Gossip-y Fun.

I love that I'm not the only one who indulges in celebrity gossip; this is just a fun post to read and we basically share the same opinion on everything!

And here is a new Scarlett picture:  (b/c how could I post something without a picture of Scarjo?!)

Oh!  P.S--Happy New Year!! 

The Christmas Hangover. (full of random thoughts)

I never knew how deflated I'd feel after Christmas--blech!  It's like I just found out that Santa isn't real; just a yucky feeling!  I feel like I put so much effort and had such high expectations in this 1st Christmas with Scarlett that I feel a bit let down.  Not by Scarlett or Alyssa, but just by my lack of realization that traveling on Christmas is not such a good idea.  Next year, family can come to us! 

And really, it wasn't a bad Christmas!  I just still have not been able to get my house back in order; toys and decorations and crumbs and leftover desserts are everywhere!!!  On a positive note, I had my hair highlighted and that totally made me feel less overwhelmed!!  Also, the husband is home this week!  Yay for time together/free babysitting while I go to the gym, but he is like having another child around sometimes...no lies...and he has no idea!  I blame his mother;)  But he does everything for me and fixes the faucet, so I really can't complain about his trail of messy-ness! 

Tonight we're just in the livingroom hanging out, so we whipped out an older cd...I had forgotten how much I love old Mary mixes!  Britney, Lily Allen, Love Lockdown, and Poker Face!!! 

Scarlett was not a fruit lover when we started her on solid foods, but oh how things have changed:

She loves her berries!



We got a HUGE snowstorm here in the northeast.  I was all excited to bring the babies out to enjoy the fresh, white, fluffy snow...until we got outside and the wind blasted cold, wetness in the face!  Awesome.  We still managed to snap some photos:

A little miserable, but determined to get a photo! 

I took Tracey's advice!  Here's Scarlett in her bilibo!

Eeek...snow in the face!

Alyssa & me

Alyssa, eyeing my hat!

Yup, she decided it was worth stealing!

Me with Tyler



So much to do...!

Christmas is fast approaching and there is still looots to do!  Lots of baking & wrapping, so I'm pretty excited...it's the laundry and sweeping that makes me procrastinate and facebook! ;) 

I even still have a little gift shopping to do, but they're for guys who I don't know really well.  Not. fun.  And Scarlett would much rather eat banana whoopie pies and harass Mr. Rex, our kitty, than go out and about to more stores!

YUM!

As much as she's not a fan, she still makes shopping look cute!

Merry Christmas to you all...all four FIVE of you!  Woohoo!

Busy, busy, busy...

We've been crazy-busy here for the past few weeks with baking & shopping & visiting Santa!  It's all FUN, but lots of work!  OMG...Christmas is so much more fun with babies!!!  I'm just so excited to see their expressions when they see their filled stockings and Santa gifts.  Fun, fun! 

So, Scarlett is ELEVEN months old today!  Eeek!  Where has the time gone?  I so sound like an old lady, but it really seems like she was just born and the fact that she'll be a year makes her seem so old, even though she's still my baby.  In the past month, Scarlett has started to do lots of new, funny things.  She can stand (!), still not crawling, but instead, she scoots around everywhere.  She hands you things, waits for you to say, "thank you," and then expects them back.  She claps and has even just started waving hello and goodbye in the last few days!  She was standing up against a table, holding something in her left hand.  After trying to reach for it, but not being able to get a toy, she attempted to take a step closer, but then decided to go with the easier way and drop whatever was in her left hand and pick up the new toy.  Still, I feel like that's progress!!!  Hopefully, she'll be walking soon-ish!

We also went to go see Santa.  We couldn't schedule it for a time that Tyler and Alyssa could both go, so this time it was just the 3 of us Smiths!  Tomorrow, Molly and Alyssa will be going with Scarlett and I and I'm hoping that it'll be more fun.  Alyssa gets the Santa thing, so she'll be more excited than Scarlett...

Terrified.  Poor baby!

Really? 

Get. me. out of here!

Now she's trying to get a good look at him.

I can't wait to see what happens when Scarlett sees how much Alyssa loves Santa...hoping for some better pictures tomorrow!

It's Snowing!

Like, lots & lots snow and we are loving this weather!!!  Scarlett and I are meeting Molly and Alyssa at the pool for open swim, but first we must get outside and take pictures of Scarlett playing in the snow!!!!  It's really time to find a snowsuit...!  I just bundle her up with mix-matched warmness, but she despises being so bulky and absolutely refuses to wear mittens.  It creates quite a scene as we wrestle to get her dressed.  This is what she looks like with a sweatshirt-material all-over outfit, socks & furry boots, fleece all-over suit all stuffed into an LLBean baby bag!  Yeah, she hated me, until we got outside...then she only hated me a little bit! 

And this is less angry!

Also, after watching the Today Show, I've decided that I NEED an all-sequined dress like this:



Soooo pretty!



  It's so pretty and would look great with my fake eyelashes!!!!  I need ideas as to to where I would wear it, though...maybe even just a fancy dinner out?!  We'll see...Christmas is coming!  (hint, hint, Tyler!)

Scarlett has SIX teeth!!!  Four on top, two on the bottom!  Crazy!

A New Obsession

I've discovered a site to help edit photos and I'm obsessed with playing around with my hundreds and hundreds of Scarlett and Alyssa pictures!  Here are a few so far:

Visiting Uncle Max at Texas Roadhouse--they have delicious pickles, apparently!

(Can you tell that I love rounded corners?!)

Scarlett's 1st Thanksgiving

It was a hit!  Here's a little background of our family tradition on Turkey Day...we go out!  My mom cannot cook to save her soul, so it's always been a family tradition to go to The Senator.  They have an amazing Thanksgiving buffet with the BEST EVER dessert table in the universe!  Just ask Molly, she's the dessert expert and makes it her goal to visit the desserts at least 13 times.  True story.  Anyway, so whether we went with our family of 6 from our childhood, or with our crazy, crazy, crazy ass Uncle, or random fiances of my mother's, or with childhood favorites (yay, blog shout-out to Liz!!!), we have ALWAYS  gone to The Senator. 

LOVE:)



Fast forward three months, and my insanely insane mother has gotten herself married to a man who cooks.  And not only that, he has been planning on preparing our Thanksgiving feast.  Like there is no possibility that we're going out as a new family of 8.  Um, what?!  No crazy-fun car rides blasting Christmas music?  No thirteen trips to the buffet?  No pictures taken in the over-sized chair?  No pictures taken of all of us next to the dessert table, just to make Mary jealous??  No pecan bread???????????  WTF kind of Thanksgiving is that?!  This was my mentality going into yesterday.  I was bummed...and a little bit P.Oed.  But if I'm hating life bummed, then Tyler gets grumpy and annoyed with my mom, so I had to put on a happy face (to save Scarlett's 1st Thanksgiving!), blasted the Christmas music, and decided to have fun! (after consuming copious amounts of DD coffee!)

As you can see, Thanksgiving was a blast!  Things may have been a little different than we were used to, but it was a definite success.  Camdyn was nice to Alyssa (this. is. HUGE!), Mum's desserts rivaled The Senator's, table talk was fun & light-hearted (even though Molly was prepared!  ;), and we all left STUFFED full of yummy food.  I feel like new traditions have been started and I'm pretty much okay with that!  There's no denying that I WILL find a new reason to dine at The Senator and eat my body weight in their pecan bread...


Oh!  P.S.--Does anyone know how to add text or pictures to a heading without photoshop??  The new header is my reminder to figure it out...that clearly hasn't been going well! 

P.S.S.-- Scarlett's newest thing is clapping!!!  And dancing!  All the timeeeeeeeeee!  So sweet! 




This was after dinner, and I forgot a bib, so she was a mess!



DOUBLE DIGITS!

Scarlett is TEN months old today!

And a lady mistakenly called her a him this morning...um, hello, her jeans have ruffles! 

On a more positive note, Scarlett fell asleep in time for me to watch Kathie Lee & Hoda...love them!  And it's Friday!  Hooray!  :)

Shopping!

Totally sitting on the table!

Alyssa loves to pose!

Wonder what Alyssa is thinking...!?

Love this!

Scarlett loves her Cousin Alyssa!

Hey, It's OK!

(I stole this idea from this blog who stole it from Glamour magazine...I think "Hey, It's OK! is my favorite section) 

...to have been listening to Christmas music since Halloween!  I'm so excited for the 1st holiday season with Scarlett!

...to get my butt KICKED in aerobics class.  (The instructor was just a little bit insane; the poor old ladies in the class!)

...to absolutely love that Prince William gave Kate Middleton his mother's engagement ring!  (and I'm just a smidge jealous!)

...to be up worrying all night about your sick baby, even while she's sleeping soundly right next to you.  (Why is she sleeping so long?!?!)

...to get excited every day that this blog has a new post!  I love Kelle Hampton's blogs!

...to already have my Thanksgiving outfit picked out!

I hope the rest of my Tuesday will be as fun & productive as the morning!  And now here are some Christmas pictures that didn't make it on our cards:

Alyssa's sharing her fluffer nutter!

 Snack break

 Love Molly's pose!

 Smith Family

 Alyssa also shared her lollipop--awesome!

 Another lovely "Molly pose," haha!



Coffee & Blogging

...make the perfect morning!  Scarlett is fed, dressed, and playing quietly on the rug.  I have the Today Show on for background noise and I just sat down at my computer with a nice, big cup of strong coffee in my favorite pink mug!  Life is good!  We are actually just killing time until I start the process of getting dressed up for my mom's wedding.  My sisters and I are still trying to decide how we feel about this; my mom and her future husband's 3 month anniversary of dating will be on the 11th.  And my mom is adopting his 6 year old daughter.  But there is enough juicy info for an entire post of it's own...

Back to my perfect morning...

So much has been happening!  Scarlett started swim lessons yesterday; she absolutely loved everything about it, although I think the other swimming babies and their mums were her favorite part.  At first, I was thinking, "come on, Scarlett, reach and pull, reach and pull, kick, kick, kick, kick!" but then I let go of the idea that she'd be a start swimmer and just had fun with her in the water.  You're supposed to let the babies do as much as they can on their own (like pull themselves out of the water) and Scarlett did so well!  I am not very good at letting her do things for herself--maybe that's why she's content to never crawl or walk!  It's definitely something that I'll have to work on!  She did do the motions of pulling herself up out of the water and even leaned into the pool to jump back in!  It was amazing!  Scarlett was the youngest baby, but there was a little 13-month-old who was her little friend.  Meeting the other moms was so cool!  I live in the same town where I grew up and I still didn't know a single mother in the class.  Very fun!  I did make the mistake of bringing Scarlett in a 2-piece, which was annoying to have to pull down every 3 seconds.  I promptly went home and ordered a little pink one piece swimsuit that has a tutu...Alyssa would approve!

It was also a very festive Halloween here on Morrill Ave!  Scarlett was a cupcake and Alyssa dressed up as Princess Tiana!  Molly had to work Sunday night, so Uncle Tyler, Auntie Meg, and Cousin Scarlett brought Little Miss trick-or-treating.  What a hilarious evening!  At every house, Tyler would say, "Alyssa, what do you say?" and she would reply, "Tricker!"  Amazing!  And then she said, "thank you!" on her own.  Such good manners!  After we hit about 10 houses, we were ready to go home and hand out candy.  Alyssa was in charge of that and she took it very seriously!  For every trick-or-treater, she hand-picked the candy they received.  It was a long process, but super-cute! 

And here is Alyssa handin out treats:

I have also been without my car for 2 weeks and right now, she's sitting pretty in my driveway!  Yay!  And my broken blackberry has been submitted in an insurance claim, so that is fantastic!  Happy times:)

Ok, I'm off to bathe and dress Scarlett and then get ready myself...I'm sure I'll have some photos of this evening, so get excited!

Peek-a-boo!

Scarlett is so silly, she is the one who plays peek-a-boo with me!  Hilarious!

Look at those teeth!

Scarlett is using our box from the Halloween cake that we made to play peek-a-boo!  The cake was delicious and festive, but wrecked havoc on my calorie counting all week! 

Scarlett, pre-fall:

Shoot!  I was hoping for a video edit on blogger!  Sorry for the sideways video!  (& if you know how to fix it, please fill me in!)

Also, soap in the water was probably not my smartest idea yet!

Happy Saturday!  We are off to find lunch and put the groceries away...!

Blog Slacker...

That's exactly what I've been lately!  I write tons & tons of blogs in my head, but haven't had the time to just sit and write, mainly because Scarlett has been staying up later at night.  Ahhh...but not tonight!  Scarjo is asleep and hopefully she stays that way!  I love her so much, but I haven't had my own time in more than a week!  It's time!

It's the 21st...10 more days until Halloween!  I.  am.  PSYCHED!   Scarlett's 1st Halloween costume is hanging in the closet, ready to be worn around the neighborhood with her older cousin!  I will be taking insane amounts of pictures, so you can all feel like you're here...!

After Halloween, I'm going to be in all out Christmas mode.  Woohoo!  I am looking forward to Thanksgiving.  First at David's, then off to The Senator we'll go!  The great part of Thanksgiving will be sharing our traditions with the next generation of babies and that they'll look so cute in their fancy dresses!  We're doing Christmas pictures soon too!  The holiday season is so magical anyway, I think with babies it just makes everything even more special!  I cannot wait!  :)

Something happened today.  Here's how it all started...Scarlett's nails were filthy, so to fix this, I decided to pour warm, soapy water on her high chair tray.  I thought, "she's learning!" when she splashed the water all over and squealed with delight.  There was water everywhere, but she was having a ball!  When the water became cool, I rinsed her tray, dried Scarlett off & pulled down her sleeves, and dried the floor.  Scarlett was getting fussy and ready for her morning nap, so I picked her up out of her high chair, grabbed my camera (that I had been using to record Scarjo in the water!), and my Great One.  (for all of those non--DD coffee drinkers, it's the 24oz cup of deliciousness!)  We rounded the corner and BAM!  My foot hit the water that I had apparently missed while had cleaned and I slipped, dropped my coffee and camera, and I fell with Scarlett on the floor.  She hit her head and was covered in luke-warm coffee.  OH:(  I am still feeling horrible.  Scarlett is okay and I have checked her over 100x, but it still freaked me out.  It makes me so sad that I am the one who made Scarlett cry. 

Now onto to happier things!  Molly totally saved me today--she picked up Scarlett and me and we went tanning and grocery shopping.  It made me feel tons better picking out fun new foods for Scarlett to try!  Tonight we all went to Cancun--Waterville's best Mexican restaurant!  Yummy!  There's not a lot that a quesadilla fajitia and fresh salsa can't fix!

All in all it was an okay day, but I'm glad that it's over!  Now I'm just excited to pick out pretty, festive holiday dresses for pictures...!  (Hanna Andersson is having a great sale through Sunday, fyi!) 

And tomorrow is Friday!  Yay!

Happy Saturday! 

(Scarlett and I are just hanging out in our pj's!)