Christmas in Columbia 08

Only 11 days until Christmas and we are counting!!!! We have done lots of fun Christmas activities over the last couple of weeks and Sallie is really getting excited!!! We went from asking Santa for a motorcycle and a scooter for Christmas and to a baby doll today. Wow, what drastic differences. We will see what direction Santa decides to go in. Sallie and Ward went on a train ride with Santa Saturday and we also went to the mall to see Santa a couple of weeks ago. She was not really crazy about Santa at the mall but did sit with Santa on the train ride. Sallie has decorated a gingerbread house and made lots of cute Christmas crafts for our Christmas tree. We all went downtown to the Christmas parade last Saturday with our friends. Sallie has learned that Christmas is Jesus' birthday and Jesus was born in Bethlehem. She is very excited about having cake and blowing out candles on Christmas for Jesus. I guess I need to get to baking. Anyway, our house becomes more active everyday and with Christmas approaching it is full charge. Anna is getting happier and more interactive daily and so much fun to be around. She really is a good baby!!! Sleeping has become more of a nightly routine now and she only gets up once in the night now. We have had to put a gate up at the door in Sallie's room due to her being able to open the door now and due to her getting up at all hours wandering around the house and because she has become quite the mischievous little girl. She is into everything now and I mean everything. She uses Anna's bumbo seat as a step stool to get boost herself up to the cookie jar or the candy. She saw me coming when she was doing this yesterday and managed to unwrap 5 Hersey kisses and put them in her mouth by the time I could get to her. I put her down for a nap last week and was upstairs working. I had the monitor on and never heard anything. About a hour after putting her down I walked downstairs to get something and started smelling something that resembled nail polish remover. I went back to the bedroom and she had gotten into my bathroom cabinets and.......painted her "poenails", sprayed hairspray everywhere including her hair and my bathroom floor, taken my hair straightening oil and dumped all three little bottles on the floor, colored my cabinets with eyeliner, and after that I stopped looking. I was in awe!! I wanted to laugh so badly at the look on her face when I caught her but knew that I could not. She could have gotten into the pack of razors and that would have been bad. I picked her up and placed her very firmly back in her bed. She says that I slammed the door but really I shut it very firmly. Everyone asks if I took pics and sorry I did not. I was too mad at the time. Due to this and her wandering upstairs in the middle of the night, her door is now being gated during nap time. Today is the first day so I will post the results. Our Christmas tree is up and we have really enjoyed decorating our new house. If feels like home and all our Christmas decorations fit so nicely in it. I will post lots of Christmas pictures that I have taken over the last couple of weeks. We had dinner with Ward's brother, Carter, and sister-in-law, Beth, and their new baby tonight. Little Ellis is beautiful and Sallie just loved her. I got a cute shot of the three girls. I will post that picture as well. It is so funny to see how babies from the same family look so different.

Thanksgiving 2008

I am so thankful for my family and we had a great time this Thanksgiving celebrating family. The entire side of my Dad's family came down to the beach. We have not seen some of those family members since Ward and I were married. It was great seeing everyones children and letting them all play. We all had Thanksgiving lunch together and then got to watch the Clemson Carolina game on Saturday. The kids had a blast. Anna got a little off while we were there and did not want to sleep and did not want to be put down. This was a little frustrating but overall it was a great trip. We came home Saturday night and had Sunday to get ready for Christmas. I am looking forward to the upcoming weeks of seeing Christmas everywhere. Sallie seems to really be into Christmas this year as I think this is really the first year that she knows a little about what is going on. I did try and take her to see Santa Claus at the beach and she had no interest and said that she did not want to sit in his lap. he talked to her from afar and she told him that she wanted a motorcycle for Christmas. No babies, no dress up, no princess stuff, but a motorcycle. Go figure!! Anyway, hopefully I will be able to convince her to sit in Santa's lap with Anna. We will see!!

The Wiggles

Well, we did it. We went to our first show, the Wiggles. It was so much fun. I actually enjoyed the Wiggles. Sallie enjoyed it as well however she did fall asleep in the middle of the show. It was during her normal nap time so she stayed awake for half then fell asleep and then woke up to see the end. She is her Mama's child. Poor Ward never gets to watch a entire movie with me. Anyway, it was fun. Anna stayed home with Ward while Sallie and I went and met Mary Grace and Betsy for the show. Other than that, our weekend was uneventful. Anna seems to be doing much better now with her reflux. She is smiling all the time now and I love this. She is still not sleeping through the night but hopefully that will come wiht time. They say that she is doing great at daycare as well. She takes a short cat nap there and then usually takes a long afternoon nap which is great for me so I can get some work done. Yesterday when I walked into daycare Anna looked like she had been crying for a while. They said that she did not like the temperature of her bottle. It looks like we have a high mainteance little girl on our hands. I am looking forward to the Thanksgiving holidays and some time off for some r&r.

Back to work

Well I started back to work Monday and it was so hard. Sunday night was a long night to start with because Anna was up many times. Ward had to leave early Monday morning for a case in the upstate and Sallie decided to wake up at 5:00 am and get in bed with me and not go back to sleep. We made it to school by 9 and I got busy at home on the computer. Thank goodness I did not have to go anywhere Mon and I could work from home as there was no shower for me that morning. Getting back into the swing of things is going to take some time as I am sure that this is normal. I hated leaving Anna at daycare but she was only there for three hours and she did fine. She was screaming crying when I picked her up however they said that she had only been crying for a few minutes after she drank her bottle. Sallie goes on the playground and can look into Anna's room window. They said that she came down to check on Anna and when I asked her what Anna was doing, Sallie said that she was crying and Mrs. Kathy was rocking her. Sallie is my little watch dog. It is nice having one day on and one day off with work. Tuesday and Thursdays will be for story times and play dates. Mary Grace and Price came over and played today and we had lots of fun. I had a really cute video clip of Sallie saying the pledge of Allegiance that I was going to post for veterans day however for some reason it did not record so I will have to get this again tomorrow and post it. I could not believe that she was able to say the entire Pledge of Allegiance. She put her hand over her heart and said it and then started singing "I am proud to be a American". At the end of the song she said Amen. I was so impressed. She was even able to say indivisible to where I could understand it. We are going to see the Wiggles live in person Saturday and I am so excited for Sallie. I know she will love it. We have been watching lots of the Wiggles at home to prepare. We are still loving our new house and getting more settled. I finally got a picture of Anna smiling yesterday. She makes you work really hard for a smile so I have had a hard time getting a picture of a smile. I got one and will post!!! Sallie's new saying these days is "cause". When I ask her why she did something she says "cause". She also says "I don't know" a lot. She has been coming into our room in the mornings when she wakes up lately. I do not have a monitor in her room anymore since she is so close to our room and we leave all doors open. Sunday morning she came in our room and around to my side to wake me up. Her breath smelled really minty but at the time I did not put two and two together. Turns out she had been up for a while and I had not heard her. I walked into the den and she had my purse emptied all across the floor. She had every tube of lipstick open and had taken 5 pieces of gum, chewed them, and placed the wrappers neatly on top of the trash can. She had placed her wad of chewed gum on Ward's bed side table before coming to me as if she were trying to hide it. All I could do was laugh!!!! The child loves some gum and would do most anything for it.

Halloween

Halloween was a fun night for us. We went to a Fall Festival with Mary Grace and Price and had lots of fun. We did trunk or treating and got to ride a ride and jump in a bouncy house. It was lots of fun and we hope to be able to celebrate Halloween like this for many more years to come. Sallie got a lot of candy and managed to eat a lot of it as she received it. We took care of the rest when we got home and tired to have a sugar detox the next day. Here are some pictures of the fun time that we had. Saturday night we had some friends come over and play and had a great time. We had wings, watched football and played!!!

6th folder 6th picture

This is Sallie at the beach the summer 07. Wow! She looks like a baby and is so grown up now. Can not believe how time has flown by. Anyway here's what you do... go to your 6th picture folder and the 6th picture in it. Tell about the picture and then tag 2 more people., Whitney and Angela are it!!!

The new house

Well, we have officially moved and are loving our new house. We moved on Friday and Saturday and got out of our last box last night. We are getting more settled everyday. It has been a crazy last couple of days but WE DID IT!!!! Our pictures are not hung and our sun porch remains empty but that will come with time. I have to return to work a week from Monday and want to take next week to just relax and spend time with the girls. I am dreading the return to work but know that I will ease back into it and make it work for now. Our house is wonderful. We love everything about it. We miss our wonderful neighbors and friends from Shirley street but know that they are only a couple of miles away. We have met our new neighbors and they seem really nice. I think that we have a female version of Mr Moon. A 93 year old lady lives diagonally across the street from us so I am anxious to meet her. Sallie has not said anything about the old house as she always says that she wants to go to her new house. I guess this is a good sign that she likes it. She has a nice big play room to play in now and that has been great. She also loves her play set outside and has learned to ride her tricycle. The tricycle was put away in the garage for Christmas and she found it in the move. Instead of fighting that battle we went ahead and let her have it. We made this her moving gift whatever that may be. I will post some pics of the house as soon as I can find my camera. Ha!!! We went to Boo at the zoo last night and had a good time. Sallie could not un wrap her candy quick enough. She ate more candy last night than I know. We did not take the camera with us so no pics of boo at the zoo. Anyway, Anna is napping so i must go take advantage of my time with two sleeping as that does not happen often.

Halloween 2008, the duck and the ladybug

Anna's first trip to the beach

Well we took Anna on her first trip to the beach and had a really good time. After titling this post I realized that we did not take any pictures of her actually on the beach. Friday we went down on the beach and did some fishing but left Anna at the house because she was sleeping. Saturday it was cold and rained all day and Sunday, the tide was up and we left at lunch time. Due to all this, Anna was not on the beach, just at the beach. Oh well, we will get pictures next time. We did get some pictures of her on her first golf cart ride. We had a really good time and enjoyed spending some time with my parents. Sallie also got to watch me reel a fish in on Friday. I was not acutally fishing but watching Ward's pole for him while he was going to get a drink. I saw a tug at the pole and started reeling it in. It was pretty cool. That was the first fish I have ever caught and Sallie watched the whole thing. Her eyes were so wide as she watched that little fish. We threw him back to find his parents. He was a little too small to keep. While at the beach our first niece on Ward's side of the family was born. Beth and Carter had a little girl name Elizabeth "Ellis" Arrington Warren. She is precious and everyone is doing great. I will post a couple pictures of her. We went over there last night and had a great visit. Anna looks huge compared to Ellis and they are only two months apart. It is amazing at how fast they grow. Anna seems to be doing a little better and it has been confirmed that she does have a milk allergy for sure. We went back to the doctor today and had another diaper tested. It was all clear. Since I have been off of milk for a week we can only assume that is what caused the first diaper to reflect a allergy. Oh well we will see how long I can do this!! It has been tough. Only two more days until our big move. We are so excited. Sallie is getting ready too. I am not sure that she really understands but she seems to. There are boxes everywhere. On a last note, something really funny...Ward took Sallie to Lowe's with him last night. He was asking a man there for some help with the paint. After the man helped Ward, Ward said thanks, I appreciate it. Sallie turned around and yelled "Appreciate it" Ward said it was the funniest thing he had ever seen. She is a little parrot now. We really have to remember to be careful with everything we say....

You know it is October when............

Pumpkin spiced items become available (especially at Starbucks, yum!!), football is in full effect, Fall festivals begin, pumpkins on porches, mums everywhere, and the South Carolina State Fair comes to Columbia, SC. As always, we went to Fair this year. We left Anna at home with Peppy and Ward and I took Sallie. Unfortunately we went on a day that was pay one price ride night and also a holiday from school for most school districts therefore it was so crowded you could hardly walk. Sallie could only ride three of the rides due to her height but wanted to ride every ride there. She was a little "difficult" to manage this year at the fair due to this and just due to her age in general however she loved the rides that she could ride and really enjoyed her ice cream cone. Ward got his fair food fix for the year and I just watched it all. I have become such a germ free crazy person that it was hard to enjoy some of the animal petting part this year. I will remember to pack my sanitizer for next year. Anna had her two month well visit today. She weights 10 pounds 8 ounces. She is in the 50th percentile for everyting. She is bigger than Sallie was at this age. I have been concerned over the last couple of weeks that Anna never feels comfortable. I know that she has reflux and bad gas pains however it just seems like she grunts in pain all the time and does not smile much. I had a lot of questions for the doctor this morning and even took in a stool sample. nice!!! The doctor loved that one. I noticed that her stools were getting more greenish in color and smelly. Sorry for the gross description. Anyway, they looked at it under the microscope and saw some blood in it. They believe that she has a milk allergy and that is why she is always uncomfortable. They are sending the stool sample off to make sure that it is not a bacterial infection however the doctor says that she is pretty confident that it is a milk allergy. I am soooo glad that I thought to take that diaper in. Before examining the diaper the doctor thought that it was just Anna's reflux. Now we can adjust my diet with no diary and see if this helps her. This is going to be so hard for me as I do love my cheese and especially my peanut butter cup ice cream every night, but I will do anything to ease Anna's pain. We will go back and re examine her stool in a week and see if this worked. She got 4 shots today and that was rough but we are all healthy and that is a true blessing. Please keep us in your prayers for a improved little stomach and for me being able to resist ice cream.

The weekends

The weekends mean lounging around on Saturday mornings and not having to rush with breakfast and getting dressed. The weekends mean that Ward is around to help and not rushed off to work. The weekends mean reading the paper and drinking coffee slowly and not gulping it down. The weekends mean a good shower without interruptions and being able to put on makeup and look in the mirror. The weekends mean morning stroller rides and help at the grocery store on Sundays. The weekends mean a little time out to Starbucks or Target while Ward watches the girls. I love the weekends. This weekend Ward was out of town and Wow....talk about taking a step back and really appreciating all that Ward does that may sometimes go unnoticed in our busy lives. It was almost like Sallie knew that I was by myself this weekend. She tested every ounce of patience that I have. We went to lunch yesterday with my Uncle and Grandmother. Sallie was pretty good at lunch but just getting out of the house to lunch was a disaster. If I said white, she wanted black. Thank goodness she went down for a long nap after lunch. Anna slept really well Friday night but not so well Saturday night. Sunday the three of us went to church. I was so ready to get Sallie strapped in a car seat this morning that we were actually 15 minutes early to church and that was a first. I then decided to stop by the grocery store with both kids on the way home. Bad idea..... first of all where do you put groceries with two children in the cart when you have to get one of the car buggies from publix. This is the only buggy that we can get now when we go to the grocery store. They are so hard to steer and get around in publix but it is a fight everytime so I always try and find a car buggy. Then Sallie decided to run off from me in the parking lot of publix and when I called her, she looked at me, laughed, and ran even further. Needless to say, we came home, had a cracker for lunch, and Sallie went to bed. Ward is now home and it feels soooo good. I know that these two year old tantrums can be so trying but I will blink my eyes and Sallie will be all grown up. I am so thankful for these trying times. Bless her two year old heart.... I prayed for patience at church this morning!!!

A busy weekend

We had a very busy and fun weekend. Friday we went to dinner with some friends and Saturday my nephew, Sam, had his 5th birthday party. I can not believe that he is 5. Wow, time flies. His birthday party was at Country Adventures and Sallie had a blast. She rode a horse, roasted marshmallows, had a hayride, and got to pet the animals. Ward took Sallie to the birthday party so that I could go to Beth's baby shower which was a lot of fun as well. The pictures that I will post of Sallie riding the horse make me laugh. They are so funny!!! She has not quit talking about the horsie ride and all the marshmallows that she ate. She smelled like a camp fire when she got home. Ward said that she did not care about the hot dogs and all that she wanted were the marshmallows and birthday cake. Saturday night Nana came and played for a little while before bedtime and Sunday we took Anna to Church for the first time. She did great. She was quite the entire service. We sat in the back just in case but did not have to get out of our seats. Now both girls are asleep and I am getting ready to join them!!!!

Proud new homeowners

Well, we decided that it was time to put our house on the market and leave 1310 Shirley Street. We are starting to grow out of our little cozy home and found a house that we love in Forest Acres. We put our house on the market and within 18 hours it was sold. We then put a contract on the house we love and within a day had a signature on that one as well. It all worked out great and our prayers were answered. We will close on October 27th. Wow!! I am already getting really sad. We will leave the only home that we have known since we have been married and the only home that both Anna and Sallie have ever known. We have awesome neighbors and have been blessed by some of our best friends being right down the street. Mr Moon will be greatly missed as well. I know that we are not going far and I have to just keep reminding myself that this is all part of the growing process and we must move out of our comfort zone sometimes to grow. Anyway, October will be busy with this move and I go back to work on October 26th. This is the end of my maternity leave. This will be a sad day as well.

Today we finally broke down and joined the Riverbanks zoo. We have been two times in the last week so we decided to go ahead and join. Feels kind of neat to be able to now go to the zoo whenever we want to as members. We had a great weekend. Friday night dinner at Monterrey was nice and Saturday we had a good visit from Ward's Dad, Katherine, and Addie. We went to the zoo and had a fun time. It wore Sallie out. She is still napping as we speak. I will post some pictures from our zoo trip. She liked the train ride and carousel best of all. It was a wonderful week and weekend.