Christmas Dress

I mentioned earlier that Christine was sooooo lucky she got a Christmas dress from GiGi and then just a few days before Christmas this beautiful dress arrived in the mail from Grandma!

My mom made this dress! She is an amazing sewer (seamstress?) she was the one who taught me how to sew and continues to inspire my sewing adventures today.

Christmas Pajamas

Yup, still updating on Christmasy things. Jeff steals the laptop everyday because he is studying intensely for his Step One exam so I never have a chance to post on the blog. He is sick today, hopefully I can get caught up a little bit.

Christmas

I had hoped to blog all my Christmas photos before the end of December so I could start off the new year all caught up. As you can see, that didn't work out so well for me. One of my New Years resolutions is to be better at updating the blog. We shall see how that goes.

For Christmas this year we went to Jeff's parents' place. We basically moved in and took over the entire upstairs... and the washing machine. Gigi watched Christine everyday while Jeff and I went out to do fun things like go to the movies, eat out, go shopping... BEST PRESENT EVER! It was wonderful to eat out and not have to take turns eating switching off entertaining Christine. There were other couples at the restaurant eating with babies, and those babies would just happily look around and bang on the table. Jeff and I had to laugh because Christine would NEVER do that, she is a fireball of energy.

Christmas was on Sunday this year, which meant that we attended church before opening presents. So this is the only picture I have of Christine in her Christmas pajamas. There are little reindeer on the feet of the pajamas! so cute.

We had so much fun helping Christine unwrap the presents. She really figured it all out pretty quick and had to stop her from unwrapping paper off presents that weren't hers.

I bought a lambchops puppet for Christine from ebay and it came with several other puppets like this Baby Einstein one. She is loving all her puppets. She thinks they are so funny when they do things like pick up her shoes.

The big present for Christine was a bunch of Sandra Boynton books I bought from Ebay. (My friend taught me the amazingness of searching ebay for children's board book lots. Thank you Katrina!) I couldn't believe the killer deal I got. Christine got so excited when she opened the box, she flapped her arms up and down as she almost hyperventilated. After we pulled them all out she tried to pick up the entire stack of books.

It's mostly a present for me because I get some more variety in the books we read each day. When you read twenty books a day you cycle through the books pretty quick and you start to get a little board of those books!

Other details:

• Favorite books from Christmas: Hippos Go Berserk, Barnyard Dance, Fancy Nancy's Fabulous Fashion Boutique, Hand Hand Fingers Thumb
• Christine is very lucky girl and got 2 Christmas dresses. One from Gigi and another from Grandma. Pictures of Grandma's Christmas dress coming soon!
• Movies: We saw Sherlock Holmes in the theater and it was AMAZING! then we saw the Muppets movie and thought it was lame. I wish we had seen Sherlock Holmes a second time instead :) We also rented some movies from Red Box: Kung Fu Panda Two gets 2 stars. A few funny lines and that's about it. Not even close to the first one. If you haven't seen the first one you should. It's great. We love Jack Black. Pirates of the Caribbean Four gets 3 stars for special effects, great soundtrack, and Jack Sparrow. The last movie we rented I won't even mention because it was so painfully bad it's not worth even mentioning.
• Presents: I got a wireless mouse to replace the one Jeff lost. Yay! It will definitely make posting on the blog more easy. Jeff also gave me a laminating machine. Yes! I can't wait for all the kiddo projects I get to make in the upcoming years. Projects I am already planning: laminating coloring pages and purchasing dry-erase crayons to bring to church (have you heard of these? amazing!) finding some cute paper dolls and laminating them to be Christine-proof.

Oh Christmas Tree...

"This tree isn't very impressive, are you sure there aren't any more pieces in the box?"

"What exactly do you do with these ornaments?"

'"No, I don't think these should go on the tree. Let's put them in my toy box"

"These can go in my toy box? OK I will make a compromise"

This year was a completely different Christmas than last year. Last year I tried to comfort a screaming baby all day long with no time for anything Christmasy. I am not sad that Christine is no longer a baby. She was a lot of fun this year. We did a book countdown to Christmas by wrapping up 12 Christmas books and putting them under the tree. Each night we would unwrap a book and read it before bed. It took about five nights for Christine to get really good at unwrapping the books. Perfect practice for Christmas day!

The trouble-maker is at it again!

One afternoon I was trying to do a few things on the computer while Christine was playing. I was only just getting started when I look over to see what Christine was up to.

What is all that stuff on the ground? Play money from Monopoly? Wait a minute, we don't own Monopoly...

Cash, credit cards, gift cards...yep, definitely the contents of my wallet thrown about the room. She had accomplished this feat (going into my bedroom, finding my purse, pulling out my wallet, bringing it into her room, and dumping everything out) in about 1 minute flat. Is there some kind of competitive sport for this? Because Christine is showing some natural talent here!

Next up, we have what I like to call "Fancy Nancy makes the cookie container Fancy"

I was in the middle of cleaning up a craft project (glittering all my old ornament glass balls BRILLIANT idea BTW.) Christine, who also thought this was a brilliant (and FANCY) idea, stood up on her tippie toes and pulled down a bottle of modge podge, a bottle of silver glitter, and a foam brush from the kitchen table, and knew exactly what to do.

Very fancy.

This last one doesn't require much explanation. I was on the couch looking over my Google Reader on my ipad when Christine climbed onto the couch then onto my lap right between me and my ipad.

Mommy I am closing your crafty blogs and opening up "Moo Baa La La La"

Oh Christine... we love you!