Happy Birthday Charlotte!

Today Charlotte turns two! This was our conversations tonight before bedtime.

Mommy: "Charlotte, how old are you now?"
Charlotte: "Two!"
Mommy: "That's right, you're Mommy's big girl now."
Charlotte: "NO! I Mommy's baby, 'member?"

That pretty much sums up Charlotte.  She is quite the little personality!  Charlotte is a social butterfly and loves to be around people.  She waves to every car on the way out of church and wants to wave to every older lady in the grocery store.  Charlotte went from a sweet baby at 1 year old to a full blown toddler who runs, talks, and knows what she wants.

She still absolutely adores her brother and wants to make sure he is included in everything.  Any time I tell her she can get something or do something she always says, "Trey too!"  and wants him to get whatever she is getting.  If Trey is upset she will say, "Trey's sad." and want you to go help him.  She will also bring him toys when he is in timeout or try to take his temperature if he doesn't feel well.  Charlotte is old enough for them to play together now and they love to play parade, hide and seek and do crafts together.

Charlotte has just started to really enjoy playing with her baby dolls.  She will sing to them, feed them, and lay them down for a nap.  She loves to brush the baby's hair and put hair bows in the baby's hair.  It is so sweet to watch her play with the dolls because Trey isn't interested, so she does it all by herself. 

Charlotte is still a really good eater.  She will eat almost any fruit and try whatever you are eating.  Some of her favorite foods are: oatmeal, beans, applesauce, yogurt, any fruit, spaghetti, mac and cheese, tacos and black bean salsa!  She doesn't really care for vegetables, but will gobble up any bean we put in front of her. It is so nice that she will eat or at least try whatever we have for dinner.   Due to her peanut allergy, Charlotte eats sunbutter sandwiches.  She doesn't seem to miss the peanut butter at all.  Her favorite thing to do with food is dip it in a sauce, especially syrup or pizza sauce!

Charlotte still naps once a day in the afternoon for about an hour to two hours.  She sleeps from 7-7 at night and hardly ever wakes up in the middle of the night.  We are getting ready to move her to a big girl bed hopefully this month.  She still loves her blanket and paci and has to have them to sleep.  At night before bathtime she pees in the little Elmo potty.  I am not sure I am really to do potty training again, but Charlotte will definitely be ready soon. 

Charlotte talks nonstop.  She will talk on the phone, to her toys, or just tell you constantly what she or Trey is doing.  Every day she says new words and phrases.  Her favorite phrase is, "Oh, Man!" whenever she drops something or something doesn't do what she wants.  It is so funny to hear what she says and comes up with.  Her other new favorite phrase is "I do 'self"  meaning, "I do it myself."

 Charlotte's personality is so fun to be around and we love the joy she adds to our family.  Happy Birthday sweet girl!

Making Cookies

The week before Christmas I kept asking the kids to make cookies with me.  I showed them the picture in the cookbook for Christmas cookies and tried to hype it up that we could decorate them with icing and sprinkles, but Trey kept insisting that we only make cookies with brown things in them (translation: chocolate chips).  Finally 2 days before Christmas I decided we were going to make Christmas cookies, even if I was the only one who did it.  Charlotte was interested once I started pulling out all the ingredients. 

Trey was content playing with the measuring tape instead of baking with us girls. He did not want any part in making cookies without chocolate chips.   Can you see the toy explosion behind him that happened every day over Christmas break? 

Finally Trey decided to scoop out the last few ingredients. 

After a couple of hours in the fridge, the dough was firm enough to roll out. 

 

Charlotte and Trey both liked making lots of different shapes.  

 Waiting for the cookies to cook and cool was taking a little too long so the kids enjoyed candy canes for the first time!

On Christmas Eve we decorated the cookies to have some to leave out for Santa. 

 Of course we had to taste test a few too. 

Opening Presents

Did Santa Come?

On Christmas morning I am pretty sure I was the first one awake at 6:00.  I laid in bed waiting for the first noise from the kids' side of upstairs.  Usually it involves Trey opening and closing drawers in his room for us to realize he is awake.  This morning though I heard him run out of his room.  I walked up to him in the hall and the first thing he said in sleepy wonder, "Mommy, did Santa come? Did he leave presents in our stockings?"  So after convincing him to stay in his pajamas we got Charlotte, sent Daddy downstairs with the camera and went to inspect what Santa left.

Trey seeing that Santa did indeed come.

Charlotte spotting the goodies from Santa.

Trey knew to dig into his stocking right away. 

After Charlotte watched Trey she was determined to get what was in her stocking.

Charlotte loved her Abby Cadabby slippers and wore them the rest of the day!

Trey showing off his Lightning McQueen slippers. 

Proving that the simplest presents are the best, Charlotte has been playing with the ducks from her and Trey's stockings over and over the past few days. 

Trey wanted to read his Chuck the Truck book to go with the Chuck trucks he got in his stocking. 

Charlotte's big present from Santa was a portable DVD player (Trey already had one).  Trey's big present was the Mickey sofa (Charlotte already had a princess sofa).  They still wanted to share Charlotte's sofa to watch their "puters" as they call them. 

As you can see from the pictures we were up and finished with Santa presents before the sun even came up!  This was the first year Trey really got what was going on and couldn't wait to see his stocking and Charlotte gets excited about whatever Trey does.  I look forward to next year when they are both super excited for Christmas morning. 

Christmas Cards

I love Christmas cards; getting them, sending them, looking through old ones.  My favorite are photo cards, especially from friends we don't see very often.  It is neat to see how families have grown and changed over the years. 

This year I was trying to figure out the best way to display our cards.  I saw some ideas on Pinterest and changed the ribbon on kitchen cabinets to putting ribbon on the door to our basement.  I couldn't find any red or green clothespins to hook the cards onto the ribbon so I just used tape to attach them to the wall.  This way I also don't have to worry about them being snapped off the ribbon by little hands.  Trey and Charlotte love to look at the cards and Charlotte likes you to open each one and read it to her. 

I also wanted to display our photo cards from years past.  After some digging in the basement I found our Christmas card from 4 years ago.  I still had one from last year and this year, but the year I was pregnant with Charlotte and Trey was 20 months old was a Christmas card disaster.  I remember Trey would not take a picture for us no matter what we tried, and once we got a halfway decent photo we stayed up until midnight creating the card from CVS because it was December 20th. Then CVS printed them wrong so we had to do them again and they barely got in the mail before Christmas.  So we have no leftovers from that year because I think we actually ran out.   Anyways I used cards from 2009, 2011, and 2012 for this display. There is supposed to be distressed red H in the empty box, but I keep forgetting to order it from etsy :)

 I used scrapbook paper I originally bought for another project and the frames were already on the wall with other printables so this was completely free and took about 30 minutes one evening.

2012

2011

2009

The kids love checking the mailbox for Christmas cards.  They also helped us mail the cards.  Here they are bundled up and ready to go deliver the cards to the mailbox.

Christmas Crafts

Our refrigerator front is filled with Christmas crafts the kids have done at home and at church.  Charlotte and Trey both love to do crafts and thanks to Pinterest I can quickly come up with crafts to do at home.  They really love to paint and especially make handprints.  The other night we made handprint Christmas trees after dinner.

Please forgive my 11 year old hoodie.  It is the most comfy hoodie I own and so I like to rock it on nights at home that involve paint, even if it is not much to look at :) 

Trey's tree

Charlotte's tree

 They also love stickers.  This was craft was leftover from my two year old class at church a few weeks ago.  Charlotte needed help peeling the stickers, but she was all about putting them on her tree and then taking them off the next day.  Trey wanted to fill up his tree so no empty space was left!