More Christmas

Here is Lyida getting into her WVU stocking. We got her a red one to match the rest of the family but Tom and Judy (the folks that sit behind us at football games) made her this one! It is beautiful.
Here she is at Nonni and Poppi's house. Orginially I wanted everyone to come to our house for breakfast and watch Lydia open gifts. That idea was bucked by everyone. So after Santa at our house, we jumped in the car in our pjs and finished christmas in Mannington. She liked her sled and Uncle Mike took her for a test drive all around the house.

This is the cutest picture ever. Her "15th" cousin Beverly bought her this. You push the button and the top rises with Pooh and the gang ice skating around in it. Lydia loves all of these push the button make the (penguin, santa, tree, snowman) sing and dance. I just loved how instead of dancing around like she usually does, she sat quiet and really focused on looking at them inside the box.
and of course, the best present of all!

Quick update, I was having a hard enough time accepting that Lydia could stand on her own, that made her seem sooo old and grown up. But this morning during our snuggle/playtime in mommy and dadddy's bed, she took her shirt off by herself! She completely got her right arm out of her pajama shirt then had the right motions to take it off of her head. But let's be honest, mommy has a hard time getting things over her beautiful Charlie Brown head. So we helped with that part, but then she pulled it off of her other arm. I just cannot get over what she can do now.

Merry Christmas

Here are Lydia and Mark. Every morning they watch Tigger and Pooh and Mark feeds her a bottle. So Lydia got him the Tigger and Pooh Christmas movie. She let him open it early so they could watch it together on Christmas Eve Morning.

Here we are at my mom and dad's on Christmas eve. I was so excited to get my December issue of Parenting Magazine and Lydia's dress was in there! I am never in style so I am pyched that I have Lydia in style at least!

This is Lydia on Christmas morning. She is playing with a musical Leap Frog thing that my Aunt DJ got her. She loves it. She would not stop playing with that to open the rest of the gifts. We had to hide it from her!

Here we are opening Santa gifts. She did ok for a few gifts then I think it was too much or just boring her...

Mark got her some Dr. Suess board books since she is loving books right now. He also got her a dvd of all the christmas specials you have ever watched. We have been having fun watching those.

Merry Christmas

I hope that you all had a great holiday. I will post many more Christmas post so keep checking. I wanted to thank everyone who thought of Lydia this Christmas. She got so many nice things and it was great visiting with everyone to brought the gifts.

Penguin Party

Here we are with all of mommies penguins. I decorate for Christmas with penguins. This picutre was from the family Christmas dinner I hosted at my house last weekend.

The pictures got out of order a little but here is Lydia loving on some of the Christmas penguins.

More funny pictures from Lydia and penguins
Here is a picture from the dinner again. This is our cousin Mary.

Here is Kelly and Lydia in the kitchen and helping me clean up after the dinner.

Feast of the Seven Fishes

We took Lydia to the Feast of the Fishes in Fairmont two weekends ago. For those of you who do not know, it is an Italian tradition to serve seven different types of fish during your christmas eve dinner. Now Fairmont has started a festival to celebrate this tradition. We went up and ate some of Poppi and Nonni's friti (fried dough). Dad's Knights of Columbus chapter was selling it. Then we stayed for the Fairmont Christmas Parade. She really enjoyed the bands..well the Honeybees (the majorettes for the East Fairmont High School Band) at least. So Whitney, you may have dance team member on your hands! Maybe she could follow in her cousin's footsteps and become head Honeybee! She currently is catching on to the flash of the camera so we are getting funny faces lately.

Here was us hanging out in the RV warming up and waiting for the parade to start.

These were from earlier in the day. Some of you might recognize those antler ears...Thelma Lou kept sniffing at her most likely relieved that she did not have to wear them this year!

Lydia and Braylon's Christmas

Last night Miranda and I got together so that the kids could exchange Christmas gifts. First funny story, Lydia got Braylon the exact same thing that his Godmother April got him!! I told Braylon that he could take it to the store and pick out a new toy but he insisted that he wanted two pirate ships....So Miranda ended up capturing a little Christmas miracle..Lydia smiling with her mouth closed!

Here is her more relaxed and traditional open mouth tongue twist smile...isn't Braylon a cutie.

Here they are the dynamic duo, even their feet are in sync!

This one was too funny not to include

So Miss Lydia has already been busted tearing open Poppi's present under the tree and had NO problem tearing the paper off her present last night. So Christmas morning should be lots of fun!

Football Cheer

Ok, all the Steelers and WVU fans have had a rough couple of weeks. So although there were no touchdowns for her to cheer for two weeks ago, we do finally have Lydia cheering. So hopefully we will have a good night this Thursday, I do not want to be tied with the stupid Browns...

Sneaky

I was going through some older pictures to see if there were any that I had not gotten to post yet and I found these from some time after Halloween.

Hey, I remember this...

They are pretty yummy.

Ha Ha Ha Ha.....Now I am going to be up all night....

She got ahold of one of thoseTootsie pops one day. I thought no harm, the wrapper was on. Well, she seemed to like it a bit too much so I eventually took it away and found that there was a big hole in the wrapper...so then she was like a crack head. I had to move them after she got ahold of several of them. But this was when she was just learning to pull herself up and "cruise" around, so it was a good motivatior!!

Snow bunny..

I love this picture of her. She is actually smiling, not just laughing with her mouth open. Not that isn't adorable either way...I just think she looks very sweet in this picture.

I was trying to get her picture standing but I don't think she knew how to stand on her boots.

Snow Day

I was very lucky to have two unplanned days to hang out with Lydia. It was nice b/c weekends and evening are crammed with errands and stuff. Those two days Mark had the car so Lyd and I were "stuck" at home. It was so relaxing. That first day was perfect. It was like 32 degrees, no wind and snowing like crazy. So I took her outside to play in the snow. The first picture is what she thought at first..

But she warmed up to the snow right away. I don't know about you but we had about 7 inches of snow. She is sitting on what is supposed to be on my steps.

I was letting her play around on the porch and she started crawling after someone/something. I took a break from shoveling to take a picture b/c i thought it was cute how she was leaving a trail. Shortly after this, all I see is her butt and feet. Yes, mommy of the year here, let her daughter fall face first off the porch, into the snow. Lydia is a tough one, she did not even cry. She is the greatest!

Month 10

Wow, can you believe it? I know she moved on this second picture (and the first one her eyes are closed) but she reaches from on end to the other in the purple box....I don't know what I am going to do with this girls long legs and feet. The oneies she has on is a 9 month onesies and it is a little big. the pants she has on are 12 months and the socks...oh lord the socks...she is in 18-24 month socks. I have her first snow pictures that I will post later today or tomorrow. She did great and even dived head first into the snow and did not even cry...more on that later.

My New Hobby

Lydia is now into "reading". It is so terribly cute I cannot stand it. She will forgo all of her toys to thumb through a book now. Then she will "read" it outloud. I love it. We do have to watch her with her paper pages books b/c she has ripped a few of those..

Here is her new face of the week. I am not sure where this face comes from but it is pretty funny.

and the face we get everytime she sees the camera...she is just too cute.

Helping dad

Ok so our little monkey is walking, crusing and climbing on everything. For those of you have never been to my house. I have never had a official entertainment center. I have always used a piece of furniture out of my grandmothers house. It was an old fashioned radio that had been gutted and someone put a shelf in it. Well now that Miss Lydia loves pushing buttons and pulling on cords, we have noticed that it was not the sturdiest place for a 90 pound TV. So Mark and I got ourselves a TV stand for Christmas. Lydia was so cute, I tried to get the ones where she was intently studing the screws and then pounding the screws with the screwdriver but everytime she sees me get the camera out now this is what I get...

CHESSE.....

Thanksgiving

Here she is cheesing it up for the camera...These are the only pictures we took while we were in Tennesse visiting Mark's mom and sister. Not sure how we ended up taking basically zero pictures but we did.
Lydia really took a liking to his little turtle and actually said turtle while we were down there. Her Aunt Natalie taught her. I love these pictures b/c even thought they are basically the same pose, you can really see her different expressions..she really cracks me up now.

Do you think she loves the camera or what?

This picture is from Thanksgiving day at my parents house. Lydia loved turkey...and she like the real green beans much better than the baby food green bean I have been trying to feed her.

Once again, I just think this is a funny face. She looks like she is saying, Hey where is my turkey? The bib says I'm thankful for my grandma...Nonni claims she did not buy it but Lydia's Aunt Mary Gay did.....hmmmm

More music

OK, I am not sure why this picture looks like a bomb went off in my living room..but just try and focus on Chris and Lydia...I swear the pile of toys you see in the back are in a cute basket..but you cannot see the basket only what looks like a huge pile of toys...oh well, I am sure you mommies can relate. This is Mark's cousin Chris. He and his girlfriend came up to Morgantown for a concert and decided to visit us. Lydia loved to hear him play his guitar and sing to her like her daddy does...

Also we are heading down to TN on Friday to visit MawMaw Ri Ri and Aunt Natalie. I will try and post from down south with my laptop but if you don't hear from me until after Black Friday, you will know why.

Happy Thanksgiving and Good luck bargin shopping!

Look at that face...

This was a couple of weeks ago, I have not had time to upload any new pictures and found these on the computer. We had company all weekend long. I will have to post some cute pictures of Lydia and Mark's cousin Chris.

Very excited

Does she look like she is saying "What did I do?"

And a blast from the past...I cannot believe how little she was......

Here I come

This is Lydia playing with her box from her car seat. She likes crawling through it but loves to try and climb on top of it even more. The kitties also like playing with it. Lydia has been doing pretty well with her signs and was able to tell us that she wanted her bottle the other night instead of the 20 other things we were trying to feed her. That was the first time she was frustrated and was able to tell us what she wanted. I was pretty excited. She also has added two new words. She says Mama, Dado, Hi, Bye-Bye (with the sign) Kitty Cat and now...Pop Pop. My dad came and picked her up Tuesday morning ( I know, I am spoiled, I don't even have to take my child to her babysitter, he come and gets her and brings her back) So yesterday morning and this morning while I was changing her, she said Pop Pop over and over. So dad might become Pop-Pop instead of Poppi.....

Month 9

Here is the official quilt shot. She weighed 18 pounds 7 oz and is 27.25 inches. She has grown several inches and several pounds!!

This was yesterday morning while I was getting ready for work. I thought it was a really funny face. She is very expressive now as you can tell.