Baby Signing Time

Once a month people come from Early Intervention to evaluate Conner and Emma. One of the ladies that comes, let us borrow a signing video. Conner and Emma LOVE watching this. As soon as we turn it on, they get really excited and start signing signs from the video. It's pretty dang cute!

Here's a picture of Emma signing eat

And here is a couple of videos of them signing

21 Months!!

Here are some things that have happened in December with the kids:

- Conner likes to raise his arms when we either say "Ta-da!" or "Touchdown!"
- They copy pretty good what we say (i.e. cool dude, don't touch, etc.)
- Emma likes to put on necklaces (only the purple one, although she also has a black one and a green one)
- Emma likes to talk in a baby voice
- All animals, according to Emma, make a growling noise
- They both like to dance (Conner will stomp his feet and sometimes bounce and Emma will wiggle/shimmy and stomp her feet)
- Emma will clap really hard, once, when she gets mad
- Emma also got RSV, but luckily it wasn't bad enough that she had to stay in the hospital and luckily we already had oxygen at home so we didn't have to worry about that either. Because she has RSV she has to wear oxygen during the day and why she looks kind of cranky in some of these pictures.

Emma:

Conner:

Christmas Time!!!

Our Christmas was pretty fun, busy and lots of things happened.

Here's a ton of cake balls I made for neighbor/friend treats

Yummy eggnog sugar cookies and really good chex mix for the treats

I made little teeny Santa hats for preemies for in the NICU at the hospital the kids were born at. There is a person who started a challenge on Facebook called 12 days of Christmas where people would make 12 little hats to give to their local NICU. Her website is here. I had made 15 as of this picture but I talked to one of the nurses who works at the NICU and asked her how many babies there were at the NICU and I decided to make 11 more so all of the babies could have a little Santa hat.

A couple of these pictures, as you can tell, are not actually from Christmas Eve. The reason is because Emma got RSV (Woohoo!) so she was kind of tired and sick so some of the pictures we took in front of the tree are from a few days later. Luckily her RSV wasn't bad enough that she had to stay in the hospital and luckily we already had oxygen at home so she didn't have to stay in the hospital for that either so we were lucky there.

Family picture:

 

Here's some of Eric and the kids. The first one is really the only good one. The kids were not having it as you can tell in the second picture. Eric was such a trooper for putting up with me wanting to take all of these pictures.

 

 

 My happy Conner man. He wasn't too sick yet in this picture

 

 My wiggly Emma girl

 

 

 We got my mom the play the Wii with Eric, Matt, and Emily. It was pretty funny to watch. Here's a video of them getting down!

 

When we got the kids out of bed to eat Matt and Emily had already woken up to see what Santa had brought for them and Emily had gotten a karaoke machine. This is one of my favorite pictures of Conner checking out the karaoke machine with his Auntie and Uncle.

Here's some of Conner "looking" in his stocking. Conner and Emma got basically the same thing: toys, bubbles and an animal loofah.

And Conner "opening" his presents

He got a couple of drums for Christmas because he loves hitting and banging on stuff. I love this picture of him too.

He got this hammer set thing from my parents. He would hit stuff with the hammer and very soon he figured out that he could just press the pegs down with his hands instead of hitting them with the hammer.

Here's a couple of Emma looking at what was in her stocking

We got Emma this cool Crayola thing. It's a wet sand thingy on one side that you can "draw" things with your finger and on the white side, with a pen with a sponge and water, can draw pictures when you get the white part wet.

Emma's new phone!

Emma got spongy bath letters/numbers!

Conner figured out how to pull himself onto this box all by himself. He reaches across and then pulls himself up. I didn't realize he could get on top of things yet, but I guess now he apparently can.

Emma playing with her new toys

While the kids were taking a nap Eric and I decided to go and visit 'Aulani and spend some of Christmas with her. Here's her spot with the lights and pink bows. We also left her a little treat too.

Her tree with all of the ornaments still there!

Me and Eric!

Conner with the foam letters on him and he didn't even care

We got Conner this bubble blower for the bath because he LOVES bubbles! When we first turned it on he just sat and stared at it for a few minutes.

This is what Emma does when you say CHEESE! Silly girl

Emma with all of her Christmas spoils

Conner with all of his loot

It was impossible to get both of the kids to try and look at the camera at the same time so these are the best ones I got

 

 

I was excited to finally be a house so I could start to accumulate decorations and actually have a place to store/put them. I got a few good ideas from Pinterest (I finally joined and jumped on the bandwagon)

I got this idea for a tree skirt from there. It was somewhat easy but it took a looooooooong time. But I was very pleased with the outcome.

Here's the skirt underneath the tree

I also wanted to crochet a star for the top of our tree since it was going to be decorated with crocheted snowflakes, so I found a pattern one day and made it and it turned out not too shabby.

And here is the finished product with the star, snowflakes, the fake cranberry (a lot less messy) and marshmallow garland, and the tree skirt. I love it!

I also found the idea for these stocking holders on Pinterest which were also somewhat easy to make.