Christmas!!

What a wonderful Christmas we had! It started Thursday (December 20th) when Craig, Sydney and I opened presents together. Sydney got a highchair from us (we decided to be practical since we were anticipating a big Christmas with family) as well as some other little toys. Her dad got her a fake remote control since she always loves to play with our real ones and guess what???...She still loves the real ones more!! On Friday evening we drove down to Houston and started our Christmas festivities at Craig's parents house. When we showed up they were on their way back from running errands so we walked in to their home and noticed everything was gone. Turns out they had moved everything to their new house as a surprise to us. So we got to spend Christmas in their new, beautiful home. On Saturday night we opened presents with Craig parents, brother, sister-in-law and nephews. It was so much fun! Then on Sunday morning we went to church and came home and opened presents with Craig's mom's family. That afternoon we drove out to the lake and celebrated Christmas with Craig's dad's family. On Monday morning (Christmas Eve) we drove over to my parents house. My brother and sister were in town and we went to church that night with the whole family. We decided to keep Sydney with us for all the singing at the beginning of the service and then took her to the nursery for the sermon part of the service. After that was over, we went and picked her back up so she could participate in the candlelight part of the service, and more singing. She LOVED it! Then we went home and had tamales and played Cranium with everyone. It was a lot of FUN!! Christmas morning we woke up and I made a really good (everyone tells me) breakfast for us. Then we opened presents with my family. Around 2pm we went to my Grandma's and had Christmas AGAIN! That's right...5 Christmases in 3 days! Sydney really raked in the gifts too...just as we predicted. We were lucky we didn't have to rent a U-Haul to get back to Dallas!! We came back Christmas night and got to unpack and hang out all day Wednesday since Craig and I were both off. What a fabulous Christmas!!

Sydney meets Santa

We took Sydney this weekend to see Santa. She didn't cry and was very intrigued by him.

8 months!!!

Wow! Mom is a little behind this month on posting all of Sydney's new accomplishments! First, she now officially has 2 TEETH!!




We have also gotten rid of her baby bath tub and now she gets to splash around in the big tub. She LOVES it!!

She loves to eat her wagon wheels!

And she is officially crawling!! She isn't very fast yet but she can definitely get to where she wants to go. Most of the time, she likes to go after our remote.

So much to be thankful for...

Craig and I have so much to be thankful for this year. We have an amazing marriage and a beautiful daughter. But this year is different. For those who haven't heard my dad had a bad accident back on October 25th--he was thrown from his horse, life flighted to Hermann hospital in Houston, in ICU for 3 weeks and in rehab for another week. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving my mom called and said my dad was well enough to come home from the hospital!! Does it get any better than that?? We were able to spend Thanksgiving together as a family and it was very special to have my dad back at home. He is still walking with a walker and has very bad blurry vision (the eyepatch helps him see better). All in all though, he is making tremendous strides everyday and we know it is because of all the prayers being said for him. Here are some pictures from our weekend together:

Big week for Sydney!

Sydney has done so many new things this week so I just had to make a post about it. She got her first tooth last Saturday! And the one right next to it is pretty close to coming in as well. Just in time for Thanksgiving dinner! (I don't have a picture of it yet)

Then she learned how to pull out all of the toys out of her toy box.

She also started rocking on all fours...not quite crawling yet but she's getting very close!

Strike a Pose

That's it, I'm outta here!!!

I think it may be time to put up the bouncy seat. Sydney thinks that she can try to escape out of it now. The problem is, when she gets in this position, she can't get herself back up again.

Seven Months Old!!!

It's been pretty crazy around the Atkinson household lately so I'm a little behind on posting Sydney's 7 month pictures. Sydney was actually home sick on her her 7 month birthday, November 2nd. I took her to the pediatrician the day before that for having a 101.2 fever and a bad cough and it turned out she had an ear infection in one ear and RSV. Apparently RSV is super contagious so the pediatrician told us not to take Sydney to daycare for 10 days!!! She is finally starting to feel a little better now so that's good. Craig and I will be so happy when she stops getting sick so much--we feel so bad for her!

Sydney is still working on crawling. Or maybe I should say, mommy is trying to help Sydney learn how to crawl. Really she has no interest at all in doing it! :) We've also be practicing finding her eyes, nose and mouth and clapping and waving hi and bye. Sydney loves this new exersaucer/jumper that we got for her. She has so much fun playing in it. She also just loves to sit on the floor and play with all her toys. She has said "mama" and "dada" though not consistently yet and not necessarily to one of us. Oh, well--we'll still take it!! She is so amazing and we just love her so much!

Sydbee

Tonight was Sydney's first Halloween and she was a bumblebee! The night started off really well. Here we are right before we headed up to the church for the Fall Festival.

Then she started to get upset so we figured she was hot in her Halloween costume so we took her out of it. Here she is in just her tights looking pretty upset. (Mason--the astronaut--is trying to cheer her up)

Next we ran into Hillary and Katelyn Kouba so we put Sydney's costume back on to take some more pictures. Boy was she happy about that!

Here she is starting to fall asleep on mom's shoulder so we decide it's probably time to head home.

And here's the last picture of the night! She was worn out!

Portrait Princess

Pumpkin Patch

Sick

On Wednesday we got a call from Sydney's daycare saying that she had thrown up TWICE while she was there. So I left work around lunch time to go pick her up and take her home. I talked to the pediatrician and she said to give Sydney 1 teaspoon of pedialyte every 5 minutes for 4 hours. Yes, you read that right--4 hours!! What a beating but thankfully it was working and she was able to keep it down. After the 4 hours were up we were able to double the dosage to 2 teaspoons every 5 minutes for another 4 hours--but really we just did that until she fell asleep that night. The next day (Thursday) I decided to stay home with her and sure enough she threw up again that morning and had really bad diarreah. So I decided to stay home again on Friday and thankfully she was getting back to her normal self! Being sick is no fun for baby or mommy!!

What a fun weekend!!

This weekend we went to Houston to visit our families. We went to Craig's parents house on Saturday and Sydney got to visit with Granny and Papa. She also got to see Aunt Samantha & Uncle Shane, her cousins Dustin, Coltin, Monica & Jessica, and her great grandparents. It was a busy day but she had so much fun. We also got to see how Craig's parents new house is coming along--it looks great! Then we went to my parents house and Sydney got to spend time with Nana, Grandpa, and Great Grandma. On Sunday we went to church and then to lunch at Chili's to visit Aunt Amber. After that we went out to see Nana and Grandpa's new horses. Sydney had such a great time seeing everyone this weekend and so did we. Boy were we exhausted when we got home!

1/2 Year Birthday!

Wow! Another month has flown by! I can't believe Sydney is already 6 months old. She is doing so many new things now. She is laughing a lot and is very curious. She always wants to touch everything especially people's faces. She's also really good at sitting up now and can sit and play with toys for a very long time. We've also tried other new foods. So far she has had rice cereal, sweet potatoes, carrots, peas, bananas and peaches. We will wait a while before giving her peaches again! On Saturday (while Craig was out of town) I thought Sydney and I would go spend some girl time together and run some errands. So I get her all packed up and in the car and we make our first stop right up the street from our place. It was this little consignment store that sales gently used baby items. Well I was only in there for about 2 minutes when I smelled something WRETCHED! I looked down at her in the stroller and she was literally sitting in a puddle of poop! It had exploded out the side of her diaper and it was everywhere. All over her leg, her clothes, the stroller, and then she kept trying to put her hands in it. I'm not usually one to be squeamish when it comes to this but even for me this was awful! Of course there's no place to change her in this tiny store so I have to lay her on the backseat of the car to get her all cleaned up. Needless to say after about 25 wipes, I put my half naked (only wearing a diaper) baby back in her carseat and headed home. And we stayed home the rest of the day and played. I tell you that story because I think it all stems from peaches. That morning was the first time she had ever had them and nothing else had changed....maybe we'll try them again in a few weeks--at least wait until Craig is in town! Back to Sydney--she has got such a little personality coming out now and we just love it! Everyday we are amazed by her and thank God for putting her in our lives. I created a little montage of pictures from 0-6 months so you can see how much she has grown!

She's sitting!

I think we can say that Sydney is officially sitting now! She can usually sit without help or falling down for about 10-15 minutes now. We're so proud!

Sa-Weeeeeet!!!!

Sydney had sweet potatoes for the first time tonight (her first veggie!) and she LOVED them too and ate everything I gave her!

Halloween Preview!!

I got Sydney's Halloween costume in the mail today and I just had to take some pictures of her in it. Here's our little bumblebee! (she'll be wearing black tights on her legs--I just don't have

them yet)

Hot Air Balloon Festival

Craig and I took Sydney to her first Hot Air Balloon show this weekend. We woke up bright and early on Saturday morning and got to the park in time to see the 7am launch. It was so neat to see all the hot air balloons get blown up and watch them take off. Sydney was awesome while we were there too...she finally wore out towards the end though and fell asleep. Later that night we went back to the festival and they had all the hot air balloons light up their fire at the same time to make the sky GLOW. It was so neat. We took a million pictures so I tried to pick the highlights for the slideshow. Enjoy!

Growing up...

So I've been putting off feeding Sydney "solid" food since we got the go-ahead from the pediatrician at 4 months. Not because she wasn't ready but because I wasn't ready. I couldn't think about feeding her with a spoon--I just didn't want her to grow up too fast. Well for the past couple of weeks she's been super interested in our food and reaching for it so I thought maybe it's time to bite the bullet. So this morning we gave Sydney her first solid food--rice cereal. And guess what? She LOVED it! She was such a pro at eating off of the spoon that you would never have know it was her first time to do it. She's also been sitting up--but only for about 10 seconds at a time. I can't believe she's getting so big!

Neat Pictures