Pre Christmas '09

I'm not sure if Jaclynn will want to redo some of these posts, but I thought I'd try to sum up our Pre Christmas events here in this one post.

Maddy tried Ballerina this fall. It didn't go over great, but all in all, she did well, had fun taking the class with Kendal and made it through.




We took a quick trip to Mexico.....

Really?

No, not REALLY! :)

We took a trip down to our VFW again and purchased our Christmas tree.

"No dad, THIS one!"

Greasy/Grizzly Adams and his girls!!!

We were lucky enough to find a time to head down to Spindler's again before Christmas this year. It worked out awesome that we were able to head down the weekend of Sadie's baptism as well. It's always a great time and as the girls have grown up, it's that much more fun to see them interact. Sadie and Mylee are both growing up so quickly and are so fun and smiley it was fun to see the two together. Here are some pics!







Let's see, what else....
Howell has an AWESOME Christmas parade. It was extremely cold this year. We enjoyed some Gus's pizza together on the sidewalk beforehand and held tight to see Santa end it.

Anxiously awaiting......

SANTA!!!

I'll leave it at that for tonight!!!

Oh, one last one. Before Rudolph could run over Grandma this year, Mylee made sure she had some say in that.


More to come....

Papa Jon's 73rd bday

On December 12th we were able to celebrate my dad's 73rd birthday. It was 6 months to the day that we gathered at his bedside thinking we were losing him. So as you can imagine, it was a very emotional day for us all. However, it was so much more of a happy emotional than a sad emotional if that can make sense. Even though we know that this will be his last birthday that we get to celebrate with him, these last 6 months of "extra" time with him has been so special for us all. And seeing dad so emotional and loving was so nice for us all as well. As he spends most of his time sleeping these days, he usually acknowledges us, and sometimes answer questions, it's extremely hard for him to express much as he just doesn't have the energy.

Well, this day was different, he was himself in as much of a way as we could ever imagine him. Hugging, kissing, crying and loving us that he was just awesome. It was definitely a special gift for all of us to see that emotion from him again and of course just to be able to hug him still and tell him we love him.

We didn't get a lot of great shots, but here are a couple action shots from our time together. He was up for probably 2 hours and to be honest, none of us could remember how long it's been since he was up for that long at a time. It was definitely a day I'll never forget. :)

Mylee - 10 months

10 months

Yes, I know...I haven't posted in over 2 months...I apologize but I have a good excuse which I'm not going to get into in this post. Since I missed Mylee's 9 month picture and post altogether I'll try to sum up the last two months together in this one.

This picture stuff is boring...
glad mom missed last months

Mylee finally got her first tooth on Dec. 12th (almost 9 months old). It was in the front on the bottom left and totally crooked. Within 10 days she had a total of 6 teeth and a month later 7. So as it stands now she has 7 teeth with the Kriegl gap in full effect. She handled it pretty well too.

In December, she became pretty talkative. We got her to say Maddy (her first word) and All Done. She did that for a few weeks and then refused to repeat anything we said after that. Now she just grunts and gabs but nothing that makes sense. She will mimic us and click her tongue, wave hi and bye-bye, blow kisses from the back of her hand, and lift her hands in the air for "So Big". She can also sign "more" and "lights".

She started walking along the ottoman and furniture before the holidays and during the holidays would take a few (4-5) steps before falling forward, and she could stand for short periods of time. We thought she was getting pretty close to walking around the new year until she was plagued with some horrible stomach bug that totally knocked her off her feet and backwards. She had diarrhea for 11 days straight which just tore her little bum up, lost over a pound, wasn't sleeping at night, and became totally clingy...she was miserable. After seeing the doctor twice it was suspected that she might have secondary intolerance from possibly two different cases of an intestinal bug. So it was decided that we put her on soy formula for a week and then a milk-based, but lactose-free formula for another week and then slowly reintroduce the breastmilk back into her diet. Within two days she was back to her smiley, happy self and off and WALKING. It was amazing how quickly she turned things around and decided she had the energy and the guts to walk. She has a ton more control then Maddy ever did in the beginning (although Maddy was only 8 months old), so we are hoping that means less head damage.

Showing her stability at 10 months

Here she goes

She continues to spit-up (throw-up) a ton. The doctors don't seem concerned as she is still a big girl but it sure makes you wonder about her poor esophagus and all the stomach acid that is in it constantly. Plus, it is a serious neusense cleaning up all the time...oh and our poor carpet is now spotted. Our dogs love following her around and licking the carpet after she spits up.

Nice one hey?

Her hair is starting to really come in as you can see in the pictures. It is really fine though. Maddy is excited and always says, "Mommy, Mylee is getting long hair like us!" Mylee really reminds me of Maddy more and more lately. I think she is really looking a lot like her sister. They still have different features, but they don't seem as obvious anymore.

Love this one of her eyes...
shows her dark blue rings around the outsides
(Her eyes are definitely different than Maddy's)

The girls continue to get along pretty well. Maddy loves her little sister and likes to feed Mylee her bottle. It's adorable how Maddy gets so excited for Mylee when she learns something new. Mylee laughs at Maddy a lot and watches her, but she gets annoyed pretty quickly when Maddy carries (drags) her around or is too close to her continuously. Below is a LONG video (sorry) of Mylee dancing and Maddy too. We think Mylee had to have learned her dancing from watching her sister.

Sorry about the naked, full of drool baby but the video
was too adorable not to share anyway