A few Christmas pictures

Madelyn in her new Dora pajamas.

Pierce sporting a pair of his new pjs.

After all the gifts were opened Christmas morning, Madelyn chose to play with paper bowls and cups.

Madelyn reassuring Pierce that he got a cool new towel, too.


After we got home from celebrating Christmas with extended family, both kids chose to play with the toys that Madelyn received for Christmas two years ago.

And we're back...

Sort of. Sat. morning we are driving down to Center Cross for Christmas with the Taliaferros. My sister-in-law just got engaged (Yaaaaay, Sarah.) and we will enjoy her engagement party while we are in town. We will be there until Mon. morning.

We left my parents' house a little after 6:00 this morning and arrived home at 1:01 this afternoon. That, in my opinion, is very impressive. The kids traveled great! We only had to stop once each way and Pierce slept like a champ. I will say that the portable DVD player is a modern-day miracle. Madelyn, and Pierce to some degreee, was entertained by Boz, Barney, Elmo, Pooh, and Mickey.

The kids had a great Christmas and received some not so needed toys and some much needed clothes. Madelyn has had a growth spurt and some of her long pants are becoming capri pants. Pierce has been busting out of his pajamas for the last month, but I have resisted buying a larger size b/c I had put the word out that he needed some. My family came through superbly! Madelyn also enjoyed giving some ornaments that she designed to her grandparents.

I received a fabulous new camera and I took a ton of pictures. I need to sort through them, and once I do, I'll post a few.

And we're off...

We're heading out tomorrow morning. JD says, "I think we'll leave around 5:00." I decided 6:00 would be better. Hopefully, what should be 6 hour drive w/no kids will only be a 7-7.5 hour drive. Anyway, if you think about us between the hours of 6:00 am and 2:00 pm, pray that we are all maintaining our sanity.

Just a cute picture

This is a picture of Madelyn and her buddy Jake (or Jakey as she calls him). Margaret and Sean kept Madelyn last week while we went home for Grandmother's funeral. Madelyn informed me that they were watching Boz on Mrs. Margaret's bed. She keeps asking when she gets to see Jakey again, even though she just saw him yesterday! Is it too early for betrothal?

Is this cruel?

Since Pierce became mobile, I've had a difficult time getting good face shots of him. I discovered, though, that if I put him on the steps, he was nervous enough to sit still. I don't go out of reach, and it really is a pretty effective technique for the time being. I know this won't last long, as he will be able to maneuver around this pretty soon. But until then...






And proof of the problem:




For this picture, I think he was deliberately turning his head the other way.

A night out

Two weekends ago JD's office had their office Christmas party. I just haven't gotten around to posting this picture, but it's so rare that I get to dress up, I felt that I should. I thought we looked pretty spiffy.

P.S. Special thanks to Phil Taliaferro for taking this lovely picture.

To lighten my mood...

I did this.

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1490155924

You'll have to copy and paste the address into the browser. For some reason the link isn't working.

Odds and Ends

I'm exhausted right now. As soon as I finish posting this entry, I'm going to bed. (It's 8:50 pm as I type this.) In addition to the traveling and the emotional strain of this past week, last night we had two Christmas parties to attend. One started at 6:00. The other at 8:00, so we were able to stay long enough to enjoy both events. However, we did not get home until midnight. We also had to be out of the house by 7:30 this morning because we had nursery duty during the 8:00 church service.

Between the hours of 1:00 pm and 7:00 pm, I cleaned up 4 rounds of throw up. Pierce is sick. I'm praying that we can make it through the night without another vomit episode and also that the rest of the family can stay healthy.

On Monday of last week, Pierce had a well-baby check-up. He weighs 21.75 pounds (70th percentile) and is 31.25 inches long (95th percentile). He's almost given up army crawling and is starting to get pretty quick with "normal" crawling. He can also pull himself to a standing position. He also has four pearly whites.

Okay, I'm going to bed. I have some pictures that I'll hopefully have a chance to post soon. I don't have the energy to go upstairs and get the camera right now.

Sad news

My grandmother died on Monday morning. John David and I flew down to the funeral Wed. and drove back to Vienna on Thurs. with my parents. It's been an emotional, stressful, and sad week. My grandmother suffered a stroke 2 years ago and had been declining in health pretty rapidly over the last few months. We will miss her, but I find hope in the fact that she is now in the Lord's presence and is no longer suffering.

Thanks to our friends the Hills and Haynes for keeping our children over those two days! It helped a lot knowing that they were well cared for.

We will be driving back home for Christmas, and we are looking forward to spending more time with family and sharing more memories of my grandmother then.

November pictures

are posted here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/cmtaliaferro

Bathtime conversation

I gave the kids a bath last night. Here is a conversation that took place:

Madelyn: Mommy, you need to wash Pierce's ponytail.
Me: Silly, Pierce is a boy. He doesn't have a ponytail.
Madelyn: (laughing) Yes, he does.

I got the kids out of the tub and started putting lotion on Pierce.

Madelyn: Mommy, you need to put lotion on Pierce's ponytail.
Me: You're silly. Pierce doesn't have a ponytail. His hair is too short.
Madelyn: Yes, he does. (pointing) It's right there.
Me: Where?
Madelyn: There! (pointing again) His private parts!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Look what happened at our house today:

Just a couple of inches and it's supposed to be in the 60's next week, but hey, it's the first snow of the year, and Madelyn is fascinated. I don't think she remembers seeing the white stuff last year.

Gingerbread Nativity

Easy, fun, family activity! No baking! Everything included!

That's what the box on the gingerbread nativity said. So, I bought it thinking that Madelyn and I could do it one morning while Pierce napped. Well, let's just say it was not easy! It could be a family activity if everyone in your family is older than 15 AND are all magnificent artists. We didn't have to bake anything and everything was included, but let's just say the box was pretty misleading. Nevertheless, we did our best. Here is our manger scene:

O, Christmas Tree

We picked out our Christmas tree on Sunday, and I must say that it is the prettiest tree we've had so far. It's a Douglas Fir and it smells so good. Here are pre-trim and post-trim shots of our tree.

So many funny things...

On the way home from school today, I heard Madelyn singing in a whisper. The tune sounded familiar, so I asked her to sing a little louder. Here's the song:

We wish you a many Christmas
We wish you a many Christmas
We wish you a many Christmas
And a happy new ear.

I did confirm that it is EAR not YEAR.

Also, the fact that we use the word MERRY and MARY during the Christmas season is very confusing to my two year old. To make things more complicated, in Madelyn's little Bible that we read at night, the Christmas story also mentions that Joseph and MARY were MARRIED. She's definitely having trouble keeping it all straight.

We picked out our Christmas tree on Sunday. As we finished putting the lights on the tree, JD found a gadget that you plug your lights in to and use voice commands to activate the lights. The gadget understands four commands. Depending on how bright you want the lights you say--"Computer, high", "Computer, medium", "Computer, low", and "Computer, off". Madelyn thinks this is great, and I have found her yelling at the tree on multiple occasions. It doesn't understand the word "Bemuter", though.

We babysat our nieces on Saturday, and the girls all had a great time playing together. They decided to do a puppet show entitled, "The Three Little Pigs but Really the Two Little Pigs." Taylor (5 years old) came up with that title. I'm sure Taylor got frustrated with the whole process because she was the only one with an attention span to really see it through, but Madelyn and Kathryn (3 years old) still participated pretty well.

Christmas Craft

A couple of weeks ago, I took Madelyn to Michael's to get some Christmas crafts. She had a blast looking around at all of the decorations. I told her she could pick out a craft to do for herself and some crafts to give as gifts. We finally had time to work on them yesterday, and this is the finished product, along with some action shots. What you see here is her "Puppet Man". I'll post pictures of the other crafts later...I don't want to ruin any surprises.