Christmas... Rural Retreat style

This morning Mommy, Daddy, and I tracked it on down to Rural Retreat for our first 'bout of Christmas spirit. I got some really sweet gifts including a super hot rocking horse and a book with my name in it! I'm practically famous! It even has my best bud's names in it too (Brett and Jackson... YOU'RE FAMOUS TOO!!!)

I wasn't nearly as interested in opening gifts as Mommy and Daddy would have liked, but we got a couple of cute shots.

And just look at these blocks! They are super awesome! I love them so much! Thank you Grandma and Grandaddy... I love you!

The milk saga

Will Mommy ever learn? When I'm super quiet... I can't be up to anything good... duh!
Yes... that would be me LICKING my milk off of the floor! I'm now nominating Mommy for the "Mother of the Year" award! :)

Drawer Schmrawer

Give me 1.3 minutes by myself and just look what I can do.

Piggies

Rachel here. Seriously... seriously! Reese and pigtails... two of my favorite things in the whole world. Now if only I could get a shot of her face at the same time! :)

You may just wet your pants...

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

The saddest tree you've ever seen...

Rachel here. Bryan and I were giddy with excitement to decorate the house this year for the holidays for Reese. The outside of the house is tackily decked out with lights, light up trees, and even those god awful deer. Bryan risked his life to climb all the way onto the tippy top of the roof, which he had never done before, for his baby girl and her Christmas lights.

The inside has twinkle lights EVERYWHERE. Her playroom is completely outlined in lights with a cutie little ceramic light up tree we put out when I was little.

Then there is the tree. We have hundreds of ornaments easily. We decided, however, with a 1 year old that it would be smart to have some parameters when choosing those ornaments to adorn our tree. 1. All ornaments must be unbreakable. The odds of her pulling the tree over were far to great to put on Uncle Aaron's precious Star Wars ornaments. 2. No hooks. That rule alone... humorous. 3. Then there was the tree itself. SOFT. Not one of the trees with the nice branches for sticking ornaments on for us... no... we got one of the trees that are nearly IMPOSSIBLE to hang ornaments on. Now it was easily $30 cheaper than the others, so we'll go with it. Considering these 3 key rules, we had about 25 good ornaments that looked really sweet on the tree. We were both very happy with it.

This is how our tree looks today. Currently there are no ornaments on the lower third of the tree. Reese likes to go up to the tree, carefully pick an ornament off and then hide it once she plays with it. It's really quite funny. I have yet to find them all. She's also managed to break 2 of our unbreakable ornaments. She makes me smile. :)

Her face

Rachel here. I didn't quite realize how hard it would be to get Reese's face on camera once she learned to walk. She's literally ALL OVER THE PLACE now, and it's very hard to capture her smiling on camera. She'll sit still long enough to watch Cookie Monster on TV, but that's about it. Needless to say most of my pictures are blurry, are of Reese staring at the television, or are of the back of her head. I managed to catch some cute photos of her though the other day. Unfortunately she was still wearing her breakfast and she has a mean runny nose... however, beggars can't be choosers... so I've learned. :)

Santa

Rachel here. My how things change! Reese with Santa last year:

And Reese with Santa this year:

Santa sure knows how to keep it cool under pressure! This experience was hysterical to say the least. We took our time introducing Reese to Santa. She was waving at him and smiling. We taught her to say "ho ho ho" to him... we thought we were golden. The second she touched his lap... all hell broke loose. The photographer got a few funny shots... she felt awful that Reese was upset. Honestly if you don't have a picture of your kid totally losing their cool with the man in the red suit... what fun is it going to see him?! We picked her up and Santa gave her a candy cane. She was IMMEDIATELY cool. She was all of the suddenly full of smiles! :)

A day with Daddy

Daddy wanted to get some Christmas shopping done on Black Friday. Mommy MADE Daddy take me with him. Something about her needing to keep her wits about her or something... IIIIII dunno! Anyway... Daddy was in charge of everything... even dressing me. Although he did make me wear jeans with my dress Mommy supposes it could have been worse. I, however, knew people would be staring... hence the distraught look.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was filled with lots of family and yummy food. We hosted Thanksgiving this year, and were blessed enough to have it with the Pattison brood! Cortney and Krista did a great job of entertaining me for the majority of the evening, which was a treat for Mommy who was able to have a conversation with ACTUAL ADULTS! Oh imagine! Last year I feasted on breast milk... this year... the options were endless! I even ate stuffing! Can you believe it?! Unfortunately I was too stuffed for pumpkin pie, but Mommy let me have a little the next day with my breakfast... CLASSY MOM! Oh and I FINALLY got a 4 generations picture with my Great Gma Pattison. I think I may have fancied her a bit. :)

Trapped in a box

I'm obsessed with anything that has to do with containers. I love putting things in containers... taking things out of containers. Here happens to be one of my new favorite past times...

Mischief

HELLO ALL! I'm baaaack... and feeling MUCH better now thank you for asking. It was pretty yucky there for a few days, but all turned out well. Mommy knew I was feeling better when I returned to my mischievious self. I've spent the last week getting into trouble and making messes as usual. Mommy has since put a gate up around that set of drawers to keep me out... THE NERVE!

Vomit and diarrhea part deux

Rachel here. It seems Reese is on the mends. For the first time in 3 days we've had solid poop. Who knew I would be so excited for my baby girl to have solid poop? :) Meanwhile both Bryan and I have had small issues with the same ailment as Reese. Hopefully we'll all be feeling much better by the morning!

Vomit and diarrhea

Great visual huh? Rachel here. Reese is officially sick. No temperature yet, but she awoke this morning to a crib full of vomit... last night's dinner, which she barely ate... yum. She's had no appetite all day. At naptime she slept soundly... so soundly she didn't realize she had diarrhead in her diaper and gotten it in other places besides her diaper. It's been that way all day. We've been trying to keep liquids in her... water... powerade... but she wants nothing to do with milk right now. She's been playing all day like a crazy woman though, so I'm not sure she realizes she's a walking time bomb. Bless her heart.

'Tis the season

This is what I woke up to this morning! SNOW! And a whopping 31 degrees (@9:15 am)! Have fun walking to class Uncle Aaron! :)

1 year 1 month 1 day

Rachel here. Last Thursday Reese had her one year appointment. It ended up actually being her 1 year, 1 month, 1 day appointment, but I digress. She's doing wonderfully. I'm not sure of the percentages, but she weighed in at 22 lbs 3 oz and was 31 1/2 inches tall. She's still in the upper percentages for her height and head circumference. Her weight is the same scenario but not as high. She's just so active it's hard to keep weight on her. There is no change in her umbilical hernia sadly. Doc said if it's not closed by the time she is 2, he'll be referring her for surgery. We'll cross that bridge once we get there though. He says everything else is developing nicely and she's right on target.

Butter bean is still a fantastic sleeper. Bedtime at 7... up between 7 and 8 these days. It's always a little hairy retraining her when Daylight Savings happens, but we made it through with little to no difficulty this time. Hopefully our Christmas trip to Iowa will be as smooth. I bumped her down to 1 nap during the day. This was super successful for about 2 weeks, then she started to have more and more meltdowns in the morning, so back to 2 we went. No tears lost here. :) She sometimes likes to party a little more before her afternoon nap. She'll sign that she's sleepy, so up we go... not wasting any time. She's been known to fall right asleep or the ever popular... "I'm gonna party up here for about 2 hours until you come and get me... don't mind me!" The latter results in an earlier bedtime of course.

Speaking of signing/language... she's getting to be quite the communicator. There are always some kind of "words" coming out of her mouth. If she's playing with something she shouldn't be, we take it away from her and say 'no'. She then goes into a 5 minute long rant in her freaky baby language... babbling... facial expressions... raising her voice... the whole nine yards. In English she can say mama, dada, hi, "duh" for duck, "doe" for dog, she says dada for bye (which breaks Bryan's heart), and she's into saying "me" when she wants something or more of something. Along with those few words she can sign sleepy, hungry, milk, more, all done, bye, and she's constantly pointing at things to learn what they are. She's also still doing her famous growling every time she sees Cookie Monster. :)

She'll eat anything you put in front of her, which is awesome. I have learned though that she's not a fan of her diced apples, which if that's the only thing she hates right now... we'll take it. The cross over to whole milk was a breeze; in fact she'd drink it all day if you let her. She's been using her sippy cup strictly for about a month and a half now. I think it's safe to say she loves it. She also loves to hide it. I'm always asking her where her milk is and she throws her arms up in the air and looks around for it. So sweet.

Some of her favorite things to play with are her car ball pit... she can easily destroy a room in under 2 minutes in that thing, macaroni noodles, water, her plastic food, all of her musical instruments, and her books. She's also began to fancy our empty cereal boxes. You wouldn't believe all the stuff you can actually fit into one of those things. Digging in the cupboards and drawers is also one of her favorite past times. I must wash the same pots and pans without actually using them more times than I can count. She's definitely a handful.

We've started putting up some Christmas decorations in the house. I'm hoping that if we do it a little bit at a time she won't notice. :) So far... so good!

Monkeying Around

Rachel here. Bryan and I got Reese this adorable giant purple monkey balloon for her birthday. She wanted nothing to do with it... that was until it started to lose helium and she could reach it. :) Now this is what she does to the poor thing for a good chunk of each day.

Making the Band 32

Rachel here. This is now what I hear most evenings when Bryan gets home:

Natural Bridge Zoo

Yet another zoo to add to my list. I've seriously been to like 6 different ones. CRAZINESS. This zoo wasn't the nicest zoo I've been too, but we got to get super close to the animals, so that was a plus. Mommy got some CRAZY pictures of the giraffes... she seriously could have reached up and touched them, but she was scared. :)

There was a little petting area. I'm not going to lie... the goats scared the bejesus out of me. I held on to Daddy for dear life. When I was looking at the pigs though... one snuck up on me!

The piggies seemed to be more my speed.

They were giving elephant rides!!! Mommy was afraid I would throw one of my precious temper tantrums once getting on the elephant, so she didn't even ask Daddy if she could take me. We got a neat picture of it anyway. Look at the GIRAFFES!!!

I got to hang out with a donkey too. Hawt I tell you!

Foamhenge

Yes you read correctly... that says FOAMHENGE... not to be confused with STONEHENGE. Last Saturday was Pattison Family Fun Day... which you know is always an adventure. We decided to get in the car and head up to Natural Bridge, VA. We'd never seen the bridge, and since it's an ancient wonder (I think anyway), we thought we'd take a peek.

As soon as we got there, we headed into the gift shop/ticket sales area. Now there are tons of things to see up at Natural Bridge. There's the bridge of course, a wax museum, a toy museum, some dinosaur thing, and then some haunted house exhibit. We didn't want any of the mumbo jumbo... just the bridge. They wanted to charge Mommy and Daddy $13 EACH to see this thing. Needless to say we hopped back in the car and headed to the Natural Bridge Zoo instead. :)

On the way to the zoo we stumbled upon FOAMHENGE. It was hysterical to say the least. Take a look!

You have to read this whole things... quite entertaining!

(in case you can't read the bottom portion:)

Mommy says one day I'll laugh about all the insane places her and Daddy have taken me... I'm not so sure.

Did you?

We voted yesterday... did you? Mommy, Daddy, Uncle Aaron and I headed over to the polls early yesterday morning to make history! I say that because first it was Mommy's maiden voyage partaking in the voting process. Can you believe it? Her first time! She was so excited... she wanted to take the camera into the booth with her. Daddy said no, and she settled on getting a shot of us in our stickers once we got home.

We're also very excited to have been a part of such a historical and memorable election. We're very proud of what happened yesterday and are excited to see what Obama has in store for us! Obama baby out! :)

Play-doh!

Look what Mommy bought me:

No silly... it's not yummy red spaghetti! It's PLAY-DOH!!! I had so much fun trying to eat it...... rolling it...

... and putting it in and pulling it back out of it's handy dandy container!

Happy Halloween!

I'm not sure I grasp the whole Halloween thing quite yet. I mean Mommy dressed me in this ridiculous outfit... I was a little pink leopard cat like creature... IIII dunno!

We got all goopy and gloppy trying to hurt this poor defenseless pumpkin...

Mommy put up these super silly decorations...

Daddy finally came home and we gave all of our precious treats to high schoolers. Why couldn't I have the candy? Trick-or-treating is for little kids...

Next year Mommy and Daddy said they would take me trick-or-treating... I can't wait! Especially because Mommy said we are going to go to Frank Beamer's neighborhood... she's under the impression they give out king sized candy bars there. Whatever Mom, we all know what you're up to!

Muah!

Look at my new trick!!!! I learned to blow kisses!!! :)

Hey Brett!!!

Look at me! I was so inspired by your being able to get in and out of your car; I decided to learn! Granted I'm still working on my form. Here I am assuming the belly flop position. It's quite effective.(You like that mess I made Brett? I'm so quick... Mommy and Daddy and the ENTIRE bottom half of the house don't know what hit 'em!)

It's awfully fun to use the car pit as a hamster wheel as well.

You think I'll be ready for the "Iron Man" competition on time?
This is how I usually end up in my car pit... all tussled... balls everywhere... check out the amazing hair as well!

I'm a pastafarian mon!

Since I've had a cold the last two weeks, Mommy won't let me do much of anything fun. That means no leaving the house to go shopping or to story time. She won't even let me outside to play! Can you believe it!? On the upside she hasn't wiped snot from my nose in 2 count them TWO days... oh the excitement! She's been trying to come up with fun little activities for me to do to keep me busy. This is extra hard for her now because I'm only down to 1 nap, so that's an extra 2 hours to fill. She's managing just fine though. The other day she let me play with pasta! It was awesome people!!! Just look!

It felt so good in my hands!

I got to put the noodles in all these different containers... one of my favorite things to do right now!

I made the biggest mess!!!!

I love PASTA!