Winter fun! (Notice Lydia is almost always in her feety jammies these days. All day long. It's been really cold and it's the best way to keep her feet warm! She won't keep socks or slippers on for longer than a minute!)

Tonight Opa came over to have dinner with us!

He and Lydia had a lot of fun; he definitely had her giggling!

Other random fun...

And back to the tupperware drawer again... This time Daddy got involved and starting throwing it back in after she would throw it out. So funny! (There's a video below the picture)

Yesterday we went to the mall! For all you parents out there, here's a tip: The line to see Santa is very very short on Thursday morning about 10 AM at Shops at Willow Bend! We weren't there for that purpose, but we walked by the line and I was amazed - I think there were just 2 kids in line. Lydia and I were on a mission to find a cute Christmas hair bow. We were not successful! But we also just wanted to get out and see new sights - home can get boring after awhile!

Last weekend Aunt Katie and Cousin Warner came over for a visit! Warner sure was chatty!

Lydia's Christmas tree is up! She likes it.

TGIF! Happy Friday everyone!
A few recent pictures taken on my cell phone:

Gotta cover those ears when it's cold outside!

Lydia "read" this giant book during the entire drive from our house to my parents' place in Plano (about 35 minutes with traffic).

Omi says Lydia looks like a little Diva in this picture. (Opa brought this hat to Lydia all the way from Germany. It's so cute.)

And this morning...

How cute is Lydia in her newest pink winter fleecy hat? Her Opa brought this one a 2 others to her from Germany. And her Grammy bought her the cute pink fleecy coat and her Daddy bought her the cute flowery fleecy jammies. What a cutie patootie. This morning it was 27 degrees when we woke up! So, we were all bundled up on the way to Grammy's house. For those of you not in Dallas, did you know we had quite a bit of snow on Wednesday morning? Lydia watched it through the window with her "cousin" PJ the cat (at Grammy and Poppy's house). Tuesday was Mommy and Daddy's 3 year wedding anniversary, so Grammy offered to keep Lydia overnight while Mommy and Daddy went on a date! So, Lydia had a slumber party with Grammy, and then stayed all day Wednesday while we were working. On Wednesday afternoon, guess what other exciting thing happened? Poppy came home from the hospital rehab center!!! Yea!!
Lydia's Omi is in Thailand until mid-January. Lydia misses her, and is practicing her german until Omi returns to continue teaching her.

Happy weekend, everyone!

Happy Thanksgiving!

We are so thankful this Thanksgiving!

Lydia's Poppy has been in the hospital, but we know God is going to make him all better quickly and we are so thankful he is alive and really doing well. He has a road of recovery ahead, but we continue to pray and believe that God will accelerate his recovery. We are so thankful for our fantastic parents who give so much of themselves to us, and take care of Lydia while we are working.
We are thankful for good jobs this year, and we know God is preparing a new one for Oliver that will meet all of our needs, and His plans for our lives.
We are thankful for a very healthy little girl, who brings so much joy to us every day. We are thankful for our new nephew/cousin Warner who arrived this year. We are thankful we have so many good friends we can count on, and a great church full of faith-filled people we can have community with. We are so thankful for a great house with a heater and groceries and water and 2 cars with car seats. We are thankful for our health, when so many others are fighting for their own. We are just so tremendously blessed, and asking God to show us how to bless others.

An update on Lydia's hearing test from several weeks ago.. She returned to the ENT doctor and he says her ear infection completely cleared up and he was quite impressed with how great her ears look. And, she passed her second hearing test with flying colors! She is definitely showing new signs of communication and understanding, although still not talking. We'll give her some more time and just continue to encourage her and teach her. We think she's a genius and is just observing until she is confident she can say what she wants to. She'll probably surprise us one day with a full sentence about the gravitational pull on the earth or something.

Look Daddy, I found a bug!


Lately everywhere that Lydia has been, there is a mess! She loves to make messes! She pulls the tupperware out of its drawer several times a day, she pulls the hangers down from her closet, she pulls our clothes off the closet shelves, she pulls toys out of her toy basket and tosses them behind her... And she has so much fun doing it. She does this at her Omi and Grammy's homes too. Recently she pulled all of Grammy's nicely organized coupons and magazines out one by one and had a great time. And Grammy let her. Aw, how sweet.

video...

video


Lydia's other favorite activity continues to be reading. We are constantly reading books! She doesn't really care about stories so much right now; she really likes the vocabulary picture books. (of course stories work if we just point to things and tell her what each one is, like tree, sun, cat, etc. But if you try to read the actual story...she's done. It's all about vocabulary right now. Can't complain about that!) She loves, loves, loves for us to tell her what each object is in a book. She's so cute with her books - she'll go find one and pick it up and then back up into our lap. Then, when that book is finished, she'll get up, find another one and then back up again into our lap. This can go on for a long time... She loves books!

This morning in the car on the way to Grammy's house, I was singing the "ABC" song to Lydia. She liked it! (It's not the traditional alphabet song, but rather this sort of rocked-out version that Sesame Street does.) I sing to her in the car a lot - especially if we're in traffic and she's starting to "get all niggily" (as her Omi says). It distracts her and she laughs at me. Anything from "I've got that joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart" to "This is the day the Lord has made" and of course we sing our traditional ABC's and the song about Noah and the "arky arky". And sometimes I make up songs. But that's just between me and Lydia - no one else gets to hear those!

Thanks to her Daddy, Lydia has new shelves on her wall! They are so pretty and she loves them. Someone suggested that I post a few pictures of her room, because evidently I never have shown it in its entirely. And everyone loves a baby room, right? The theme is just spring. I wanted her room to be happy and sweet and something she could think was pretty too (unlike something really lacey and un-kid-like. So we have pretty flowers, little birdies and lots of happiness! At this point, none of her toys are really in here. They're all over the rest of the house! Maybe one day there will be a Barbie dream house or a play kitchen in here, but we're not quite there yet!

Well, everyone knows I love fall. I know I should be grateful we have this amazing 70 degree weather in November, but I do wish it was a little cooler and crisper outside for the season. On the other hand, Lydia has been able to spend a lot of time outside, which she loves! We have been to the park more and taken many walks outside together. She's so happy outside, and pretty disappointed when we go back inside!

She has been over her cold and her ear infection for about a week now. Yea!This wekend we had family in from out of town, and we also got to see Lydia's cousin Warner again! I'll post pictures of the festivities soon. Right now it's time to go put Lydia down for "night night". Tomorrow Daddy is working from home and keeping Lydia all day, so wish him luck! He never complains - he's a good Daddy and loves to be home with her when he can be.

Hello everyone! All's well, we just haven't been diligent to take a lot of pictures lately. Brief reports on Lydia: She's trying to get over a cold she's had off and on for 3 weeks! We went to an ENT doctor last week for her hearing screening and discovered she has an ear infection. Such a shame. We're grateful she hasn't exhibited a lot of pain. She's been congested, though, and probably a little uncomfortable in her head. She is of course on antibiotics for the ear infection and will be over it soon. For the most part she has been her usual happy self through it all. As for the hearing test, we are scheduled to go back in a few weeks for a re-do. It wasn't possible to accurately assess her hearing while she has cold symptoms and fluid in her ears.
In other Lydia news, we realized yesterday that she definitely has 2 more teeth breaking through on top, to the left and right of her front 4 teeth (would those be bicuspids or incisors? I don't remember what they're all called, nor do I remember how to spell their names.) These will give her a grand total of 14 teeth - my goodness!
This weekend Lydia's Daddy began to measure for and hang her new wall shelves for her room! One down, one to go (hopefully tomorrow). They are so pretty and Lydia and I can't wait to place pretty things onto them!
Also this weekend, Oliver was making our bed and discovered a new game which Lydia loved! Throw the pillows all around her! There's a video below. Note he actually hit her with the first one - whoops. She didn't seem to mind. More to come soon...promise.

This afternoon, we went to watch Daddy play flag football again! We watched all of the first game, which was enough to see him catch 2 long passes! Go Daddy! Lydia enjoyed walking up and down the sideline. Up, and back...Up, and back... She also enjoyed looking at the tiny little daisies in the grass! Another family had a great 2-seater folding chair, which Lydia reeeaaally wanted to try out for size. They were sweet and welcomed her to do that! So, I sat her down and she happily swung her legs for a few moments before her short attention span kicked in and she decided it was time to go walk back and forth some more.

Here is one of Daddy's catches on video! The videos on here are usually a little bit distorted and they're small, but hopefully you'll see him in the bottom left-hand corner! Lydia was trying to run away from me, so I wasn't even looking at the camera - just holding it out in front of me with one hand in case it was a good play, and trying to grab Lydia's hand with the other. We got lucky catching this! I was not successful in catching Lydia, however, so I had to very quickly end the shot.

This afternoon we went to the pumpkin patch up the street at Grace Avenue Methodist Church in Frisco. They do a great job every year. Hay rides, a hay maze, a pumpkin launch, bounce houses, and TONS of fun pumpkins of all sizes! Daddy, Mommy, Lydia, Omi, Grammy, Poppy, Aunt Kelly and cousin Liam came too! Lydia is so blessed to have her family nearby. She really enjoyed walking ever-so-independently through the hay, checking out all of the pumpkins. We bought 3 small pumpkins (Daddy-pumpkin, Mommy-pumpkin and Lydia-pumpkin) for the front of the house.

At this age it is NOT easy to get perfect smiles on camera. Really parents should just forget portrait-style pictures altogether until the kids are older and just count on candid shots to truly capture the cute moments. Still, we had to try...