The Nation Family: December 2010

Thursday, December 30, 2010

18 months

Holy crap. How is she only 6 months away from being 2?!

We went to the doctor on Monday for her 18 month check up and everything looks great. She weighed in at 23 lbs., 11 oz. (50th percentile), she is 32" tall (60th percentile) and her head was 19.5" around (90th percentile). James says she got his noggin, the doctor said she is just really smart...we'll go with the doctor on this one.

She has been battling a cold for the past couple weeks, poor thing has been coughing so much and her little nose has just been running non-stop. Fortunately she hasn't run a fever and the doctor checked her ears and they looked fine, unfortunately for her it meant she was still able to get her 18 month vaccines.

She is right ontrack with her skills - drawing, picking up something and brining it to us when asked, gives hugs and kisses, etc. And a bit advanced in her language, she only needs to have 6-10 words at this point but she has at least 17 words and can string 2 words together, which according to the doctor is a 2 1/2 year skill.

Words are as follows...
mommy (now said with a British accent which is hilarious), puppy, doggie, hi, hey, bye, lunch, go, no, whoa, ouch, cheese, uh huh, thank you, more juice, monkey and let's go.

She also does the sign for 'more' and is quite demanding when doing so. Yesterday she handed me her snack cup that had cereal in it and started very insistently signing for more and just this evening James gave her a little piece of a Reese's peanut butter cup and she was signing for more before she even swallowed the first piece! I think we're going to need to work on 'please' next.

She has 9 teeth, four on the top, 3 on the bottom and a molar on each side and any day now the other bottom tooth is going to pop through. Thankfully she seems to do pretty well with teething, doesn't seem to give her a low-grade fever or disturb her sleep.

These photos are from a couple days before Christmas, we learned that she is still too young to bake (note the flour EVERYWHERE) but she certainly enjoyed helping.

From SGN - 18th Month (Christmas week)

Merry Christmas!

Christmas is always fun and exciting but it is so much more fun and exciting when you've got a child to share it with, even when they aren't old enough to fully grasp the whole concept (side note: in the coming years we'll be trying to figure out how to balance the true meaning of Christmas with Santa).

We had quite the Christmas miracle this year, we had plans to attend the 6:00 p.m. Christmas Eve service and then go out to dinner with one of our favorite couples, unfortunately the evil stomach bug struck again (thank God it wasn't our family again) and that plan was cancelled around 4:00 but we decided to go ahead on our own. Now dinner time is usually 6:00 and the bed time routine starts around 7:30 so we were excpecting nothing short of disaster. Our little angel was well, a perfect angel. We came prepared with snacks galore, crayons and books but we didn't even need them, she was the model child in church and even the model child at the Japanese restaurant. A Christmas miracle indeed!

Christmas morning we had Grandma, Uncle Patrick and Uncle Andy over for breakfast and present opening. Savannah's big gift this year was a play kitchen, we knew she would eventually enjoy playing with it but we weren't sure if she'd enjoy it immediately - thankfully she LOVED it right away!

I think her favorite part of the kitchen is that phone, she has carried it around the house every day since. Looking back, we probably should have given her the kitchen last because she was more interested in playing with it rather than opening her HUGE pile of gifts. Oh well, just made Christmas morning last a little longer.

Not all of these gifts are hers but I'd guess about 75% were!

From SGN - 18th Month (Christmas week)

We only got her a few things but our little girl was most definitely spoiled with plenty of cute outfits and some super fun toys! Her closet might be getting an extra shelf soon and it looks like Toys R Us exploded in the living room and it isn't even over yet, this weekend we'll be celebrating Christmas all over again with Gammie & Papa and then again in a few weeks with her cousins!

From SGN - 18th Month (Christmas week)

Oh yes, that is a ball pit.

From SGN - 18th Month (Christmas week)

I think James and I have been enjoying this toy more than she has.

From SGN - 18th Month (Christmas week)

Savannah wasn't the only one that got cool gifts, James got me an iPod touch and it has pretty much been attached to my hand for the past 5 days. And when it isn't attached to my hand, it's attached to his...I think we might be a little obsessed. I don't know if I have access to WiFi at work but if I do, let's just say my productivity will be WAY down.

We've both been off work all week (I had to go in until 11:30 a.m. on Monday) and it has been so nice!! This is the first time in 9 years that I've had this week off, to say I was eagerly anticipating it would be a major understatement. I know Savannah has really enjoyed having both of us home, she's even been sleeping until 7:15 which still sounds early but I assure you it is late for her. However, I'm already starting to worry about next week when we're back to the normal routine. I definitely don't envy James having to drop her off at daycare on Monday morning, something tells me it isn't going to be without tears on her part.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

17 Months

Savannah was officially 17 months old on November 27 and yes, I'm more than a little behind on the update.

She is constantly increasing her vocabulary, seems like she learns a new word every day...or maybe our intepretation of what she's saying changes every day. Among others and in addition to the 16 month update words she now says include:
-mommy (which I love, love, love hearing)
-puppy
-thank you
-cracker
-uh huh (complete with shaking head for yes)
-monkey (this is new within the past day or so)
-lunch (although she uses it for any meal)
-bye bye or just bye (complete with waving and at the right time)
-love you (ok, this might just be one of our interpretations)

I know I've mentioned before that she loves to be outside but she knows that she can't go out without shoes on so she will find her shoes and bring them to you (and not just the first two shoes she finds, an actual pair of shoes) then sit down in front of you so you can put them on her. She tries very hard to put them on herself but hasn't mastered that yet.

She knows that when it is time to eat she has to get in her chair so all we have to say is, "Are you ready to eat?" and she'll run over to the table and start pulling her chair out. She is very much into climbing on everything, including the kitchen table, so we have joked about tying the chairs together so she can't pull them out to climb up them, hopefully we won't actually have to follow through.

We fall more in love with our little angel every day.

From SGN - 18th Month

Thanksgiving

We spent Thanksgiving with James' family this year and as we always do when we are there, we had a fabulous time. We even got to go on a lunch date, big thanks to Gammie & Papa for keeping an eye on our pumpkin so we could enjoy a meal together that we didn't have to cut into tiny pieces and share.

Savannah really enjoyed getting to play with her cousins and hang out with her Aunt Tonia & Uncle Mike, we can't ever manage to live within less than a 5 hour drive of each other so we don't get to see them quite as often as we'd like.

Unfortunately she somehow managed to catch a stomach bug while we were there and spent the better part of Saturday evening sick. Thank goodness for hardwood floors, extra PJ's and the fastest washer of clothes in the East - by the time we had to change into her 3rd pair of pajamas the first pair was dried and folded! We thought we managed to allude the short, but terrible bug but alas, by Monday night I was sick and James came down with it on Tuesday, then my mom managed to catch it later in the week. Thankfully that is behind us now.

Look at that beautiful turkey!

From SGN - 18th Month

Clearly not a fan of finger painting!

From SGN - 18th Month

Her cousins seemed to like it though!

From SGN - 18th Month

Legos are fun! (side note: how adorable is the little camo vest that Gammie made?)

From SGN - 18th Month

Annual family picture, sure was easier to get everyone smiling before there were kids!

From SGN - 18th Month

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Shutterfly

I don't normally do this sort of thing, but since I outed myself a few months ago about being a couponing dork I couldn't pass this up...especially since just by raving about a great company, I'll get free Christmas cards - doesn't get much better than free! 47

I use Shutterfly ALL.THE.TIME - super great quality, speedy, quick, fast, (do you get the point?) turnaround, hundreds of designs, competitive prices and they are always running some sort of promotion to get a discount or get something free (again, doesn't get much better then free!!). Christmas photo cards, birthday party invitations, calendars, photo books, the list goes on and on. If you want a picture on something, chances are they have already thought of it and they can make your vision a reality. 84

Savannah's super cute 1st Birthday invitations that we got SO many compliments on? Thank you, Shutterfly.

From Blogger Pictures

Our Christmas cards from last year that were absoultely perfect? Thank you again, Shutterfly.

From Blogger Pictures

Since we're not so great at planning in advance, we're finally taking our pictures for this years cards tomorrow morning. I can't wait to pick out the perfect design for this years card (from Shutterfly, naturally) and get them in the mail!

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Cheese Face

We've got a total ham on our hands, anytime we point the camera in her direction we get "Cheeeeee" along with this adorable face. Really, does it get any cuter?

From SGN - 18th Month

I'm sure we did some really exciting things in the month of November, at the very least I know we had a very full schedule, but we didn't take many pictures so I don't know for sure. Is it sad that I can't even remember the past month without pictures??

I know we attended the FL/GA tailgate, where someone was clearly thrilled to be...

From SGN - 17th Month

saw some planes flying over us...

From SGN - 17th Month

where I managed to dump my maragarita in my lap (because of too much excitement in talking with my hands)...after Grandma came and picked up Savannah (thank you, mom!!)

From SGN - 17th Month

and got to hang out with a few of our favorite UGA fans...

From SGN - 17th Month

The Happiest Place on Earth

We spent the first weekend of November at Disney World, to say Savannah was less than thrilled would be an understatement. We knew going in that she wasn't at a great age to really enjoy it but we were hoping we would be pleasantly surprised. One of the biggest disappointments for us was the lack of things to do for children her age, she's too small to ride 98% of the rides and she's too mobile to sit in the stroller all day long. I was really shocked at the number of children that were still in the park when my mom, my sister and I went back at 10 p.m. for the Electric Light Parade.