12 in 2014

A few bloggers that I follow are doing a link-up of your favorite 12 pictures from 2014. As I love, love, love me some pictures I figured this was the perfect link-up for me to participate in! I noticed a bunch of them are doing their favorite picture from each month, but as I sorted through our photos I noticed that a lot of fun happens in the warm weather and we huddle under blankets and sleepiness during the cold months. :-) So these pictures are my favorite of the whole year regardless of when in the year they fell.

May - Grandma and Grandpa Carstens have two chickens, Goldie and Brownie, that Abby just loves to play with when she comes to visit. We'd watch her toss them snacks and chase after them a bit, but never getting close. So imagine our surprise when when morning she walked up to Brownie and just picked her right up like she'd been doing that for years. I love her expression here. Just calm serenity like she's a chicken whisperer. 

May - Grandma and Grandpa had cake in the house and we told Abby she could have a piece, then walked away into another room. When we got back we'd discovered that Abby had eaten her piece, decided she wanted more, and proceeded to paint herself with frosting. :-) Nate had fun bathing the beauty and Abby had fun with the bubble bath!

May - My nephew, Chase, was born. This is the first picture of all the Akers' cousins together. 

July - Having fun on the neighbor's slip-n-slide. This summer was just magical in our neighborhood. (And in fact, what sealed the deal for Nate and I to stay longer in this house than we'd planned.) Almost every day the kids would go out in the morning and play in someone's yard until lunch-time, come in for a rest, then head back out to play until dinner, heading back in to eat, then out again until it was too dark to see, before calling it a night. I spent more time chilling in a lawn chair talking with neighborhood friends and watching the kids play than anything else this summer and it was MARVELOUS! I remember having a neighborhood like this growing up (kids randomly ran between houses and lived with the "come home when the street lights come on" rule) and am so, so happy that Abby is getting the same. Especially as I hear other friends talk about being the only family with children on their street or how none of the kids play outside if there are kids.

July - I know you've probably seen this picture a ton because it's my go to picture for Abby this year. We were having a girls day at the Art in the Park festival (Nate had been working some seriously long hours at this time) and so I was in a "whatever Abby wants..within reason" kind of mood. So when she saw the face painting booth I was all for it. She sat so still while the paint was being applied and then when she saw herself all done up her eyes just lit up. She thought she was so beautiful....and she was right!

August - Abby and I had a date at the fair (cough..Nate was working...again...cough) and she'd just gotten off the scary dragon ride and wanted something that wasn't so scary (the first jolt of the kid roller coaster had her trying to get off the ride :-)). So she tried the scrambler and it was PERFECT! She laughed and giggled and yelled "woah" over and over again. You could just tell she was having the time of her life right then and there. I'm so happy I got to see it!

September - Her first day at Faith Assembly's Imagination Studios Preschool. I really wanted to get a picture of her standing in front of her new school but she kept turning sideways. I finally asked why she kept moving when she told me she wanted me to take a picture of her new butterfly backpack. I never did get that picture of her in front of her school sign, but this sweet pose makes up for it.  

October - Shortly after starting school Abby began to give up naps. Or more like she'd fight, fight, fight to stay awake and mostly succeeded. But every once in a while staying awake was just too much for her and I'd come in to let her out of quiet time to find her passed out. This was my favorite "passed out during quiet time" picture because of how adorable she looks (of course), but also because of how LOUD her movie was. She'd been watching The Land Before Time: Journey to Big Water on full volume and when the movie ended it played the Main Menu melody over and over and over and over and...well, you get the point. I took the picture, turned the volume down a bit, then waited to see if she'd wake up on her own. Over an hour later and she finally noticed the quiet. :-)

October - Our annual girl's outing to the Country Mercantile Harvest Festival added a boy. :-) I love the relationship Abby has with her Grandma (my Mom) but it's also wonderful seeing Grandma's relationship with all of her Grandchildren. This is an annual outing that I look forward to each year. 

October - Abby came down with a cold that ended up in her lungs. She has what Doctor's call Reactive Airway Disease which is really just a fancy way to say that crap tends to settle in her lungs when she gets sick, leading to horrendous coughing, difficulty breathing, and taking a long time to get over being sick. This particular cold required breathing treatments four times daily and each treatment could easily take an hour to complete. After one day of hard playing she was more tired than normal but still needed that long breathing treatment. We got her started, put on a movie, and then went about picking up the house. Not five minutes later I came back into the living room to find her fast asleep on the couch. Oh, my poor baby. I felt so sad for her. Nate and I decided to call her treatment good for the night (short though it may have been), quickly changed her into pull-ups, and put her to bed where she slept in late the next morning.

November - Color Nate and I shocked when Abby came racing up to us having just written her name on the whiteboard. I'd been working on her letters with her, and preschool does so as well, but I'd never seen her write them without prompting before. She's such a smart little cookie!

November - You know it's been a busy day when both young and old pass out on the couch in front of the TV. These two are the loves of my life and I feel so blessed that I can call them mine. 

Well, there you have it. Our year in a picture nutshell!

The First Christmas in Our House!

This Christmas was super, super exciting to me as it was the very first Christmas that was celebrated in our actual home! Normally, we either head down to Portland, OR and celebrate Christmas with Nate's family or we celebrate Christmas with the Akers family on Christmas day. This year I really pushed to have our own little family's Christmas celebration in our own house. It took a bit of finagling (and then even more so on the days leading up to Christmas) but we did it! Dave and Linda came up from Portland with Nate's Grandpa (Chuck). Chuck then went to Nate's Aunt and Uncle's house to spend some time catching up with that part of the family (since we travel down to Portland frequently we tend to see a lot more of Grandpa than the others so we were okay with him "disappearing"for a bit). Christmas Eve we went to my parent's house to celebrate with my family which meant that Christmas morning was free to do our celebrating.

We started off our Christmas celebration the night before with Nate reading Abby "Twas the Night Before Christmas". This Advent season I made the HUGE mistake of deciding to give a wrapped book to her every night for her to open and read. We had almost enough Christmas/Winter themed books to do this from Nov 30th - Dec 24th so I thought it'd be a fun Advent activity for her to look forward to. Never again. Inevitably, I never did get around to wrapping up all the books so pretty much every night while she was taking a bath I was scrambling at the last minute to wrap up a book. Plus, I hadn't really hidden the books too well so she found the stash and then was sad when she opened up a book that night and found that it was one she'd seen earlier and therefore it wasn't a new to her book. Last reason why I won't be doing this again is that she's one to read a book over and over and over again and with only opening up one book a night instead of having all the books all at once she'd glom on to her favorite few and not want me to read the "new tonight" book. When I'd previously presented all the books we averaged out what we read much better. So that idea was our "Pinterest fail" for the season.

Once I was sure she was asleep I brought the many Christmas presents out of hiding (can you tell she's the only Grandchild on Nate's side of the family?) and hung up the stockings (Nate's parents are up with Abby's on the fireplace, Nate's and mine are chilling on the floor next to the dollhouse).

The next morning was exactly as I envisioned. Nate and I both got to sleep in a little bit, but still woke up long before Abby did. All four adults got up and dressed and had time for a cup of coffee before the little one's door creaked open. Her face upon seeing all the Christmas joy we'd put up in the house the night before was just wonderful to see. Then, with no rushing or cramming in of activities...with no clock to be watching....and with no plans of any type for the morning we began to celebrate togetherness, family, Christ's birth, and lots and lots of presents.

Abby started with her stocking and I learned that wrapping almost every item in her stocking is unnecessary. She enjoyed opening up the gifts, but by the end she needed an unwrapping presents break. :-) Here she expresses her utter delight in the Santa Claus skittles she was given.

After a short pause where she wanted to open all the candy she was given, as well as make sure everyone else knew they had candy in their stockings, we began opening 'under the Christmas tree' presents.

Abby did a great job handing out gifts to everyone.

Starting to get excited with opening a few presents. She now has dolls to play with in her dollhouse. We were gifted the house and two dolls (Dad and Sister) and I bought Baby as an I Love You gift, but we made the mistake of allowing her to take the dolls with her when we went places and we soon lost Dad and Baby. So she had Sister and McDonald's barbies as her only dollhouse dolls. Not anymore! She got a New Dad, Mom, and Little Sister. Yay for imagination!

As my child tends to fall on the higher range on the growth charts she'd outgrown all of her play clothes. Finding play dresses in a size larger than 3T (she's currently in 5T) proved to be more difficult than I imagined. Thankfully I found two that were of the right size (and price! - as I was unwilling to spend $30+ for a play outfit) and "princessy" enough to be considered a princess dress even though they weren't.

Then she opened up a present from Grandma and Grandpa and present opening took a pause. She was gifted a jewelry box with a dancing ballerina that played music. Oh my stars did she love, love, love it. So, while she sat and played with her jewelry box for an extended period of time...

we adults opened our presents (Dave enjoying the calendar we created for him for work)...

and ate breakfast. I made Holiday Hashbrown Casserole and French Toast Casserole and we were gifted the cinnamon rolls. Mmm mmm mmm. It was a yummy feast! Abby would come by every few minutes and snag a bite but mostly she was enjoying herself and her new toys in the living room.

After breakfast Abby went back to opening up her presents and pausing in her opening as she saw fit. 

I honestly think the best part of having Christmas be at our house for Christmas Day this year was how relaxing everything was. There was no rush to open presents as we had no need to get Abby home in time for a somewhat decent bedtime. There was no hurry to be done with celebrating as we had no place else to be anytime soon. There was no formality of any type as it was just close family. It was just comfort, laughing, eating, playing, and enjoying the day as it came.

Abby still working on opening gifts as she tended to play with each one for a significant amount of time before wanting to see what else was available.

During one of her present pauses she used her new makeup to do up my face. She was VERY specific on where the colors should go. When I suggested pink go on my cheeks she gave me a look that clearly displayed I was crazy and proceeded to color my nose instead.

Having fun trying to pick out a booger. Yes, I'm that kind of Mom. :-)

Showing Dad how her new Duplo legos work.

Much later in the afternoon, after we'd cleaned up the house, put our new gifts away, and were just thinking a new face would be nice to see, it was time to head to the Eslinger's house for a Christmas Day early dinner feast of prime rib. There we got to visit with Nate's Grandpa, Aunt and Uncle, cousins, their husbands and children. It definitely felt like a bit of a crazy zoo after the calmness of our morning, but we still had a lot of fun catching up with people and eating yummy food.

Grandpa reading Abby her new book...The Little Girl Who Lost Her Name. It's a book where a little girl wakes up to find out she can't remember her name, goes on an adventure collecting letters from the various beings she meets, and then realizes that all the letters she's collected spell out Abigail - it's her name! :-)

The day after Christmas was originally intended as another calm and slow day to follow Christmas, but with my family involved some adjustments were to be made. :-) My family is notorious for last minute get-togethers and this was no different. What started out as a prime rib dinner (number three in three days, if you can believe it) for five ended up as dinner for twelve. Luckily we had extra prime rib and a few side dishes left over from a previous meal so with new prime rib and side dishes we had a feast fit for a lot of kings! I must say I did really well for having a "not gonna stress - everyone will get some sort of food to eat" type of attitude about the whole dinner and the evening was a fun one.

Since there were no presents to open we adults got to linger over dinner and dessert as long as we wished and the kids got to play with all sorts of new toys so they kept themselves entertained. It was a lovely way to end the day.

Our after Christmas Day feast with Mom's china! She gifted her china set to me when Nate and I got married and I'll admit that, other than wine glasses, I hadn't used it until now. Very happy we dusted the set off. Still not sure there will be a lot of use until Abby is older, though. :-)

I'll end this Christmas post with the pictures I took of Abby in her Christmas dress (she picked it out all by herself!) at church.

I love her smile here! But I also noticed that poor Joseph tends to get cut off in our pictures since his statue is so tall and Abby sitting is not.

A view of the manger with Joseph. :-)

Checking our the other side of the church where the Wise Men are waiting as they travel to meet up with baby Jesus.

An Akers Christmas Eve Family Gathering

This Christmas was a special one for the Akers side of the family as Bestamor, Uncle Steve, and Uncle Mike came over from the Seattle area to celebrate the holiday with us. Sadly, it had been almost a year since I'd seen my Uncles and probably a good six or so months since I'd seen my Grandmother. This meant that my parent's house was filled to the brim with family members, just the way it should be during the Christmas season. But wait! Nate's parents came up from Portland, OR to celebrate Christmas at our house this year, so my parent's wasn't just filled to the brim it was overflowing with family!! (Sadly, David had to work - he loves the overtime - so he was missed by all.)

A view of their Christmas tree. And since we adults don't give gifts to each other (only my parents do, as they break the rules) this was pretty much all for three children.

Chase having more fun gnawing on the wrapping paper than actually opening up his gifts.

Mom trying to get Chase interested in opening his fits. Look at all the chubby rolls! He's so cute. :-)

Haylee and Abby in deep concentration opening their gifts.

Uncle Steve and Bestamor watching Abby mad dash through her presents.

Bo, Dad, Dave, Uncle Mike, and Katie watching Chase play with this new football. 

The Akers family Christmas celebration was a little different this year as we actually had a prime rib sit-down dinner instead of just lots of snack food. Definitely a nice change, but I think Mom agreed that the munchies were missed. :-) Plus there's less cleanup that way! This was a wonderful start to all of the fun celebrating that the next few days would give.

Pacifiers - A Thing of the Past

December 20, 2014. The day Abby "gave up" her pacifiers. Or, more factually, the day Nate decided would be the day that Abby would give up her pacifiers. :-)

Abby was (and truthfully, still is) a baby who LOVED her pacifiers. I'd read all the advice on not giving pacifiers or bottles until the nursing relationship was in full force so as to not cause confusion, but this little girl had different ideas. She loved to comfort suck so much that she went home from the hospital with a pacifier in her mouth and had zero confusion in figuring out how to feed vs comfort herself. Fast forward three years and I started getting comments on when we were going to force her to give up her pacifiers. Honestly, my thoughts were that I knew she wouldn't go to school with a pacifier so what did it matter if she gave it up at one, two, three, or four. I wasn't going to put a time limit on it.

But then we had our parent-teacher conference with Abby's preschool teacher. Abby has been doing great at preschool (her report card was just fantastic - we couldn't have been prouder) but her teacher did ask if Abby still used a pacifier occasionally as she had some trouble saying some sounds, particularly her L sound. Not enough that speech therapy was even a suggestion but enough that her teacher thought she was getting a "slippery tongue", which basically meant that her tongue wasn't moving far enough forward when it needed to. Which meant that her pacifiers were now starting to actually interfere with development - AKA her pacifier days were numbered.

Her last picture with a pacifier. This was also one of those "TAKE A PICTURE" moments as I know there won't be too many more moments where she falls asleep on me. She'd flat refused to take a nap but as soon as quiet time was done she just started crying and crying. After trying to cheer her up in various ways I asked what she wanted. "I want a hug, Mom!" So off to the rocking chair we went where we rocked and hugged and rocked some more. A little bit later I felt her body go slack and her breathing deepen. Sure, enough, little miss who didn't want to take a nap was taking one. 

Nate left on a week-long business trip right after this meeting and I knew that there was no way I would be able to successfully make it through the week while also working to give up pacifiers, so I said we'd work on it "after he got home". (I'm so thankful I didn't work on her giving up her pacifiers the week he was gone as she reverted back to infant sleep patterns and was up for at least an hour every night that he was gone - the first night he was gone I only got four hours of sleep and it didn't improve much by the end of the week.) On Saturday, when Nate came home, we were enjoying our family time when Nate's personality came out. :-) I say this lovingly but if you know Nate you know what I mean. He decided at 6pm that it'd be a perfect time for her to give up her pacifiers and go buy her a big girl present to commemorate the occasion. So after a little discussion on giving her pacifiers to another little girl and getting a big girl present we rounded up her pacifiers and then went to Toys 'R Us where we picked out a trampoline (a small one). Upon returning home she was all smiles and giggles as we bounced and played on the trampoline.

Then came time for bed. And the screaming and crying and pleading for pacifiers began. My Mom heart was simply broken as I listened to her sobs while sitting next to her as she tried to fall asleep for the first time ever without a pacifier in her mouth. Let's just say that I was thinking some not very nice things about the timing for giving up pacifiers and the person who pushed for that timing. :-) But the decision had been made and I knew that the situation would only be made worse if I gave in and gave her a pacifier. 30 minutes later she passed out from exhausted crying and I went to bed exhausted from a week of bad sleep and a sad heart. But the next day she only asked for the pacifier once and only cried for a few minutes before passing out at bed. The day after that she sweetly said that we should go find the little girl we gave her pacifiers to and ask for them back. And nighttime had a few minutes of asking for her pacifier but no crying. Yesterday she found a pacifier in her playbox and brought it to me to give to the little girl. :-) (Of course a little bit later she said we should make a trade and give the pink pacifier to the little girl and get the purple one back. Hee.) So I know we're moving along into not needing her pacifiers anymore territory. It's not perfectly giving them up yet, but we're getting there. It's particularly hard when she's tired and just wants to sit and suck but her wolfie (stuffed wolf) makes her happy most of the time.

So here we are. A few days into giving up our pacifiers. We've had lots of good moments and a few bad moments. But overall I do see the "no paci's" light at the end of the tunnel. Once again my little girl is getting to big!

I couldn't resist adding the Tiger Girl pictures. She'd played in her make-up and was so proud of how she looked. 

Having a stare-down. She watches a YouTube video where a cat plays with his mirror image. I think she was doing something similar here.

Preschool Christmas Party

I enjoy helping out with Abby's preschool, but I've also helped out a lot this year. :-) So when a note went out from Abby's teacher requesting that the parents work together to figure out a craft, two games, and snacks for the preschool Christmas party I decided to step back and let some other parent step up and have fun. (I figured that after helping at field trips, Halloween, and Thanksgiving I had achieved the "parent helps out at preschool" level quite well.) But two weeks after the original note went out there was still not a single parent signed up to help create/assist with the party. So I decided to sign up for a game and figured that might get the ball rolling for other parents. I will fully admit here on my blog that I was disappointed in my fellow parents when another week went by and only one other person had signed up (and that was a general "I'll help" instead of actually signing up for something). There are 16 kids in this class! I know that parents work, and all aren't able to physically be in the room with the kids, but I KNOW that people were available to put together something little and drop it off on the day of the party. :-( It ended up that two days before the actual party was scheduled a few other parents volunteered to help - two to be in the classroom with me helping out with the two games and craft, and one to bring in snacks but not able to stay - but I still ended up signing up for a game and the craft and working with Ms. Amy for a second game that they had in storage.) But once the actual party day arrived everything was a success!

For their craft they made silhouette nativity scenes from this Pinterest pin Stained Glass Nativity Craft. There was a little bit of panic as I discovered that while the student sheet Abby had listed 13 students there were actually 16 in her class. I am so, so thankful I made extras just in case one ripped as we ended up needing those extras!

Here is the snowman marshmallow toss game I created. The first go round we had the kids just stand in front and drop the marshmallows in, but as pretty much every marshmallow made it in we decided to make it just a bit harder.

So we grabbed a step stool and got them up a bit higher. That made it a little more challenging and, in my opinion based on their giggles, a little more fun for the kids as well.

Our second game, courtesy of Ms. Amy, was pin the nose on Rudolph. Abby stood very patiently while getting her blind fold on...

...then grabbed a quick peek to see where Rudolph's nose should go. :-)

Amazingly enough she put Rudolph's nose right where it was supposed to go. LOL!

I will totally admit that I was a little put out in helping out at this Christmas party at first because I just wasn't feeling the "volunteering spirit" right off the bat. But I'm so thankful I did end up volunteering because I had a lot of fun finding a game and craft, actually putting them together (thanks to Jessica L. for helping me cut out the many, many pieces for the silhouettes!), and enjoying time being with Abby!

Preschool Christmas Pageant

Abby had a preschool Christmas concert and it was so adorable watching her try to follow the hand motions for the songs while also remembering the words she was supposed to be singing. Add in a video monitor that was showing some cartoons while the singing and hand motions were going on and I had a little girl who was simply mesmerized by all the activity and well, not really singing. :-)

(Yes, I know this post is month's late...and the next few will be as well...but better to play catch up than not at all!)

All of Imagination Studio's preschool classes with their Principle Ms. Jolene. (Ms. Amy, Abby's teacher, is in purple on the left.)

Here are three videos where she's actually performing (instead of watching the screen). :-)

I'm looking forward to next year's concert and seeing how she does!