Merry Christmas!

For Andrew's birthday (I will post soon from his birthday), my in-laws got Andrew some dress-up scarves. We've been having so much fun with them. Here are some characters from Jesus' birthday story. Above, Andrew is one of the Magi carrying gold.

This is a photo even to make Pastor Gabe proud: The Magi is giving his gift to Jesus. Please note that Jesus is about 9 months old, not a newborn. (EFCOC knows what I'm talking about!) Andrew's favorite part was dressing Keira up as Jesus.

MaryShepherd-boy

Santa Claus at the North Pole.

Yummy chocolate soy milk!

Our little snow bunny. (Just without the snow.)
Keira getting me all ready for the ball.

Andrew got everything ready for Santa tonight, including his letter for him:
(By the way, this is Andrew "dressed-up" as a snowman. Look at the snowman on his shirt if you're curious about any of his outfit.)

Dear Santa and Reindeer,

Thanks for coming to our house. It's raining outside. The reindeer won't get wet, but Santa will. Here's a towel for Santa to dry off because Santa will get pretty wet outside.

Here is some of my milk for you because I can only have soy milk and not cow's milk and Santa is like me. Santa is pretty big, but cow's milk is pretty big too. (editor's note: Santa ended up getting cow's milk.)

Thank you for the presents for me and Mei-Mei. We hope you had a good trip to our house. Have a good trip home.

Merry Christmas!

Love, Andrew

Night-time Feeding Problems

Here's another good sleep-deprived story. (I'm still waking up 1-2 times a night to feed Keira.)

Last night, as I was tucking Keira in, I thought of how cute she was, dressed in pink in her crib. She sleeps with two dolls, both dressed in pink too. I said good-night and soon after, went to bed. I got up, hours later to nurse her when I heard her cry. I went to pick her up, but on accident I picked up the doll's legs. "oops," I thought to myself, "that's her legs." So then I gingerly picked up the doll's body, just like you'd pick up a baby. "wow," I thought, "she's much lighter than I remember her being." Then I heard Keira say, "Mooooom!" at which point I woke up a little more and saw her sitting up next to the edge of the crib and noticed myself picking up a doll... oops.

Rock the House!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Moose

(stock moose photo)

Last night, all 4 of us were on our way home from a party pretty late. (Well, it was 7:30, but that is past the kids' bedtime.) It was dark and things were pretty quiet in the car. Gabe and I were talking up front and hadn't heard anything from either of the kids for 15-20 minutes. Out of the blue Andrew said, "Does anyone here see a moose?... anyone?... anyone?" I turned to look at him behind me and found something like the picture above. Andrew then exclaimed, "Mommy sees a moose! Yay!"

Keira had here 9 month appointment today. She's not actually 9 months just yet, but this was the only time available so...
She's healthy and doing all the things a little 9-month-old baby should. She's cruising along furniture and people, crawling the big-girl way, and "talking" more and more every day. She just started sitting herself up from a laying down position, which is very helpful for me. I think she'll be standing on her own pretty soon too. She's eating pretty well and likes to eat finger foods. Keira is a fun and funny little girl. She loves her daddy and big brother. She cries if Gabe walks past her without picking her up. Keira and Andrew play games together and can be left unsupervised together for short periods of time, which is another big blessing. They love each other more than I had ever imagined and it's a greater blessing than I thought it would be. Keira is a huge blessing to our family. I was wondering when I wouldn't be able to remember life without her and I think I'm there. I looked at pictures not long ago from our trip to New Zealand. There was a pic of Gabe, Andrew, and I and I wrote under it, "our family picture". I laughed because of how funny it seemed to have a "family" pic without Keira in it. It's official. She's part of the Barber fam. We love her so much!
As for the stats...
height: 29.25 inches (95 percentile)
weight: 16 lbs. 13.5 oz. (25 percentile)
(This explains why her pants always fall off!)

Even though this pic is blurry, I think she looks so cute! (We were putting our Christmas stuff up!)

A post on our Turkey Trot to follow soon!