Just 'cuz they're cute

Emilia is enjoying the awesome new toys she picked out with the gift card that Nanny and Poppa gave her for Christmas. She got a new Eric Carle book, The Grumpy Ladybug, and she got these Color Wonder markers and a Toy Story 3 coloring pad.

She also got a new play-doh set with letter and number stamps. Her favorite part of the set is the play-doh knife!

This was the outfit she picked out by herself yesterday (except the shirt). She told me she wanted a skirt and chose this one. Then she told me she wanted black tights. What a diva!

Then I told her I wanted to send a picture to daddy and this is how she posed!

Every time Nate is playing on the floor she either lays her baby down or lays down herself...or both.

Nate is getting new skills everyday! He can sit in the Bumbo for a bit now...

...but it doesn't take long before he gets tired and starts to lose it a little. We do a little most days because he thinks he's a big boy sitting up!

He's playing more with his toys these days too. He bats at them and grabs onto them now!

Thunder Snow 2011!!! (said in a very intense manner)

This storm drove us nuts!! We don't like snow in the first place, but it certainly didn't do itself any favors with this storm (neither did the Maryland Department of Transportation). On Wednesday afternoon it began with a freezing rain/sleet mix with thunder and lightening. By about 4 pm it turned completely over to snow and started to accumulate. By about 8:30 pm we had about 7 inches on the ground!

Brian left work in Baltimore at about 4. At around 7pm he called to tell me that he was stopped in a "parking lot" on I-70. Apparently MDoT decided that plowing a major highway was not a top priority and the vehicles 1 1/2 miles ahead of Brian couldn't make it up a hill. He sat on I-70 for 5 hours!!! He was originally in the right lane but a large group of idiots decided that they would try to pass the traffic on the right shoulder and ended up just making another lane of traffic. Would have been just annoying, but it turned out to be quite dangerous. Each time Brian tried to move forward he slid sideways and was afraid that he would hit one of the cars on the right should since they had positioned themselves so close to him. Once the traffic finally started moving he let some of the congestion clear and then got a push from a good samaritan. He drove 1 1/2 miles on completely unplowed roads in this 2-wheel drive truck! The rest of the trip through Maryland was fairly smooth sailing. Once he crossed the bridge into Virginia it was a different story. 15 hadn't been touched by a plow! He got stuck in yet another traffic jam and sat for another 1 1/2 hours. He finally got home around 2 am Thursday morning! Thank God he got home safely...someone was watching over him that night!

While Brian was sitting in the cold on I-70 we were dealing with the cold (and dark) here in the house. We lost power at about 8:30 pm while Mimi was in the bathtub. Her response to the situation was "Mommy, turn yight on"...I wish I could have. Fortunately Nate was already in bed and we finished Mimi's bath by flashlight. Mimi went to bed and each of them got an extra blanket. It stayed quite reasonable in the house...it only got down to about 60 overnight. The power went on and off a couple of times on Thursday before it was finally on for good at about 1:40 pm. Brian hooked up the generator so that we could at least have a couple appliances plugged in for a while. 

The good that came out of the storm was that we had Brian home all day on Thursday! He was very excited to use his plow to do the driveway and some of the street in front of the house. He was very glad that he had the plow since the snow was SOOOOO wet and heavy. Mimi even took a ride on the quad with daddy! It was a good packing snow, though, and we all got the chance to spend some time playing outside and making a snowman!

Nathan James

Nathan is getting so big! At his 2 month appointment on Jan 7th he weighed 12 lb. 5 1/2 oz! He is developing in leaps and bounds and has recently started really enjoying playing on the floor. He is attending to his toys when he's on his play mat and has really taken to his purple elephant!

His favorite thing is when people talk to him. He always lights up, smiles, and giggles.

He wants attention ALL the time - and unfortunately so does Mimi. I do my best but there is only so much to go around. The good thing is that Mimi LOVES Nate and can usually be distracted by me asking her to talk to or play with him for a little bit.

She loves to play with and take care of her babies as well. She usually imitates what I'm doing with Nate (right down to the nursing part).

Little chatty Carl has been talking up a storm these days. This is actually part of the same video clip but blogger wouldn't take the whole thing so I broke into two parts.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! (this is a long one)

Well things have finally settled down a bit after the holidays so here goes a long holiday post...

We started our holiday season this year with some traditional Christmas activities like sitting on Santa's lap and making a gingerbread house together. Emilia was not a big fan of the big man as you can see by the picture. I think the elves were surprised that I got the picture but I figured, for better or worse, this was Mimi's first experience with Santa. The gingerbread house went much better - she especially enjoyed eating the candy!

 

We made the trip up to PA on Thursday before Christmas and all the festivities began on Christmas Eve. Aunt JJ, Uncle Mark, all the cousins, Nan, and Pop got to meet Baby Nate.

Emilia had such a great time playing with her cousins, too!

The gifts began flowing that evening after a delicious dinner made by mom. Mimi was super excited with all of the commotion, but she spent quite a bit of time with each of the gifts that she got.

She was even excited to open gifts for Nathan.

Baby Nate spent most of Christmas Eve with Nanny. He was very content to hang out on her lap and cuddle while all of the other kids went crazy opening their gifts. He was awake the whole time and just watched...next year I'm sure he won't be so quiet!

Mimi got her annual Christmas Eve jammies. She couldn't have been more excited that they had a monkey on them...her favorite animal.

After everything settled down Nathan got in his Christmas Eve jammies and cuddled up with Mammaw while we watched "It's a Wonderful Life" (by the way: he spent most of the week like this).

Mimi was a bit surprised to see more presents on Christmas morning. It was tough to get to her open all of them because she was so interested in playing with her new toys.

After we got ready we went to Grami's house and found even more gifts to open! Mimi didn't even open all of the gifts at Grami's until several days after Christmas because she chose to take a nap after lunch instead. I think she was a little overwhelmed.

It was a good thing that she napped so well because there were even more people and even more gifts on Christmas evening at Aunt Janet and Uncle Kurt's house. You can see a cookie in her hand in the picture below...this was one of about 4 or 5 cookies that she had in a short period. We were wondering who kept giving her cookies until we saw that she was helping herself out of the tupperware boxes of extra cookies!

Here's Baby Nate with Mammaw...again!

We got to spend a little bit of time with Matt and Amanda before they went home. Nate was REALLY cozy with Uncle Matt!

Grami got some much needed Nathan time as well!

Mimi got to spend some quiet time with Mammaw too. She even watched her knit...for a couple of seconds. Maybe someday Mimi can teach me to knit...she'll probably learn before I do!

Mimi finally got around to opening her gifts at Grami's house and was thrilled to see Dancing Mickey!

When we got home there was even more Christmas!!! Once again it took some coaxing to get Mimi to open her gifts, but we got through them all...now finding a place to put everything is the tricky part!

We planned on leaving a bit earlier to come home but Uncle Walt McCabe passed away the day after Christmas and we were fortunate enough to stay for his memorial service. Even under the circumstances it was nice to see that part of the family that we haven't seen in so long. It was a beautiful service and a wonderful luncheon at Aunt Janet and Uncle Kurt's house. In true McCabe fashion there was lots of singing and music to celebrate his life.

Mimi just can't help herself when there is music around...(sorry the video is sideways-I always forget that I can't rotate video).

We had such a wonderful Christmas and are truly blessed to have such a wonderful and loving family! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone. I hope our 2011 is as great as our 2010 was!!