We decided this year we'd like to celebrate Christmas early as a family of four. Friday evening we went to see Santa at the mall. As you can see from the picture, Daniel was not very excited while Leslie just took it all in.
Pre-outing: Leslie was excited to see Santa!
First photo with Santa!
Don't you love the look on Daniel's face?
We convinced Daniel that if he would sit with us to see Santa that he could ride the train at the mall.
Leslie and I shopped around while Daddy and Daniel rode the train.
Saturday morning we got up, opened presents, ate cinnamon rolls, went to Union Station and Crown Center, took a short trip to Lowes (because really, what holiday is complete without a trip to Lowes?), and came back to play and relax.
He kept telling us that he wanted a "side loader garbage truck with eight cans so garbage can go in the cans and next to the cans." Leslie got him some additional garbage cans. I think he was happy.
Daniel made this for us at school for Christmas!
"TA DA!" It's one of Daniel's favorite sayings right now.
Leslie looks pleased with her caterpillar toy from Daniel.
Merry Christmas from Union Station! (Yes, Leslie is with us, but once again you can't see her.)
Here's a video of Daniel opening his garbage truck:
Later this afternoon we'll try out decorating some Christmas cookies. I don't imagine those cookies will stick around the house for long!
Perhaps the greatest gift of all came yesterday evening from Leslie. She laughed for the first time. Thankfully we were able to video it. For some reason, she finds the word "gnocchi" hilarious. We were letting Daniel watch a Curious George Christmas show at the time and the cat's name is Gnocchi. We said it, she laughed, and we were all thrilled! It was an awesome day.
Leslie turned two-months on Saturday (nine weeks today)! She had her two-month check-up appointment today. She came in weighing 10 lbs. 10 oz (43rd percentile) and measuring at 22.5" in length (54th percentile). She received several immunizations of which she wasn't a fan... poor thing... those needles were huge!
Other updates -
Hurrah for sleep! Leslie typically gives us around six hours of sleep (10 pm- 4 am) nightly. She transitioned well moving from the end of our bed in a pack-and-play to sleeping in her crib.
Feeding continues to go well. She nurses every 2-3.5 hours (with the longer nightly exception). We're hoping she'll still take a bottle (we haven't given her one since Thanksgiving) so that I can still manage to escape for a rare date night or girls evening out. She still has no interest in a pacifier.
She moves well and has some control over her arms now. She continues to roll from her tummy to her back. In fact, it's hard to keep her doing tummy time because she rolls over almost as fast as we put her down.
Daniel continues to adore Leslie. We went to Target Friday evening so he could pick out a present for Leslie. It was so cute... he picked out a toy caterpillar because he also had a caterpillar that he loved. We love that he put thought in to Leslie's gift and didn't try to get her a garbage truck! :) We wrapped it together, and it's under the tree ready for Christmas.
We adore our kiddos and feel so lucky to have such wonderful kids!
Leslie's first trip to the KC Zoo (you can't see her, but she was there!)
See, there she is!
It was a great day to go to the zoo! We practically had the place to ourselves!
Leslie is smiling all the time now and starting to "talk" to us. Here's a video of one of our latest conversations:
Daniel does so well playing by himself when I'm occupied feeding Leslie. His pretend play is so adorable and imaginative. You probably won't be able to hear much of the conversation, but he's playing with Playdoh, one of his many garbage trucks, and some garbage men:
Other cuteness:
Decorating our Christmas trees (It's a long story, but these are our outdoor trees... next year we'll have a more "official" Christmas tree.)
I took some cute pics of the kids a couple of nights ago:
And earlier today, Amy and Daniel were being silly and having fun and somehow she got him to start dancing. He almost never dances, so I made sure to record a quick video of some of his moves:
We spent a long weekend in Iowa for Thanksgiving. We were excited to introduce Leslie to the people that hadn't yet had a chance to meet her, and Daniel had a blast playing with everyone. And he did lots of laundry, both at Grandma and Grandpa's and at Papa's house.
Leslie did great travelling, slept well, and enjoyed being held by everyone. Other than the first evening when we got there, she was calm and content for pretty much the entire trip. We couldn't ask for much more than that!
Here are some pictures we took over the long weekend:
Decorating Grandma and Grandpa's Christmas tree
Fun with our friends, the Hilliards, at a hotel swimming pool/hot tub
We got Daniel's school pictures today. Before I post them, I realized we haven't said anything about how well he is doing with school. He's doing so well that at the beginning of the month, we switched him to "full" days (9:30 - 2:30) instead of just mornings. He genuinely seems to enjoy going to school every Tuesday and Thursday, and seems to be learning a lot. Today after school, Amy asked him what he learned about. His response: "The letter L! It's a consonant!"
His letter recognition (both capital and lower case) has significantly improved, along with his counting. And then we were reading a book a couple nights ago that has all of the months of the year in it, and with no prompting from me, he was able to name them all in order. Good stuff!
Without further adieu, here are the pictures...I'm not sure we'll be hanging any of them on the wall:
Leslie had her 1 month pediatrician visit today. She is growing right on track at 21" (40th percentile), and weighing in at 9 lbs., 3 oz. (43rd percentile). We should see (more) smiling and hear cooing soon! Also, last night we slept for almost six hours straight, waking only once to feed - thank you, Leslie!
Daniel also visited with the pediatrician since his coughing and runny nose have resurfaced. Currently he's on Singular to help with the allergies to the dogs, but sadly it seems he needs more. His coughing while running and playing seems to be worsening, so we're currently testing out an inhaler twice a day for two weeks to see how he responds. It's hard to hear your happy, playful boy cough and cough after running around and playing. Hopefully this will help.
On a totally unrelated note, Aunt Danielle and the boys left Sunday morning, but we snapped a few pictures that weren't included in the last post. Here are a few pictures of the fun:
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