We spent the
month of December trying to focus on celebrating Christ’s birth as well as
spending lots of time together as a family.
We had an advent calendar with family activities for each day and we
also had a nativity calendar to help build the nativity scene and spur
discussion about Christ’s birth. We
battled the remnants of Declan’s ear infection and the stomach bug for everyone
but me early in the month, but thankfully the majority of the month was
sickness free!
Sideways Nativity because it won't rotate
Our completed family time calendar
Some of the highlights of our
family time this month were egg nog night, decorating cookies, dinners out, Christmas
presents a child from home of the innocence, gingerbread houses, gingerbread
waffles, movie nights, popcorn, and more.
Alethea loves learning what the fun activity for the day would be. Both kiddos took turns rotating between
adding a character to our nativity calendar and putting a sticker on our advent
family time calendar. It is so much fun
to live the excitement of the season through a child’s eyes.
The culmination of our family
time was a lot of time spent with my side of the family the week of
Christmas. We had a fun baking/cooking
day the Monday before Christmas at our house in preparation for our family
Christmas the following day. Then, after
Cody got off work on Tuesday, we had fun getting together at Cody and Justine’s
house. We enjoyed some pizza, custard
and cake, and yum-yum bars followed by kiddos opening presents. It was so much fun to watch all three of them
thoroughly enjoy the process and then even more fun watching them have so much
fun playing together. We enjoyed a
relaxing Christmas Eve day at home, prepping food for Christmas day, going to
Christmas Eve serving, and then watching both versions of the Grinch and
wrapping presents. The kiddos watched
the cartoon version and then after they went to bed Ben and I watched the Jim
Carey version and I got to wrap presents on Christmas Eve like I always love to
do.
Christmas day was even more
special this year. This is the first
year Alethea has been so aware of the Christmas story and the true meaning of
Christmas. We have never played the
Santa Claus game, though she does love all the stories about him, but this was
the first year she really grasp the concept that Christmas was about celebrating
Christ’s birthday. It was so much fun to
read the Christmas story from her Bible and have her make the connections for
why we each get 3 gifts on Christmas.
She doesn’t necessarily understand the symbolism behind each individual
gift yet, but she does understand that the three gifts are like the three gifts
the wise men gave Jesus when they came to visit Him. She also got very excited about making an ice
cream cake for Jesus birthday and she made sure to tell everyone that Jesus
wasn’t really going to eat the cake, but He would enjoy watching us celebrate
His birth from heaven. J
We had to get a little creative this year to explain why Mommy and Daddy
were just getting one big gift, a weekend away, because that weekend meets the
criteria for all three gifts, lol.
Alethea’s gifts included: a cd of hymns sung by kids and a veggie tales
movie as her frankincense gift, a water bottle and socks as her myrrh gift, and
a scooter as her gold gift. Declan’s
gifts were: a cd of toddler worship songs and a veggies tales movie as his
frankincense gift, a water bottle and new shoes as his myrrh gift, and a gears
building set as his gold gift. Both
kiddos really enjoyed opening gifts this year and playing with their gifts
together. Delcan was even able to ride
Alethea’s scooter with relative ease!
In addition to our little family Christmas, we had my parents and Granpeg
over for some delicious homemade cinnamon rolls, fruit, eggs, sausage, and
bacon for brunch. Alethea ended up
eating 4 just by herself, but Declan was more interested in the fruit bowl. Then after naps we headed over to Cody and
Justine’s for some brisket, mac n cheese, green beans and mashed potatoes. Declan’s favorite was his “cheese cheese” as
he calls mac n cheese. Then we just had
fun hanging out and eventually sang happy birthday to Jesus and enjoyed our ice
cream cake. It was such a fun day and
time of year making memories as a family, and next year there will be 5 of us.
Crazy!
Now it’s time for the end of the year update on the kiddos. Declan is now 32¼ inches tall and weighs
23.8lbs at 18months. Because Alethea has always been off the charts, I am not
sure what normal is and the doc reassured me at Declan’s well check-up that he
is growing just fine. I figured as much, but it is always nice to confirm. Surprisingly, he has been working on molars
all month, only 2 have actually broken through, but we have had no evidence of
the process other than chewing on things more and happening to check his mouth
wondering when the kid was going to have more teeth, lol. He has a silly fake
laugh and loves to do something he is proud of, then walk backwards away from
it while pointing and laughing to get our attention.
He is very vocal even though he
doesn’t say many words. He loves to yell
“mama” or pretty much anything else that comes to his mind at the time,
especially in the car. His words list
that I can think of consists of: “uh uh” (his version of no and answer to every
question) “mama” “dada” “aya!” (Alethea) “mawmaw” (mamaw), “cheese” “cheese
cheese” (mac n cheese), “uh ah” (uh-oh), and then he makes car, dog, and duck
noises. He is so aware of what is being
said around him and it isn’t uncommon for him to start doing something I just
asked Alethea to do. His grasp of language is so good and he is becoming very
communicative even though mostly with a variety of sounds/inflections and not
words. He loves to complete tasks for me
like going to get a diaper or putting his clothes in the dirty clothes or
unload the dishwasher (this one can be nerve-wracking). He loves to make silly
faces and has begun to make them on purpose to get our attention and he is
becoming more and more aware of how we react to him.
He is a little Houdini and can
unbuckle his chest clip in his carseat (something Alethea still can’t do at
almost 4yrs old). One of the biggest
changes for him this month happened in preparation for Baby E’s arrival and
preparing Declan for sharing a room with Alethea; he started sleeping in a
toddler bed. We initially put him in the
twin bed on the floor in his room, but he kept rolling off so we decided he
need a more gradual transition. After a
few longer nights of crying, he has made a great transition to a toddler bed.
We don’t have to worry about him getting out of bed either because he hasn’t
done so since the first night and nap in the bed. Hoping he continues to be like his sister and
keeps this habit of staying in bed.
Alethea has slowed down her growth but she is still off the charts. She is 42¼ inches tall and 37.4lbs at 3yrs
10months. She is wearing 4s and 5s in
pants and 5s, 6s, and 7s in shirts. She
can be hard to predict so we don’t really buy more than a season ahead. She loves to color and make pictures with
stickers. She thrives in one on one
interactions which can sometimes be hard with a little brother but we really
try to set aside special time for her whenever we can. She always wants to know where we are going
and is such a social butterfly so she wants to go places pretty much every
day. We are working on the concept that
sometimes you just need to stay home to recharge and get things done.
She is big into matching colors and has a lot of similar habits like her
mommy where she wants things to be a certain way and will let people know if
they don’t do it right. I may be
unintentionally creating a control freak, lol.
One thing is for sure, she is a lot like me and that creates a lot of
conflict at times as a result, but I think we are growing as a result of
it. She definitely tries to be a little
mommy to Declan and copies things that I will do for/say to him. Thankfully, for the most part, he is still at
an age he doesn’t mind this but we do try to remind her that she isn’t in
charge. The good part of this is that she is very helpful with Declan and helps
to keep him safe and taken care of. If
something is wrong with him, she first tries to help him but, if she can’t, she
immediately comes to get help from us. I
love her caring and sweet spirit that is so evident in her love for her little
brother.
She is still very honest and we can count on her to tell on herself, even
if it gets her in trouble, she is much more emotionally volatile lately, maybe
partly due to lack of naps, but It can make it hard to get through to her at
times. Sometimes she is just such an
emotional mess that we can’t really do anything other than give her some time
alone to calm down and then process with her afterward. She is also a yo-yo eater and many evenings
eats a tiny amount of food simply because she doesn’t want what is served for
dinner. I am pretty sure there are
nights where she is starving, but if she was hungry enough, and not so stubborn,
she would eat. J She loves her bible songs and is always requesting
to listen to them in the car. Sometimes we have to compromise and listen to
other music or silence for a bit, but most of the time she gets to enjoy her
music. She is very into princesses
lately and loves to sing the songs associated with their movies. For Christmas, she got a few of the princess Barbie
type dolls and she loves them. So fun!
What a wonderful end to our year and looking forward to all the blessings
2015 has in store!
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