The update of all updates!!!

Yikes! I realize I am sooooo far behind in blogging. So, I am making one gigantic update of everything that's been going on with us lately. Let me start by giving you a little update on Sydney. She is talking like crazy now...full sentences and all. I would guess her vocabulary is somewhere in the 200 word range but I've never counted so I don't know for sure. She can pretty much say anything you ask her to say and she's a parrot too so you have to be careful about what you say around her. Craig said the word "moron" the other day and Sydney said moron like 10 times after that. I was NOT happy (but it was kind of funny). She can also say all of her ABC's now but for some reason she often leaves out E-F-G...not sure why, guess she doesn't like those letters. :) She can also count to 10 now!! She loves singing and sings Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Itsy Bitsy Spider and attempts the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse theme song. At the beginning of the show they sing "M-I-C-K-E-Y, M-O-U-S-E" and Sydney always says "Yyyyyyyy", "Eeeeeeee"...she hasn't quite gotten all the letters down yet. She is also so girly lately. She loves her purses (yes plural), wearing jewelry, having bows and "ponies" in her hair and going Shopping! She'll say at least 5 times a day that she wants to go shopping. For those that know me well, you know she did NOT get that from me! :) We finally decided on bedding for Sydney's "big girl" room yesterday which lead to a paint decision being made so I finally feel like we're making progress on that front. We officially have 2 weekends to completely finish her room. (I want it done by her 2nd birthday) On to little Harper. She is growing well and moving a ton lately. I had my 24 week appointment last week and everything went great. I'm measuring "perfectly" according to my doctor and my blood pressure is staying down so far which is great. I go back the end of March and after that I start going every 2 weeks. I can't believe I'm already getting to the "every-2-week" point in this pregnancy. It's seriously flying by. We'll start working on Harper's nursery once we get Sydney moved into her new room so that will be our next project. It shouldn't be too bad though since we're reusing everything that we had for Sydney's nursery. Craig and I are also doing well but let's be honest, you only read this post to find out about the kiddos huh? Okay...picture time. Bear with me. There's a LOT!

Like I said, Sydney LOVES jewelry and one of her favorite things is to get out one of my jewelry boxes and put ALL of it on.

Some pictures of Sydney playing at the "park" (aka the elementary school playground)

Valentine's Day with Daddy.

Holding sweet little Pierce - practicing to be a big sister!

STUCK. Sydney loves to say she's stuck or her hand is stuck or her foot is stuck. This day, she really was stuck but of course I had to get a picture before I helped her. (she's in between the levels of our coffee table)

Aw, sweet sweet vacation. A week ago, Craig and I left Sydney in Dallas with our partents and travelled with 3 other couples up to Colorado for 7 glorious days. Yes, it was hard leaving Sydney and I missed her terribly but it was a MUCH needed vacation for both of us. Thankfully our friends partents have a house up there so we were able to "room" for free and bought groceries to cook breakfast, lunch and dinner everyday. Craig skiied 3 days while we were there and had a great time. I pretty much just laid around, read a couple of books and RELAXED. It was fabulous. Hillary is also pregnant so the two of us were homebodies the whole time. Megan skiied the first day but poor thing ended up falling and tearing her ACL and had to be on crutches for the rest of the trip. Here are some pics from our wonderful trip. Thanks for much for inviting us Chris and Hillary!! :)

Harper Grace...

Yay! Craig and I have FINALLY decided on a name for our new baby girl. Her name will be Harper Grace. Naming Sydney seemed so easy, in fact, I'm pretty sure we had her name picked out when I was 6 weeks pregnant. This time we couldn't decide on anything! Finally Craig got tired of me asking and said he didn't want to discuss anymore names until we actually found out the sex of the baby. So once we did, I was throwing names at him right and left. (I think he was a little overwhelmed!) Naming a kid is no small feat...I mean it's the name they'll have forever so you want to make sure it's a good one! I'm so excited I can stop calling her "the baby" and start calling her Harper now. :)

Sister, sister

We had our sonogram today and found out that Sydney is going to have a little SISTER!!!  More importantly, the baby is healthy and measuring right on track.  Praise God!  Last night before Sydney went to bed, we asked her if she thought the baby was a boy or a girl and she said Girl...I guess she knew all along.   :)  I know Craig is just seeing the dollar signs running through his head right now...extracurricular activities, prom, college, WEDDINGS....etc.  I pray that Sydney and her little sister are the best of friends...not that they won't ever fight (we all know how girls are!) but that at the end of the day, they are there for each other no matter what.  After the sonogram, we took Sydney to Target so she could pick out something new for the baby.  She got her this adorable little sleeper.  She just carried it around Target telling us how it was for the baby.  It was so sweet.  I think she's going to make a fabulous Big Sister!

10 things I love about Sweet Sydney

1.  The way she leans in for a kiss when she's in trouble - when Sydney and I are talking about why she's in trouble she'll lean in and pucker her lips just waiting for a kiss.  How can you resist that?  

2.  Her independence - yea, I realize later in life this may come back to bite me, but I just love how she wants to do everything herself.  She will say "I do it."  Whenever I see her having a hard time doing whatever it is she was doing, I'll ask her if she needs help...sometimes she says yes, sometimes she says no.  It feels good to know that we have instilled a confidence in her to know that she CAN do it, but to also know it's okay to ask for help.

3.  Her nurturing side - she got a lot of baby dolls for Christmas and they are her favorite thing to play with right now.  She walks them (in a baby stroller), swaddles them, rocks them, tries to change their diapers, and even gives them a bath by taking every wipe out of the box and washing their faces.  (I think she's getting ready to be a GREAT big sister!)

4.  Her love for church - Sydney gets so excited to go to church on Sunday.  Maybe it's because she gets to play with her BFF Madison but I hope it's also because she learns about Jesus.  As soon as she sees our church through the car window she yells "Sydney's church!"

5.  Her smile and laugh - maybe it's a little cliche but this girl has got the most amazing and contagious little smile.  You can't help but smile back at her.  (another way she tries to get herself out of being in trouble)

6.  The way she lights up when Daddy comes home from work - enough said...it's one of the sweetest parts of MY day too.  :)

7.  How she loves to read her Bible - every night before bed, we read one book and one story out of her children's Bible.  She never forgets that we read her Bible and I love that she's starting such a good "habit" at a young age.

8.  "Thank you much" - this one is fairly new.   Sydney has been learning about manners at school this month and her new thing is to say "Thank you much" instead of just plain ol' Thank You.  I like her version better.  :)

9.  Her pats on the back - When Sydney gives you a "big" hug now, she'll pat you on the back.  

10. Dancing - Sydney loves to dance.  She dances at home when we have music on and in the car while we're driving.  She always says "I dancin'!" as she bobbles her head from side to side.

Playing at the Park

We take Sydney down to the Elementary School's playground in our neighborhood a lot to play. She loves going down the big slide while we're there. Here are some pics we took from the other day.

Watch Jackson...

Sydney is doing and saying the CUTEST things right now. My new favorite is that when she is playing in the backyard, she'll say "Watch Jackson." Jackson is our dog so she is telling him watch whatever she's doing; swinging, going down the slide, kicking the ball. It's really cute. She also says "watch mommy" and "watch daddy" when she wants us to watch her do something. I feel like she is getting so big now. This morning, when she woke up, the first thing she said was "nose stuffy." I love that she can actually explain herself to us now. This is such a FUN age!!!!

Christmas 2008

We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! Ours was fantastic and very busy as usual. We had a total of 5 Christmases. It started Christmas Eve with Craig's dad's family, then Christmas morning with my immediate family, Christmas afternoon with my dad's family, back to Craig's parents for an immediate family Christmas Friday night and the last one was Saturday morning with Craig's mom's family. Whew! Thankfully our friend Daniel let us borrow his SUV so we could get back with all our (read: Sydney's) gifts! We were packed to the gills when we drove back from Houston. Santa brought Sydney a new play kitchen and a 2 foot tall Minnie Mouse (her favorite character). She also received books, clothes, baby dolls, a doll stroller, and many other toys. It's pretty cute watching her with all her new baby dolls. She wants to change their diapers, swaddle them, rock them, etc. I think she's getting ready for her new little brother or sister! :) Here are some pictures from all our Christmases. It appears that we got a little lazy as the days went by with taking pictures....ooops!!!

Big Sister!

That's right!!  Sydney is going to be a big sister!!  I've been meaning to post this for a while now but by the time I was out of the first trimester, we got busy with Christmas shopping and and Christmas traveling, that I didn't have much time until now.  I'll be 15 weeks tomorrow...due date is June 25th.  We got to see our little beating heart at the 7 week appointment and then got to hear it at our 11 week appointment.  We are VERY excited and can't wait to find out what we are having.  I think we'll find out the end of January.  So what do you think?  Take my poll below.