getting ready for Christmas

(for the record, I have no idea why the typing/spacing is so weird on this entry. and I'd rather post it now than spend time trying to fix it! oh well.)
Before we had two children, putting up Christmas decorations was usually a one day affair, or at least one weekend. Pull them out, pick out what we wanted to put up, string up some lights and then tuck the leftovers away till next year. Now with two kids, we don't have a lot of extra chunks of time so we've spent much of December getting ready for Christmas. That includes decorating (we've strung up lights outside on two separate weekends) and just doing Christmas-y activities. Since Hayden is two, she's really starting to "get" Christmas and it's made everything a lot more fun. She's become a big fan of the advent calendars - though she keeps asking to "do the advent calendars" multiple times in one day and doesn't quite get the once a day part of them. I also mis-estimated how hard advent calendars would be to do when you have no concept of numbers beyond 1 and 2. Here's a picture of her getting started on the very first one!

Part of the reason we had such a hard time putting up lights outside (one of my favorite Christmas decorations!) is that Mother Nature has insisted on decorating for Christmas as well. We've had at least 2 measurable snowfalls this month, and what has fallen has yet to melt away. That means no icicles hung up on the roof this year because it's too treacherous to get up there (we've had snow and ice). But we have managed to get some lights up outside (multi-colored of course!) and Hayden had a fun time playing in the snow. She would pick up a bunch of snow and try to throw it on Blizzard (much like her leaf throwing antics earlier!).
Other activities have included dancing to Christmas music (check out the video!), singing Christmas carols (see earlier video!), watching old school Christmas specials (thumbs up to Charlie Brown while the Grinch got vetoed by Hayden), and decorating the house. We have a big tree downstairs and a little tree upstairs.

(this is the only pic from decorating the tree and it doesn't even include the tree! but it's cute!)

We also went to the Christmas party at Jason's work. Both kids did a great job wearing special Christmas outfits - Eliza didn't even have to get her outfit changed the whole time! (a small Christmas miracle!) Hayden had fun at the party, eating all sorts of hors d'oeuvres and hanging out with Sarah.
We also try to put Eliza in aSanta hat whenever possible. Who doesn't love a baby in a Santa hat?!

Eliza at 12 weeks

Not quite as exciting as Hayden singing jingle bells, but I thought Eliza deserved a video too. She is officially 12 weeks old today! Granted, she still doesn't do too much that's exciting - but you can see her smile, yawn, rub her hands together a little bit and start to fall asleep. (the video was taken just moments ago and she is now napping on the bed!)

Jingle Bells!

Bringing you some Christmas cheer!



Hayden was going down for a nap, and decided to start singing while I went to get Eliza, who was waking up and fussing. She really likes Jingle Bells and has apparently learned most of the words! Sorry you have to hear me singing, but I thought we needed some closure to the video. :) I especially like her laughing!

Happy Turkey Day!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

We got back on Sunday from our first road trip with two kids. We headed west to Columbus to spend Thanksgiving with Jason's parents. It was a good trip. Both Hayden and Eliza were excellent car travelers. The trip there was great; the trip back less great, but mainly because of traffic, not because of difficult kids. Not sure why we have to pay toll money to sit in traffic!

Anyway, took a few pictures along the way to document the weekend. Hayden had a great time with so much family around; she was a bit shy at first when everyone arrived for Thanksgiving, but quickly warmed up to Uncle Rich, Poppa and Ammi. She passed off brown chex (I no like) to Uncle Rich and had him reading her stories after dinner. Though I know she would have liked the turkey, Hayden stuck to starches for the big meal. Chex mix, a few bites of mashed potatoes and a roll made up her meal, followed up with ice cream for dessert.

She did crack me up, at least twice when we made our chocolate bourbon pecan pie on Wednesday before hitting the road. First, she was willing to try just about anything we put in the pie, including plain pecans. (she's showing off her mouthful in the first picture.) I think she probably would have eaen the corn syrup had I let her, or even tried the dash of vinegar that went in the crust. Then, when I let her smell the bourbon (we often smell ingredients), she busted out with a big grin and said "yummy!" For the record, I did NOT let her try it! :)

We got in to Columbus at a reasonable hour (8:30ish) and everyone went to bed smoothly. Next morning, I was ready for holiday mode. At her first diaper change in the daylight, Eliza was dressed for the occassion!
As per tradition, we turned on the big parade. Hayden made herself comfortable, for about 2 minutes, before jumping up to find something else to do. She made us pull the stool close enough to the chair so she could put her legs on it. And then she put the pillow behind her back. so funny!
Later in the morning, after a very impressive tantrum, we all managed to get dressed to go for a little walk with the rest of the neighborhood. Hayden was pretty tickled by the giant turkey we found nearby.
And she liked pushing her baby in the stroller, for about 5 minutes. This picture shows her showing the baby the leaves, just like I do for her when we go walking and Hayden is in the stroller.
Grammy and Granddad have a pretty good supply of leaves too. After the walk, Hayden and Granddad did some frolicking in the leaves.

When we got back from our walk, everyone got dressed for dinner (which was planned for early afternoon). We even managed a family picture! I was thinking we could use this for Christmas cards, then realized that Eliza has a thanksgiving bib on and that just wouldn't work. And to give you a little 'behind the scenes', right after we finished smiling, Eliza decided to have one of her projectile vomiting episodes and the thanksgiving bib was retired for the day. Amazingly neither her clothes, nor mine, were harmed!
We had quite the group for Thanksgiving dinner. Ammi, Poppa, Uncle Rich, Norma, and cousin Kim came down from Michigan and the Wesps joined us as well. We even got to talk to the West coast DeRousie contigent via Skype. Not the coolest photo but I love that this picture shows Ammi, Jason and Eliza skyping with Jen and family in Portland. Talk about intergenerational family connections!
Thanksgiving dinner was delicious. Grammy did a wonderful job with the preparations. We had turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans, fresh cranberry sauce, gravy, stuffing, apple pie, pumpkin pie and ice cream. I contributed rolls and the chocolate bourbon pecan pie. YUM! As I said, Hayden stuck with the starches until dessert time when Grammy tried to introduce her to the glories of Thanksgiving pies. Hayden decided she preferred ice cream without the pie.

The annual DeRousie family Thanksgiving potrait.
Thanks to Mr. Wesp for his photography skills!

After the big meal, we just enjoyed our time in Columbus. There was some shopping done by Grammy and Daddy on black friday. There was lots of book reading, baby snuggling, and sport watching. Jason and I got to catch up with a couple old friends. Eliza really enjoyed "talking" to Grammy and Granddad, showing off her new skills of cooing and smiling. Hayden even got to try some of Grammy's eye makeup - can you see it?!

On Saturday evening, we headed over to the Columbus Zoo to catch out their lights. I'm not the best nighttime photographer (christmas list hint - photography class!), but you get the jist. The whole place was decked out in an amazing amount of lights. Hayden seemed to like it, especially eating snacks in the stroller. I think she would have liked to have seen more animals, since we told her we were going to the zoo, but most of them were sleeping.
We did get into a barn in the North American area and got to check out goats and sheep, and some honey bees.
Plus, there were various light animals around the zoo. I took a picture of the hippo in honor of Poppop.
Right before we left, we managed to catch the light show around the lake. The lights flashed on and off in time to 3 christmas songs. Hayden loved the lights and even danced to the music. Then it was time to head home cuz it was late and chilly. See how bundled up we are!
As I said, Sunday's drive home was not quite as smooth as the drive to Columbus, due to the traffic on the turnpike. But everyone hung in there, and we made it home safe and sound. I took pictures of happy kid faces to prove it!
And with our Thanksgiving roadtrip over - I think we just might be ready for our three prong Christmas trip (SC to Durham to Columbus to SC)!Happy Holidays!!!

Two Months

Happy Two-Months Birthday to Eliza,
Happy Two-Months Birthday to Eliza,
Happy Two-Months BIRTHday to Eliza,
Happy Birthday to You!

Eliza's not getting as much press as Hayden yet, so I thought she deserved her own special entry in honor of her two months birthday. I can hardly believe it's been two months already! Seems like forever and not even a day all at the same time. She's filling out nicely, isn't she?!!

This is the closest to a smile I've been able to capture so far...

Lots-o-leaves!

State College is an interesting place. It has phenomal drink specials (nickel draft night! quarter well drinks!) and enough pizza places to let you try a new place each day of the month (or at least it seems that way, I haven't really documented this). It also has terrific ice cream options, hence the frequency of ice cream mentions in this blog. :) The other thing State College has a lot of this time of year is LEAVES. Lots and lots of leaves. Somehow we have managed to do a decent job raking them up, and Hayden was introduced to the joy of playing in a leaf pile. Her smiles and silliness make all the hard work of raking totally worth it! Below are photos from two separate occasions of leafy fun.

Here's her first venture into a pile. I'm not sure why she kept her hands up. Reminds me of how most people enter a swimming pool - hands up until you get used to the temperature. I finally convinced her to throw some of them in the air. She thought that was fun and made for a neat picture. This came back to haunt me later...
Such a cutie! (and how great that she's willing to wear her mittens!)
Even Eliza got in on the fun, though she didn't toss any into the air. I think Eliza needs to be able to sit up better for this to be a cute photo. But alas, by the time she sits up, there will be snow instead of leaves. Guess I better bundle her up well for that photo!Now a day or two later, in the morning, it was just a beautiful fall day and I thought I'd take a picture of our tree in the front yard in all it's colorful glory. Note the large pile of leaves the girls had been playing in. And also note the large amount of leaves STILL on the trees! Our raking duties were not yet done (nor had we done the backyard yet!).


So a little while later, we did some more raking. And there was some nice weather so we had a picnic outside on the lawn to enjoy the sunshine. I didn't get the camera out for the picnic but I did manage to capture Hayden enjoying the leaf pile. This time around she was much more into it. She started by taking huge handfuls of leaves and bringing them over to throw them on me and Ellie.

And then she just dove straight into the pile itself.

I didn't make Eliza go leaf swimming this time around. Instead, when I finally put her down to go play with Hayden, she just napped peacefully on the picnic blanket.
I'd invite everyone to come play in the leaves with us, but the leaf sucking truck just came by yesterday and took away all the leaves. While we still have a few, there's not quite enough for a giant pile. But I promise we'll be able to throw a huge leaf pile party next year, if you're interested! Like pizza places and ice cream, those leaves are just a part of the State College experience!

Fall Follies

Finding time to blog these days is tough. We keep ourselves pretty busy. Someone is always needing a meal, a nap, a diaper change - and that's just me taking care of me! (ha!) You know we've done some fun stuff this fall - like adding to our family, picking out pumpkins, playing in the snow, and celebrating Halloween. These were some pretty fun big events but we also do little fun things too, which keep our day-to-day life entertaining. There aren't always as many pictures of these events, but sometimes I manage to pull out the camera. So here are some (literal) snapshots of the little things in our life this fall... in no particular order...

We play with Blizzard... Hayden actually really tries to play with her sometimes by throwing a toy for her or chasing her outside. Blizz isn't really sure she likes the attention, but she usually plays along.
We paint vegetation - primarily gourds. :) This is best done in your pajamas!
We introduced Eliza to the Creamery. She's the little yellow part below my chin. We went shortly before Halloween, on one of the last warm days and had two YUMMY flavors - my favorite was Monster Mash. (look it up!)
We've taken a lot of naps - sometimes in strange positions...
and sometimes they are hard to wake up from...
Eliza is especially good at napping. She really likes to nap in her swing! (thank goodness!)

There's been a little bit of sisterly bonding. Hayden is a big fan of the bonding sessions; Eliza not so much.

We have gone to the grocery store A LOT. And Hayden sometimes helps me unpack, if I have to feed Eliza right when we get home. Notice how neatly everything is lined up and how the bread is standing up straight!We've started doing some tummy time. Sometimes this is best done on Mommy's knees!

We've also taken advantage of daylight savings and checked out the moon in the Happy Valley dusk. The scenic picture does not capture how pretty the evening was. We did manage a pretty good picture of the three girls (yes that's Eliza in the fleecy yellowness under my chin this time.)
We've also put lots of smudges on the glass storm door. :)
And I can't even tell you how many books we've been reading, over and over and over... (but I'm still tremendously proud of my bookworm!)
Hayden has also experimented with what she can and cannot do on her own. Case in point - she CAN fit into the block container but she CANNOT get out of it without help. Yes we were laughing at her and just had to document her achievement/distress.

Most recently we enjoyed a visit with Poppop who came up to stay with us before heading to Philly for a conference. We were so busy, this is the only picture we took with him! Come back again soon!
So that's life with us this fall. Hope all is well with you!