7 AND 8 Months

7 Months
This little monkey is such a joy!! She is such a great baby! She adapts to anything that is thrown at her on any given day. She really is a blessing to our family! I know how much happiness she brings to Chris and I and it is SO fun to see how much her sisters absolutely adore her!!!

She has learned to sign milk which came at a hard time. At 7 months stopped nursing! Seriously just a little after she learned that. I felt horrible. The second day of no more nursing, I was handing her over to the Day Care lady at the gym and Daphne had the biggest sad face and was signing milk! I almost cried right then and there! Honestly, she did great transitioning to a bottle. After she realized she can get satisfied the same by a bottle she was fine! I even nursed her one more time after a couple days to ease my (physical and emotional) pain, and she didn't even seem too excited by it! That made me feel better! She loves her bottles now and knows that milk just comes in a different container. :)

8 Months

Daphne's personality is really shining through! She does the cutest expressions! She is a funny girl and loves to tease. She learned to shake her head "no" and she knows she is funny when she does it! I just love it! She also started clapping. So she will clap and then shake her head no. All the while, she has the cutest sly grin on her face!

We finally went to the Pedi Dermatologist about her little birth mark on her leg which turned out to be a form of a port wine stain. It's really light and comes and goes, so my Dr. wanted it looked into to be safe. No worries here. Her skin is also marbled which you can see in the picture. But that is very common and nothing to worry about. Lucy was that way too I think. I just thought it was because she had fair skin. But oh my goodness, Daphne's thighs are to die for! She really is a chunky monkey and I just LOVE it!

We love our sweet little Daphne and really enjoy all that she brings to our family! She is such a sweet little girl!

PS - for all you friends that are into photos, notice the 7 month compared to the 8 month. 7 month shot in auto, while 8 month shot in manual. It makes a difference!! :)

Summary of Christmas

Besides the decorations going up and the countdown calendar, our holidays usually begin with a package from Grandma and Grandpa. In this package is, not only, our Christmas gifts but a present a day for the twelve days of Christmas. The girls love it and so do I. Part of the purpose of doing this is for the fun, obviously, but to also help keep the kids entertained so Mommy can get stuff done. Grandma...it is working! :) (Sadie, Daphne and Lucy watching the movie Up from Grandma and Grandpa.

Lucy got some Christmas fun rolling with her school program. She was so cute and did such a great job! You could hear her over everyone! It was hilarious!
Such a proud Daddy!
Lucy and Mrs. Lisa. She is so sweet! Lucy loves her!
Averee and Lucy - BFF!
We always go to Chuck E Cheese after. We lived it up and had a blast! There were even new rides so it was extra exciting! Lucy love the horse race!
Next we had Sadie's school party. I was lucky enough to be one of the planners of the party, so I helped the kids make these little snowflake ornaments.

They rotated from 4 different tables doing 2 different ornaments, a Christmas bingo, and decorating gingerbread cookies. Then they had a book exchange by reading a "left/right" story. Half of them didn't get their left and right so it was quite funny! There are some really sweet kids in her class!

Making her ornament.

We love Mrs. Little!

Mrs. Little had to do a silly face one! Sadie was game!

We had to decorate our own cookies at home too! Yes, it is cold here, but Sadie insists on coming home and changing into something else everyday! :)

We were so lucky and got to have my sister Cyndi and her husband Craig and their sweet baby Hunter come visit us for a few days before Christmas! Here is Hunter actually liking some rice cereal. He is so cute!
Daphne and Hunter had fun baby play times! They are so cute!
With Cyndi and I together it was fun to be able to do my family's tradition of playing the dice game. Sadie LOVED it and liked counting the dots on the dice. She REALLY had a great time with it and wanted to play it again the next day. Sadly I didn't have more little presents. Lucy was a little too distracted by standing on her head and whatever else! She did like rolling the dice though. For some reason she would close her eyes when she rolled the dice. It was so cute!
Cyndi, Hunter and Craig ready to play the dice game!
Christmas Eve all snug in their bed! (I tried to take one of Daphne but I totally woke her up when I went in her room...which is random because we go in every night just to look at her and her cute little snuggled face!)
Santa CAME!!! So EXCITING!!! So much chaos! :)
Daphne enjoyed her first Christmas! She didn't get the unwrapping part too much but enjoyed playing with the paper after. The girls were always willing to help unwrap presents for her though!

Lucy was done with pictures but Sadie and Daphne were ready for more!
Here is one of our new family members! This is Fluffy (formerly known as Squeakers - until we discovered that Fluffy squeaked all the time so we switched names!)
We got the girls 2 little hamsters. We didn't get a picture of Squeakers but she is quite cute and is solid dark gray. The girls absolutely love them. They haven't been a difficult pet so far. They sleep a lot and like to run around in their little ball.
Sadie must have heard the hamsters running in their wheel downstairs, because she came running into our room to wake us up saying that she "HEARD SANTA!!!" We needed to HURRY!! It was a great Christmas! We had so much fun hanging out, playing and relaxing!