Christmas cookies

Grace and I cooked some more Christmas cookies today. Grace really wanted to make Santa some of the break and bake cookies, and I was not going to argue with the easiness of it! The only problem is that Grace wanted to make both the reindeer ones and Christmas tree ones. That means we made 48 cookies for Santa! That is not going to help Santa's diet, so I convinced her we should bring half the cookies to Grandma and Papa's house. I think Miss Lily will be helping Santa eat his cookies this year!

Grace insisted on taking her shirt off to bake, I promise she did not get this from me. I always bake with clothes on! 

 Santa's cookies! Grace told me that "we also need to leave out some soy milk for Santa, but that Santa doesn't like soy milk, but he'll dip his cookies in it, and that he also needs a cup of tea." She also informed me that Mrs. Claus comes with him to help and that the reindeer do not need food because they eat mac n cheese and soup before they leave the North Pole. The things they come up with!

 I also tried to make some of the melted snowmen cookies. They didn't come out quite as cute as the original, but cute enough for me!

Christmas Festivities

Well, it certainly would not be a weekend in December if we didn't pack in as many Christmas activities as possible!

On Friday night I put the kids in their Christmas pajamas and we went next door for our annual Christmas cookies with the Brennans. 

Emma just watching.

 Grace making cookies with Auntie and Uncle Josh.

 Carter played us some beautiful Christmas music on the piano, okay, maybe it was only beautiful to me!

 Hard at work decorating cookies. 

I think Gracie probably did more eating of the frosting then actually decorating with it, but anyways. 

 Then on Saturday I braved the stores to finish up my shopping, before heading home for the night to finish all my wrapping, we took the kids to see this house in Lakeville.

 After spending maybe 2 hours of wrapping I was very happy to say I was done with it all!

Sunday morning we headed over to Grandma and Papa's house early to see their Christmas decorations and have breakfast.

The kids hanging out at Grandma & Papa's

 After Grandma and Papa's we went home so the kids could all nap, then we went next door again to make some gingerbread houses, which we did for the first time last year.

Grace's house, which she did all by herself! 

 My house.

 Some of the other houses

 Grace stole my camera and snapped a few shots. 

Christmas Baking

I started some of my Christmas baking this morning. Today I managed to make 3 batches of Oreo Truffles. I made an original batch in dark chocolate, a golden vanilla Oreo in milk chocolate, and a mint Oreo in white chocolate batch.

Then I made those oh so yummy, yet easy pretzel kisses. I made 2 batches using regular kisses and 1 batch using the hugs.

Then I made some rolo pretzels. I made 1 batch using white pretzels, and another batch using regular pretzels.

 I found these cute little Christmas jars in the Target dollar bins and they were perfect for the rolos and kisses. 

 Boxes filled with truffles.

 I had Cole bring me in one of the large party tables this morning to give me more work space. 

 I made some snowman pops, they didn't come out as cute as the original, but they'll do. 

 Then I whipped up 2 batches of santa hat pretzels. 

Then I made some reindeer feed and 2 batches of saltine toffee.

Did I mention that I did all this while home alone with all 3 kids, needless to say I'm exhausted and my house is a disaster! At least, I got a start on some of my baking!

Messy Babies

Carter doesn't like eating finger food, so I thought that maybe if I bought the pre-made baby food that had a little texture in it I could slowly get him to get some finger food. So yesterday I bought a few jars of the Stage 3 food. I feed Emma and Carter a jar of what they called lasagna last night, it had a few little pieces of pasta in it.
Emma loved it and got most of it in her mouth!

Carter on the other hand, loved the sauce part, but spit out every little piece of pasta! Notice his nice little pile of spit out pasta on his bib! He's such a goof ball!

But he was so damn proud of himself!

Teething Cookies

These have to be the messiest thing EVER! They are made so babies can just suck on them which leads to a gross brown mess. I don't really give them to the babies often because of how mess they are, but if they've had a really messy breakfast or dinner I just let them have at it!

Carter just got to town and couldn't care less about getting messy.

 Emma on the other hand isn't thrilled about actually touching it, but she is sort of a princess and has no desire to even attempt to hold her bottle, she's rather you do all that for her.

Bums, Bananas, & Tripods

Sort of just a randomness of things....Emma loves to lay on her belly with her bum in the air, it's so stinkin' cute!

Carter can sit in the tripod position for a few seconds at a time unassisted.

Both babies are teething like crazy after fussiness all day I remembered about the mesh feeder last night. I gave it to Carter, who seems to be having a harder time with the teeth and he went nuts for it. First I put an ice cube in it and after he finished that I put in a banana. Carter was so excited about the banana and it was the only thing that kept him calm for a good 15 minutes while he chomped away on the thing.

With their morning cereal/vegetable I've been giving the babies a sippy cup of water. Well they now know what a sippy cup is when they see one, so when Carter saw me get his sippy cup out of the fridge this morning and put it down he started screaming until I finally let him have it. And while Grace was sitting next to Emma later on she was drinking her own sippy cup when Emma started reaching for Gracie's cup and crying so I had to go get Emma her own cup. It's crazy how fast they pick up on these things.

And because I'm kind of crazy I put the kids in some crazy outfits today just so they could wear their cute babylegs.

"Um, Mom this bow is the size of my head!"

Random Happenings

Just some random things that have been happening in our house lately!

Carter likes to use poor Emma as am arm rest!

Emma and Carter have suddenly gotten so big and love to play! They are reaching for toys and putting them in their mouths!

We finally got our 2nd exersaucer out of the basement so Emma and Carter won't have to take turns now. I also busted out the swing this past weekend. Both babies have been fighting their naps, so I thought I'd try the swing and they both LOVE it! Problem is that we only have one right now. Carter also has taken two naps in the crib the past few days!

Emma still loves her hands and stares at them all day long! Although it often looks like she's practicing karate.

Carter is trying to be a big boy and really wants to hold is own bottle.

This past Friday was a rainy day and Cole didn't have to work so we all went to the mall to pass some time. We let Grace stop and play in the arcade and she had a blast!

We've been slowly trying to add some dairy into Grace's food over the past month to see if she has grow out of her dairy allergy. We started off very slow with just foods that may contain dairy, then slowly added some into her food, then I'd put a tiny bit of cheese on her pizza. She hadn't been having any reactions to any of the dairy so after the arcade on Friday we went to Friendlys and let her eat some really ice cream for the first time!

She loved it and didn't have any reactions! It almost seems like she used to have a reaction to her poop after eating dairy but now where she is potty trained the poop doesn't touch her skin so she isn't reacting to it.

After the mall on Friday Grace's hair was a mess from the rain, so I decided to give her a wacky hairstyle to go with her wacky hair!

I've been trying to switch up Grace's hair style to find something to do with it other then pigtails, but I still love the pigtails the best.

Carter is such a ham and often flashes this smile for the camera.

Emma on the other hand often flashes me this look!

The pediatrician the other day recommended starting some foods with the babies. I picked up a sweet potato on Saturday at Whole Foods to cook up for them. Sunday morning I fed them some, I didn't think Carter would eat any since he just gags on cereal, but he loved it!

Emma loved it as well, but I expected that since she loves the cereal too.

two very messy babies!