Needless to say, two kids kept us quite busy in 2009! We apologize for being out of touch for such a long time. I am in the process of going through our 300+ Christmas pictures so hopefully, I will have some to post soon.
2009 was a great year for our family. The addition of Andrew in February of '09 was definitely the highlight of our year. Andrew is now 10 months + and into everything! He, unlike his sister at his age, has already started crawling, pulling up, cruising and is even trying to climb our stairs. He currenlty has 4 bottom teeth and his 2 front teeth are starting to drop down. At his 9month appointment he was 22 lbs and has dropped to around the 70th percentile for both weight and height. He is talking (well, babbling really). His primary word is bye-bye, bbbb...bye-bye...(repeat, jabber, jabber, repeat). Our experience has definitely been that girls talk a lot more and boys are more active. Andrew is full of energy and a lot of fun! It is hard to believe that the time has come for me to start planning his ONE YEAR birthday. While it has been a great year, it will be said to say good-bye to Andrew's "baby" days (sob, sob!).
Caroline still enjoys preschool and was excited to start back today. She loves the fact that Andrew is becoming more active and able to "play" with her more. Our BIG Christmas gift this year was the fact that our BIG girl is now 110% potty trained (day and night). Around November Caroline spotted a Beauty and the Beast tea cart in the Disney store and asked if Santa would bring it to her on Christmas. Why I chose the response I did, I don't know...but, I said, "if you are potty trained by Christmas, I guarantee you that Santa will bring you that cart." Well, that was all it took for our strong willed Miss Priss to go home and ask to put on her BIG girl panties (prior to this she was going potty but she was not willing to let pull-ups go - they were just more convenient she once told me). We are LOVING our new pull-up free life with Caroline. To better explain just how trained she is let me give you three good examples: 1) awoke us last night at 2:30 am by knocking on our door and asking to go potty, 2) likes to go "all by herself" & 3) 2 nights ago she even got out of the tub to go "tinkle!" To say we are estatic at her sudden breakthrough is an understatement!! And yes, everyone of you did say, "Don't push it, she'll do it on her on time and when she does that will be it."
As far as Ben and I go, we were blessed to celebrate our 7th anniversary in December and we truly are more in love today than we were the day we said our vows (mushy, mushy I know but it's true). We are still grateful to have our same jobs -- I will celebrate my 10th year at my Company this year, and Ben continues to enjoy his work with the State. Ben completed his 3rd TSO Orchestra event December 20th (where he truly "rocked" our church with some awesome guitar licks) and he continues to participate in our church's orchestra and teach guitar lessons to 7 students. We absolutely LOVE our Life Group at North Metro and are looking forward to 2010 as we continue to grow closer friendships.
Overall, we are just grateful that God has afforded us so many blessings in 2009. While many looked forward to saying farewell to 2009, we will definitely miss the moments we have enjoyed over this last year. We are eager to learn what God has in store for our family in 2010!!
