This was our year with the Friederichs family, so my mom came up a few weeks before Christmas to celebrate. We went to Prairie Lights and let Sophia stand up with her head out the sunroof. She LOVED it! We also made sugar cookies to decorate. Sophia loved helping roll out the dough, but by the time they were ready to paint, she had moved on! We started having weekly family devotionals using her Little People nativity set and reading stories from our favorite: The Jesus Storybook Bible. We would end each devotion with a song and a prayer thanking God for sending his Son to mend this broken world. Sophia did not cooperate at all the first time- all she wanted was to play with her new "toy" (the nativity set) and threw a colossal tantrum the entire time. The following two weeks were better. By the end she would excitedly anticipate singing a song with us and was quiet to listen to our prayer. We plan to continue doing weekly devotionals now that she's two and it's my hope that she will start to learn and remember things about our wonderful God, so that at some point, she will give her heart to him.
Like always, Sophia could spend all day every day outside, and this holiday time was no different. Climbing trees in her princess slippers:
My mom got the girls matching Christmas dresses and they were adorable! This was our attempt to take some pictures in the ten minutes between waking up from nap time and heading out the door for the Village's Christmas Eve service.
We were able to get a whole family shot with everyone awake after the service, but never was able to get one with Grammy and Bumpa. :(
On Christmas morning, we had reindeer pancakes for breakfast:
Then we opened presents. The girls get three presents each for Christmas, just like Jesus did from the wise men. This is a tradition we love- it helps keep us in check, as far as not spending to much or finding ourselves tempted to go overboard. But more importantly, it downplays gifts as part of our Christmas celebration. We want the other things we do to stand out more than gifts at Christmas, so we try to make them a small part of what we do.
Our stockings are filled with homemade presents. Andy made each of the girls growth charts. He painted them and found fun animals to glue onto them. I was so proud that he thought of this, got all the supplies, and spent time putting it all together. What a great daddy! As my stocking stuffer to the girls, I continued the tradition of making them ornaments. This is what I did for this year's ornament. I love them! Sophia loved both hers and Penny's and asked to look at them several times a day until we took the tree down.
Sophia enjoying learning how to use her new Tag Junior!
It did start snowing Christmas morning, and we ended up getting 1-2 inches that stuck. Sophia and Andy played in the snow for as long as Andy could take the cold...
Catching snowflakes on her tongue...
As soon as she came inside, after I got her boots, jackets, and hat off, she looked around and said, "Outside? More outside?" We laughed, and then said no. :) We had a wonderful two days with Daddy home and enjoying the company of Grammy and Bumpa who spent the night to celebrate Christmas morning with us!
One of our biggest surprises was a big milestone that happened Christmas night. Sophie found a little potty up in the coat closet and asked us to bring it down, so we did. She asked if she could get on it, so we said ok. Then she tee-teed in the potty! I was so shocked, I jumped up to grab a sticker and the camera!
Now, this is the only time it's happened. Despite getting back on the potty several times, Sophia has yet to make it happen again. That hasn't stopped me from getting everything ready for her though. I've also made a potty chart, but it's blank since she hasn't gone again....
After that, we enjoyed watching Cinderella. Sophie snuggled up on my lap for the WHOLE movie! What a treat!
Maybe the best Christmas present we got was from this little sweetie:
We love both of our daughters, and we anticipated the hardships that come along with having a newborn, but it was hard. Much harder than the first time around, primarily because you can't sleep when your baby sleeps, because you still have a toddler that's up! But also because Penny Mae didn't find a rhythm with her schedule as easily or as early as Sophia did. For a few nights before Christmas, we were spending all night up with her, putting her paci back in every time it fell out. After several nights of getting four hours of sleep, then getting sick, I said "no more." We started putting her down without her paci and letting her cry it out. She rewarded us by sleeping ten hours a night. After that everything clicked all at once for her: she started nursing better, she goes down for naps and at bedtime with nothing more than a few minutes of crying, if any. She has slept 10 1/2 hours every night since that first night, so we were able to finally move her into her room. Now Andy and I get actual time together without a child in the room and we are getting better sleep. Thank you Penny Mae! This present was just what we needed!
However, with all those changes, little Penny Mae needed to cope. She became a thumb-sucker. She had been toying with the idea for a while, but about three days ago, she made her final decision. I can see it now, a future blog post where I get to celebrate the end of this habit. It will be a future battle. There's nothing we can do about it now. So I'm over it!
I return to work from my maternity leave a week from tomorrow. It is going to be hard to leave my baby three days a week, but this is it- my last semester. I may be too busy to post much, but we'll see how it goes. Merry Christmas to you! I hope your family celebrations were filled with joy!
