Second week of December - Enjoying the holiday season

Uh oh - I was just hoping she wouldn't notice all the ornaments on the tree... (Ha, yeah right!)

Maxwell enjoyed one last play date with his friend Sam and us adults all enjoyed visiting with each other.  We have had a lot of fun hanging out with Sarah and Brad and Sam.  They are moving to Michigan and we are quite sad to lose them!

Maxwell helped me secretly "elf" one of our neighbors

My smiley girl!

Here's a couple videos to show you some of my kids "talents"

Video - Emmalyn blowing raspberries

Video - Maxwell working on his dribbling skills

My Christmas shopping is coming right along

Cuddle time at night - it's a big fight between these two on who gets to be next to Momma

Silly faces

She is perfection - - pure, true perfection!

Playing ring toss on the elf hat

We made our annual trip to the Deerfield neighborhood to look at lights.  This year we went by ourselves and got out and enjoyed a couple streets on foot (and stroller).  Some of our favorites weren't up this year... maybe the houses were sold to new people?

Maxwell caught Daddy resting

Max's selfie

Nerf darts - they make super chew toys

One handed push up

Love those baby eyelashes

She's working on her climbing skills

Everything goes in her mouth...

...even big things

I let her play with one of the ornaments

Emmalyn loves the song "Row, Row, Row your Boat" and will start laughing (really it's more like chuckling) if you sing it to her.  

She has been sleeping horribly lately - she's up every half hour to an hour and sometimes it will work to put the binky in and sometimes it won't.  :(  She is only completely calm and sleeps well if she's in our bed.  While I'm not a fan of having my kids sleep with me, I am a fan of sleep.  

She is great at swallowing her food and is starting to be able to pick up her puffs.

It's great that she can pick up the food we want her to pick up however, the flip side of that is now that she is able to pick little things up, she is also picking up and trying to eat things that she shouldn't - like stuff on the floor such as leaves...and she loves it!  UGH.

Christmas in the Square

December is in full swing!  Yeah for the holidays!

This is what my Christmas shopping looks like - a bunch of Amazon boxes.  I am doing a lot of online shopping this year.

We took the kids and went to the city's "Christmas in the Square" event.  We met our friends Sarah and Brad there with their son Sam and new daughter Naomi.

Santa was arriving just as we were arriving so we got to see him before the official start of the "parade"

Max was not happy to see him

Reindeer Daddy

He was quite nervous knowing Santa was around

The girls!

The boys!  Maxwell didn't want to participate or do anything.  It was incredibly frustrating for me.

Sarah (Naomi), Sam, and Max

Let me correct myself, he was only interested in his funnel cake...beyond that he didn't want to do anything.  Remember how I mentioned that if anyone else is eating, then Emmalyn will get upset until she gets something? Yeah, so she was getting upset and I didn't bring food for her so she got a few bites of a funnel cake.  Sheesh - I couldn't believe I was letting my nearly 8 month old eat a friend funnel cake with sugar on it.  Maxwell was certainly not that "lucky" at that age.  That's what happens with the second child though, right?

Looking at the real reindeer

Max did play a couple of the "games" at the booths.  Apparently the vendors were cooler than Santa.

Waiting for the lighting of the Christmas tree (it ended up being colder than we were properly prepared for so we didn't hang out forever).

When we got home, we'd been "elf'd".  Max was really excited to see what one of our kind neighbors had left for us.

On our way to the event, we passed a big blowup Mr. Potato Head wearing a Santa hat in front of one of the businesses.  Maxwell said the funniest thing as we were passing.  He goes, "That a big potato!  He's wearing a Santa hat.  He should give it back to Santa.  But we should do it for him because he doesn't move."

:)  Isn't it fun to hear the way 3 year olds think?