Mother/Daughter Tea Party!

Ever since Gracelyn was born, it was always just the two of us and she was used to having my undivided attention.  Then along came Faith, and suddenly she had to share!  Don’t get me wrong – Gracelyn LOVES her little sister and she has never complained about having to share me with Faith.  But every once in awhile, I can tell that she really needs some Gracelyn & Mommy time.  Well, Gracelyn’s Girl Scout Troop got invited to a Mother/Daughter Tea Party on February 27th, and Gracelyn and I decided that it would be something fun for us to do together – Just the two of us!  So, we went out and bought her a special party dress (which will be pulling double-duty as her Easter dress)!  Doesn’t she look so grown up!

We dropped Faith off with Aunt Kelly and Uncle Darius and we were on our way!  Once we arrived, they took a picture of every mother/daughter pair, and they gave us the picture before we left.  The tables were decorated with some really nice tablecloths and flower arrangements and we actually got to use real china for our tea and lemonade! 

I think Gracelyn was a little disappointed with the food that they served – Big Surprise! – But I really enjoyed it!  We were served cucumber, egg salad, and peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, cookies and scones.  The scones were just really hard biscuits and not that good, but the cucumber sandwiches were really quite tasty!

Everyone from Gracelyn’s troop attended the tea party, so Gracelyn had a lot of fun giggling with her friends and I got to know the other mothers a little better.

After everyone finished their tea, the girls got to play some games, which were led by some high school girl scouts from the Noblesville area.  They also made a cute picture frame to put our picture in.  Gracelyn had such a great time she didn’t want to leave and I really enjoyed getting to spend some quality time with just her!  Since I get to spend all day with Faith while Gracelyn is in school – I am trying to make some time at least once a week where it’s just Gracelyn & Mommy time!  I just started a new job so hopefully I will be able to make it work!!

Happy 10-Month Birthday, Munchkin!!

Faith is 10 Months old today!!!  It’s hard to believe that it has already been 10 months.  It feels more like 10 weeks!  My little Munchkin has been such a happy baby so far – fingers-crossed that it continues!

She has been crawling since Christmas and she is into absolutely EVERYTHING!!  Such a curious little thing. . .

 

Her latest ‘trick’ is attempting to climb the stairs.  So far she has only managed to make it to the second stair from the bottom.  Looks like I’m going to have to get the baby gate out a little earlier than I had hoped!!

She likes to eat almost everything.  For a couple of months, she was eating 8 jars of baby food a day!!  Now, she eats 4 - plus some finger food.  Bananas are her absolute favorite and have been since she first started eating solids.  Lately, I have been trying to get her to drink out of a sippy cup, but so far it has not been a huge success.  She mainly just likes to shake it and bang it on various things to make noise.

She got her two bottom teeth at 4 months, but on February 18th, her first top front tooth finally made an appearance.  She has been working on it and drooling constantly for about 5 weeks now.  The other top front tooth is also getting close to breaking through, so I expect to see it any day now!

SOOO BIG!!!  ‘So Big’, ‘Pat-a-cake’ and ‘Peek-a-boo’ are some of her favorite games to play.  She also likes to give kisses, which basically consists of her wiping her drool on my face – But I love it anyway!!  Whenever I change her diaper, she will hug a clean diaper to her face and then whip it away with a big smile – like she’s surprising me.

She definitely knows the word “NO!” and loves to shake her head back and forth whenever I say this!  She also likes it when you shake your head back to her and she will keep doing it for as long as she gets a response.  We are working on waving good-bye right now and sometimes she will do it, but it’s not very often yet.

I have been giving her a bath in her little infant bath tub, instead of the big bath tub, since she was born because it saves on water and it was just faster and easier.  But, the other night I gave her her first bath in the big tub and she really liked it.  Her favorite part was playing with the running water and the tub spout!

And, Boy, Oh boy – Does Faith love her big sister, Gracelyn!!  The first thing Gracelyn does every morning is to go and play with Faith - if she is up.  Gracelyn is the only one who can get Faith to giggle uncontrollably on a daily basis.  And Faith must have an internal alarm clock because on school days she will start to glance at the front door about 10 minutes before Gracelyn’s bus drops her off and she lights up and gets so excited as soon as Gracelyn walks in the front door!

 

It’s been a fun and amazing 10 months!  Happy 10-Month Birthday, Faith Kathleen Rader!!

Ringing in the New Year!!!

Gracelyn, Faith and I rung in the New Year with a kid-friendly celebration at home.  My sister, Kelly, and her husband, Darius, and their two kids came over for a little bit to celebrate!

Gracelyn was very excited all day long about our “New Years’ Party”.  Apparently, I did not do that great of a job explaining it to her the first time because she kept asking me weird questions concerning a ball dropping.  First she thought some kind of ball was going to fall out of the sky.  Then she thought we were going to drop a ball in our house which she proceeded to practice by throwing balls over the second story banister into the entry hall.  Finally, after I explained it for the 7th or 8th time, she finally got it.  Once she realized we were just going to watch it on TV, I think she was a little disappointed.  Oops!!

She was still VERY excited about all of the noise she was going to get to make with the horns and other party favors.  And she loved her hat, however, as you can tell from the picture – Faith was definitely NOT a fan of the hat Gracelyn insisted she wear.

Kelly and Darius brought some sparkling white grape juice with them and Gracelyn and Nathan threw a few cold ones back!!

Kelly and Darius left about 9pm so that they could get the kids in bed.  Party Poopers!!

 

My kids, however, decided that they needed to stay up until midnight to watch the “Ball” drop.  So the three of us played board games until midnight and then joined in with the countdown in New York.  Which, for some reason, makes me cry every time.  I think it’s the song that always does it for me.  Anyway, Gracelyn also thought that it was really cool that our friend Leslie lives in New York not far from where all of the people were that we were watching on TV.  She kept standing really close to the TV so that she could look and see if she could see Leslie there.  It was really cute!!

On the plus side of staying up late  -  Gracelyn & Faith both decided to sleep in, which means that. . . Mommy gets to sleep in!  Hooray!!!

Happy New Year!!!!!  Here comes 2010!!!!!

Home for the Holidays!

We visited my parents from Dec. 23rd to Dec. 28th for the holidays!  I have a hard time getting excited about Christmas for most of December.  To me the entire month of December is just stressful and we are ALWAYS busy.  But as soon as I get everything loaded into the car for our trip home and we are about 5 minutes into our trip, I finally start to relax and get a little excited.  I love having the entire family together for a few days without everyone having to rush in 6 different directions.  I also LOVE seeing the excitement of Christmas and Santa through Gracelyn’s eyes!

Here is another picture collage of some random photos from our Holiday trip home!