4 Months, Christmas, and More!

So it has been a heck of a long time since my last post and so many things have happened! First of all I must say MERRY CHRISTMAS from all of us to you! (Yes, it IS still Christmas for another week, although I do consider this a little late :-). Below is our Christmas picture that went out in some of the cards we mailed - don't fret if you didn't get one, we only got a few in the mailbox Christmas Eve; we're slackers like that.


The other exciting thing that happened before Christmas is that Miss Elizabeth came into town! Maybe we need to come up with something cuter than that for Charlotte to call my best friend of 20 years. Any suggestions? Isn't she a natural?


The 23rd we spent at my Grandomom's house for the 8th annual Grandkids Christmas Party. The party certainly has calmed down since the first year when a bunch of the kiddos were still under the age of 5...)

Christmas Eve we spent with Fred's parents (what no pictures? Bad Mom and Dad!). His mom made YUMMY Gumbo and sent us home with a doggy bag. We had a very nice visit!

Of course, SANTA came to our house and left a bunch of gifts for Christmas morning. We took a video of Charlotte opening all of her gifts from under the tree. After opening gifts at home, we met Michele at St. Michael's for Mass before joining everyone at my parent's house. Daddy and Charlotte played Christmas Carols for everyone!



After enjoying the piano and sleeping through the first half of our gift exchange, Charlotte opened some more presents!

She had a wonderful first Christmas - even if we did pack it in early and had her at home and in bed by 8:00.

In other news, Charlotte hit the 4 month mark on the 26th. We can hardly believe how much she's grown and developed such a personality. She LOVES to be a part of the action, so much so that nap times have become a nightmare as she fights sleep and often won't sleep longer than half an hour at a time. When not cranky from the lack of sleep, she really can be quite a silly girl:


We still haven't gotten many belly laughs out of our little girl; but she smiles huge smiles all of the time, giggles, coos and shrieks. The shrieks are the most amusing, although not so much at 3:30 am (after eating and a diaper change) when she wants me to come play with her. She's been wide-eyed around this time for the last three nights. I check on her every half hour or so to plop the paci back in (as if she doesn't spit it right back out), but let her just entertain herself. Since I sleep between the loudest shrieks, it makes me wonder if she's really wide-eyed for a full hour and a half or just waking up every half hour... She looks as awake as she does below!



We had a nice shot-free visit to the Pediatrician on Thursday (no where to put a shot!) and she confirmed that all the extra drool and spitting up have a definite cause - Charlotte is teething! So far its only seemed to really bother her at bedtime, making it unlikely that she'll enjoy her usual bedtime book:

Anyway, thats all for now folks!

Happy New Year!