Christmas at the Heisler's

We spent Christmas day and a few days afterwards at the Heisler house. Kim's grandparents, David (with girlfriend Marisa), and Uncle Tom were there. Mimi, Kim's mom, was a great hostess and made fantastic meals while we were there!!! At both Christmas celebrations, Abby loved opening her presents. She had so much fun playing with each thing after we opened it. Therefore, she was always the last to finish opening her gifts. David took some great pictures of everyone while we were there.

Christmas at the Allen's

Fortunately everyone was well for Christmas so we were able to spend a lot of time with family. We spent a few nights before Christmas with Jason's family. Abby had so much fun playing with her cousins: Megan, Chase, Aubrey, and Julia. We had a wonderful time and were so happy to spend some time with everyone!!

Christmas in New York City

The week before Christmas, Jason and I went to New York City for a vacation. The day that we left a blizzard was planned to hit the North East. Our flight landed on time, and the snow waited until after we reached our hotel to start. It was crazy... there was no snow when we arrived and the next morning there was about a foot of it. The highlights of our trip were shopping on 5th Avenue and at Bloomingdales, walking through Central Park, and seeing the Christmas Spectacular starring the Rockettes at the Radio City Music Hall.

Here are some of our pics:

18 Months

Abby turned 18 months old on the 17th.

Her 18 month stats are as follows:

Height: 34 inches (95th percentile)
Weight: 19 pounds and 11 ounces (3rd percentile)
Head Circumference: 18 3/4 inches

Here are some of the her latest milestones:

- She talks up a storm. She is counting to 5, using "please" and "thank you" when she should, says the name of most of her toys, food that she eats, people that she knows, animal names and sounds, etc. If she doesn't know the name of an object, she will hold the object up to us asking us what it is. After we give her the word, she repeats it a couple of times (it is like she is trying to memorize it).

- She has started trying partial sentences. For example, we always ask Abby questions starting with "Abby, do you" (ex. want to go outside, want a snack, etc). She repeats "Abby, do you" when we say it. The other day she said something that sounded like "Here it is."

- When she is injured, she will run up to us pointing at her injury asking for us to kiss it by making the kissing sound.

- She sings along when we sing any song. She knows very few of the words, but she makes up words to go along with the song. A lot of the time she knows the sound that the actual word in the song starts with, so she will sing that. Her favorite songs right now are "Ring around the Rosy", "Old MacDonald", "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", "Row Row Row your boat", and the Backyardagin's theme song.

- Her favorite TV show is Backyardagins and her favorite movie is Cinderella. She won't watch a full movie yet, but she sits through Cinderella the longest (close to an hour).

- At restaraunts she is an easy toddler in that if we let her out of her high chair to walk around, she won't run away. Instead, she will stay pretty close to us. Our favorite restaraunt is La Hacienda because it is super kid friendly. There is a singer named Jaun that sings cheesy Mexican songs, Elvis songs, and wedding songs. Abby loves him.

- She knows what Santa looks like and calls him by name and then says "ho ho ho" every time she sees him.

- Today we gave her a Hersey's kiss for the first time. We told her it was a chocolate kiss and as soon as we gave it to her she kissed it. Sooo cute!

Elf Yourself

We created a cute family video... check it out at http://elfyourself.jibjab.com/view/mGJ7tZyGxy37Be0Y.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving week did not go how we expected it to go this year.

On Wednesday (the day before Thanksgiving), Jason and I were planning to drive to Louisiana to stay for the night with Melanie and Randy. Jason's mom was going to watch Abby and we would join them again on Thanksgiving and stay with them for the weekend.

What actually happened was that Sunday night before Thanksgiving week, Abby started acting a little different. She would yell at me every time she tried to eat a different food. Usually she is a very good eater and even if she doesn't like something, she would never throw a tantrum. This continued through Tuesday during the day and she began to drool exceedingly. She also woke up Sunday and Monday nights yelling "No! No!". All signs at that point led to us thinking that she was just teething.

Tuesday night before Thanksgiving, we left after work to head to Jason's parents house. We were to spend the night there and leave for Louisiana in the morning. Abby would not sleep this night. She was 5 times more difficult with dinner then she had been previously. She wouldn't eat a thing. We finally got her to sleep at 10pm but she was up again screaming at 11pm. So, I made an executive decision that we would be skipping the trip and driving home that night.

We saw the doctor the next day and he said that she had hand, foot, and mouth virus. This is common in young children and the symptoms are usually sores on the child's hands, feet, and in their throat. Abby didn't have any sores on her feet or hands, but she had them in her throat. This is why she wouldn't swallow food or saliva (looked like drool)... and it is why she would wake up at night screaming. The doctor gave us a medicine concoction to help with her pain and minutes after taking it for the first time she was feeling so much better.

The doctor said she was highly contagious, so we knew that we couldn't do Thanksgiving at Jason's parents house. Abby has four cousins (10 and under) that she could contaminate. And, after more research on the web, we learned that although adults could get this sickness, children had a much higher risk. So, we decided to go to my parent's house for the holiday. We did this for two reasons: one we needed help since neither Jason or I had slept in a long while and two, we didn't want to spend the holiday without our family.

My parents did help us a lot with Abby. They let us sleep in and take a few naps. And Abby slowly started to get better. By Saturday she appeared to be all better.

It was a small Thanksgiving, but we were thankful to spend it with my parents and my grandma, Gigi. Here are some of our holiday pictures. The rest are posted on our Shutterfly account.

Family Portraits

Last year, my brother David took pictures of Abby for our Christmas cards during Thanksgiving break. This year, David went to Chicago for Thanksgiving with his new girlfriend Marisa. Therefore, we went to Sears Portrait Studio to take some family and Abby pictures that we could use in our 2009 Christmas card. Abby hated the big cameras and cried the majority of the sitting. The lady taking our picture worked really hard to try to get her to smile. I'm amazed that the pictures turned out as good as they did. Here are my favorites. All of them are located on our Shutterfly page.

December 4 - Snow Day

It snows in Houston about once a year. December 4, 2009 was the day that it snowed in 2009. Abby's school let out early, so we were able to enjoy it. Abby refused to put on her gloves, so she kept holding out her hands and saying 'brrrrrr'. She did walk around in the snowy yard a bit but she didn't like touching the fallen snow.

November 15 - Dewberry Farm

On November 15th, we met up with Becky, Michael, Aubrey, and Julia at Dewberry Farm to have fun for the day. We had a day filled with fun: pig races, slides, playgrounds, corn maze, flowers, and animals. Here are some of the fun pics: