2009 : Dyar Girls Take On Their Parents

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The Mickey Show

Posted on December 31, 2009 at 12:28 pm

One of Amelia’s early Christmas gifts (and Lena’s) was a ticket to go see Disney Live! – Mickey’s Rocking Road Show. So Ann and I took Lena & Amelia and off we went – we didn’t tell them until that day – and to try and explain what I meant I said we were seeing Mickey In Person – and that is still how Amelia describes it. She keeps asking to go back so I think it was a hit.

Waiting to see show with their new Mickey dolls – they asked for the Little Mickeys at the gift stand (and considering what was available, that was very reasonable!). Amelia now sleeps with hers.

Here are a couple glimpses of the show – Cinderella was there too!

Lena (& Amelia) watched pretty seriously… and at the end there was ‘snow’ made of paper. At first Amelia didn’t like that it was getting on me & her chair but Lena showed her how to enjoy it. The girls had a great time and I’m so glad we got to take them.

Afterward we celebrating Christmas a little early with Chris’ family – the girls got the cutest umbrellas and Grandpappy of course got a snuggie from Benji…

Aren’t they just so sweet together – they really could be sisters – the Dyar genes run strong! Whenever anyone says Amelia looks like me, I don’t mind – but then you see her with their side of the family and well… she looks like them. I don’t think you can argue that very much. Its just fine by me though since she is so adorable, as is her cousin!

And finally – at some point we laid Katherine down on her mat on her tummy for tummy time and I came back and this is what I found – she is watching tv. So I guess she did roll over at least once – hasn’t happened again though.

You can tell by that smile that she was up to something! She does love her tv.

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Family PJs

Posted on December 31, 2009 at 12:16 pm

Started the tradition of family Christmas PJs last year. This year I swore I would order early enough from The Company Store to get our sizes, and apparently mid-November is not early enough. (Last year I got some from another company and did not like the quality)

So I headed off to the mall and actually was pretty happy with what I found at Macy’s – other than Amelia’s pants not having elastic so we had to safety pin them together…

Here are a few of our attemps at a family picture in our pjs.

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And The Year Ends…

Posted on December 31, 2009 at 10:55 am

As 2009 comes to a close, I am so thankful for baby K, the newest addition to our family. It was a rough start – between mother’s intuition and fear when I no longer felt her moving on a Friday morning (later became her birthday and she was fine) to five days spent at the Children’s Hospital because we found her blue (didn’t know reflux could cause apnea) to flooding at 3 in the morning when she was a month old (since we were up for a newborn feeding, we saw the water coming and got everything up off the floor) … she has taught us to truly be thankful for what we are given.

I have never prayed as much as I did those five days at Children’s- and while times like that may make you question your faith – instead it strengthened mine. K is now a thriving four month old making it hard to remember how frail and tiny she looked at the hospital. But I will never forget.

I will also never forgot how wonderful friends & family can be – thank you for all of your support this year. While social media may be the ‘hot topic’ right now for both good & bad reasons – what I will remember is that because I put a status on Facebook about flooding, we had friends show up at our door to help without being asked. Friends that even had to drive around closed roads and more. You can’t ask for better friends than that.

All in all, I feel really good about 2009 – it was the year we became a family of four. I feel our family is complete. Even though there were hard times, the good far outweigh the bad. I have a toddler who is so loving and full of life. She brings joy to me every day. I have a baby who warms my heart and already loves to snuggle. I see my toddler be an even better big sister than I could imagine – loving every minute of it, and so proud of her sister.

We enter 2010 with great expectations. May everyone have a great New Year.

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A: 29 Months Old

Posted on December 31, 2009 at 10:53 am

I think this month has been the month of adorable toddler conversations.

When we showed you houses with Christmas lights, “Its soooo beauuuutiful’.

When we talk about your house, its “Melia’s house, not Mommy’s, not Daddy’s, no Katherine’s – its Melia’s… okay??” (Your Okay?? is really drawn out too)

When we drive, when we go on ladders, when we go around obstacles of any sort – “Be Careful Mommy” (Think we say this a lot to you); When its you “I have to be careful”

When you want to procrastinate its “Few minutes okay?”

When you want some of something (like cookies) – you always ask for five of them

When K is crying – “Stop Crying Katherine” with hand motion (for stop)

And I haven’t caught on video but you have this drawn out low funny way of saying some things like ‘The truck is sooo big’

You also are quick to tell us ‘you skipped a page’

Its fun having conversations with you know – such a big girl you are becoming.

Love,

Mom

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- Monthly updates

K: 4 Months Old

Posted on December 31, 2009 at 10:50 am

My dear little K,

You are growing so fast. Four months old already – time is flying. This month has seen you start daycare – and you are really doing well there. Almost immediately after starting you started trying to roll over and were better at grasping objects. One of the reasons I am so comfortable with you there is the attention and affection they give to the babies. I giggle at the notes saying you learned sign language and your favorite part of the day was circle time – but it makes me happy to know you are in a warm and loving environment every day.

The downside – since you’ve started at school your night time schedule has gone crazy! You were such a good sleeper, waking only once to eat sometime between 3 and 5. Now we might be up every hour after midnight giving you back your paci or soothing you. Maybe we can get that fixed over the holidays. You have gone through alot – you started school, dropped a bottle, had your first cold, aren’t swaddled anymore… its not a wonder you aren’t sleeping as well. BUT, we will get you back on track. I promise. We are all happier when we are well rested.

You are still a smiley happy baby. You love attention and you give the best grin when we turn our attention to you. You also love to watch your big sister – I can see she will be the best source of entertainment for you.

Your 4 month checkup won’t be until next week – but you were 15 lbs 6 oz at the doctor last week and well.. you like to eat. But that is what makes you so adorable! You are so cute when you get hungry and start going after your fist with a vengeance all the while moaning while you do it.

You are just like your sister, mom and grandmothers in that you like to talk – you have adorable coo’ing conversations with us. I have a feeling that eventually we won’t get an word spoken by parents between the two sisters chatting away.

This month has also brought lots of drool – we don’t feel a tooth coming in but oh my gosh, the amount of drool you have is… impressive to say the least. We can now see the tooth coming but its not in yet.

Looking forward to your first Christmas!

Love,

Mom

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- babygirl2

Nicknames…

Posted on December 17, 2009 at 9:35 am

So far I’ve used mostly just first initials for our girls – baby K and toddler A. However, on A’s old blog I used her name and I don’t think it would take much work to figure out there names… so is it worth it? Maybe I should use nicknames or maybe its okay to use their real names… thoughts?

Possible nicknames…

Baby K could be sweet pea (one of my nicknames for her) or muffin (they call her muffin at school)

Toddler A could be lady bug or Bedelia

Cousin L could be Belle or bee (she is the bee to A’s lady bug)

Or maybe we should just go with names.

So now introducing…..

Baby K = Katherine Ann

Toddler A = Amelia Rose

I think this feels right – we’ll see!

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- General

Gingerbread, Friends and More

Posted on December 15, 2009 at 7:24 am

Well we are down to roughly a week before Christmas – can’t wait to see A experience it all as I think 2 1/2 is finally an age to start really enjoying it. We sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to baby Jesus quite often around the house, and she loves Santa (especially how Mickey Mouse saves Santa in one episode that we’ve seen quite a bit these recent days).

We went to a friends house for a little toddler party, and here is A hugging her friend M – they hugged for at least a couple minutes, it was too cute.

Group hug – there are at least 3 toddlers, if not 4 in there somewhere.

We tried to get all four to sit by the tree. This is what we got.

Later that day we made a ginger bread house – A was very excited.

This is what happens when you ask her to say ‘cheese’.

That’s a better smile.

And of course, me being artsy with the camera.

And then just some random pics of baby K who had her first cold this weekend – she was still a happy baby.

I have this picture of A somewhere, so I tried to duplicate it with K.

Hope everyone had a good weekend, and we are close to the holidays – Enjoy!

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Who Needs Sleep

Posted on December 11, 2009 at 6:48 am

Me. I need sleep. I am not one of those people who survives off little amounts of sleep. Everytime I came home from college after finals or some other time period when my sleep was particuarly limited, I’d come home sick. I really like 8 – 9 hours a night, and go to bed fairly early to get this.

While I was prepared for the sleepless nights in the beginning of having a child – our first slept pretty well after that. She got up to eat in the night once until six months of age, but otherwise was a sound sleeper from 8 pm until sometime after 6 in the morning. I barely remember having to get up with her. As she got older and got teeth, or got sick – there was some bad sleep but it always comes back to her being a good sleeper.

Our second baby – K – was a great sleeper almost from the beginning. We were spoiled. By 6 weeks of age she was sleeping 7:30 pm until 7 am with only the one feeding in the night – that didn’t happen with A til 14 – 15 weeks old. The week of Thanksgiving she even went until 5 am for her feeding – we thought, this is perfect. Just in time for me to go back to work she’s going to drop her feeding. Ahem.

K is now a bad sleeper. I don’t know what happened. Logically I know – I mean she started daycare, we’ve all had colds, she’s congested, she isn’t swaddled anymore or on an incline, its gotten colder… I can name 1000 reasons why this has happened, but it doesn’t make it easier. We are tired. We are two weeks into daycare/work and we’ve gotten about 3 decent nights of sleep in that two weeks – and decent isn’t even what it was a few weeks ago but its better than most.

She is still going to sleep fine, even without her paci most nights. But then the fussing will start – sometimes as early as 11:30 – she doesn’t want to be awake. Put a paci and usually she falls back asleep (unless she drops it – then repeat, try again). If that doesn’t work, some patting and maybe music on her rainforest perhaps. She usually goes back to sleep. But that means we are up 2 -3 times a night each in addition to feeding her. We are getting tired.

I know this will pass. I know people deal with much worse on a regular basis. But for now? Its a good thing she’s cute!

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Breakfast With Santa

Posted on December 6, 2009 at 12:43 pm

I love the holidays! Just a great time of year. Yesterday we had the opportunity to join friends at a Breakfast with Santa – A was very excited to meet him. We took quite a few pictures – but unfortunately the ones where our flash worked, santa is a bit scared looking. The ones where it didn’t go off – those would’ve been the good ones – oh well! I tried to edit but you can tell the quality in lightening the non-flash ones – just didn’t quite turn out. (Some I made almost black & white – looks better than way).

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the daughter of two engineers entertained herself by building with pretzel rods and pancakes.

I then noticed how the sun through the window really made you see the color of A’s eyes – they are a very lovely hazel that is hard to capture so here was my attempt.

Some other fun pictures from breakfast.

Then, since we were all dressed up – time for pictures in front of the tree! The best is saved for the Christmas Card but here are some other fun ones.

This next one amuses me – I think baby K was done with photos.

And then K was just so adorable during a diaper change, I then had to capture some of it.

Hope everyone is having a good weekend!

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Thankful

Posted on November 30, 2009 at 6:46 am

As I embark on a new stage of life – going back to work with two wonderful daughters – it was good to have a week to think about all I am thankful for. We have amazing family and friends and our daughters bring us so much joy. I couldn’t ask for a better husband and loving father to the girls. We spent the week with family, both our small one and our extended one, and really had a great time. We got our first artificial Christmas tree and set out the nativity – I love the spirit of the holidays! And of course, we took pictures. Which is good because I might have to look at these every hour for the first week back at work. I love my job – I have really great co-workers. But it will be hard for a few weeks – at least we have Christmas to look forward to! We hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and finds time to be thankful.

Thanksgiving was a bit cold but we tried to take A and her cousin L on a walk – they snuggled with a blanket – we didn’t make it very far.

A decided to try out the bouncer we were using for K on Thanksgiving… a bit big?

Cousins playing dress up on Thanksgiving – it was too cute. The oldest, E on the right, called themselves the ‘dress up girls’ – but her sister (also an E) wasn’t allowed – she is the youngest in the picture next to A. But little E was creative and made her broom a magical broom to be included. Very cute.

K sporting her UGA bib and Duke blanket, sleeping through the chaos. And I mean chaos. We had… 9 kids total plus 14 adults. 6 of the kids are 3 and under. (Two of which are mine of course). So we were pleased K managed to nap – maybe daycare will go okay!