Photo Fun

Just for fun, here is a side by side comparison of both girls on their four-month birthday wearing the same outfit.

And a recent portrait of both of the girls together:

Birthday girls!

This one is a few weeks late, so I'm goign to roll both birthdays into one post.

On January 8th, Mady hit the big 0-3. We had an early birthday party for her while the family was in town, so we just took her to Chuck-E-Cheese to make her actual birthday feel special. Carrie and I put together a quick list of some of the changes of the last year:

• We can no longer talk about Mady in front of Mady. She is on to us now.
• She can jump. both feet. off the ground. same time.
• She is actually a pretty good eater now. Aside from fish and eggs, she'll eat most things, including raw cauliflower.
• She recoginzes letters and numbers and can count to 49... and probably higher than that.
• She has started "parenting" her toys. It seems that a different toy becomes a new little brother or sister every few weeks.
• She sometimes projects her emotions onto her toys ie "Mommy, Jubilee (her doll) is scared!"
• She always has an excuse to climb out of bed once we put her down.
• She is terrified of the fire alarm.
• She is very opinionated about what she wears now. She usually insists on pink and fuzzy.
• She wants to be a soccer player when she grows up.
• She can dress herself and feed herself with a fork and spoon.

On January 17th, Cameron hit the four month mark. At her four-month check up, she weighed in at 16lbs, which is the 92 percentile for girls her age. She is 24.5" long, which is about the 50 percentile. Here is her list of fun developments in the last month:

• She is starting to regrow the hair on the top of her head. It is coming in light brown.
• The doctor confirmed that her eyes are most likely going to remain blue.
• She now uses her hands to grab our hair, hands, toys etc.
• She has rolled over 3 times, but doesn't do it very consistently.
• She loves tummy time.
• She squawks, grunts, and squeaks a lot.
• She has become very smiley.
• She LOVES bathtime. Even if she is in a bad mood, the bath makes her face light up.
• She falls asleep by 8:30 most nights and gets up around 6:30
• She giggled for the first time on her four month birthday. Daddy was making farting noises with his mouth.

Happy New Year!

2012 kicked off with a bang! Grandma and Grandpa Beyer came to town right after Christmas and stayed for about two weeks. Allen and Amber also came out for a few days right after the new year, which was great since we hadn't seen them in a year and a half. This was their first time meeting Cameron. Since we had everyone in town, we had an early birthday party for Mady. Carrie made some "ice cream cone cupcakes" and Krista brought "cake pops." Matt and Emily (our cousins) were able to bring their one-year old daughter, Caroline. It was nice to have another child there.

A few days after that, we all went down to spent a day in Killbuck with Marty and Pat. My siblings and I have lots of wonderful childhood memories from "The Farm." While most of the property is being rented out to another family, and Marty and Pat built a new house on one small corner of the original property, it is still nice to get back there every once in a while. This was Allen's first chance to bring Amber out there. It was also Cami's first trip to Killbuck, but I don't expect her to remember it.

On the 7th, the Richards had a big family Christmas Party. Since we don't get to see a lot of the family from that side very reguarly, it is always fun to see how much everyone has aged since we last got together. This time, there was a whole new generation of children running around.

In addition to all the gatherings, it was great to spend some nice low-key time with family to start off the new year. We are anticipating a year of relative stability in 2012, but we'll see what God has in store for us!

Baby's First Christmas

Cameron's first Christmas was also our first Christmas in our new apartment in Cleveland. We took the girls to a Christmas-eve service at the Methodist church where Carrie's MOPS group meets. They had a fun children's service that allowed all of the children to participate. Each kid got to pick out a costume as they arrived. Mady wanted to be an angel. When they read the Christmas story, they different "actors" were called up and told what to do. Mady has never been as attentive in church as she was that evening! Her costume consisted to a sparkly headband with a pipe-cleaner halo, and star-on-a-popsicle stick wand (apparently angel's carry wands). She loved it, and insisted on dressing as an angel for a week afterwards.

Our goal for Christmas was that our girls will be excited about it, but not because of the presents. We did some fun "count down to Christmas" activities during December. We got up early on Christmas morning to eat cinnamon rolls and read the Christmas story from Luke. We went to church in the morning and Steve and Krista came over in the afternoon for Christmas dinner. It was nice to have them over to our place for dinner since they usually like to host. It was also nice because we could put the girls to bed and stay up and talk and play games. We decided that we would give the girls their gifts on New Year's Eve because we wanted to emphasize that Christmas is Jesus' birthday. All in all, we had a great day.