18 months

I am so very behind on my blog, and really want to get caught back up. 

The end of December, this little lady turned 18 months old! Seriously, ridiculous. Wasn't she just born a couple months ago?!? She's getting so big, so much fun and we love having her in our family.


18 month stats:
Weight: She finally hit 22lbs, finally hit the 50th percent!
Height: 5%
Head: 5%

She only says Mom and Dad, but says them very often. The doctor is concerned about her lack of talking, but I'm really not all that worried. Lincoln took a crazy amount of time to talk too. She communicates what she wants just fine, it just consists of a lot of pointing, shrieking, crying, screaming, grunting, etc.

She can hang with the boys, and loves to wrestle with her Dad. She will get very upset if he doesn't include her when he's throwing the boys all over the living room. She's also very much a girl and gets mad if we forget to put her necklace on for the day. This day, she was feeling like she needed a little something extra ... :) She was mad I only put one necklace on her, so she would get in her drawer and bring me pretty much whatever she was in the mood for.

She also has finally decided it's pretty fun to have painted nails. She will tell me that's what she wants by blowing on her fingers.

She thinks she's awfully big and loved sitting by herself at my mom's to eat dinner.

On morning, I really needed a few minutes to get some work done, so I attempted to entertain her with a girl movie, some juice and a bowl of pretzels. It lasted until she ran out of pretzels and she was off again.

She also figured out her new "cheese!" face.

Along with being a girly girl, she also has a full flare for the dramatic. She was upset I wouldn't get her a snack that very second.

Some mornings, she rocks some seriously awesome fuzzy bed head

She also started nursery on Christmas Sunday. She was excited to get in there and play with the toys, but wasn't happy I left her in a room full of strangers. It only took her a few weeks to adjust and she's done great ever since.

Just a little more drama, she was so excited for church!

Happy 18 months sweet baby girl! We love you to the moon and back. You were the missing link in our family and we are so grateful we have you.

Christmas

  Now that it's February, I guess I need to hurry up and get my Christmas post over with so I can move on with my new year. :)

I was trying really hard to be ready for Christmas earlier than Christmas Eve so we could enjoy the night without stress, and that didn't happen, but it wasn't as stressful as past years.

Surprisingly, my children went to bed really easily and fell asleep quickly. We were able to get everything ready and head to bed.

We hung up wrapping paper in hopes of keeping children out the next morning, but that didn't happen. They didn't rip it, they just snuck in and luckily they only went through their own stockings.

Just as I was getting ready to go to bed, I went to lock up and saw a Christmas miracle in the making. Snow.

That miracle didn't disappoint, we woke up to a yard full of white fluffy snow! (Which to this point has pretty much been our only good snow storm this winter ... bizarre).

The kids were so excited, I don't know if Ethan could have waited another minute.

He had even gone in early and started organizing everything in his own way.

Jade was a lot more fun this year, I love watching her figure things out!

 
Santa did good this year:

Jade continued on with her gift sitting and was really funny all morning.

Being married to Mart = homemade boxes. Ha ha!

Ethan has reached the age where clothes are HUGE disappointment ... and it just so happened that the first several gifts he opened (aside from his Santa gift) all turned out to be clothes.

And last but not least, we plan to have a lot of family adventures this year! To help with that, two new kid bows and arrows! (These go with my new bow from my birthday, Mart's new shotgun, some new fishing poles ... and hopefully to come, a canoe!)

Mart has been wanting to get a shotgun for a very long time! Thanks to a handful of side jobs before Christmas, we were able to get him one the day after Thanksgiving.

Later that night, after a not so fun moment of family drama (thank you Ty), we headed to Grandma's house to spend some time with her.

Without fail, every single time my boys go to visit Grandma, they come home with a business card or two. Thanks to Grandma, they each received 500 of their very own for Christmas. Yay for us ... ha ha.

 
Nanan made each of them a knitted dinosaur and the kids thought they were great. 

Grandma apparently thought Jade needed a stuffed pig that was as big as she is, and it was very cute.

The kids must have had a good Christmas this year, because for a couple of days after, they were all very entertained.

Jade as convinced that her new doll stroller was actually for her.

Ethan loved putting together his new snap circuit set from Grandma and making the propeller fly

And Lincoln was so excited he finally got his own skateboard and had to try it out.

Merry Christmas!