Happy Thanksgiving!

We hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! I didn't do so well taking pictures this year, but I did manage to capture a few. We had lunch at Bud and Yiyia's house then went to Emmy and Pops' house that evening for delicious smoked turkey sandwiches and pumpkin pie. All in all, it was a great Thanksgiving and we ate so well! Thank you to our gracious hosts and hostesses!

at Yiyia and Bud's, eating some turkey and ketchup (yum)

sweet Duncan, Ben's cousin Brandon's son

"What happens if I flip this switch 400 times? Duncan, do you mind?"

Duncan and his sister, Clara (They are visiting from North Carolina!)

sisters Clara and Ann playing with Lainey in the yard

at my parents' house with Uncle Matt (or "Ma" as Lainey calls him)

Meeting Baby Ella

Our good friends had a beautiful baby girl on November 15th. We finally had the opportunity to go over to meet her last night - she is just precious. We were grateful for the opportunity to meet her and hold her...it's crazy for us to think that she'll have a new little friend in the next few months!

Baby Ella, happy and alert

our sweet baby having a meltdown (I think it had something to do with the ride-on toy in the right-hand corner of the picture.)

Lainey and Ella's big brother Dylan drinking some milk

19 months old!

We have a 19-month-old daughter! She's so big!

Lainey loves playing with Play-Doh. Shortly after this picture was taken, she decided to sample a chunk of the Play-Doh...yum.

• I am happy to say that finally she is happy and secure when I drop her off in childcare. She has always been fine at school (except for day one) but she would continue to cry when we dropped her off at church, at the gym, and at Bible study...places she's been going to frequently for months and months and months. But I can happily say that she no longer cries when she's dropped off in childcare! She walks in, plays, and then when I pick her up she likes to show me what she played with during her time away from me. Example: At the gym, she'll quickly push a toy around or go down the slide...sometimes it's hard to get her to leave!
• Her language is developing. Her new favorite word is "messy". It has replaced "uh-oh" as the most popular word in her vocabulary. Other words include: "shuise" (juice), "oh, no", "yeah" (yes), "mou" (mouth), "no" (nose), "tees" or "ees" (please), "dee dee" (binky), "gagoo" (goggles that Grover wears in one of her Elmo books), "ow", "Essie" (for Aunt Elsie, Yiyia's sister), "soo" (shoe), "choo choo", "Ma" (for Uncle Matt), "mow/now" (meaning meow for what a cat says - she says this in a high-pitched voice), "Any" (for Amy, a friend and babysitter), and she tries to say "Ariel" but it comes out like "Aaheel", the Little Mermaid character who is pictured on her toothbrush.
• Lainey used to be able to say the "b" sound appropriately, but now it seems as though many of her b's have been replaced with d's. So "baby" is "dady" and "Abby" (Abby Cadabby from Sesame Street) is "Addy". "Boo Boo" has turned into "doo doo". :)
• She loves playing with cars, babies, puzzles, colors, and stickers and any toy where you put a letter/shape into a specific slot.
• Squeezing other peoples' cheeks is very exciting to her. She'll squeeze her own and then immediately look to squeeze someone else's. Even if it's someone behind you in the grocery line.
• "Itsy Bitsy Spider", "Old MacDonald", and "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" are some favorite songs.
• She likes to eat cereal (not picky on which kind) with milk for breakfast (ahh, a child after my own heart). :) She'll start off using a spoon, but then tires of that and will just grab the cereal with her hands. She'll also eat yogurt with cereal in it, although this becomes quite messy because again, she will start off using the spoon but then will resort to using her hands!
• Putting on her own pants and shoes is a challenge for her, but one she generally (when in a good mood) enjoys. She can't quite do either completely independently yet but it's fun to see her try.
• Sesame Street is wonderful. Lainey LOVES Elmo...all things Elmo. She will point at the TV and demand "Elmo". Kinda embarrassing that she does that, but I am grateful for the distraction sometimes (like when I'm making dinner or she's just in a super-fussy mood). Lainey also likes Dora the Explorer and Barney and Friends.
• She flat out refuses to hold my hand in a parking lot. Or really anywhere. I mean she sits on the ground and cries and screams in the middle of the parking lot in defiance (yes, I know, so safe).
• Whole apples are delightful, but she makes her mom remove the apple stem and the core part from the bottom of the apple before eating.
• She's the first to tell you "uh-oh" when your purse or bag strap falls off your shoulder - she'll rush to help you put it back on.
• Lainey loves ketchup. She'll eat it with anything - pretzels, goldfish, mac 'n' cheese, you name it. Sometimes she'll eat it plain. It is a great way to get her to eat meat, however. I'm grateful for that!
• "Where is ______?" is still her favorite game (apply this to books, toys, body parts, Elmo on TV, etc.). We also play "Where is Lainey's car?" every time we're in a parking lot.
  

This is our child playing "Where's Lainey?". And no, Reagan doesn't enjoy playing "Where's Reagan?". :)

• Lainey generally still takes a good 2-3 hour nap every afternoon...usually just after lunch. She goes to bed around 8 or 8:30 (on school days, it's earlier) and wakes up between 7 and 8 in the morning.
• I've had to put several doorknob locks on various doors...one happens to be the door into the new baby's room. She loves going in there and trying to put her babies to sleep in that crib. She'd also like to get in that crib. So for now, the room is off-limits.
• She furiously waves her hands up and down when trying to show us her hook 'em horns sign. We're trying to teach her to do the hook 'em horns sign correctly, but right now, it looks as though she's gettin' her guns up for a Texas Tech game.
• Her biggest fits are thrown when we have to leave the park. It's horrible. It's sad, but it makes me not enjoy going because I know what happens when it's time to go. She does fight me on a lot of things right now, but I think it's just her age. I hope so, anyway. :)
• Ben and I are definitely at that point where we have to spell words around her these days, namely "park", "outside", and "bink".
• Finally, her babies get lots of love from her. She loves to rock them, and she loves for me to rock both her and the baby. She also puts them to sleep many times a day, always laying them face-down (on tables, floors, wherever) and covering them completely with a blanket and patting their backs. Her school teachers do this - well, they don't cover them completely with blankets but they do pat the kids' backs. She adds to the routine by saying "shhhh" and trying to put her finger to her lips, but most of the time she's just smooshing her nose with her fingertip. It's cute. Too bad she doesn't know what "shhhh" means...soon after they are asleep she wakes the babies up again by squealing and yanking off their blankets. What does this say about future interactions with her little brother?
  

getting sleepy

Itsy Bitsy Spider

This is a video of Lainey doing her hand motions to the song "Itsy Bitsy Spider". You'll notice that she really gets into the "down came the rain and washed the spider out" part of the song. I have her school teachers to thank for teaching her this; they are wonderful!!

Cars and Jump Town

playing cars with Dad in the bathroom

"How did they get there? Did I do that? Get them out, please!!"

Lainey playing at Avery's birthday party at Jump Town...unfortunately she wasn't able to go into all the bounce houses. And her pregnant mom couldn't climb things with her. However, thanks to Avery's mom, Lainey got to go down a few slides!

Reading to the babies

This evening, Lainey and I read books to her babies. For the first book, I set up all the babies against the entertainment center so that they could see what I was reading. After that, Lainey kept bringing me more books and then would rearrange the babies for each story.

arranging the babies

Lainey is sitting on Teddy Ruxpin so that she could be part of the story audience. I think her original goal was to sit next to him and not on top of him? She did this several different times with several different babies.

Visit to Hot Springs, Arkansas

On Sunday morning, my mom, dad, Lainey, and I took a trip to Hot Springs, Arkansas to visit my grandmother. It was a brief trip; we arrived mid-afternoon on Sunday and left Monday morning. It was wonderful to see my grandmother and it was fun for her to see Lainey although I don't think Lainey stopped moving the entire time. The actual car trip was long, but thanks to a lot of snacks, juice, several toys, and various DVDs...we made it. :)

See? She's a blur. She loved running up and down this ramp and then jumping on the metal part; it made a unique sound so of course, that was exciting.

I had to include a picture of this dog. Her name is Caroline, and she "guards" the apartment across the way from Grandmother's. Lainey loved her. I think Caroline and Reagan would have gotten along well; they would have a lot to say to each other.

Inside my grandmother's apartment she vacuumed up the cracker crumbs that she dumped on the floor.

Silly girl

The top picture is Lainey doing her "Where is it?" pose. She and Ben were hiding several cards and invitations under the duvet. She has also taken to throwing her sleep sack over one of our heads (or her head) and playing "Where's Mom/Dad" or "Where's Lainey" - both are exciting and somewhat lengthy games that really mess up one's hair. :)

And, of course, she thinks adult shoes are fun to try to scoot around in. What child doesn't?

Where are your jammies?

Every morning, this is how Lainey greets me. She takes off her jammies at some point - either before she falls asleep at night, sometime during the night, or in the morning when she first awakens. You'll see her jammies in the bed (the snowflake ones that she loves?). She's also done this with a pj top that has buttons; she slept one night with just the pants on. I guess she's just more comfortable that way!

New fascinations

What little Lainey has been up to...

playing in the laundry basket

putting on shoes and socks all by herself (You'll notice the shoe on the wrong foot! And no, this is not something she does every time or even every day. She can put on some of her pairs of shoes all by herself but today was the first time I actually saw a sock on there as well!)

buckling her high chair straps

arguing with her mom on a nightly basis about why she thinks her sleep sack should take a bath with her

opening doors

Success! She's in!

and settling on two books that are by far her favorite at this

point in time.

Another funny thing Lainey is doing is hiding things. She'll hide things under her legs, under her sleep sack, under a napkin...you name it. Then she'll give us a big smile and hold her cute little hands close together in front of her chest, palms facing upwards, as if to say "Where is it?". I hope to capture this on camera someday!

25 weeks!

Here's the belly at 25 weeks...growing, growing, growing! And he's kicking, moving around, and jabbing me all day long. I think this baby moves way more than Lainey did. I'm able to see a lot of his movements and of course I feel them all day long... :)