Holiday Aftermath

The week between Christmas and New Years was pretty low key. Dad was back at work, no more family came to visit, and the kids were constantly begging for friends or for me to entertain them. It got old really fast.

 Brooke made some fun art projects in school. These were used as decorations for their nutcracker performance in December.

Right after Christmas, Brooke got a stomach bug.  We missed church the last Sunday in December which was really sad for Brooke because she missed out on her last Sunday with her teachers before she moved to her new sunday school class in January. She's loved her teachers: Brother and Sister Bradley and they were really good to her.

On December 29 Grant turned 14 months! He is already acting so big. He likes to be right in the middle of whatever the older two kids are doing. He is a climber too. We have to be careful to push in the kitchen chairs otherwise he will climb up on the table. Grant still only has the same two bottom teeth he's had since 11 months. He's not walking yet, but is very close. He can stand up on his own and he's taken a couple "accidental" steps when he's not paying attention. If we try to get him to walk on purpose, he won't. Grant knows the signs for "milk" and "more" and will say "dot" for hot if we're around the fireplace. He can also say "uh-oh". I've heard him say "ma-ma" when he's just babbling, but if I asked him to say mama for me it always comes out as "da-da". One of these days we'll get him to say it.

This is Grant's favorite toy. He loves to sit inside this toy box. I've been going to the gym recently and there's a daycare there for the kids. When I go to pick them up, Grant will be sitting in the toy box at the daycare too!

 Grant is totally rocking his baby-mullet

 He also has a bruise on his cheek from falling off a kitchen chair on Christmas day.

 I am a little obsessed with baby selfies. Once, when Porter was a baby, we took the cutest baby selfie together. He was smiling so cute and I looked good. I keep on trying to recreate it with Grant but so far, no such luck. But it's fun to look at these pictures of us together over the past year to see how we both have changed.

 We don't even bother trying to get Grant to play with his "baby" toys anymore. He wants to play with all of Porter's things all the time. It's kind of cute and fun to watch them play together. Usually though, it ends in tears from one or both of them as they fight over toys and refuse to share with each other.

New Year's Eve night Blake had to work a night shift, so the kids and I ate pizza for dinner, made a time capsule that summarized the last year. We'll open it on NYE 2016 and then make another one. Hopefully this will be the start of a fun tradition for our family.

First, I got an empty shoebox and had the kids look through magazines for pictures that reminded them of our family and glued them on the outside of the box.

 Then, each child filled out a 2015 in review paper

 Each person in our family chose a word or phrase that summed up 2015:

 We put everything in the box and sealed it up!

After the time capsule, the kids and I watched a movie. By 7:20, Porter was saying, "Mom, do you think we should go to bed?" He was tired so off to bed we went! Happy 2016!