Goodbye 2011

It seems as I get older, December 31st becomes more and more a day of reflection on the year gone by. Maybe that is because it seems the years go faster and faster as I get older. Or maybe it is because I seem to get busier and busier each year. Whatever the reason, I sit here once again thinking about 2011.

It's been a fantastic year with many blessings and memories. We have watched our children grow and flourish, which of course has been the most memorable parts of the year for us.

Laura would probably say the highlight of the year for her was her Birthday, or maybe more recently Christmas. She is already talking about her next birthday. Although, she can say the months of the year, she really has no concept of how far away November is from now. We were at Meijer yesterday, and she was telling Matt everything she wanted on her birthday list.

One of the most fun things to watch is how the girls play together. They love to play and pretend together. This morning they were playing camp-out in the living room. They had their nap mats, which are similar to sleeping bags, and they were pretending to see shooting stars in the ceiling. They had their books and toys that they had brought with them to camp. Laura reminded Hannah and me several times that she was the boss!

Hannah adores her sister. It will be fun to watch them both with a new sister. I predict that Hannah will have some jealousy adjustment issues, but I'm sure she'll grow to love her sister. I think Laura will embrace her from the beginning. She talks about the new baby almost daily. She likes to give us name suggestions. Hannah has made remarkable developmental progress lately. She has been going to the bathroom, taking off her diaper herself, and going on the potty. She is very independent. Whenever she doesn't like me doing something for her, she firmly with a frown says, "No thank you Mommy!" Unfortunately her scolding is usually followed with her hitting me or someone else (whomever she is scolding). As I mentioned above though, she loves her sister fiercely. The very first thing she says in the morning is, "Ra Ra (laura), where are you?" If Laura walks into the room, Hannah says with an very excited expression, "Ra Ra! Hi Ra Ra!" She loves to hug on her and of course, wrestle with her. They play "chase" around and around our living room. That is probably one of their favorite games.

Laura is really getting into make believe and pretend scenes. She will play with her playsets or whatever and make believe scenes with them. The most popular of course are school scenes that mimic those at daycare. She often lines up the characters and one will be the teacher. For instance last night, she had a group of dinosaurs she was playing with in which she had lined up the kids. The mommy and daddy dinosaurs were up on the couch, "working." And there was a teacher dinosaur instructing the kids. I'm not sure this is good or bad!

We had a wonderful Christmas. On Christmas morning Laura got out of bed and peeked through the gate at the top of the steps to look downstairs. Then she excitedly reported to my mom that Santa had come. She was practically jumping out of her skin! She ran into the bedroom to tell Matt and I that Santa had come. She did really well when it was time to open presents. She took her time and helped her sister with presents too. So, remember my prediction about Hannah taking a long time unwrapping gifts? Wrong! Hannah did great. She unwrapped each gift pretty quickly, gave it Papa, and went back to the tree to get another one. Both girls had so much fun! That of course was the most fun part of Christmas. Later that night, my mom's family came over, and we did another round of gifts. Hannah did not want to wait for Papa to give her a gift, so she would just walk over and grab one. Well, about five times in a row, she grabbed her own gift! It was kind of funny. But statistically, most of the gifts were for the girls. Laura and Aunt Ellen played dentist that night with the playdoh kit that Laura got for Christmas. Laura loved drilling out the cavity bugs and filling them with pink fillings. Yes pink...we are on the West Side! I think Hannah enjoyed the presents of Christmas, but her favorite part was probably Max. My dad brought his yellow lab, Max, down to our house, and Hannah just LOVES Max. She went outside to see him a hundred times. She often said, "No Mac!" with her stern face.

I took the week after Christmas off work, which has been awesome. I am truly dreading next week. The kids and I played and played and played and took naps together. It was great. When Laura was playing with her dentist set, she told me that she was going to be a dentist with Aunt Ellen when she grows up and they will be best friends. So cute!

Tonight we will go spend the last evening of the year with good friends and look forward to what 2012 brings! Happy New Year!

Twas the Week Before Christmas

We had the Adams family Christmas party last Friday. A good time was had by all as usual. Laura was so excited to open presents. She just kept asking over and over again if it was time. Of course, when it was time to open them, she tore through hers like a race horse in the final straight away. Hannah was a little overwhelmed I think. She went really slow! So I guess we know what that means for Christmas morning! While we were waiting for the rest of the clan to arrive, Laura and Chelsea built towers out of the plastic solo cups, and we watched Christmas Vacation for the first time this season. I think it replayed again later in the night. Matt wore a very festive black dickie underneath his white shirt. See the picture above...so cute!

Saturday we had a blast at the Childress' baking cookies. Well, Rachel and I baked cookies and the girls played. Laura was so happy to see Avery. She has been asking the last couple of weeks to see her friends, Avery and Maddie. Avery and Laura built forts out of the couch cushions and hid from each other and the dads. Hannah had a big day too. At one point, she wanted to wrestle with Peyton, but I don't think Peyton knew what to make of it. I don't think she and Avery wrestle like my girls. Hannah eventually conked out on the couch. Our cookies were a success; in fact, Matt polished off the last monster cookie today. Monster cookies are my grandma Prochaska's recipe and Matt's favorite.

Sunday was kind of a lazy day. Grammy and Papa visited in the afternoon. The girls were happy to see them, but Hannah wanted to see Max, Papa's dog. They will bring Max next weekend for Christmas. She just loves dogs. Thank goodness Mom and Dad have one and Uncle Alan has one. Whew!

This is the last week before Christmas. Both girls are very excited. Every day they each get to open the door on the Advent Calendar. They are talking about Christmas stuff at school. Laura says to me last week, "Daddy, Santa has elves, and we have Target." Smart girl!

We have watched several Christmas movies over the last week too, including Dora Christmas videos, which Hannah loved. When she hears, "Swiper, no swiping!", she says, "Oh man!" It's the cutest thing.

Fighting Worms

This has been the most fun Christmas season yet. At first when Laura was a newborn, I remember thinking how much more stressful Christmas was than before we had a baby. But now that the kids are getting to the fun toddler age, and we have gained a little more experience, it just gets more enjoyable every year.

It has been raining for days in a row here, and so there have been worms all over the drive way. One morning when we were loading the kids and all the stuff into the van, Laura saw two worms all wrapped together. She said very matter of fact, "Look, those two worms are fighting." I'm not exactly sure that is what they were doing! Observations of a four year old.

Matt posted this Laura conversation on FB this week. She is such a riot.

"Hey Dad. Did you know that snake slobber is poisoned? Yeah, if you touch it or eat it it will make you sick and you will stay sick. It will make you throw up a lot. ...You don't want that."

Another good Laura story. Matt bought the girls the Elf on a Shelf this year. Laura is completely into it. She looks for Mr. Johnny (her elf's name) every morning, and she plays games on the website. Well she started to get concerned that Johnny would report that she was bad, and so she started to prepare a sign. She colored on this sign that she had started at daycare. It was her hand that made a Thanksgiving turkey, and she drew snow and rain all around it. When she completed it, she announced to Matt that she wanted to put it on a stick and put it in the yard. She wanted Santa to know where she lived and that she was good. Matt told her that it would get all wet in the rain, but Laura was adamant about it. So Matt took it the next to work and had it laminated. He brought it home and stapled it to a wood post, and they put it in the flower bed in the front of the house. She feels much better now.

Whenever Matt and I are busy with something, we tell Laura that she has to go play, we are working. Well, this backfired on me the other day. Laura was doing something I didn't want her to do; I don't even remember what it was now. But she was frustrated that I was telling her to stop, so she yelled at me, "Mom go do some work!" Whoops.

Hannah is developing in leaps and bounds. She seems to be growing rapidly right now, and she has started to show interest in using the little potty. Whenever Laura goes potty, Hannah toddles after her and sits on her little potty. Last week she actually had a few successes. She was pretty excited about it, but she has not been consistent. It's still early. She is talking so much more now too. She repeats just about everything anybody says. She loves to name everyone in the room. Her teacher says at school that she likes to name all of her friends. She is not a vegetable fan. One night we thought she was saying "yucky bubbles" and she was really saying "vegetables." But usually she spits out vegetables that she tastes and then says yucky. She also loves Ariel, Dora and the movie Rio. She sings "rio, rio!" And she quotes Swiper on Dora, "Oh Man!"

Last weekend we kicked off our Christmas preparation by going to cut our tree. We went to Saum's tree farm again in Amanda. They had a little pen of goats this year for kids to pet. That was Hannah's favorite part. We did that first, and when we went to pick our tree out, Hannah just kept saying, "goat. goat" and pointing towards them. Laura was the leader in picking out our tree. She showed us the ones she liked and said that we picked the perfect tree. She also picked out a tree for Uncle Alan. Matt and Alan were disappointed that Josh didn't come along since they had to lay on the ground and cut the trees! Too funny! Then we went inside and the kids had hot cocoa and a cookie. And to top of the day, Laura got to sit on Santa's lap. She was super excited about this. She told him a bunch of stuff that she wanted and everything started with "brand new." Hannah didn't want anything to do with the big man, except that she took a candy cane from Mrs. Claus. It was a great trip!

Of course when we got home, the real fun began. Matt wanted to rearrange the living room first before bringing in the tree. This is pretty typical; he's usually itching for a furniture change around Christmastime. Anyway, once we finished rearranging, Matt brought the tree inside and commenced an epic battle with the tree and the tree stand. I recall these same battles between my dad and Christmas trees past. Many years it seems we had twine string or some other support measures holding our tree up straight. Laura was trying so hard to be patient the whole time. She asked several times, "Can we decorate the tree yet?" Finally we started to decorate the tree. Laura and I did the bulk of it. Laura loved every minute. It was like a treasure hunt looking through the boxes of decorations and finding ornaments. Hannah "helped" too. She dragged garland all over the floor and took off as many ornaments as Laura put on the tree. But we had fun, and it looks great! We have the living room decorated, but we haven't done the basement yet. Usually we put up an artificial tree, Buckeyes themed, a train set, and a village set. The kids are enjoying opening a door every morning on our Advent calendar. It's a house that sits on our mantle. They didn't really get it last year, but Laura loves it this year. And Hannah wants to do it too, since big sissy is doing it.

We had another meaningful event this week. Grandpa Prochaska passed away on Tuesday. He had been sick for awhile, but he was tough and feisty. I have many happy memories of him and the Prochaska Christmas around this time of year. When we were little, we always celebrated Christmas Eve at their house. We would all take a drive and look at lights, while Santa came to Grandma and Grandpa's house. When we got back, the living room was full of gifts and we commenced the opening. As kids, we were so excited while we were on that drive "looking at lights." Grandpa always led the passing out of the gifts. He would start with stocking stuffers, like socks or gloves or lotions. The passing out was the fun part. He sat down by the tree and would yell your name and say from Santa Claus and toss it to you. So there were all kinds of things being tossed through the room. It went something like this, "Marie, Santy Claus! Ellen, Santy Claus! James, Santy Claus! Joe, Santy Claus!" We loved it. My husband thought it was the best thing when he joined our family and came to his first Christmas party. There are many more memories like this. As I spoke to my cousin Joe, this week on the phone, we recollected that we are so blessed to be in our thirties and have had so much time with our grandfather. Of course he will be missed, but we know that he is in a better place.