of Leah playing outside and Kiersten is banging on the sliding glass door begging for some attention. They are definitely a pair. Leah is fairly tolerant of her "shadow" these days but I know it won't last long. For now I am just in love with my baby girls. They make me smile in more ways than I can count and I have a feeling this is going to be the best Christmas ever.

Naughty or Nice

Last week we took the girls to see Santa Claus. It was interesting. I told Leah earlier in the day that we would be going to see him. She talked a big game about how she was going to sit on his lap and tell him what she wanted for Christmas. Which by the way is ALWAYS "Woody, and Jessie and Bullseye and Buzz" from Toy Story. Well we got there and she clung to my leg like static cling, I had to pry her off and it took her awhile before she would go over. And heaven forbid she smile. Kiersten did great, she sat there happy and calm for about the first minute and then Santa started talking to Leah. Kiersten turned her head and looked at him and within seconds the bottom lip came out and she started wailing. I of course wanted to get the picture where Kiersten's bottom lip was coming out and she was about to let loose but Mitch said no...so this is what I got. I call it the mug shot. Have you ever seen two kids less thrilled about seeing Santa??? Well at least we got one. Otherwise Leah is all about Christmas. She already knows the words to Jingle Bells and Santa Claus is Coming to Town. We have the Elf on the Shelf and she finds him every morning. I think the girl is just about as prepared as a 2 year old can be, now hurry up Christmas!

Leah too!

Yes, Leah too! Every month on the 8th I get the blocks out and take a few pictures of Kiersten, and this month Leah wanted to participate too. It works out pretty great that Leah's birthday is on the 9th because when I took this picture she was only a day away from 31 months! I will post Kiersten's picture later after we have our 9 month well child check-up. Leah is so funny though, she really has quite an imagination. We hear her making up stories and taking part in fantasy play all the time. The other day she was playing with her cell phone chatting away with Aunt Wawa, she told us all about how Aunt Wawa went shopping and bought Chicken Nuggets. I catch her on a regular basis putting her stuffed animals up on our kitchen island playing doctor. She treats them and makes them feel all better with her hair brush and microphone. Don't worry, Santa Claus will be delivering a proper pretend medical kit.

And don't get me started on Santa Claus. Having kids around makes the holidays a whole new experience. We are loving it. She gets so excited about Kris Kringle, Christmas Trees and all that jazz. It is adorable. We haven't quite figured out how to do this Santa thing yet, with us being gone for the holidays. But I think Santa will conveniently put the gifts under the tree while two little girls are being strapped into their carseats for the long haul back to the midwest and when we return on the 29th the gifts will just "magically" be there! Can't wait to see the look on my little 31 monthers face!

Winter Wonders

It's here! Winter has definitely settled in, although it technically won't be here until the end of the month I am declaring that it is already here. Right now the temperature in my neck of the woods is a chilling 32 degrees and I have seen snowflakes falling a few times today. It has excited Leah to no end to see them twinkling down from the sky. She screeched with delight and ran to grab her coat. Yes, my little tomboy insisted on going out for a little fun in the non-existent sun. She played out there a good forty minutes. Digging around in her sand table while in the meantime Kiersten banged and banged and banged on the sliding glass doors trying to beckon her big sister back inside to play. Here are some pictures of the day.

Gobble, Gobble!

How thankful we are this Thanksgiving!!! Not only are we blessed with good health and happiness and our two beautiful girls, but we were also invited to spend the holiday with some dear friends. Thanks to Jim and Jenn for welcoming us into their home. It was a great way to celebrate Kiersten's first Thanksgiving and Leah had so much fun playing with Bella and Olivia. Of course Zach was a perfect peanut too for only 2 weeks old! How fun, and How grateful we are to have such wonderful friends. Jenn's mom Gloria was so wonderful to sit and make the Turkey headband craft with the girls...we just had to get a picture and I LOVE that Leah has one sock on and one sock off. And as you can tell, by the end of the night Leah was all turkeyed out, ha! It was a wonderful day for our family and hopefully for your families too.

Big Things

Yep, Big Things have been happening around our house! I mean besides the roof and the hoards of company that we have had. But the roof is finally done, all of our company is gone and thanks to everyone for your concern after Mitch pulled the ULTIMATE "Mitch" and put the nail through his toe!!! Anyway, it finally happened! On November 20th Kiersten got her first tooth, YAY! We knew it was coming, we could see the white pressing up against the gums...we always try to remain optimistic without getting our hopes up too much. Afterall, Leah got her 1st tooth on her 11 month birthday exactly so we were elated when Kiersten got her first "toofer" at 8.5 months...YAY! Now if the rest of them would just start cooperating.

In addition to the first tooth, on November 21st we finally decided to be brave and let the girls take a bath together. Anyone that knows Leah knows that she can be a little rough, to put it mildly. So we were apprehensive, but she did great. They LOVE taking a bath together and it is certainly making things easier on Daddy since he is the one usually dishing out the baths. Leah was super excited when we finally pulled out her winter jammies with feet because now she has jammies just like Kiersten. Everyday they amaze me with how much they love one another. It's really awesome and I love having picture like this one to look back on and make me smile.

New York, New York

This past Thursday my mom and sis-in-law Cynthia flew out to my place for a girl's weekend and we did it up in style. Mitch took Friday off and so us women-folk hopped on the train at Princeton and headed up to the city. This trip was planned for weeks and I was so excited to have some "me" time. I hadn't been away from Leah in over 2 years and it was my first time away from Kiersten.

We started out with a "little" shopping in the Largest Store in the world...ten stories tall, Macy's! I LOVE Macy's...it is the real miracle on 34th street, let me tell you! I could spend days in there, I always find all sorts of goodies. But we headed back to the hotel around 5 so we could get ready for dinner. Our concierge made us reservations at a cute little Italian Restaurant called Arno. It was awesome, mom and I split a dish and still walked out of there full. We had a wonderful lamb ratatouile and calamari for starters, followed by a chicken and artichoke dish with the most delicious homemade pasta and a fabulous banana chocolate mouse pie for dessert. We were in heaven!!! Cynthia was quite adventurous. She had a lot of first at the restaurant. Her first Pinot Grigio, lamb, calamari, prosciutto, and mushrooms...She enjoyed it too! After dinner we hightailed it about 15 blocks to the Broadway Theatre, where we had tickets to see Promises, Promises. It was fantastic, Sean Hayes and Kristen Chenoweth were the leading roles and Molly Shannon was in it as well, she is ALWAYS hilarious! It really was great. A big thanks to my mom for treating us.

On Saturday we got up, packed our suitcases and headed out on the town again for some shopping. We went to Rockefeller Plaza and hit up a few stores, then kept on trucking down to FAO Schwartz...it was a zoo. Made a stop at LegoLand, the Disney Store and a few others on Times Square before heading back to...MACY'S! We shopped there for a few hours, hit up H&M and hopped on the train to head home. Penn station is always a zoo, but we made it on the first train and got home just in time for a wonderfully prepared dinner by Mitch, WHO happened to put a nail in his big toe while working on the rood on Friday. I hadn't even been gone 2 hours and I got a picture text of his big toe with a BIG Nail sticking out of it...I guess Air Nail Guns will go right through a shoe and a sock and a little bit of bone. Thankfully our friend Kathleen was able to come sit with the girls while Mitch went to the ER where they had to cut the nail out. I told my mom "I don't have to worry about my girls when I leave home, I have to worry about my husband." Overall, it was a fabulous weekend and I am already planning for the next one :)

8 months and counting

You will have to excuse my blogging hiatus. We have been doing a major project at our house that required a dumpster in my driveway for a week and the in-laws were here to help out. My father-in-law and hubby put a new roof on our house and what I was told was going to be a 3-4 day project has turned into a week + project with a change of flight plans for Grandpa Dave and a temporary loss of my sanity. By Tuesday I was jittery from all the banging and was quite certain I couldn't take anymore, but alas...it's almost done, and if I'm lucky it will get finished up this weekend while I am happily out of town enjoying my girls getaway in NYC with my mom and SIL Cynthia.

Onto the reason for the post...Yes, Kiersten is 8 months old. It actually happened a few days ago, but I have been delayed. She is really a happy baby girl and these two pictures capture her "happy" expression so well. I love these shots sans the bright red-Rudolph nose from the cold that we have been battling for a week now. No stats to report this month because there is a well-child check-up, but she certainly has a hearty appetite. She is especially fond of feeding herself finger foods. Sadly, we are done breast feeding. I didn't necessarily want to be done, but she decided that she was done and has REALLY taken to the bottle. She is just to busy and gets too distracted by big sister Leah to stay focused on the task at hand...so I sadly let it go. Good thing I have a freezer full of breast milk to get us through the next few weeks.

On October 29th, Kiersten pulled herself up into the standing position. I walked into the living room to see her standing at the fireplace happily playing with some of Leah's toys. The camera wasn't in reach, but I snapped a shot on my cell phone. She didn't stay up long. And wouldn't you know it, one week later on Nov. 5th I caught her walking holding on to the furniture. Any one want to place any bets that she will be walking by Christmas??? My little baby isn't a little baby anymore, she has gotten a taste of independence and she likes it!