Sydney's First Christmas

Today was probably the best Christmas ever. Christmas takes on a whole new meaning when it's your child's Christmas. Although, Sydney didn't really understand today, she had a blast. I think her favorite part was being able to stay home with mom and dad all day and have 100 percent of their attention. Sydney got up around 8 a.m. She wasn't really too successful at opening presents, but mom and dad helped her out. Then we spent the entire day in our PJ's just playing on the floor with all of her cool, new toys. We didn't even cook dinner! We ordered Chinese take-out! I think this was the best part of all. My brother and his wife always go out to a chinese buffet for their Christmas dinner. I never really understood why you want to spend your Christmas in at a buffet. But now I think that's a great idea. Cooking dinner would have taken away from the time we would want to spend with Sydney and we'd get all stressed out. So take out was a great idea. Sydney was exhausted. She took an hour long nap in the morning, a two and a half hour nap in the afternoon, and then fell asleep by 6:30. Below are some pictures of this great day!

Tomorrow I am headed out for some after holiday sales and then we're going to prepare for our trip to PA. I'm really looking forward to seeing everyone up there.

Well I hope everyone's holiday was as great as ours.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!

Yeah! Christmas if FINALLY here! I am so excited. Yes, I am more excited than Sydney. Christmas Eve was awesome. We went to service at 7pm. The service was amazing! There were people actually brought to tears. Sydney had a great time. Then we came home and put our new Christmas PJ's on. Sydney went to bed and Jason and I drank hot chocoloate and watched a Christmas Story (my second favorite Christmas movie). I, of course, ended up falling asleep about 30 minutes into it. Jason didn't mind at all since he really doesn't like that movie. So he watched Ghost Hunters (one of his favorite shows).

It is now 7:20 a.m. on Christmas Day and Jason and I are anxiously awaiting Sydney waking up. I think this is the first day since she was born that we actually WANT her to get up! So here are some picture of our Christmas Tree as we are looking at it right now. I'll post more pictures this evening (post-Sydney).

9 Months Already

So in my last post, I forgot to tell you about Sydney's 9-month check up. She got 3 shots and did fantastic. As always, so smiled for the first one, got a little unhappy for the second, and cried during the third. But I think it was just an act because 10 seconds later she was smiling again. Sydney is weighing in at a whopping 16 pounds 2 ounces. So maybe it's not whopping for her age, but the doctor thinks she's doing great. So I haven't updated everyone on her diet lately. She is eating tons and tons of food. She loves all fruits and veggies. Jason is a little worried she's going to be a vegetarian, so we've started giving her some meats and she loves them too. She has eaten chicken, turkey, fish, and tonight she tried a few bites of my meatload. She absolutely loved it. Her veggie of the week is cucumber. She seems to really like them. She is also eating yogurt, cottage cheese, and bread. Tonight she actually ate an entire slice of bread on her own. She didn't shove the entire slice in her mouth at once. She actually took tiny bites. It was really cool to watch her eat like a big girl. She doesn't have any teeth, but that doesn't seem to be stopping her.

So I asked Christina to come over to our houe and snap a few family portraits for the Christmas cards. Yes, I know waiting til the last minute, but that's been happening a lot lately. So you'll all probably receive Christmas cards from us after Christmas, but be happy you get them at all. So here are some of my favorites.

This is Sydney's fouth week at her new daycare. Everything is going so well. I think Sydney really enjoys going to Edna's house. She is getting such a good education. Today Edna asked Sydney to pick up the blue pice and she did. OK...so maybe it was a lucky guess, but maybe she really does know blue :)

I think she's well on her way to talking. She's got the mama and the dada down pretty well. As far as the signing is going, she's got milk down pat. She did it again this evening and at Edna's house. The next sign is eat. I've been working on that one the last couple of days with her. We'll see if she gets that one.

Baby Signs

So last week, the most amazing thing has happened. Sydney did her first baby sign. She made the sign for milk. Jason got her a bottle and she continued to make the sign while she was drinking the bottle. Then on Monday, she did the same thing at day care. What a genius! Well maybe not a genius, but a super smartie!

Last night, Sydney enoyed her first visit to Flat Iron Farm. For those of you not familiar with Southern Maryland, Flat Iron Farm puts on a huge display of lights for the holidays. They also open up all the barns for folks to walk through. Sydney saw cows, pigs, goats, chickens, ducks, horses, ponies, and sheep. I think the horses and cows were her favorites and baby pigs were a close third. It was such a fun time. Unfortunately we forgot our camera so we don't have any pictures of the event. Maybe next year :)

So I don't have pictures to post today. I spent 2 hours loading all our photos to our shutterfly site. So check out that page to see a bunch of pictures of Sydney over the last couple of months. The website is http://vancamps.shutterfly.com/