Mmmm...eggnog!

 Everyone, including strangers are always commenting on how this one is J's little look-alike.  And it's not just her appearance...

 She has a lot of her Daddy's personality as well.  And this morning we discovered that she shares the same tastes.

 We put a little bit of eggnog in a glass for her.  Knowing that it was something different and unfamiliar, she eyed it with trepidation but tried a tiny sip.

 No sooner had she swallowed then she was lunging for the glass and another taste of the creamy goodness that her Daddy loves so much.

Ah, holiday breakfast of champions!

 And, she couldn't quit licking her lips and cheeks.

Then there was this.  Another shot of Baby Miss, also taken today, side-by-side with a picture of the Girl (which I just happened to stumble upon while going through some old pictures while making a calendar to gift to the grandparents) at almost exactly the same age, a mere 19 days apart with the Girl being older.  They could nearly be identical twins!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Today we celebrated Thanksgiving at J's Grandma's house, we call her Super Great Grannie. Super Great Grannie has a lot of great granddaughters, eight to be exact and just two great grandsons. Seven in a row born in the last five years. {Our baby boy will break that streak come spring.} This year the girls got their own special table for Thanksgiving dinner. They thought they were pretty big stuff, in the kitchen all by themselves with their goblets of festive sparkling cider or punch. One in particular had impeccable manners.

Poop!

Baby Miss has shown a limited amount of interest in the potty.  She has her own little wooden potty chair that my Dad made when the Girl was a tot.  She usually likes to "use" it (and I use the term very loosely) when one of her Big Sisters is in the bathroom.  She sometimes follows them in and sits on her seat pants, diaper and all.  This morning she showed her usual amount of interest and I figured I'd take her diaper off and see what happened.  She kept running back and forth into the bathroom.  Each time she came out I'd ask her if she'd gone potty and she'd say, "Yes."  I'd go check and find nothing.  About the sixth time that this scene played out she came and informed me that she'd gone poop.  "Not likely," I thought.  So I finished up with the dishes, thought about starting some laundry and with the laundry room directly outside the bathroom popped my head into the bathroom and low and behold...there it was.  Poop in the potty!  Baby Miss was rewarded with two M&M's (emmy-nems as she pronounces them) and gushing praise from myself and Little Sister.  She was so proud of herself as is evident by that gleeful grin.

Uncle Steebie!

Baby Miss received a birthday card in the mail from my Aunt. Inside was a five dollar bill. Baby Miss got extremely excited when she saw the money and I was amused to think that we were in trouble if she already knew what money was all about. She held up the bill, pointed to Abe and knowingly exclaimed, "Uncle Steebie!" Hilarious!!! J's brother, Stevie, doesn't bear an uncanny likeness to the President but Baby Miss apparently thinks so. Warms my heart to think she was so thrilled to receive a picture of her uncle in the mail.

Pre-Dinner Dance Party

 This evening as J was working on dinner, I turned on some tunes from a favorite playlist.  That was all it took to bring about an impromptu, pre-dinner dance party.  All of these girls LOVE to dance!

We call this the "Freak Daddy Out Sister Dip."  Aptly named cause it causes J to have heart palpitations every time he sees it.  He is sure that Baby Miss is gonna wind up being dropped on her head.

 And the "Sister Squeeze."

 Oh how I love those smiles!

Little Sister can do it too...still working on the dip part though.

Unconventional

This is how we do nails...sprawled out on the dining room table, in jammies sans pants, wearing two different boots.  One belonging to her, the other to her big sister.  Unconventional, probably.  But it works for us.

Birthday Girl!

"Oh yeah, I remember what this is all about!"  Exclaims the expression on Baby Miss's face as we celebrated her birthday last night with a cookie pie, ice cream and a few friends.  I have to laugh when I think about how we've scaled back on the birthday celebrations over the years.  With the Girl, every birthday included balloons, streamers, favors and lots of people.  Which equated to a stressed-out Momma that didn't even get to enjoy the moment cause she was too worried with the details...were there enough treat bags for everyone, was the house tidy with everything in it's place (a rarity that usually only occurs on such occasions in this house), etc.  All for a one, two or three-year old little girl who didn't care about such things and who had no such expectations.  With each successive child I'd like to think I've grown a bit wiser and now our birthday celebrations are pared down, more intimate versions of previous years.  And hopefully when they're older and look back at pictures they'll know that the lack of decorations or people wasn't because we loved them any less than a sibling but that we'd grown and learned what works best for our family.

 As this sweet pea turned two I mourned the loss of my little babe.  She is now a full-fledged toddler and has been for a while now but the age of 2 just puts a little finality on the conclusion of the baby years.  But, I didn't dwell on it because, man is this Baby Miss at a fun age!  She is fearless, expressive and funny.  Her vocabulary is like no other two-year old I have ever known.  In fact, this morning at her Well Child Check-Up, no sooner had the nurse asked if she'd started putting two or three words together to make phrases, than Baby Miss walked over to Little Sister, held out her box of raisins and asked in perfect pronunciation, "_______ (Little Sister's name here), would you like some raisins?"  The nurse just laughed and said, "Check."  She adores her older Sisters and is my cheerful morning person (quite unlike the other two).  She usually starts off her day by asking where the Girl and Little Sister are before we even make it out of her room.

And the dress that she is wearing in these pics, it's her favorite.  Her "ballerina dress."  A majority of her day is spent twirling when she wears this dress.  She doesn't mind being the center of attention and is pretty good at garnering it.

 This is her best little bud, Miss C, giving her some birthday love.

 The gifts were a hit this year.  She loves this little music box with it's twirling ladybugs...

and it's quite plain to see that she's smitten with this giant giraffe.  She brings a lot of joy and laughter to our house.  J and I are so abundantly blessed to have not one but three daughters, all of which are uniquely and wonderfully made by an amazing God, the ultimate Creator.  Only He could give gifts this good!  Happy 2nd Birthday Baby Miss!

Dude!

Yep!  Seven and a half years and three girls later, in April we welcome a little prince to this kingdom of princesses!  But maybe Baby Miss has known all along...she has been patting my belly and exclaiming, "Hi Dude!" from the beginning.  Our ultrasound was this afternoon and our technician, Carmen, was a riot.  We all filed into the tiny room and she said, "I guess I don't have to ask what you are hoping for."  She then proceeded to get down to business, as she was squirting gel on my stomach she said, "Well let's see if this little baby has some outdoor plumbing," and no sooner had she put the wand to my belly than up on the screen popped an unmistakable image that gave us our answer.  "Good thing you wanted to find out, otherwise baby would've just spoiled the surprise.  It doesn't get any clearer than that."  She then proceeded to check all of the other organs, major body parts and take the required measurements.  Baby Boy is healthy and measured big (by about a week), which was never the case with our Girls.  Carmen had fun drawing a ball cap on Baby Boy and commented, "Wow, this baby is gonna have fun.  Your family is like a circus."  In reference to the Girls who were a little wound up and enjoying the experience.  As for the Girls, the Girl voiced her preference on the way to the hospital that she hoped it was a boy or a puppy.  Good thing it was a boy cause puppy was definitely out of the question!  Daytona will undoubtedly continue to refer to him as "Dude" and Little Sister showed her first glimmer of enthusiasm.  Up until today she has refused to even acknowledge the situation.  J and I are excited that our last one will lead us into new and unchartered territory.  Not quite sure what to expect, other than the inevitable...that we'll get peed on quite a bit.

Practice

 This weekend we are at Poppie and Gramma's.  J is painting the inside of our house.  A much easier task without three munchkins underfoot so I decided to take the Girls and head over the mountains for the weekend.  Yesterday Baby Miss got to practice her blowing-out-the-candle skills with a pre-birthday celebration in her honor.

 She had the right idea but kept sticking out her bottom lip and blowing up, which was great for displacing her bangs but didn't do much in the way of putting out the flames of the candles on her cupcake.  It sure was cute though and she was persistent.

Her persistence finally paid off and she wasted no time in getting hold of that cupcake.

Earlier tonight we got to reconnect with old friends.  Friends that we don't get to see nearly enough.  They are the best kind of friends though, the kind that you just pick up right where you left off whether you saw them yesterday or 2 years ago.

Lovely.

As Baby Miss's birthday looms on the horizon, I couldn't help but think how she has transitioned from a baby caterpillar and emerged from her cocoon into a full-fledged toddler.  Very few traces of baby remain.  Sad in some ways but amazing in so many others.

Auto Mechanic?

Today I walked into the front room and saw this.  It's not the first time either.  This is a coffee table that my Dad made for us complete with cubbies for storing magazines and books.  However, the books and magazines have long since been cleared out for Baby Miss to do this.  Her work.  Possibly a future employment option.  {And, in case you were wondering, "No," her feet are not that big...Little Sister had a friend over to play today and those are her boots that Baby Miss is wearing.}

Happy Halloween!

 Happy Halloween from a friendly witch, buzzing bumblebee and adorable watermelon!  The Girl and Lil Sis have never been big on door-to-door trick-or-treating so this year we kept it simple and went to the Trunk-or-Treat at our church instead.

 Oh how I love this little watermelon!  I got this costume a while back, on sale at Children's Place for...$15!!!  It will probably go down in history as my favorite store-bought Halloween costume ever.  Hands down.  But when I first showed it to Baby Miss she looked at it with disdain and exclaimed, "I not like!"  Oh brother, seriously!  Are not-quite-two-year-olds allowed to formulate opinions on super awesome costumes that their Mommas pick out for them?!  I think not.  At any rate, she quickly caught on to the realization that people give candy to costume-clad kids and then she was all too eager to get into her costume, even the hat!  She kept saying, "I melon." And her "trick-or-treat" was to die for.  If I were a stranger and she came to my door, I'd have just dumped my entire bowl of candy in her pumpkin.  J thought that the hat looked like a beret and therefore she became the French watermelon or, "Zie Vater-mel-ohn."

 A few of our pals prior to the trunk-or-treating.

 This sweet bee was as cute as can be...

 but was afraid to leave the safety of our trunk.  She much preferred passing candy out to getting it. She only trick-or-treated at a few familiar adjacent trunks while holding my hand in a death-grip before retreating back to our car.

 This friendly witch was quick to make the rounds and then spent the rest of the evening being goofy with friends.

 And Zie Vater-mel-ohn ate a lot of candy and thoroughly enjoyed it.  So much so...

that she had no problem doing a bit of trick-or-treating around the neighborhood...

while her Big Sisters cheered her on.

Shades

A girl can never have too many pairs of sunglasses...

Eighty-two...

the number of drafts waiting to be written and posted, dated as far back as April 11th of last year!  Times that number by two and you have the number of blog posts that I probably meant to write and never even got around to setting up a draft in my blog editor.  That's a lot of catching up to do!  And, I do intend to get caught up...eventually.  I plan on easing back into things and filling in the blanks of all those back-logged draft posts as best as I can eventhough many of the details may be lost forever in the far reaches of my memory.  You might've been wondering, "What happened?"  As best I can tell - life.  Life happened.  No guarantees that it won't prevent me from keeping up with this little blog in the future {especially, say, come next spring} but for now, I'm back.  Or at least, I hope to be.

Pumpkin Carving

 We finally got to the business of carving our pumpkins late this afternoon.  We figured if it didn't get done today, it wouldn't get done at all.

 Inevitably, J gets stuck with most of the grunt work.  Especially as this one seemed to enjoy cleaning out the gook when she was much, much younger.  Back then she couldn't care less if it got on her or her clothes...now, not so much.

 Although this year Little Sister did a pretty darn good job of cleaning her pumpkin out.  After she was finished, there wasn't much left for him to do other than carve out a much larger version of a 'kitty face' than what she'd drawn.

 Baby Miss did pretty good too, although she lacked the elbow grease to really get the job done.

 Of course my job is 'official photographer.'

Baby Miss enjoyed drawing on the pumpkins.  She started out with hers and then proceeded to leaver her mark on everyone else's as well.  And apparently, the 'official photographer' dropped the ball when it came to capturing the finished products.