themcalisters.net

Home from Georgia

We got home from Georgia on Monday to discover Santa had dropped off a few presents here as well! No coincidence that these were large, and Daddy was tired of carrying things downstairs at this point. Taylor's new Pooh couch stole the show. We'll take some more photos of her on it now that the camera's not full of pictures, but she looks so cute sprawled out on it when it's folded up.

Christmas in Georgia

We made the trek to Georgia for Christmas this year, and had a wonderful time. Taylor quickly grasped the concept of unwrapping presents and loves playing with new toys and dressing up in new outfits. Poor little girl -- just so many new toys and so few hours in the day to play with them. All we need now is a house to put them all in.

This weekend we'll be visiting Huntsville family, which will wrap up our Christmas celebration and kick off Taylor's 2-year-old birthday parties. The partying never stops.

Getting an early glimpse of the fun that awaits Christmas morning

Wonder what's in this one.

Lots of gifts under that tree. Sure hope we have time to open them all.

No chimney? No problem. If the phrase, "The stockings were balanced on the back of the sofa with care" sounded more poetic, I'm sure Major Henry Livingston or Clement Clark Moore (depending on who you ask) would have used this in the famous poem instead.

A new Tupperware shape sorter, just like Mommy and Daddy (and probably most other kids) once had.

This one's more challenging than her previous shape sorters, but even 10 different chapes can't throw this girl off her game.

The hardest part was getting her to put down one present so she could unwrap another one.

Flash cards, just like she plays with at school! Watch out world.

"Grandma gets presents too? I'll help her unwrap hers." Just for the record, Grandma is not mad in this picture. Nor is she mean. She's the best Grandma a little girl could ask for.

"Is this what I think it is?" ...

... "Yes, I think I know what this present is!" ...

... "I was right! It's a box!! And a very comfortable one at that."

Once we managed to get into the box, Taylor found it full of goodies from Grandma and Grandpa.

A new Wiggles DVD! The ride home should be lots of fun.

Cousin Alyssa gets new skates.

Taylor plays with her new DVD while Daddy gets a moment to open a present.

Cousin Darrin gets a Spongebob video game.

Fridge Phonics: The same song over and over get old, but Taylor loves putting the letters in the hole and pressing them to hear the letters read back to her.

Cousin Lecil bites. There, she admitted it.

What's this? A potty for Alyssa? ...

Nope, just a box to hold her new Foxx. Poor girl, she was devastated to unwrap a present to find a training potty box. That was a mean joke, Aunt Elizabeth.

Uncle Darrell gets a leafblower. No fun there.

"Which toy should I play with first?"

Aunt Leslie looks longingly at the tree - shouldn't there be a present for her too?

A giant Elvis stamp! Now she's happy.

It's pure madness. Maybe the living room will recover one day.

But Grandma doesn't care. She has Deluxe Scrabble.

Somehow I get roped into playing Horsey. Not a good idea after Christmas dinner.

Cousins Adam, Alyssa, Darrin, Lecil and a squirmy Taylor.

Another attempt. Taylor doesn't like group photos.

Please can I get down now?

One more cousin shot - Lecil wasn't ready yet.

Zoolights

We took Taylor to the zoo Saturday night. Yes, night. Every year the zoo puts up lights and you can walk through and enjoy the lights. I'll admit I was disappointed at first. Too many people pushing and shoving to enjoy the lights and Taylor was half asleep. Well, we decided to wander over to the Children's Zoo (I'd heard there might be reindeer, there weren't). After wandering around to discover every section of the zoo closed off except for the lengthy line to the train, we were pleasantly surprised to find that the petting zoo was open! Taylor petted one animal and then happily watched daddy pet the rest of them. She also had fun telling each animal "night night" and blowing them kisses. It was a very late night that, while it started rough, ended quite happily. Needless to say, we didn't do bath that night (we got home after 9!)

I almost forgot! We bought her a glow-stick necklace and she LOVED it. In fact, she insisted on going to bed with it. Brian and I laughed when we heard it fall between the crib and the wall. When we went to bed, we got it and put it our room. The next morning when she woke up she was reaching between her crib and the wall and saying, "Want that... want that..." I finally figured it out, gave it to her and she was happy again.

Bedtime babies and Santa's visit

Taylor has started wanting her babies to sleep with at night. One night last week she couldn't decide which baby she wanted, so she took both to bed. That's her previously-featured Space Bear baby in her left hand.

The apartment complex had a sign-up list for Santa to come visit. We survived an especially nasty traffic day in addition to only having 1 working car to make in home in time for this. Taylor was to sleepy/hungry/tempremental to sit on Santa's lap, so this will have to suffice for this year.

New server

Good news for us! If you're seeing this post, this means you're looking at our new server. We're still with ICDsoft which when we signed up years ago only had servers in Hong Kong. Now that they have servers in the U.S., we're swapping over. The site should load significantly faster now, at least for us. That's why we haven't had many updates lately - there's a lot of files to copy over.

First pictures of Michael

Here are the first pictures we have of Michael Allen. More to come when I have some time tonight to go through the rest. Proud papa went camera happy, but I can't blame him for that. More pictures will be available here later, and on Mike & Bev's site linked on the left.

A few stories

One night while we were in Huntsville, we went to the Botanical Garden's Galaxy of Lights. They string up lights and all sorts of exhibits - about a mile long and people are strongly encouraged to turn OFF their headlights. Considering we were crawling and not on a main road, we unbuckled Taylor and let her sit in Grandma's lap up front. She sat straight up the whole time and was completely and utterly enthralled! We're hoping to find something like that here as well.

Monday was a fun day. Taylor wasn't cooperating with me that morning on getting ready for daycare so I started listing off her teachers' names as part of who all she would get to see that day. No real reaction. Then I started naming her friend and wow what a reaction! At the mention of Maya, she went to the door and was ready to go! After 4 days of mama and daddy, I was worried about separation. Apparently after 4 days of not seeing her friends, she was ready to see them and had no problem separating. :)

Well, she only slept 30 minutes that day so she was cranky that night. I ended up laying down with her in the guest bed because she didn't want me to put her down - when I tried, she'd cling and literally climb back up into my arms. While lying down, she would occasionally reach over, turn my face to her and say, "kiss" then kiss me. It was really really sweet and I hated to end it but she needed to go to bed and laying down obviously wasn't working. We went into our room where the rocking chair is - lights out - and she was out within 5 minutes.

Yesterday was equally fun. She had a better nap but when a friend, Brennan, left she started crying. She was looking out the window and crying for daddy. As you know from a previous post, daddy's in Huntsville right now. We had difficulty getting to sleep but, in the end, the rocking chair won. And sadly, no sweet kisses like the night before.

We'll see how it goes tonight with daddy having bedtime duties. :)