Logan's First Thanksgiving

Truth be told, I've tried to do this post numerous times. It just never made it to the publishing stage because as soon as I'd get to writing (fingers crossed this time), Logan would either wake from a nap or get fussy and clingy which makes for a bad combo when trying to get some blogging done. Pardon the picture overload on this post, we figured we couldn't get enough pictures of her first Thanksgiving and so they just kept coming...and coming....and you get the idea.

We had a great Thanksgiving in Ocala with my side of the family. We were all able to get together, which was a huge blessing, given that we're not sure when it'll happen again. Logan was a champ with only two 30 minute naps that day--she didn't get fussy much at all. We started the day with some of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, went and hung out with my siblings and then had an incredible Thanksgiving lunch with the family. To top it off, we got to watch the Santa Clause that evening, which is usually what John, Carolyn and I watched on Christmas Eve together, but since we won't be together we pulled it out early. Even Logan got to watch it this year!

Here's our first family picture on Thanksgiving as a family of three:

Mommy and Logan on Thanksgiving morning showing off Logan's Thanksgiving ensemble:

Two beautiful girls:

Logan and her Nana (not sure what's up with her face):

Logan had a great time playing with her Titi Carolyn, who indulged her and let her climb all over the place:

She got to spend some good quality time with her great grandpa Carlsen, too!

And even cracked a smile for some pictures, probably because someone allowed her to play with the phone she's holding:

She was a real trooper letting herself be passed around this last weekend. We were sure it was going to be a clingy one, but were hoping maybe we'd turned a corner when she allowed herself to go round and round the room--of course as soon as we got home, she wouldn't let either of us put her down or go near another human being...sigh. (side note, this picture is NOT a photoshopped picture of my dad 20 years ago that we pasted Logan into...he really does look THAT good)

While we ate dinner, Logan enjoyed a feast of cheerios, which she has learned to put in her mouth by herself:

We even gave her some mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes (all of which she L-O-V-E-D):

Photo Op with mommy:

Photo Op with daddy:

I actually have a comparison picture of the three of us from last year but I looked like such a horse that I decided to spare your eyes. :)

A whole family picture:

And one of the kiddos:

Happy Thanksgiving Guys! Now, bring on the fat guy in the big red suit!

Friday mid-moring the girls took Logan with us to Kohl's for her first Black Friday experience. She had a great time, which makes me SO happy because shopping is so much more fun when you've got someone with you, and now I have someone to go with me all the time (who can't say no yet...haha)!

A Girl and Her Dog

Every once and a while, before we left for Miami, I wondered how Logan would feel about the dogs my parents have. I became a little worried after we had a playdate at a house where there was a dog and Logan freaked out any time the dog looked at her and began to pray that:

a. she'd tolerate being around the dogs.

and

b. the dogs would tolerate her being around. The older of the two dogs tends to be a little more fickle and I was really worried she would not take Logan's curiosity.

Logan spent the first couple of days staring down the dogs like so:

That was her "don't mess with me dog" face. She liked to look at them and would even crack a smile every once and a while but she did NOT want them near her. In fact, she'd watch and even crawl up to the dogs until they turned around to eye her, and then she'd quickly turn around and get an "oh no!" face and scramble to the nearest adult. This was until she realized that they make great playmates, that is! I was pleasantly surprised when Cookie, the older dog, took to Logan and allowed her to poke and prod her without so much as batting an eyelid. Logan followed cookie around everywhere and whenever I took Logan out of the room, Cookie followed us, as if she was trying to protect L. It was very sweet.

Logan affectionately named Cookie "EEEEE" and you knew when you heard "EEEEEEE", Logan was either playing with Cookie or looking for Cookie. Any time that Cookie was outside, Logan sat or stood at the window and patiently waited for her to come back in (all while calling "EEEEE" loudly and pounding on the window).

By the end of the week, the two were best buds. Cookie sat and watched TV with Logan:
First thing when Logan got up, she'd go looking for "EEEEE":

And Logan was sad to say goodbye to her the morning we left. Ok, so I was sad to see her say goodbye to Cookie. I guess I don't really know what Logan was thinking, but she looked a little forlorn as we left the house, so one can assume, right? Maybe one day we'll have to get Logan a dog (this, of course, won't happen until she's old enough to be able to do some of the things I HATE to do--i.e. dog baths and cleaning up dog poop).

Miami Part II

We pulled in to good ol' Wake Forest sometime this morning around 2:30am. Logan was such a champ on the trip, she went to sleep in the car at about 7:30pm, woke up briefly at about 10:30 when we got gas and went back to sleep until we pulled up. Then she wanted to party. Sigh...such is life now, right? (she did go back down around 3:30am, no worries, and was up promptly at 8am)

So, we finished out our week in Miami last Wednesday. We had such a great time! We mostly hung out and watched our favorite (Logan's favorite) shows on the big screen (since she doesn't get to watch a whole lot of tv when we're at home--we limit the intake) like this:

We did a LOT of shopping last week. I don't know what it is about a cute (great)grandchild, but she makes her (great) grandma and grandaddy do crazy things with money to make her a happy girl. There is NO DOUBT that this child is well loved by both sets of her grandparents and ALL of her great grandparents! (Thanks mom and dad for making our week so wonderful) Speaking of shopping--remember that shopping cart cover that we got? Logan had her own ideas as to why we put it in the cart:

"I'll just kick back here, guys. You go ahead and do whatever you need to do, I won't go anywhere."

Two discoveries were made on this trip, too. The day we left Miami, Logan was rustling through our bookshelves and what did she pull out? Oh yes, an old violin concerto of mine. She spent a good 10 minutes just flipping through the pages-- I'm thinking we've got a musician! Then I look at the way she's sitting and realize, she may be a dancer too, no? (wow that was a very hispanic way to say that):

Logan was such a sweet girl this trip, she always is, but it was so nice to have such a mild mannered baby when we didn't have daddy around to help juggle the parenting. In church on Sunday my dad talked about blessings and I can't get over how much God has blessed Mike and I with such a wonderful and precious gift.

Before we left, Logan and I helped put up the Christmas tree! Well...I helped, Logan sat and looked cute:

Mid-Trip Update

So, a few weeks ago Mike and I decided a trip to Miami was in order for Logan and I. He has some big projects for school and is getting ready to finish out the semester, so we figured now would be as good a time as any to leave the house quiet and peaceful for him. I envy the fact that he's getting complete nights of sleep and is able to sleep past 8:15am when our alarm clock (cough...Logan...cough) usually wakes us up.

We've been having a great time hanging out in the warmer weather here with family. I figured I'd share some of our adventures through pictures! So here ya go:


We got in Wednesday evening and ate a quick dinner, stocked up on baby necessities and came home to take a bath and go to bed. Thursday mid-morning, Tita (my grandmother) came to pick us up and we went to Babies-R-Us and to lunch with her. Logan didn't quite know what to think of the big store but sure was happy with all of the goodies that were bestowed upon her by her "bis"tita (in Spanish, bisabuela is how you say great grandma and since I've always called her tita, we jokingly call her bistita in reference to she and Logan). We FINALLY got our shopping cart/high chair cover that we've been craving for weeks now that Logan has discovered the joys of sucking on carts, some sweet little outfits, and some new toys! We had lunch at my favorite salad place in Miami afterwards and got to spend some quality time with Tita:This is Logan with her vibrating teether--it is by far her favorite toy in the whole wide world. One time, it got left in the nursery at church and we were miserable until we got it back again the following Sunday. Another time, she dropped it in an aisle at Walmart and when I got to the car and she realized I was not handing her the toy as she was being put in her carseat and she made sure that we went back in and searched high and low for the thing until we got it. She loves her other toys, but I think this one brings welcome relief to the teething pains and so she just always wants it around.

Here's Logan and Tita at lunch.

And Logan with her teether again (don't you LOVE that highchair cover??? It's our new favorite accessory!)

Yesterday, Logan and I ventured back to my old stomping grounds at the school I taught at for a couple of years. I was anxious to see some of my old coworkers and was so excited to be able to spend a little time with them and show off my sweet girl! They oo-ed and ahh-ed over her and how "porcelain" she looks. White skin is not a thing people see here very often. I also got to hand out several business cards as the outfit she wore was an original that I designed and created for her (you'll see in the next few pictures)! Then we came home and hung out for a while:

We crawled and read and played with the doggies. Speaking of which, Logan is quite taken with my parents' older dog, Cookie. She's the smaller of the two and has been very patient as Logan pulls her tail and pulls her ears and kind of slaps her on the back. Logan has a great time doing all of this so long as Cookie doesn't move or look at her...the second she looks at Logan, Logan turns around and quickly scampers away. She likes the dogs, but she likes them on HER terms! (you can see her two little teeth really well in the picture below)
This is Logan's favorite chair in the house. I think she likes it so much because it's shorter than any of the furniture that we have at home and she's able to stand up tall and move around it because it gives her the upper hand. I have a better standing picture but it's in my camera memory (not on the SD card) and I don't have the reader with me here, so I'll definitely post that one when we get home! You can really get a good shot of the outfit, here, though.
Today we went shopping with my mom then had a girls lunch. It was so nice to get to spend some time together! It's fun to have three generations of the girls to out and do girly things (we missed Carolyn, though). Then we came home and have been playing with pots ever since.

Up up up

Logan has been pulling up for a while now, but she's not been a steady stander. She'd pull up halfway or close to all the way and then fall back down. In the last week or so, she's become very steady and has started pulling up on everything (coffee tables, her walker, tv stands--see below, the bed, her crib, the rocking chair--that's a fun one, her jumperoo, the couch, mommy and daddy's legs, pretty much anything she can get her hands on) and she'll stand for a good 3-4 minutes without wobbling.

It's fun to watch her, but it's bittersweet because it's one more step towards independence and not needing mommy and daddy quite as much as she does now (though, even though she's crawling she still wants to be held by one of us 75% of the day). Anyway, I snapped some pictures of her this morning watching her new favorite show, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse--I don't normally let her stand this close to the TV when it's on.

Here she is trying to mess with the DVR...guess she's already seen this episode.

Really mom? Can you just let me watch my show, please?

Ok, one smile and then we're done.

RIP

My pink razor phone that I just about died for a couple of years ago is officially and totally d-e-a-d.

The culprit:

That's right, none other than my sweet baby girl herself.

Logan got ahold of my phone about a week ago and drooled a massive amount of water onto it causing it to short out. It was a sad day when my pink phone died. Did I mention it was pink and that was my favorite part about it? Sigh. It's a good thing I was up for an upgrade or I may have been more upset and not found this quite as humorous as I do.
So, miss Logan now has a cell phone of her own and has not even SEEN my new phone so as to protect it from her and her weapons. For now she's perfectly content thinking that she's got my connection to the outside world in her mouth, and I'm ok with her thinking that. Maybe she doesn't need a Christmas present after all? :)

Tis The Season

The collection for Samaritan's Purse Operation Christmas Child has started and it goes for another week and a half and so this week we got out one of our old shoeboxes and got ready to fill it up.

Now, we do not make a lot of money. I'll just throw that out there. However, the children who receive these boxes are immeasurabley worse off than we are and Mike and I feel that it's incredibly important to teach all of our children the value in giving to others, especially those less fortunate than ourselves. And how can we not call ourselves fortunate? We have a roof over our head (that's not tin), we have a carpet to walk on (instead of dirt or mud), we have beds to sleep in (we don't have to share one tiny bed for our entire family...well, some nights we do--but we don't HAVE to), we have food to eat at every meal, we have running water and electricity, we are all healthy and have wonderful Dr.'s who help us when we're not, and we have a great God who sustains us. I think we're MORE than fortunate!

That being said, if we can fill a shoebox, anyone can fill one. It took about $10--total, and that $10 is going to make some little girl's YEAR. You don't even have to donate through a church! Go to Samaritan's Purse and it gives you all of the details. Participating in Operation Christmas child has really been wonderful for me. I did it before Mike and I even met and when I've had to opportunity since, I've taken it. It really helps you put life into perspective and makes you more thankful than ever (and what a great thing to be so near Thanksgiving) for all that you have!

When Mike and I went through the holiday season last year with a baby on the way, we talked a lot about how we wanted to raise our children to really see the value in giving to others. Especially those who don't have anything. I think it's been really convicting to me because I lived around such extreme poverty while we were in Guatemala and know what a gift like a shoebox would mean to those children. When you see something like that first hand, it touches you in a way that makes you totally re-evaluate the way you do things and even though I was just a middle schooler while we were there, I still think about it daily and how it changed me.

So, when we found out our church was doing OCC here we jumped on it. We chose to do a box for a little girl aged somewhere from 2-4 since we've got one closest to that age group. Then Logan and I made a trip to Target (what a GREAT excuse to go, right?) and just browsed and picked out several things that we thought (I thought) would be fun for a little girl to get. I actually saw several other families there who were talking about things to put in shoeboxes so I was excited to see that we weren't the only ones there doing it! I look forward to when Logan can pick things out for the shoebox, herself. How fun for her to pick something that someone her own age would enjoy!

Enough of my novel. :) Here are the pictures from when L and I put the box together:

Logan wanted to help with wrapping the box:

Checking it out to make sure it was done correctly:

Inspecting the toys to make sure that they're what SHE would want:

Ok, mommy, keep it up!

She even helped load some of the items into the box. Here she is putting the toothbrush in that she picked out at Target:

I think we got everything in there and it's ready to go!

Of course, we had to add a homemade bow to the pack for the sweet girl who will receive this.

Close her on up and she's all ready to go, guys! We did good work.

And a sweet picture of my sweet, sweet girl to finish up: