So I realize this post is a few days late, but once again, we've been really busy, mostly organizing toys and playing. We did have a great Christmas! We drove to Des Moines on Christmas Eve and spent some time with Papa and Nani and then with Grandpa, Grandma, and Aunt Carrie. It was a quiet day, but just what we needed before all the excitement of Christmas Day.
Christmas morning the kids woke up and were ready to see what Santa brought and open presents. This Christmas was all things LEGO for Daniel, and Leslie received lots of fun gifts too. We spent the morning with my parents and Carrie and Luc, then with Papa and Nani, then with Uncle Gene, Aunt Mary Jo, and cousin Allison. Finally, we rounded out our day with our friends, the Hilliards. It was a very busy day, but we are so thankful for time spent with our family and friends.
Checking out Santa's cookies and the reindeer food Christmas morning
Daniel was very excited about his Lego Fire Station
Leslie loves to read books!
Building Legos... how Bobby spent a good part of his Christmas "vacation" ;)
Christmas cuties
At Papa and Nani's new house
Leslie loved the necklace Daniel made for Nani
Legos at Uncle Gene and Aunt Mary Jo's house
Leslie played with Aunt Mary Jo for quite a while putting bows in and out of baskets. Leslie was quite entertained!
Aunt Debbie and Uncle Mark got Leslie an adorable Snow White outfit!
The big present this year came from Great-Granddaddy. The kids woke up to a surprise playhouse/slide we set up in the basement! To say they enjoy the playhouse is an understatement. We've already spent hours each day (yes, literally) in the basement playing. It's so much fun and a welcome distraction from the cold weather outside. Thank you Great-Granddaddy!
One other funny story which is not Christmas related... Yesterday Daniel brought down his "buddies" (like 15 stuffed animals) in a nylon crate/cage. When we headed upstairs, I asked him to take the crate back upstairs. He asked if I could do it instead and I explained my hands would be full with Leslie and a few other things. Then I mentioned, "Daniel, how is it that you got the crate downstairs, but you can't carry it back upstairs?" Daniel says, "It's a long story..." I cracked up! He sure is developing quite the sense of humor and makes us laugh every day. :)
We wish everyone a happy and healthy 2016! We will easily be in bed well before midnight!
Again a few days late, but life is busy these days! Leslie turned 14-months-old a few days ago. Looking back over the last month, not a lot has changed with her. She continues to sleep well, eat well, and play well. Since last month, some of the biggest changes are:
No more morning nap. She dropped her morning nap quickly and without trouble. It completely freed up our mornings to go out and do fun (or productive) things. Her afternoon nap is a bit earlier than it used to be, and she usually sleeps for about 2 hours, but just one nap a day makes the days much easier.
She now loves books. Anytime we are in her room, she will eagerly crawl over to her bookshelf, pick a book up, and crawl in one of our laps for us to read it to her. I will say that we rarely make it through an entire book before she pushes it away and goes to get a new one.
She's still not walking, but she's doing a lot of cruising and will now walk/wobble around the house when only holding on to us with one hand. Even though she's not quite walking, she is so very adventuresome...and without fear. One of her favorite games right now is to climb on Daniel's chair and have him tip it backwards and forwards while she rides on it. She basically falls forward and backwards, quickly, and laughs and laughs the whole time. She also tries to climb on anything she can. At the Christmas party the other night, she managed to make it all the way on top of one of the kid picnic tables without any help (for the record, I was standing right there in case she got into trouble). She can also climb all the way up the stairs without any help. She loves to climb!
One of my favorite parts of the day right now is when I walk in the door after work. No matter where she is in the house, as soon as she hears me, she comes crawling full speed to see me, wants to be picked up, and then starts giving me kisses over and over again. It's so fun and sweet. And that's our little Gnocchi in a nutshell, fun and sweet!
Here's a video I took the other day of Leslie reading books to herself (she babbles a lot now):
The last few days were a blur, but so fun. Friday, I took Daniel and Leslie to a cookie decorating play date at a friend's house. Daniel enjoyed slathering on icing, and then licking it all off... only taking one bite of the cookie and then running off saying he wanted to play with his friends. :) Leslie enjoyed helping me taste a few of the sugar cookies. Maybe next year she can help me decorate!
Daniel was not in to having his picture taken... obviously!
Saturday we went to a birthday party at Paradise Park for our friend, Connor. After cake and ice cream, Bobby took Daniel around while I stayed in the "baby" room with Leslie. Both kids had a fantastic time and played together for a bit in the ball pit!
Leslie playing with her friend, Easton, in the baby room at Paradise Park
Saturday evening we met up with friends for an early Christmas dinner/party. Once again, the kids had a blast! (I had fun too!) There was a bounce house and lots of toys to play with in the unfinished basement.
I got a picture of some of the dads chatting :)
I made a peanut butter cup cheesecake for dessert at our gathering. It was delicious!
We feel really lucky to be part of a good group of friends here in Lee's Summit. Making new friends in a city you didn't grow up in can be tough, and I'm fortunate enough to have met some really wonderful mommy friends (and their kids and husbands)!
Saturday our neighborhood association hosted "Cookies with Santa" at the community clubhouse. Even if the kids didn't want to go to this, I did! ;) Thankfully, Daniel seemed pretty excited about it.
The day before, he cut and glued pictures of things he wanted from a toy catalog. He wanted a toy kitchen (yep, because we really need another one - ha!), telescope, doctor dress up outfit and cart complete with computer, Legos, Target giftcards (that one cracked me up!), construction toy set... I think that was everything. I'm not so sure how much he actually wants all this stuff, but it was a fun afternoon activity.
When we actually got to see Santa, Daniel was pretty timid. He barely spoke to him, but Santa was in good spirits and seemed to make Daniel feel comfortable. Leslie was not so happy. She cried and clung as tightly to me as I've ever felt! No way was she going to sit on his lap! So, without further delay, here are the pictures:
Here are a couple cute videos too. In the first one, Leslie shows off her new tricks including our current favorite thing she does when we ask her how old she is...
The second video is just a cute one of the two kids playing and laughing together this morning:
On Tuesday, Daniel's preschool, Traditions Preschool, held a special event for grandparents and special friends. We were lucky enough to have my parents join Daniel for the celebration. They sang a few special songs (yes, even Daniel sang which is pretty amazing), shared snacks, and played with them for outside recess. It was great! They came back with glowing reviews of how fun it was to see him in a totally different light. I think Daniel really excels at school and loves to play with other kids, especially his friend, Alyvia.
We managed to have a little fun at the house too since Grandpa and Grandma came on Saturday and stayed until Wednesday. Here are some pictures of the fun:
Grandma and Daniel built a foam gingerbread house
Zoom zoom!
Thanksgiving - We have so much to be thankful for, but above all, we are thankful for our family. This year we stayed home for Thanksgiving, celebrating the night before with neighbors and fireworks, a special Thanksgiving lunch at the Crown Center Westin, a quick visit to Legoland, and a relaxing afternoon at home. Today, Black Friday, we ventured out to Target for a few Christmas decorations and such, but not until the afternoon once the crowds settled down a bit. We still have two more days of fun at home... some of the fun should include painting Leslie's bathroom and finishing up with Christmas decorations. It's been a great "staycation" so far, and I'm glad we have a couple more days! Here's some of our fun so far:
Our neighbor, Andrea, with two goofy kids
Happy Thanksgiving!
He was less than thrilled to have his picture taken
Although I'm a few days late, Leslie turned 13-months on Friday! A few new updates:
Sleeping - Leslie sleeps about 11 1/2 hours a night. Usually she's down right after 7 p.m. and wakes up around 6:30 a.m. Her naps are a little more sporadic, especially when we have to pick Daniel up from school on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. Today was the first time she didn't nap a morning nap at all. I really thought she was going to fall asleep at lunch, but she powered through.
Eating - Leslie became a little more picky. She will still eat most anything you put in front of her, but if she sees something she'd rather have sitting nearby, she will spit out what she has in her mouth and "ask" for the other food instead. Her favorite foods are bananas, scrambled or hard-boiled eggs, yogurt bites, puffs, mac and cheese (just like Daniel), and popcorn (Leslie and I usually share popcorn as an afternoon snack - I eat the hard kernels and then share the white fluffy part with her. As weird as this sounds, this time is often one of my favorite parts of the day!).
Leslie is working on trying to stand up by herself. You can see how proud she is of herself when she gets up, wobbles, and then falls. It's pretty adorable!
Her vocabulary continues to impress us. I honestly don't know how many words she says now, but it's a lot. I think her favorite words are "woof" and "dog." She uses them the most. She bounces when you ask her something and the answer is yes. I remember Daniel doing this too, and it's so cute.
Leslie continues to establish her independence. She knows what she wants, when she wants it and is not afraid to tell you! (The same applies for what she doesn't want.)
She is pretty fussy these days. She has at least four new teeth coming in and was running a fever a few days ago, and again today. She had a runny nose a couple weeks ago, so she's had a rough go for a while now. She's such a cutie though! Speaking of cute...
With only one nap today, she fell asleep on Daddy late this afternoon. I don't think he minded much ;)
And the cuteness continues...
This photo cracks me up!
Daniel with his two best buddies, Hop Hop and Ooo
We went in to check on Daniel a few nights ago and found him like this.
Is it hereditary? Take a look at this video of Leslie in our laundry room. I managed to start the video just after she stopped bouncing and squealing with joy:
One of Amy's friends is a professional photographer. We've been talking about having family pictures taken for quite a while, but we finally scheduled it. Last Sunday we met her at the entrance to our neighborhood, where there is a pond, water fountain, bridge, and lots of pretty fall colors. We spent about an hour taking various pictures. Leslie wasn't thrilled with all of it, but she did pretty well despite that. Daniel was great - talking non-stop and smiling eagerly. That may or may not have had something to do with the giant bribe of a Lego Firetruck he was offered if he did a good job for the pictures.
We are thrilled with how great the pictures turned out. Rather than post a few, I'll just post a link to them here: Gilliam Family Picture Album
And, just for fun, here are a few pictures of Daniel helping me rake leaves yesterday. He was surprisingly helpful and had a blast doing it. Although it was kind of funny when this morning he complained that his back and legs were hurting...I'm not sure he's ever been sore before!
Happy Halloween! Get ready for a long post - we've had a lot of excitement around here lately.
This year, Daniel wanted to be a fire fighter for Halloween. It's the first year he's been really excited about wearing his costume, going trick-or-treating, and all the fun (and candy) that goes with this holiday.
On Thursday at school, the kids were asked to wear their costumes for a Halloween Parade. Amy and Leslie stayed to watch and took some pictures and a video. Daniel had a great time, and if anything, it just made him more excited for the big day. (The video is a little long, and Leslie cries through a lot of it, but it still gives you an idea of what the parade was all about. Daniel is in the red fire fighter costume/hat.)
Class photo including his teachers, Miss Leslie and Miss Linda. The girl in the yellow right next to Daniel is his special friend, Alivia. Daniel likes to hold her hand... they are quite good buddies!
On Saturday, we started by carving our pumpkins (yeah, yeah, we waited until the last minute). We really stepped up our craft-game and decided to try carving one of the pumpkins as a Lego head and the other one as a butterfly.
Just getting started
We stopped mid-carving for a few quick pictures before putting a very tired Leslie down for her afternoon nap:
I think they turned out pretty well:
By far the best thing that came out of the pumpkin carving was this anecdote. As we were getting started, I told Daniel that I was going to try using a drill to carve the pumpkins. He kept insisting that a drill would not work.
Daniel: "That won't work daddy! A drill is for making holes and you need to make lines! That just won't work!"
Amy: "Daniel, be a little more positive."
Daniel: "I'm positive it won't work!"
Before heading out to trick-or-treat, we managed to get a few pictures of our little fire chief and his dalmatian sidekick;
Trick-or-treating was a lot of fun. We started by going to all of the close neighbors that we know well and sort of expected Daniel to have had enough at that point. But of course not, he wanted to keep going, so we did! We were out for about an hour and a half, went all over the neighborhood, and watched our little boy have fun. At one of the early houses we stopped at, they gave each kid a small bag of chips. Leslie was extremely proud of her bag of chips and it kept her entertained all evening. Anytime someone would open the door, she would hold up her chips proudly for them to see how great they were.
A little bit of his haul...
In other news, Saturday was Daniel's last swimming class for this session. He did very well in his first class without me or Amy in the water with him. He did not like going under water, but usually would do it without too much complaining. Otherwise he mostly had fun (when the water wasn't too cold) and really enjoyed himself. I took a few videos at his last class to show what he's been working on.
Here he is practicing using the kickboard, and kicking while on his back:
He is in the deep end here, learning how to tread water:
At the very end of class, they always sing this little song and have each kid take a turn jumping in the water. Daniel doesn't mind jumping in the water but has absolutely no interest in singing. You can see the teacher attempt to get him to sing his part of the song before he jumps in:
And, last week, Leslie got a wonderful birthday present in the mail from Great-Granddaddy. It was a beautiful purple chair with her name on it, similar to the one given to Daniel a few years ago. She loves it. Her favorite thing to do with it right now is sit in it with Woof (a small stuffed dog from Aunt Debbie and Uncle Mark). She holds, cuddles, and rocks Woof, and smiles as big as can be. We keep trying to get a video of it, but as soon as you point the camera at her, she stops whatever she is doing and tries to grab it. We'll keep trying!
They love their chairs!
The kids have been playing together a lot more lately, and having fun doing it. Amy snapped a couple pictures of them last week.
They both love Lego (Daniel for building, Leslie for eating)
