cheers!

 

 

the clock struck midnight.

the calendar flipped.

our glasses bottles clinked.

and just like that, we started a new year.

2 0 1 6

you're supposed to spend new year's with the

one you love and lucky for me,

i talked my friends into coming over for

a little par-tay so i could stay at home and

put my littlest to bed on time.

brette on the other hand,

didn't go down until a little after 9:00

because she was having the time of her life running

around with graham and reese.

(no worries, she took a three hour nap today)

with reid still getting up around 4am every night,

i feel bad having someone watch her so we can go out.

it's not exactly a great time to be up.

but wouldn't you know it,

that little chicken slept until 6am this morning.

she would.

 

we had a lot of fun.

we talked about babies and houses and jobs and other people.

normal 30-something conversations.

 we laughed and drank too many beers,

but not a drop of champagne, so if anyone

feels like making a toast,

i have the supplies in my fridge.

 

i hope your new year's was fun and safe.

just imagine i'm raising a glass to you.

now let's get this party started.

 

sweet hats.

party people

sparkling juice at midnight. poor reese had to be woken up for it.

my fur family.

graham: a future party animal. this child never went to sleep.

the girls

turnbow's - with a little girl due in march.

the boys

the glovers

 

chocolate cake mouth.

 

 

now for my new year inspiration:

you're welcome.

 

christmas recap

 

so i actually did get a christmas miracle.

ronnie got christmas eve off and we got

every single thing done on my list.

woot. woot.

i started my day  e a r l y,

like 5am, but it was so worth it

because by 8:00 i had already gone to the grocery

store and taken my kids to go see santa.

i'm going to let you in on a little secret:

people do not get up early to go see santa.

so if your kids are early risers, like mine,

take advantage and go when they open.

literally NO LINE.  like, at all.

we walked right up while another family

was finishing up and took our picture and left.

the whole thing took 5 minutes.

so. awesome.

ronnie and i took the girls to the magic tree the night before

and i spent my evening wrapping gifts while ronnie

took 2 hours putting together a big wheel.

i'm not kidding.

i made my pie when i got home from santa

and showered for church while the girls napped.

we managed to make it to christmas eve mass

by the skin of our teeth and lot of help from my folks.

there is something about getting everyone ready for church that's cursed.

it is ALWAYS stressful, which is so not the point of going.

but brette did a good job of putting on lip gloss for an hour

while the rest of us took turns holding reid.

we made it home in time for our annual christmas eve pizza,

sat out cookies for santa and put the girls in matching pj's.

i did forget to read them "twas the night before christmas"

which kind of kills me, but i promise to do better next year.

 

 

 

 

christmas morning brette woke up at 5:50 and wanted to see

if santa had eaten the cookies she left him.

 i made her wait for her sister until 7:00, so she watched cartoons

in our room and guessed what presents santa brought her.

once reid joined our party,

we had a good time making a mess of the living room.

(note to self: wrapping paper with glitter is banned from this household)

after breakfast we loaded everyone up and headed to warrensburg

for our big family christmas with all the relatives from my mom's side.

we ate a lot, watched the kids open a ton of gifts and then

i downed a few glasses of wine to top off my holiday.

oh what fun!

brette and reid are super lucky to have so much

family surrounding them and really made our holiday amazing.

brette was super excited by three things:

her new black boots (which she's wearing in all our Christmas morning photos)

a buzz lightyear toy

and a northpole dance radio (oh lordy, help us)

 

 

 

 

 

 

we had a great day.

hope yours was spent with

all the ones you love.

 

until next year!

happy holidays

i'm checking things off my list left and right

and somehow i think i'm going to manage to get it all done.

whew.

in the meantime,

i just wanted to wish all of you a

merry christmas and blessed new year!

2016 is charging right for us.

 

and for those of you not on my mailing list,

here's our last minute christmas card that

i managed to get out on time.

 

 

and now i'm off to go bake a pie.

merry christmas!

making a list, checking it twice

i just made a list of all the things i need

to get done before christmas and

now i'm feeling a little frantic.

and yes, i guess waiting until christmas eve eve

to figure this all out was not smart.

there are things i want to do and then

there are things i have to do.

but lets be honest,

i plan on getting everything checked off my list.

 

1. bake a tollhouse pie

2. go to the magic tree and lights-seeing

3. make ham roll-ups

4. exchange a gift i bought in the wrong damn size.

5. wrap every single thing.

6. go to christmas eve mass

7. go see santa

but first things first,

i need to go to the grocery store.

always.

it wouldn't be that bad if i could just run to the store

right now but the girls are both napping.

i'm secretly hoping that they don't nap forever.

(which goes against my mom-mantra)

but the sooner i can get cracking,

the better.

i really wish ronnie was walking through the door right now to help

or was off tomorrow, but i won't hold my breath.

that would truly be a christmas miracle.

am i right?!

 

i'm sure everyone is running around

frantic trying to put the finishing touches on christmas,

so here's to the holidays...

the most stressful best time of the year!

 

 

 

 

reid: 5 months

 

my littlest chicken is five months old

and is such a sweet little girl.

(much sweeter than my 2.5 yr old that,

at the moment, makes me want to pull out my hair.)

however both my girls are sick,

so we're having a rough week.

but still, let's celebrate miss reid.

 

growth:

i have no clue what she weighs,

i'd guess between 14-15 lbs.

her little leg rolls are growing in quite nicely

and her cheeks are as round as ever.

her newest accomplishment is rolling over.

all. the. time.

and once she started rolling over,

she had to stopped being swaddled at night,

which has made things interesting.

more on that in our "sleep" section.

however, she just rolls from her back to her stomach,

but once she on her stomach she can't get back over.

for some reason, she won't push off on her arms.

we're working on it.

she's in size two diapers and 3-6 month clothing.

her hair is still red and her eyes are still blue.

i wish her eyebrows and eyelashes would darken up

a bit, because even though she has them,

they're hard to see.

she's still on reflux medicine and the pediatrician upped

her does to 2 ml twice a day. 

so far, it seems to be working.

 

 

sleeps:

this little one is an amazing night sleeper,

but that's where it ends.

so far, naps are still not consistent and

what works one day will most likely,

not work the next.

she gets up around 7am and will sleep on and

off throughout the day.

i always have both girls down around 1 in the afternoon

and sometimes R will give me a couple hours and

other days she'll only give me 30 minutes.

i'm going to stick with it because i know the older she gets,

the better she'll nap.

i just wish i could find that sweet spot everyday.

as for the night, she's going down by 7:00,

up at 4:00 and back down until 7:00.

but as you read above, we've had to stop swaddling her

because she'll roll over.

this means, she might wake herself up a few times

before she's officially asleep, but she's getting better and better.

 mostly, this whole rolling over thing it freaks me out

because i'm afraid she'll smother herself.

if she was able to sit up or crawl,

i wouldn't worry, but since she's still so little

and still in the age range for SIDS i spend a lot of my nights

checking my monitor to see if she's flipped over.

in fact, this morning she was asleep on her tummy.

dang those tummy sleepers!

i'm looking into getting an angelcare monitor.

it will actually sound an alarm if she stops breathing.

i never worried much about this with brette because

her gross motor skills were never on point, so by the

time we stopped swaddling her she still wasn't rolling over in her crib.

it is highly recommended that babies sleep on their back,

but i think reid has other plans.

 

 

eats:

she is still nursing wonderfully.

she eats every few hours and i wanted to add

some water to her diet, but

i only ended up doing it like 3 times this month,

so i really sucked that up.

i'm going to REALLY focus on it and

try to introduce her to a straw.

i remember loving that brette could use a straw,

so that's my #1 goal this month.

i plan on starting to introduce food at 6 months and

i cannot wait for that.

i'll start with cereal and peanut butter,

then vegetables and fruit.

starting foods is one of my favorite parts of the first year,

so i'm really looking forward to january.

 

 

plays:

she likes toys that rattle, light up or play music.

she still loves her pacifier, but mostly just to play with

and not really use it for sleeping anymore.

i try to force it on her because it really does soothe her

but i think she's starting to get over it.

she also likes things that hang above her to she can bat at them.

we don't have one of those play mats but

we have a homemade version in the playroom that

seems to work just fine.

i try to have her hang out on her tummy a few times a day,

but she isn't a huge fan.

she loves sitting up, but can't do it without support,

so i prop her up or put her in the bumbo.

our bumbo has a tray on it so you can give her toys

and she can occupy herself for a little bit and

sometimes when brette needs something too,

this comes as a big help.

but most of all, she likes being held.

of course.

 

 

our second little child is quite different than our first,

but has captured our hearts just the same.

happy five months, reid!

 

 

 

wanna compare?

here's brette at 5 months.

 

 

 

 

cookie day

we had our annual bake off at my mom's house.

all the females (plus my dad) exchange cookies

and spend a whole day making

more cookies and christmas candies.

 

oh what fun!

 

fudge

divinity

peanut clusters

oreo balls

peanut brittle

dipped pretzels

molasses cookies

peppermint bark...

and that JUST what we made that day.

i can't even explain all the things i ended up bringing home.

holy cow.

i just gained 800 pounds.

but look at these little girls that got to help.

totally worth it.

 

 

 

i think i need to invest in three four

little aprons for next year.

how cute would that be?

 

i just love traditions.

hope you're having a sweet holiday too!

 

fast food

randomly last night i made the bomb breakfast casserole.

fast. easy. and so good.

 

it was nice outside after naps, so

the girls and i went out for a walk.

i had to nurse reid when we got back in and

when i looked at the clock it was almost 5:00.

holy geez.

dinner.

crap.

since we start bedtime around 6:30,

dinner needs to be ready around 5:45.

normally if its already 5:00 and i have nothing out,

we would be feasting on frozen pizza or scrounging up leftovers.

but when i checked the freezer there was no pizza.

we did have some chicken pot pie leftover,

but not enough for me, ronnie and brette.

just great.

i noticed that we had

jimmy dean cooked sausage links.

eggs.

cheese.

we also had a can of biscuits because

i intended to make a shepard pie recipe off pinterest sometime, but

hadn't gotten around to it.

 

 

 

hmmmm.

surely i can make some sort of breakfast concoction out of all this.

so i started with the sausage links and starting cooking 10 of them.

meanwhile i cracked 6 eggs and whisked them in a 9x9 baking dish.

i cut the biscuits in forths and laid them in the egg.

once my sausage was cooked i cut up and added them to the dish and

stirred in shredded cheese and sprinkled in some salt and pepper.

i had my oven going at 400 and put it in for 20-25 minutes.

meanwhile, i took my sausage drippings and made gravy.

side note:

have you ever made gravy?

i used to be kind of intimidated by it.

i mean, me? make homemade gravy?

i should leave that to the professionals.

but i swear, it's the easiest thing to do ever.

you literally add flour to your sausage and stir it around

for 2 minutes, then add milk and stir it around until it gets thick.

salt and pepper to taste. (can add red pepper if you like it hot)

that. is. it.

i know.

suddenly you're thinking about all those homemade breakfasts

your mom and your grandma have made you where you thought,

holy geez, thank god SOMEONE can still make this for me,

and now here you are, making it for yourself.

you should try it and impress everyone.

 

when the casserole came out i poured the gravy on top.

and wa la - done!

so basically i made biscuits and gravy breakfast casserole.

and yes,

we were eating by 5:45 and its my new fave.