Friday, December 28, 2012

I last wrote about Abbi, leaving off mentioning how I was excited to see her open presents this Christmas. It wasn't a disappointment. She was very excited about the majority of her presents, and she really did seem grateful for the majority of them. She definitely got into "present mode" where she just wanted to open the next one, and the next one, and so on. But we urged her to take some pause and try to appreciate what she was opening, and she reacted well to that.

Another awesome facet of the Christmas season with Abbi this year is that SHE wanted to get a few gifts for people. She specifically wanted to go to the store to buy a gift for her friend Audrey, and for Cole. She looked and looked and looked trying to decide. Then once we were home she wanted to wrap immediately.

Abbi has spent more time this past month sick. Just like last month. I found myself noticing that with Cole around, Abbi seems more prone to getting sick. I'm sure that has at least something to do with the fact that he puts EVERYTHING in his mouth, and then she in turns touches most of those things. A sick Abbi is a rough kid to deal with. She's cranky and hard to please. But another consequence we notice is that the house is silent. In an eerie way, so much so that we look forward to her getting better just to have the dull roar that is Abbi noise back.

Finally - there have been more and more occasions where Abbi and Cole are actually playing with one another. This is why we had two kids. Jenn and I specifically hoped that having another child, they would have one another. To play with each other now, to help get through things in the future, and to help deal with Jenn and I when we're old. And so it starts now, with them playing together. Its awesome to watch her be so nice and helpful to Cole. Last night for instance she was very intent on wanting the help him walk. She just needs to learn a little bit of patience to go with that helpfulness.

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Thursday, December 27, 2012

Abbi got a doctors kit from Grandmom for Christmas and loves it. She proceeded to bust it out and give a prognosis for everyone in attendance on Sunday afternoon. Grandmom had given her some "medicine" to put in her pill bottle. She them gave "pills" to everyone, including herself and Cara. Those "pills" were m&ms.

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Monday, December 24, 2012

I took this picture of Cole and Grandmom yesterday at our Christmas "Eve" dinner get-together. I often have the camera, but don't so often think to take pictures of the kids with their other relatives. Since she was helping Cole enjoy a new toy, I thought it was a good time to get a picture of the two of them.

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Friday, December 21, 2012

At this point it feels like the race is on to one year. Two big changes mark Cole's entry into 10 month old life.

The first change is that he's now got 8 teeth. 4 up top and 4 on the bottom. It seemed as though all these teeth just popped their way out all at once. Cole handled the teething well, the only real problem he had with it was an excess of drool we were forced to deal with.

Then obviously with those teeth, means he can eat more. I say almost nightly that this boy is a machine. Just a food eating machine. If he sees once of us eating, he wants some. He of course also gets his standard meals that he devours, but he just puts it away. Constantly. This is of course all a good thing, I mean he really seems to be self-weening himself off of his mid-day bottle. Which is the goal. He's pretty much eating all the things that we eat, that aren't on his no-no list (shellfish, peanuts, etc.). Whats amusing here as well is that he likes to put things in his mouth himself. Abbi would let you "feed her" where Cole definitely wants to do it himself. If you put it in his mouth, he'll often take it out and then put it back in.

He's still got his all-star personality. Smiling and laughing a good bit. Another development that is continuing is his interactions with Abbi. They are playing "together" a bit more. The other night they were actually playing together. They were playing peek-a-boo on opposite sides of the side table. It very cute to watch.

One thing I've found interesting with Cole in contrast to Abbi is that the things I used to do with her he doesn't find as interesting. For example tossing him into the air. He hates it. Abbi loved it. So I've had to work hard to discover new things to do with Cole to play with and interact with him. While its fun, its also hard because I kinda figure my set of kid tricks worked on all "kid". Clearly they don't.

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Wednesday, December 12, 2012

A few weeks back we went shopping at the Mills and outside of Bass Pro Shop, they had a person dressed up as Frosty. So, after a little bit of hesitation, Abbi decided that she would like her picture taken with him, and the chance to say hi. I'm shocked she was willing to get as close as she did.

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Sunday, December 9, 2012

I feel like each month I write the same thing about Abbi. Each month she gets older, and so do Jenn and I. There really is nothing like a child getting older and older by the day to make you reflect on your own age, and position in life.

I look at Abbi and I can't help but see a mini-me. She loves attention. She's loud. Often times she can be quite obnoxious. She's silly all the time. She loves her mom to death, and her brother too. It really is crazy to look at a little 3 year old, and see yourself, but thats how I feel every day when I look at Abbi.

Some of the problems that were beginning to present themselves last time I wrote are obviously still there. We've had to have a few conversations about telling the truth. Situations where she's clearly lying we're doing our best to encourage her to tell the truth, so she can learn the value of being honest. But its definitely a struggle with her. Its actually kinda funny from my perspective to hear her blame Cole for something that is literally impossible for him to do.

Another awesome development for Abbi is her recognition of some of the alphabet. She can clearly spell her name now, A-b-b-i. If you ask her to write her name it is written as follows: Mountain line (A), line circle (b), line circle (b), and line dot (i). She knows which letter is which, but tends to shout out "Montain Line!" when she sees a capital "A" on bilboards and signs. She we usually respond by asking her the letter, and we always get "A". Its awesome.

I'm really excited to see her open presents this Christmas. Last year she got it, but this year even more so. We've been talking with her about the meaning of Christmas, and this was the first year that she was interested in decorating the tree with us. She's also all about turning on our Christmas lights that are all around the house. I love seeing things through her eyes, it makes the mundane that much more enjoyable.

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Saturday, December 8, 2012

Last night after dinner we had some pudding cups for dessert. It should come as no surprise that Cole loved it. As you can see here he's got the spoon in his mouth and has been at this point chomping away at it for quite a while. He was also a complete mess excuse he had pudding on his hands, face, and clothes. But he loved it!

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Wednesday, December 5, 2012

One thing I truly love about Abbi at this age is her outright crazy behavior. She insisted that Jenn and her both have these headbands on during dinner, and then once we were done Abbi wanted to give Jenn a kiss, while I took a picture. But of course, she decided to also do some crazy eyes.

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Monday, December 3, 2012

If he can pick it up, he puts it in his mouth. EVERYTHING. Cole has become very curious about everything, and of course that means he wants to put it in his mouth. Whats not so good about this, is that we have a ton of little toys that our 3 year old plays with. So it does require constant vigilance to ensure Cole doesn't choke on some stupid little toy. That said - I love him putting this in mouth.

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Yesterday while I was outside putting up Christmas lights, Abbi wanted to come outside as well and help "supervise" my process. I took her picture sitting and supervising, but then she wanted me to take multiple pictures of her in different poses. I threw them all together into this collage shot.

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