Snow!

Late Christmas night, most likely early the next morning, we got some snow in SC! I know this is not a big deal to our mid-west family, but we rarely see snow this early in the season, most of the time, not at all. Hannah has been fortunate to see snow twice in her young life. She enjoyed it much more this time. I took a picture of her standing on the chair just like last February. It was fun to see the difference. We went out and played for a while. She had fun scooping it up in her mittens and throwing it up in the air. She also liked making tracks with her new boots (perfect gift from Nana and Grandaddy!)

Christmas with the Vitters Family

Christmas with the Miller Family

The pictures don't do justice to the beautiful doll bed my dad made Hannah, or the beautiful Raggedy Anne my mom made her. I'll try to take some good pictures and post them later.

Thank you Miller family for an amazing Christmas. It was great to be with everyone this year!

Christmas

Here's a little "teaser" picture while I work on downloading and sharing the rest! Merry Christmas everyone!

Projects

I've mentioned before how much Hannah loves projects. No matter what mood she's in, if you mention the word "project" or she sees a paintbrush or even a pencil, she instantly gets happy and ready to create. We've had some fun with projects the last few days. Here are a few highlights:

Baking cookies with Nana: Hannah had a blast making cookies with Nana. Nana was smart and made the dough at her own house prior to coming to keep Hannah. Hannah liked using the rolling pin, and stamping out the Christmas trees. She also liked adding sprinkles and frosting to some of the cookies. She really wanted to use the "shovel" to get the cookies off the cookie sheet, but it was too hot.


Little Kids Craft Extravaganza (for more pictures see Heather's blog): Hannah, Madeline, Mary Scott and Ben got together to create some fun crafts. Thanks for sharing your gingerbread kit, Heather. And a huge thank you to Aunt Llora, who was a wonderful help!!!!! Mary Scott and Ben will enjoy themselves more next year, but I'm so glad Katy brought Mary Scott anyway! And yes, Hannah is shirtless. We've done enough projects to know :) We also made snowmen and/or Santa ornaments. I thought I had a picture downloaded, but don't. That will have to come later.

Santa - Then and Now

We attempted the Santa visit today. While waiting in line she enjoyed seeing him (with other children and from a distance!) but when it was her turn, it didn't go so well. I was prepared with my own camera so we wouldn't have to pay for the disaster I was assuming it would be. She didn't disappoint me!Wow, what a difference a year makes!

Still Dry

It's been a full week of dry pants, and no accidents! She's even been dry for 90% of her naps. We have even traveled around town, visited Mommy's school for the holiday event, gone to the grocery store, went to Nana's music program at her church, ate at The Cotton House, and spent some time alone with Papa. No accidents!

I realized accidents are in our future, but it's nice to know she seems to understand the whole concept :).

Getting Ready for the Holidays

We are finally getting ready for Christmas. It took a while longer than usual to get the tree up and decorated. It is a little more bare than usual, but because of the size of our living area, the tree takes up a great deal of space, and it too much of a temptation to Hannah. She loves the pretty lights. In fact, she would probably let me drive her around for hours if she could see "pretty lights" the whole time. She's going to love Saluda Shouls and the Lights at the Zoo this year. So when do they both fit into our calendar (and yours Heather!)?

I'm way behind on shopping. Usually I'm about done by now. Not this year. Hmmmm....I wonder why?

Tomorrow is my first cookie exchange, and I'm excited to go. However, I'm a little embarrassed by my cookies. They are super yummy, but super small. I followed the recipe (and it still didn't make the number it said it would) and made 1 inch balls. My cookies are rather small...

Any recommendations for a good Santa to visit? We're thinking about the Santa at Picture People again, if it fits into the calendar. We don't want to pay for the mall Santa, if she'd just going to freak out (I'm thinking she won't though). I'd love your suggestions or great Santa ideas!

Hannah has a terrible cough and isn't sleeping well. No fever (whew) yet but she is very cranky and indecisive and grumpy and the list keeps going. To make matter much, much, worse Justin has also been sick. He's had a temperature for several days (upper 102s, like 102.9) and has still had to work. It's going to be a fun filled weekend.

And I'm not going to "say" much on this post, as I don't want to jinx anything, but Hannah has had 4 dry days in a row. This includes going on a trip to my school yesterday evening, and back home! She's really doing a great, great job. She loves her big girl panties so much, she wore them to bed last night over her pj bottoms. It wasn't worth the fight.

A post wouldn't be complete without a picture of Hannah. She likes to tell the deer by the tree goodnight. Sometimes it trumps Kodak (amazing actually). She likes to kiss it on the nose :)

Help?

Okay my blogspot friends. Time to help me out again. I am failing to remember how to change my colors to match my background. Has it changed? Am I losing my mind? Please help :)

Cooking

Hannah loves projects. She loves art projects and she had recently decided she likes cooking projects. If I'm in the kitchen she has to get the stool out so "Hannah see". She loves to stir things and pour in ingredients. She helps Mommy a lot. This morning we were making muffins. Apparently the stool wasn't tall enough for her so she got down and went to the table and tried to drag over a kitchen chair. I helped her get it over and she took over after that. I poured the milk into the measuring cup, and she poured it in and had to stir it. When I took over stirring to get the lumps out, you would have thought I was taking all of her toys away. While she was stirring I went to get the camera. When I came back, she had already started to fill up the muffin cups! I was amazed. She usually helps with pancakes, and knowing what to do with muffins was a surprise! She made sure each cup had some in it. It wasn't until the first batch was in the oven (berry muffins for mommy and Hannah) that she discovered she could taste the batter. Daddy's muffins (chocolate chip) didn't have nearly the amount of batter they should have. It's a good thing it was the cheap, only add milk, kind of muffins!

Are they done yet? (luckily muffin tops don't take as long to cook) Patience is not something we've learned yet...
All good cooks clean up their own messes. Hannah is no exception. She knows her daddy too well (he was of course still sleeping). There was a little mess, but surprisingly not as much of mess as you'd think there would be. We had a great time, although I'm not sure I will ever get anything done in the kitchen again.

It's Halloween Fun!

What a fun weekend we had! Hannah was so much fun this Halloween. I can only imagine what future Halloweens hold for us. We started the festivities at Uncle Trip and Aunt Llora's Haunted Housewarming party. They did an awesome job of decorating and feeding everyone. They should really consider doing it every year, as it was so fun! Hannah and Maddie had a blast together of course. They got to decorate little pumpkins, eat lots of junk, and play with Aunt Llora's toys. Who knew the favorite event of the evening would be pushing each other in the empty toy bucket?

Hannah as a lion. Thanks Nana for the awesome costume!!!!!

Sunday afternoon Hannah and I (and the neighbor girl) carved her little pumpkin she decorated last night. She was so excited to watch it all. Megan next door took all the "slime" out and Hannah tried to eat the top. She really liked when I cut the face and kept saying "hole". She liked to take the lid on and off.
Maddie came to our house for trick-or-treating. The girls had fun together once again. We walked up and down the street and they both started to really get into it. They would say their own versions of "trick-or-treat" and even remember to say thank you. Hannah couldn't keep the candy out of her mouth and had a difficult remembering to put the candy into her bucket. She wanted it immediately. She did manage to get a lollipop and sucked on it for most of the excursion. She was so sticky afterwards and kept saying "I sticky."

Pumpkin Patch

Wednesday after school we went to the Red Bank Methodist "Homeless Pumpkins" patch. Hannah had a ball. She loves pumpkins and was super excited to go. She touched just about every single pumpkin and had conversations with some scarecrows. She got to pick her very own little pumpkin to take home. She was so much fun to watch!

18 Months Old

Hannah turned 18 months old on Friday. I can't believe she's already a year and a half old. I left school early on Friday to pick her up and get her to the doctor. It was nice to sit on the "well patient" side for a change. She was fine in the waiting room, but as soon as they opened the door for us to go back, the disaster started. She's definitely been to the doctor too often lately. She knows all too well what's going to happen. She checked out just fine though, and the good news is that her ears seem to be cleared. The shots she had a few weeks ago finally did the trick. She got her routine shots this time, and we added on the flu shot while she was already miserable. Luckily, no more vaccinations until she's four. Hopefully there won't be any more ear infection shots either! She went up to the 36th % in weight (which was good) and went down from 94% to 38th % in height. Everyone still thinks she's very tall for her age, and we were quite surprised by that stat. Her head is in the 64th%.

Here are a few of her "highlights":

• loves to sing and go to music class. She sings words to real songs along with the music, and without the music as well. She also loves to just sing made-up songs.
• she can identify some colors (she told me my earring were blue randomly one day)
• she can identify the number 9 and will tell you if you have 2 of something
• sings the first part of the alphabet song
• can identify and say almost every single body part ( says eye bows instead of eye brows, but points to the right item)
• speaks in some sentences
• talks all of the time, and can be understood more and more
• still uses sign language with her real words, and adds new signs as soon as I show them to her ("help" is still her favorite)
  
• makes great connections (saw a giraffe on a happy meal bag and said "giraffe" then she said "I feed" - which she did at the zoo a few weekends ago)
• loves her dog "Kody baby"
• loves to play with her babies
• wants to drink nothing but milk
• has HUGE temper tantrums (usually over milk)
• is very stubborn
• has 10 teeth (or at least parts of 10 teeth) - she's very slow with teeth!
  

I could keep going, but what mother wouldn't?