Happy Valentine's Day!!

 We had a busy week getting ready for Valentine's Day.  Sophie, of course, had been waiting for this day to come since mid-January.  She loves all things holiday, and was super excited for the next one to come.

Sophie making her Valentines.  Preschool has been a wonderful activity for Sophie this year.  It has given her some independence, maturity, and friends.  She could not wait to make her valentines for all of the kids in her class.

Sophie's valentines.  We filled the bags with Swedish Fish.

 I tried to do different Valentine activities with her everyday this week.  I got lots of great ideas from Pinterest- which I both love and hate.  (Really when do those moms ever sleep?  Who has time to do all those things?)  Anyway, the candy heart color sorting proved to be a favorite activity.

All of her sorted hearts.

We made Rice Crispy suckers.  Sophie helped with the entire process, so each pop was covered in chocolate and about 5 lbs of sprinkles.

Looking at all of her valentines from school.

Cade realized there was candy on the floor.  Sophie grabbed it away just in time.

Caught in the act.

First balloon.  This provided lots of fun!

Cade and Sophie both looking at the balloons.  What a great day!

Crawling Cade

Cade is officially a crawler!  He started off doing a couple of crawls at a time, before dropping back down to his belly, but he has now mastered the task!  He crawls all over.  We are officially in the clean floor phase, because if there is anything on the floor he will go after it!  Sophie has learned rather quickly that she needs to put her toys up high, or they're fair game.  He has also just started being able to sit up from a laying down position, and is trying very hard to pull up on things.  It's amazing that all these things are happening at once!  I am hoping that since he can now crawl and sit up, he will stop trying to master these skills in the wee hours of the morning.  I often find him crawling around his crib at 1:30 in the morning.  In typical Cade fashion, he always greets me with a smile, as if to say, "Hey, this is great, you're up too!"  It's a good thing he is so darn stinkin' cute!

Jan updates

 We have seen several changes with the kids in January.  Cade has gone through the biggest changes- he is now a champion sleeper!   He now takes an hour nap in the morning- I usually have to wake him up- and then 2- 21/2 in the afternoon!  It's incredible, he used to only sleep a total of 2 hours throughout the entire day.  Because he is now napping regularly, we can now get out of the house and do things- we didn't do much before because he would always nap in the car and that would ruin the little napping that he did at home.  I wish I could take credit for his napping, but honestly I did nothing different.  One day he just decided to sleep, and sleep.

 Sophie's imagination has really taken off. She plays all day in her own little world- although she is usually a kitty or a favorite character from a book- like Froggy.  In the picture above she was a mommy kangaroo and had her Joey tucked in her pouch all day. It was pretty cute to see her bouncing around the house with her stuffed animal tucked in her shirt all day.

 Sophie also just got her 1st haircut.  She was pretty scared, but it's amazing what a bribe of a lollipop will do.  She later informed me that getting her haircut was her favorite part of the day.  We will go back again, but I am sure I will have to bring another lollipop.

 Showing off her new haircut.  If you look really close you might be able to tell that it's trimmed.

 Cade is now an official army crawler.  He is now happily terrifying his sister by following her around and trying to take whatever she is playing with.  There have not been any major fights- yet- but I am sure they will come as he gets more mobile.

Sophie was quite pleased because we had strawberry shortcake for dessert.  I told her that it was a special dessert for the Super Bowl.  She looked down at the dessert and told me that,"it's not a super bowl, it's a super plate!"  She's a cutie!

Cade at 9 Months

I have gotten behind on my blogging, but Cade is officially 9 months!  Here are his current stats:
Weight: 20.8 lbs- yes, he's a big boy! ( he is at 50%)
Height: 28 inches (at the 30%)
Teeth: 0, yes he is still the toothless wonder.  Apparently I didn't get teeth until I was 12 months, and Cade seems to be following my lead.

Favorite food: Sweet Potatoes
Disliked food: peas, green beans, and peaches

Likes:  Anything he can chew/slobber on, watching his sister, doing anything physical- jumping, standing, ect, and taking a bath
Dislikes:  Being burped after his bottle, taking naps, getting diaper changed
On the Move: Cade is trying to crawl, but right now only goes backwards.  This makes him very frustrated!

Sleep: Cade is an excellent sleeper.  He typically sleeps 11-12 hours every night.  He is however a terrible napper.  He is still the king of the 30 min nap, and prefers to take 3 throughout the day.  I have tried every strategy out there to try and lengthen this nap.  Nothing has worked, so after 3 months of pulling my hair out, I have given up.  I would rather have a great nighttime sleeper than daytime.

Cade continues to be a happy, easy baby.  He is quick to smile and now does big belly laughs.  We are blessed to have him in our family.

Christmas, Part 2

  

 We flew back to Portland to be with everyone for the holidays. In our traditon, we celebrate Christmas again with my mom on the actual Christmas Day.  It was great fun, and the kids are truely spoiled. My mom had a smaller tree with ornaments set aside just for Sophie to decorate.  She was thrilled.

 We did our annual tradition of making gingerbread houses on Christmas Eve.  Sophie has gotten very skilled at decorating these, and puts almost as many decorations on the house as she does in her mouth.

 Notice she has banished Daddy, as she now wants to do everything "By Myself."  She now tells me several times a day that she is a "big girl,"  and "I dont need help, I can do it."

 Uncle Sam and Aunt Holly gave Sophie a scooter for Christmas.  Since it rained the first several days she decided that since she couldn't ride it outside, inside would have to do. Rosie the dog especially wants to thank Sam and Holly for this gift.  There were many close calls.

 Sophie opening up gifts Christmas morning. 

 Cade opening up gifts Christmas morning.

 Jen, Shaun and the kids came out for Christmas break and surprised my mom in the process. We were all thrilled, and the kids had a wonderful time together.  Unfortunetly, my camera was running out of batteries as soon as they came, so I do not have very many pictures of all the kids. The picture above was taken at the aquarium and its not very good, but moments after this was taken, Sophie decided that she was going to get into the touch pool.  We left shortly after, and might  have a lifetime ban of ever coming back.

 We got up early one morning to go to the zoo.  It was freezing out!  We were practically the only people crazy enough to be there- but we did get to see all the animals up close, including the new baby elephant.

 Jonas and Bekah were very sweet with Sophie the entire trip.  Here is Bekah lifting Sophie up to get a better view of the snakes.  We stayed in that room for a long time- it was warm.

All the kids gathered around the ipad, Jonas was kind enough to lift Sophie up onto his lap so she could get a better view.

Even though my kids were sick the entire time with colds, ear infections and then the flu- it was a wonderful vacation and so much fun to see all the kids play so well together.

McDermott Christmas

We celebrated our first Christmas last weekend.  (Yes, our children are extremely spoiled) We had a wonderful time, it was so much fun to get the kids all together again.  We went out Saturday afternoon for sledding and hot cocoa, and then had Christmas dinner later that night.  Sunday morning, we woke up early and went back out in our pajamas to celebrate Christmas.  We did stockings, presents, ate a huge breakfast, and then headed back outside so the kids could burn off some of their energy.  Sophie played hard all day and was truly exhausted by nightfall- she ended up sleeping 13.5 hours that night.

 Santa put goggles in Sophie's stocking- she was thrilled!

 We gave Sophie a dress up kit, which had a firefigher's hat and ax inside. She wore the hat and carried the ax most of the morning. Despite all of my hard work, there are no princess dresses on this little lady.

 Cade was quite thrilled to spend most of the morning on grandpa's lap.  Grandpa let him goober his presents and eat all the wrapping paper he wanted.  Oh well, it's a good source of fiber right?

 Playing in the snow Montana style-hooking up sleds to the back of a four-wheeler.  Not exactly my idea of fun, but Sophie loved it! She kept saying, "Faster, Faster!"  She is not afraid of going fast...

Sophie showing off- she liked to lean to the side on the sled, and run her hand along the side in the snow.  We have a daredevil on our hands.

Christmas Baking

Making cookies- for the record, we didn't notice that Sophie was completely covered in flour until we were halfway through the cookie process.  It was only then that we noticed that we had gone through half a jar of flour...

 More and more flour.

 Sophie is Miss Independent right now and wants none of my help.  So, if you squint your eyes you can kind of tell what shapes our cookies are in.

Sophie did take the task of decorating very seriously.  She knew exactly what colors she wanted to "paint" each cookie and which color of sprinkles.  I thought that she would just decorate a couple with me, but she did such a good job that I let her decorate them all.  Near the end, she applied a little too much pressure to one cookie and it broke.  She looked very upset and close to tears when I told her that when one breaks we can eat that part.  She promptly picked up her knife, and using it in an ice chisel fashion, broke a cookie into many pieces.  Then smiled and ate all the little pieces.  Yup, that's my girl.

We made gingerbread boys one night and Sophie thought that that was a lot of fun too!  Unlike last year, where she didn't eat any of the candy, this year she sampled each piece before placing it on her gingerbread boy.

Decorating is a serious and tasty task!

 Stopping mid-decorating to sample the cookie.  Mmmm.....