Holiday Travels

A belated Merry Christmas to all! Our holiday travels have not yet ended but I wanted to at least post a bit to catch up on what we've been up to over our vacation. Alex and I are still in Philadelphia at my parents' house, and we'll probably be heading back home on Saturday. Marlon went down to Orlando on the 26th for recruiting and he will also be heading home on Saturday. But to back track a week....

We started out our vacation last Thursday with a trip to State College to visit our old neighbors and friends. We stayed the night and had a great time visiting with everyone--I definitely realize how much I miss the Penn State area every time we go back--there's nothing quite like living in the town where you have so many wonderful memories....college, meeting my husband, buying our first home, the hospital where Alex was born, etc. We continued on from SC to Philadelphia on Friday and spent Friday evening with my family before heading over to Marlon's parents' house on Saturday for their annual christmas dinner/get-together with family and a few close friends. (I will have to post pictures later!) On Sunday Marlon and I actually had a "date day" and went into New York for the afternoon--we went to a yummy Pan-Asian restaurant for lunch, Ruby Foo's, then went to see Hairspray (which we really enjoyed!). I did learn that I probably won't be visiting any broadway shows again when I'm 6+ months pregnant unless we invest in the premium seating, since it was VERY tight quarters and not easy to get out of the middle of the row every time I needed to hit the bathroom!

We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with my family, then we headed over to Marlon's parents' house again for the afternoon (our families are only 30 minutes apart so we are extremely lucky that we can spend holidays with both!). Alex knew Santa came to visit and brought some presents, and she loved opening them all! Her few favorites were probably the dress up outfits from Aunt Renee and Nana (much to her daddy's dismay!), the Candy Land castle edition game (she doesn't have a clue how to play it but loves the little device that dispenses all of the game pieces!), and her flutes that are meant to be used in the bath (althought she is in bed playing them as we speak!).

That's a brief update for now--I don't want to go too crazy with the posting until I can upload some photos! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday and were able to enjoy time with friends and family!

Home Again

I finally returned on Friday from my week-long trip to Philadelphia for work. Alex and Marlon had a great week of father-daughter bonding, which was long overdue for them--they both had fun so I didn't feel so bad about being gone all week! I'm very grateful that Alex enjoys spending time with her dad and doesn't miss me while I'm gone. She goes many months without seeing him very often when he is in season, so this time is definitely much needed for the both of them!

We spent Friday evening visiting with Marlon's college roommate, Greg, his wife Krista, and their son Luke. Luke and Alex are only about 2 months apart so they have fun playing together. We were hoping to head to State College on Saturday to visit with our old neighbors but the weather didn't cooperate, so I spent the rest of our weekend making cookies, doing laundry, wrapping presents, and cleaning (in addition to spending time catching up with my family!). We are heading to Philadelphia this weekend for the holidays, so I have a lot to do around the house before we go, including finishing up the last of my christmas shopping.

As for a pregnancy update, I'm 28 weeks along now and am beginning my once-every-2-week visits to the doctor. It's hard to believe I've reached that point already! I've definitely gotten much bigger (I need to post a picture once I take one) and I'm definitely uncomfortable doing things like getting up from sitting on the floor. I still have 3 months to go so I can only imagine how I'll feel a few months from now! We're still going back and forth on name choices for the baby---it's definitely been tougher this time around!

Here's a quick picture of Alex and "her Sophie"--this was taken while we were trying to capture our christmas card photo yesterday (a little late, I know). This was not the final choice but I still thought it was very cute.

Oh Christmas Tree

I wanted to get a post up before I head to Philly for the week for work. We finally went out on Friday and cut down our Christmas tree, a family tradition. We were trying to wait around for nice weather, but when we saw that wasn't going to happen I figured that it's all about snow and winter, so let's venture out in the elements and enjoy ourselves! It was actually raining off and on, but the conditions weren't bad. Once again we ended up with a huge tree--bigger than we planned for. I think it was over 8 feet tall, but since we have high ceilings in our living room it fits. Alex fell asleep on the way to the tree farm (with a lollipop in her mouth) since she'd missed her nap.

Here's Alex and daddy venturing off to find our tree!

Our massive tree laying in the snow after Marlon cut it down...

Now this farm we go to does NOT have a bailer/shaker (we learned this last year) so we had to drive home on the interstate with this tree tied on top of our car, not wrapped up at all. If only we had a video camera for the ride home--I drove and Marlon held on to some of the twine through the sunroof to keep it from sliding around. We had to pull over a few times to re-adjust, and we finally made it on the 25 minute drive home. It was pretty amusing but it's so worth it when we pull into the driveway and realize we made it!

Our smiling kid helping hang the lights.

Alex and mommy (and baby brother) putting up the ornaments.

I was also able to make my first batch of christmas cookies yesterday--snickerdoodles, which we were able to enjoy while decorating the tree and listening to christmas music. Now it feels like the holiday season is here! I was even able to wrap a few presents last night and put them under the tree.

On a different subject, Alex has been doing great with potty training--only 1 or 2 accidents in the past week. Yesterday she was down for a nap (but not sleeping) and Marlon checked in on her only to find out she decided to go into her bathroom (which is off of her room) and use her little potty to go poop. Very independent of her, however she made a little bit (ok-a lot) of a mess because she then tried to dump it into the big toilet, and when it didn't come clean she went through half a box of wipes trying to clean it, then clogging the big toilet, then trying to change her dirty clothes (since she didn't wipe so well)--so Marlon immediately called for assistance and he got her right into the tub while I got the task of cleaning up the mess. It was pretty amusing (I debated taking pictures but thought I could probably do without), but despite the mess it's nice to see she's trying to do it on her own. "All By Myself" is the theme for this week. She wants to do everything all by herself, from getting dressed, to going to the bathroom, to getting stuff to eat. They sure do grow up fast!

The White Stuff arrives

So we're getting our first official snow day today--schools are closed and it has not stopped snowing since I got out of bed this morning. Alex stayed home today so of course we had to venture out and play in the snow for a bit. These pictures were taken over 4 hours ago, and it has snowed a lot since then, so I'll have to post some more pictures once I take some.

Alex enjoyed eating snow--whe was warned to stay away from the yellow stuff--so this one is of her leaning down to pick up some snow with her mouth.

And this is her enjoying it!

We made 3 mini-snowmen (they only had eyes and a nose--finding the other parts was too much work)--here is one of them!

I also realized I'd never posted pictures of Alex's newly painted room and new furniture. She loves her big girl bed and has done great sleeping in it. We have yet to decorate the walls, but I at least wanted to get the room set up with furniture. We also just painted the baby's room, so once that gets somewhat set up I'll posted pictures of that as well!

I also recently got some photos from my sister-in-law, Lauren of my nephew Carter. I had to post one because he's just so cute! I saw him when he was only 1 day old, but we're looking forward to seeing him again over the holidays! He just recently turned 1 month old, and he's getting so big! We're looking forward to the days when he can play with his boy cousin who will be born in a few months!

Deceptive Feeding Begins!

So I finally got around to purchasing the Deceptively Delicious cookbook a week or so ago, and yesterday I went out and got a steamer to cook veggies, so I decided to give some recipes a try last night. I must say that I am impressed so far, and it makes me feel good to know I am sneaking healthy food into Alex's diet. Last night I cooked and pureed sweet potatoes and butternut squash, which was a fun process. I did learn that my blender doesn't double very well as a food processor, so I think I'll have to invest in one of those. This morning for breakfast I made pancakes with sweet potato in them--I figured I should at least try the food that I'm feeding her, and I'll admit they were good! For lunch I swiped some butternut squash onto the bread when making a grilled cheese sandwich for Alex's lunch, and she didn't seem to notice. She also scarfed down the pancakes this morning--I froze the remaining ones but I'm not sure how well they'll hold up in the freezer since they seemed a bit more moist than regular pancakes. Last night I mixed up some plain lo-fat yogurt with some pureed frozen blueberries, added a little powdered sugar, then put them into popsicle molds to make frozen yogurt popsicles. I wanted to start with some of the easy, basic recipes to see if this idea is really feasible for me, and so far, so good! My next goal is to attempt to make homemade brownies with carrot and spinach in them!! I LOVE brownies, so I'm sure I'll be pretty picky about how these taste, but I'll keep you posted!

On another very important note....we need some feedback on baby names. This is totally Marlon's idea to post this on here--I'm much more a fan of "I really don't want to know if someone doesn't like our name choices, particularly if I really love them" but we have had a difficult time finding any names that we both would consider for the baby. So far we only have 2 in the running--and we each prefer one of them (not the same one of course). What are your thoughts? The 2 choices right now are Cameron and Kellan. Let me know which you prefer, and feel free to share any other suggestions you have as we're open to ideas!