Sugar, sugar!

We're up to our eyeballs in sugar around here!  First, we spent some time making our annual gingerbread house.  Poppy was all about quality control with the candies...

Sam was the supervisor...

Then we got hit with a bit of snow earlier in the week, so Marc took Poppy to school on a sleigh.  She was thrilled to say the least...



And today, it was all about making cookies.  It was very serious business...

Again, she's all about quality control...

Sam had fun watching, wishing he could have a little nibble of cookie dough...

Check out this mobile Poppy and I made for Sam.  We've been working on it for weeks and now it's finally done, just waiting for Marc to hang it over his crib.  (oops, that reminds me, I still need to post nursery pics!)

I helped Poppy pick out the shapes from the craft store.  We ended up with a few sheep so that he would have something to count while he's falling asleep, a star to wish on, a horseshoe for luck and a heart so that he knows he's loved.  Then we painted them, added feathers and strung them up.  And Sam loves it!

After a break for naptime, it was back to our cookie making madness.  Time for the frosting.  It was so hard for Poppy to keep her fingers out of that frosting and to not gobble up all the cookies as she frosted them, but she did!

And this little cutie was drooling like crazy while he stared at all of the cookies.  And btw, Sophie the Giraffe is the best infant toy, ever.  He loves that thing!


Our masterpieces!  Have you ever seen cookies this beautiful?!  Poppy was so proud of herself.  We had so much fun today!

Holiday Fun

The little elves that run our advent calendar have been keeping us quite busy this week.  They had us baking Christmas cookies, writing a letter to Santa, having game nights...

Saturday they sent us to Santaland at Chestnut Ridge park.  The weather turned out to be perfect, no too cold and the snow held off.  There was just enough snow still on the ground so that Marc and Poppy could take a ride down the hill on their sled.  We definitely look forward to going back later in the year when there is more snow.

Poppy was of course, petrified once she got up close to Santa.  He offered to hold Sam so that she could see that he was alright, but she still wasn't going to get too close to him.  Later on she said that she liked meeting Santa because he had a little gift for her, but her favorite part of Santaland was getting to drink hot chocolate and eat cookies!

Then bright and early Sunday morning, Poppy checked the advent calendar and she found a little note that said we were going to eat breakfast inside of a gingerbread house.  She was a little confused by this - she didn't understand how we would fit inside of a gingerbread house!

We drove up to Canada and went to the Great Wolf Lodge, where they had built a giant gingerbread house as a fundraiser.  For a donation to their charity, you could eat at the single table inside of the gingerbread house!

Here's what the outside of the house looks like.  The house was really made out of cookies, chocolate, pretzels, candy and icing!  Poppy was in awe when she saw it...

And this is once we went inside, Poppy peering out the window, still in awe that she is surrounded by so many cookies and candy...

It was so cool that we had the whole gingerbread house all to ourselves!

Sam was so excited that he fell asleep!  Isn't his little car seat cover the cutest thing?

Poppy was so excited that she barely ate anything for breakfast.  We all had such a great time!  And the Great Wolf Lodge was quite possibly the coolest place ever!  We were able to get a tour and see what the rooms look like and see the waterpark.  Poppy was staring at the waterpark and she sadly said, "I wish I had my bathing suit."  Don't worry Poppy - we will definitely be going back for a fun weekend trip!

'tis the season for super fun stuff!

First of all, check out this awesome shot of Lola giving Sammy a little kiss.  Don't worry, we don't let her lick him all day, but she would if she could.  This dog lives for spit-up and baby drool. (and don't mind Poppy's spaghetti sauce stained face)

And check out Big Boy Sammy (as he likes to be called) sitting up!  He's getting better at it everyday!

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We have a beautiful advent calendar that is a little wooden house and Poppy gets to open a door or window each day.  In years past, we've always filled it with candy and other little treats and trinkets for Poppy, but this year I decided to write down a little note from an elf that tells us a fun thing we get to do that day.  The other day the elf said we can have hot chocolate with all the fixings after dinner.  Poppy was soooo excited - she LOVES hot chocolate.  And then we read 'Twas the Night Before Christmas while drinking our hot chocolate.  I'm going to try to snap pics of the different advent activities we do...

Both Poppy and Sam loved reading this book.  And we've read it at least 100 times since then.

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On Saturday our little advent elf told us to go get a Christmas tree, so we took our annual walk down to the local tree lot, like we have every year since we've lived in our house.  Unfortunately, another part to our annual tradition is that Marc and I argue about where to get our tree every year.  Marc has always hated my beloved tree lot; he thinks the trees are over priced and sorry-looking and he desperately wants to drive out to the country to chop our own tree down at a tree farm.  So after winning the battle for the past five years, I finally agreed that next year we could chop our tree down where he wants.  Sniffle, sniffle.  How can you beat being able to walk to get your tree and bring it back home on a wagon?  Oh, and on the way to get our tree this year, we were walking down the street when a crazy white cadillac came driving down the street, blaring its horn and pulled over to greet Poppy, with a jolly old Santa sitting in the driver seat.  He gave her a GIANT candy cane and she has been carrying it around ever since then, telling everyone that she saw Santa driving down the street.

(in case you can't tell, that's Sam I'm carrying in a black sling)

She really didn't care about the Christmas trees, she was so excited about that candy cane!

Hee, hee.  I just had to include this picture of Poppy helping us get the living room ready for the Christmas tree...

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Then Sunday we were off to one of the coolest things - we went to the Genesee Country Village for their special Yuletide in the Country.  We basically were on a small tour with about 10 other people (my parents went with us) and we were able to go inside colonial homes that had actors acting out the history of Christmas.  It was sooooo neat.  We weren't really supposed to take pictures and there were no flashes allowed, so the few pics Marc did take are a little blurry.  The weather was perfect, cold and snowing...

I was so nervous about Sam getting cold - I had him bundled in about 5 layers, plus a snow suit, plus I wore him in the baby carrier, plus I put a thick blanket over him.  He fell asleep the first minute we were outside and he didn't open his eyes once during the 2 hours we were out there!

In this house, two little girls read 'Twas the Night Before Christmas and Poppy had a huge smile on her face the entire time because she recognized the story.

All of the actors were dressed in costume and had accents.  As we walked through the village, people would walk by singing Christmas carols and ask you to join in.  It was so neat!  Poppy said her favorite part was when the boys and girls danced together...

And then at the last house we visited on our tour, they lit the real candles on their Christmas tree, had a boy playing bag pipes and showed us what their traditional Christmas dinner was like.

After the tour, we were able to stay for a yummy turkey dinner before we got in our freezing cold car and drove an hour to get home.  Poppy couldn't stop talking about all the things she loved about it.  She even remembered a song that one of the carolers was singing in the village.  We all had such a great time, we can't wait to go back again!

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My two cuties reading together.  Poppy loves to read to her baby brother.

So many more fun Christmas things coming up in the next few weeks!  Oh, and Sam's photo shoot went really well - it was very interesting.  For those of you non-Buffalonians, Fisher-Price is based in Buffalo, so they are always looking for kids to photograph for their boxes or ads.  So no, Sam is not a model, but he did smile really good for the photographer!  You know I will definitely keep everyone posted if he makes it onto the box of something!

Random thoughts...

We had a great Thanksgiving.  Lot's of eating and relaxing and then some more eating.  And so many things to be thankful for.

I had all of these random thoughts to post, but now I can't seem to remember them!  I have mush for brains these days.  Hmmmm...

Today I tried sitting Sam up on his own and he was able to sit up!  I couldn't believe it!  He toppled over after a minute or so, but it still impressed me and you could tell he was excited.

Have I ever mentioned how much Sam LOVES freezing cold fresh air?  Whenever he's crying, all I have to do is walk outside and he instantly stops, takes a deep breath and starts looking around.  Works like a charm every single time.  I'm sure my neighbors think I'm crazy, bringing a screaming baby out onto the porch even when it's snowing, but whatever works, right?  And whenever we go for a walk, the colder it is outside the faster he falls asleep and stays asleep.

Poppy is all about card games lately.  She is super fun to play with and is finally good at waiting her turn, etc.  I think her favorite right now is Snap, or maybe Old Maid.  The entire time we play, she keeps saying "I hope I don't get stuck with the OLD MAID!!!"  Super cute.

Can you believe how big he is getting?  4 months already!  Oh, and he has his first photo shoot at Fisher-Price this morning.  That should be interesting.  Poppy has been saying that she would like to get something for Sam for Christmas so she is coming with us to the photo shoot and then I told her we can go to the toy store afterwards and she can pick out a toy for him.  She is beyond excited to pick out his toy (which she totally knows he will be too little to play with and that she'll have to play with it for the next couple of years...)

Hallelujah!

Guess who slept through the night last night?!  Yep, this little cutie pie.  It's a miracle!  And after getting 9+ straight, uninterrupted hours of sleep for the first time in over four months, I feel like a new woman today!!!  (And Sam seems to be in a pretty good mood too!)  So we started doing "sleep training" last week, and as hard as it was, it was also the best thing we could have done.  We learned the hard way with Poppy that the older they are when you start, the harder it is to do, so I always knew we were going to start young with this little stinker.  We started with just having him learn to put himself to sleep at night and the first few nights were rough (for everyone involved), but do-able.  Then a few days later we moved on to having him put himself to sleep for his naps and now after a week, I can put him in his crib while he is awake and he falls asleep without a peep.  How awesome is that?  And he has been waking up once a night for nursing, but last night he just slept through it!!!  I'm trying not to get too excited because who knows what will happen tonight, but at least I know we are on our way to full nights of sleep!  Yay Sam!!!!

We've also been celebrating a few birthdays (my dad's and Courtney's) and Marc and I had our first night out sans kiddos!  Exciting stuff!

We also met up with some friends for a "literary playdate" which involved a craft, storytime and then Corduroy made an appearance!  Poppy was pretty scared of him, so I didn't get any pictures.  While Poppy and Claire were playing, Sam and Oliver had time to hang out too.  How cute are they together?

We're still here.  Time is just flying by lately.  I don't even know what we've been up to!  I haven't uploaded pics since Halloween, and there was barely anything on the camera.  I'm gonna work on taking more pics lately though because my two little monkeys are growing up waaaaaay too fast.

Here are a few pics of Poppy showing Sammy the ropes about her rats.  Just take a look at how many rats she has.  (and the 5 "back-up" ratty's we have aren't even included in this pic)

She was being serious when she taught him how to gently pet ratty, and to not spit up on him, or put his tail in your mouth.  Sam took the lesson very seriously.

So let's just talk about how big he is getting all of a sudden.  First it was the exersaucer and then a few days later I put up the jumperoo.  He loves this thing.  He loves anything that lets him push with his legs.  His absolute favorite thing is for me to hold him up by his hands so that he can pretend he's standing.  He gets the biggest smile on his face and I think he thinks he's really standing.  (I'll have to get a pic of that soon)

And this is from a few weeks ago when I was at book club and Marc had Poppy help him give Sam his bottle.  She was so proud of herself that she was feeding her baby brother.

As of the other day, he no longer uses these little bottles, he graduated to the big boy size!  (which means a ton more work for me in the pumping dept.)  And last week, one day all of his 0-3 month clothes fit him.  The next day they didn't!  It was crazy!  It literally seemed like he doubled in weight overnight!

Whenever I get the chance, I've been making little batches of baby food that I store in the freezer.  Poppy decided to help me make kale cubes the other day.  It's amazing how quickly her "helping" went from meaning that the kitchen would be a bigger mess, to now she actually really helps.  She scooped all of the baby food into the ice cube trays while I did dishes!



Do you see what I mean about them getting so big all of a sudden?

Happy Halloween!

Poppy wasn't really that into pumpkin carving this year, but Marc still was!

On Saturday we had some friends over and we all walked down to Elmwood, where all of the neighborhood shops were having trick-or-treating.  It was a fun afternoon spent with friends and it was so nice to be able to dress up in everyone's costume during the day.

Then on Halloween we went to Scott and Jessica's to see all of the cousins in their costume.  And this is where Sam finally made his debut as one of Snow White's dwarfs.

And the Louie the Lorax was spotted "speaking for the trees".

Trick-or-treating was a huge hit this year, even though it was so cold that we only made it to a handful of houses.  After each house, Poppy would proudly exclaim that when she gets home she is going to eat up all of her candy!

As soon as we walked in the door, she dumped her loot and lined it all up like this.  I remember doing the same thing when I was little, getting ready for the big candy trade with my brothers.

Luckily we were able to talk her out of eating everything that night, and now the rest of her candy is working well as bribes to get her to continue to nap each day!