Dear Keira, please stay 23 months old forever...

Keira will be 2 in just a nine days.  As hard as I try, I can't quite wrap my head around the fact that our baby girl is not so much a baby girl anymore!  Where has the time gone?  I just put Keira to bed and at this very moment, I've never wanted anything more in my life than to freeze time and keep her as she was this weekend.  It was a good one, nearly perfect.

On Friday she went to bed daddy's girl, but woke up Saturday morning wanting me and only me.  While comforting Ryan, I was not-so-secretly flashing a smile on my face and loving my baby girl's attention.  The tables are usually turned, so of course I was enjoying every moment! 

My favorite activity of the weekend was spending some time with Keira in the kitchen.  For Christmas, her Nanny Jess had gotten her some sugar cookie mix and we finally had some free time to bake them this weekend.  I pulled one of our dining table chairs up to our island so that she could help knead the dough.  To my surprise, she took to it right away!

 

Although I don't want her to grow up, I am looking forward to all the memories we will make together in the kitchen.  I think she may be a natural baker.

Once the dough was nice and soft, I brought out the rolling pin.  I assumed she would just observe, but she took it from me and started going for it.  She refused to give it back.  I do!  

After rolling the dough, we started to cut them out.  I bought some football themed cookie cutters and set of alphabet cookie cutters to help her with learning her letters.  Amazingly, she can identify almost all the letters of the alphabet by sight, completely blowing our minds away!  This is the great part of her growing up.  I love seeing her learn and do new things day after day!

After cutting out all of our shapes, she took an hour nap.  When she woke up, I went to get her, and instead of quickly bringing her downstairs I sat with her in her rocking chair.  She nestled her little head in my shoulder and we rocked for a good thirty minutes.  I'm not sure if she ever fell back asleep but she was as still as could be, only moving to readjust a couple of times.  Moments like these are rare.  I'm not home often when she wakes up from her naps and we had nowhere to be, so we just sat and rocked.   I focused on the quietness, the calmness of the room, how her head fit perfectly in the nook of my neck, her gentle breathing, how she was holding me tight and how I was holding her back... and for thirty minutes time stood still.  I kept thinking, my precious little girl, mommy loves you so much!  I don't ever want to let you go.  Of course, eventually she lifted her head and the weekend moved on.

We spent a fun evening with Ryan's son, Jeremiah and his family, so we waited to decorate until Sunday afternoon.  We picked the cookie shaped like a football jersey and I frosted, while she sprinkled!

 

 

She picked her colors by name.  Just like her letters and numbers, she now knows a lot of her colors.  She can identify red, pink, purple, blue, green and yellow.  She still has difficulty with brown, orange and black, but we'll get there!

 

Of course she had to taste test during the process! Yum!

Daddy helped keep the sprinkles on the island and not on the floor.

She ended up with a mostly blue, little bit of pink, green and yellow football jersey with an "F" for Felten.

She had more fun decorating and could care less about eating the actual cookie!  Of course, I thought the sprinkles and 10 chocolate morsels she ate during the process where more than enough for the day.

She was in a playful mood the rest of the night!  While watching football, she yelled, "Go, football, go!" as the Broncos ran one into the end zone.  She sang "Hurry, hurry!" with the mice in Cinderella as they sewed her dress.  When she wanted a snack, she pulled my hand toward the pantry, begging "Come on!"  She then had me read her book after book, cheering "One more time, one more time, please!"  She even started saying, "Jus kiddin!" and uses it in the appropriate context.  After months of trying to get her to say, "thank you" it finally took this weekend.  And if we make a request of her, she says "Ok! Ok!" in the cutest, most playful way.  Who taught her all of this!?!  And can I hug her any harder than I already do? 

I say it during every stage, but I really think I love THIS stage the BEST.  I don't want her to turn 2!  I really don't. I want her to stay 23 months forever!  Wah!  Too bad Keira's in bed and Ryan's at work because I need a family hug.  Haha!  Hopefully, you are laughing with me.  I know I'm being a little ridiculous.  2 will be great and I really am looking forward to her next year.  God has so much more planned and it would be selfish for me to keep her from all that HE has designed.  I can't wait to see how much she learns and grows and all the funny that comes out of her mouth!  This weekend though, I tried to put the future aside to live in the moment... in the 23 months!  I have just 9 days left and I'm going to cherish every. Single. One. 

Christmas Jammie Wars!

Sorry to disappoint, but we don't have a cool rap video to go with our Christmas jammies and if we did it would be more Sesame Street rap than 90's rap! And we'd be bragging about running to the mailbox and back rather than conquering triathlons.  Truth be told, I admire the Holderness Family, not just for their awesome matching pjs but for their creativity and the ability to edit it all together.    If you haven't watched the Holderness video yet you need too! Click right here.  Just as funny is the response I saw from the Thien Family gettin' jammie with it!

Despite the competition, I am still excited to reveal our own Christmas jammies!  I'm happy to say we got ours on a budget.  Ever tried looking for matching Christmas pajamas? Apparently, it's not just our family tradition.  It's an industry just as big as the Ugly Christmas Sweater!  Take the The Company Store.  Their matching pajamas start at $49... each! Each!  Times that by the number in your family and you quickly realize someone is making A LOT of money on pjs you wear for only a few days because you feel odd wearing them in the middle of July.  Sigh. Yes, they are very pretty and they look super comfy and make for great videos, but you can get your entire family's matching Christmas set for under what it cost for just one pair at The Company Store.  You just have to think outside the box!

Instead of matching we went with a theme and it all stemmed from Ryan wanting Ninja Turtle pajama pants from Target on Black Friday.  I did protest at first.  They weren't Christmassy at all!  On the other hand, they were just $10 bucks.  I almost said no and then came across a really cute Elmo pajama shirt on sale for $5.  In the middle of a large crowd at Target, I reasoned that we can all wear a fictional characters adored by kids and kids at heart!  It would be our theme!  Of course, Ryan was happy about my reasoning and quickly got his pants.  My shirt didn't come with any pants but I found pink ones on sale that worked.  For Keira, I picked out Super Girl pajamas that even I want to wear as an adult.  They came with a cape! How cool is that?!?  She also loves to spread her arms out and pretend to fly, so it was perfect.  We were set for under $50, in fact, with a couple bucks to spare!  On top of that, we can wear them all year long.  I barely wore my pajamas from Christmas.  It does feel weird wearing "Ho Ho Ho" pants when it's 80 degrees outside!

Although we can't wear them to bed until tomorrow evening (my rule) we put them on tonight for family pictures in front of the tree.  Here they are!

The show-only-your-pajama-pants-and-your-child picture.

The look-straight-and-smile picture.  

Ryan's leg is propped up on purpose 

so you can see the Ninja Turtles!

 

The we've-got-to-get-Dutchie-in-the-picture picture.  

Take 1.

Take 2.

And take 3. Keira looks older than her age in this one!

 

 And last but not least, my personal favorite, 

the let's-pretend-to-fly picture!

Ok, with a comic book effect.  She makes a cute super hero!

Side note: Ryan got me Sony Vegas last Christmas and I still haven't completely edited a single project!  So perhaps, if I can find the time to learn this year, next Christmas we can get into the game for realz.  In the meantime, peace out and peace to you & your family this the eve of Christmas Eve!

Christmas around our home!

It's just four days before Christmas but we've been enjoying our decorations all month long.  I will be sad when the holiday comes and goes and we have to take it all down, especially our tree!  Decorations are my favorite part of the holidays and this year, Keira helped making it all the more special.

She was excited to bring the tree home!  We have this strange little nook in our living room that's perfect for our tree.  The only downside is that we have to move our love seat into the garage.  The lack of seating, though, is totally worth it in the end!

  

Keira marched around the tree with Ryan as he unraveled the string.  It magically grew with every step, which fascinated her.

I thought for sure she would have no interest in helping me trim the tree, but as soon as Ryan brought the ornaments down from the attic she got to work!  It quickly became a mommy-daughter project!

First came the lights, which she loved! Wow!

She made a really good light supervisor.  

Of course, a great boss shows appreciation, so we had to take some time out for hugs just 2 minutes in!  I was happy to oblige but we had a long way to go. 

Rather than just stringing the lights around the tree in circles, I like to zig zag them from the trunk to the edge of the tree and back to the truck over and over again until I get to the very top.  It adds depth to the glow and lights the entire tree rather than just the outside of it.  It does take a little longer and it's easy to get carried away.  I accidently used all the lights we had, leaving nothing left for our front porch!

Next came the ornaments.  I based the theme of our tree on these three signs: Merry Christmas, Let it Snow and Ho Ho Ho.  We found them in the dollar section at Target and I fell in love with the mix of red, blue and green.  On the plus side, we already had red and blue ornaments, so all we had to buy were green ones, saving us a lot of money!

Christmas exploded in our living room!  We've collected a lot of ornaments over the years.  Ryan dislikes this part the most, but I assure him there is a method to this chaos.  

Keira takes a more active role when it comes to the ornaments. Unpacking things just happens to be her specialty!

You never fully know until you experience it, but Christmas is more magical with children! I had so much fun with her this year, the first of hopefully many to come.  I know it will only get better!

So here it is, our tree completely decorated and presents at its feet. It's such a merry little tree! In fact, if Keira were a Christmas tree this is exactly how I would picture her! It just captures her spirit perfectly and the color combo reflects the kid in all of us, but is grown up enough for our adult side as well. 

I had pictured putting these signs on our mantle, but decided they were better suited for the tree.  Ryan didn't like it at first, but after adding all the other ornaments, they seemed to fit right in.

One of our Christmas traditions is buying an ornament that best represents the year.  I really didn't have time to look for one at Hallmark, but I did happen to see this one at Starbucks when I was picking up a cup of coffee.

It came with a gold pen so that you could personalize it and after much reflection we settled on this:

"The only thing better than coffee are family hugs."

Keira has definitely become a hugger!  She'll often hug you out of the blue and is especially fond of family hugs like this.  As soon as she hears us say, "Family hug!" she smiles and grabs us both by the shoulders. It's certainly something we want to remember about 2013! 

Now for the presents!  I didn't purposely match the wrapping paper to the tree, but we just happened to have a couple rolls left over from last year that did.  Sweet - another dollar saved! 

I also had some blue ornaments that didn't make it to the tree so I used them to adorn a few of our gifts.  I just love the way a simple ornament embellishes a present and instead of ribbon I used fluffy green yarn in its place.

Keira and the other kids got special Sesame Street paper that I found at Big Lots!

This year, we added a countdown to our Christmas decor, which will be even more important next year when Keira fully gets it.  I found this in the dollar section of Target too.  It has a chalkboard like surface.  I just need to remember to keep updating it, something I have not been very good at so far.

Our mantle gets to dress up for Christmas too...

and we hung stockings in our foyer, one for each of us.

Lastly, my only art & craft project this season was this wreath. I was inspired by a friend of mine who makes these as a hobby.  See her tutorial here.  Notice the yarn?  It's the same yarn that I ended up using around the presents.  To be honest, I didn't want to go back to the store to buy more ribbon, so I went with the yarn.  I like to think I was being more resourceful than lazy!

I hung it over the entrance to the kitchen.

Our decorations this year ended up being a lot of old mixed in with a little bit of new.  It all came together though... our little Christmas miracle before Christmas!