December in Review

Sorry for the lack of blogs the last 2 months. We thought we would start the new year out with a new post reviewing the busy month of December. In early December, Allison took her first plane ride to North Carolina to visit her Grand-daddy, Mimi and Uncle Sam (Kim's dad, step-mom and half brother). This was the first time for her to see her Mimi and Uncle Sam so it was an exciting trip. Allison did very well on the plane for an 11 month old. She loved to play with the shades on the windows - opening and closing them a million times. We had a great time in Raleigh visiting with our family. We celebrated Matt's birthday while we were there by eating at The Angus Barn. It's supposedly a pretty famous restaurant in the area. In fact, the night that we ate there, the head chef was on Iron Chef America and won! We thought that was pretty neat since we are fans of the show. We also celebrated Christmas with them while we were together. Mimi made a delicious Christmas dinner in which we all had to wear reindeer antlers while we ate (the antlers also played music). Everyone had a great time - even Allison as you can see.

We visited the rest of our family in Searcy over the Christmas holidays. It was good to visit with all of our family, but it is so much more exhausting with a baby. Both of our parents live just a few blocks away from each other, so we end up trying to be at both places for all events. This means that we usually end up eating 5 meals a day for most holidays. And as all of you non-parents will learn, nap time is an essential part of both baby's and mommy's day and it's very hard to schedule naps when you have so many people wanting to play with Allison. But we are glad that everyone enjoys her so much.

She didn't really seem too interested in opening the presents, but she would try to help you tear the paper a little or pull the tissue paper out of the bag. Some of her favorite gifts were her Sesame Street "Baby's First Purse" that included her own lip stick, keys, cell phone, and coin purse, her blow-up ball pit (thanks to this toy, Allison has added the word "ball" to her vocabulary), her Leap Frog Fridge Farm, and her newborn Cabbage Patch doll (named Vanessa Sylvia - Sylvia is her NaNa's name, and you can guess who the gift was from). When she opened up her Cabbage Patch, which came with a bottle and a car seat for the doll, Kim asked Allison to give the baby the bottle - thinking that the request was a little too advanced for her yet - but to everyone's amazement, she did it and has done it every time we've asked her to. Granted, sometimes she is banging the bottle into the baby's face, but she is learning to pretend play, which is a lot of fun. Here are some pictures of Allison opening presents that I thought you may enjoy:

For anyone who still reads this, I will be updating the blog frequently this week. I have lots to catch up on, so please stay tuned...