Happy First Birthday Megan!!!!

What a wonderful day! We love birthdays around this house and we celebrated all day. First, we took a trip to the doctor's for Megan's one year well check which turned into a sick visit for both Megan and Anna. Thus Megan's first birthday gifts today were two vaccinations and then an Amoxicillan prescription. Not too bad I guess. She got some cool bandaid "tattoos" that made her look like a tough biker when her shirt was off for cake time and "at least the Amoxicillan is pink and tastes good" (in Becky's words.)

During nap I baked cupcakes, cooked dinner and decorated a little for our evening party. The "party" consisted of me, Matt, Anna and Megan; But when you call it a party, Anna gets so incredibly giddy with excitement that you really can't do it any other way. We had a banner, party hats and lots of cupcakes. We finished with birthday presents in the basement. It was a fantastic first first birthday party (we'll have the second with just family on Saturday - sorry friends, wish you could come to celebrate, but we decided to limit the kids since we just came off a 10 day hiatus of illness.)

I can't believe little Meggie Moo, Megs, Megan is ONE!?!? This year was so much fun. Really it was. I would encourage anyone who can muster the energy and strength to have two under two. Seriously. Go ahead. Twiblings are wonderful!!!! Now we have a one year old and a two year old. It makes your head spin thinking about it, doesn't it? It's definitely not for everyone, but we LOVE it :) ....However, check back in with me if this weather doesn't warm up one day soon. I NEED to get out of this house. This winter thing is what might make one rethink the whole idea of two toddlers...

Anyway, Happy First Birthday Baby Girl!!!! We love you!!!!

p.s. Thank you Charlotte for letting me borrow your very pretty "1" shirt. I think I looked so cute in it. It's nice to know I can still borrow clothes from my friends even when they live in Texas. :) I miss you! Love, Megan

I'm a big kid now!

Isn't that the old Pull-Ups commercial song?? Well, we are singing it in our house! I woke up on January 1 and thought "This is it. I'm done with "big kid" diapers. If all the 2 year olds at our NYE party are potty trained, then Anna can be too." We immediately went to big girl panties all day that Friday and we haven't turned back. Anna had a few accidents the first 4 days (about 6) and hasn't had one since.

Now, I am by no means an expert at potty training and actually have to say that I didn't do much to prepare us for it. But, it was easy. What I learned with the first child is this: parent and child have to be mutually ready to go through this or it's going to be way too stressful.

Anna was showing signs and interest back in March when I had 8 week old Megan to deal with. Although we purchased a potty for Anna at that time, I never really let her try to learn because I knew I wouldn't have the time or energy. During the summer, I tried several times thinking it was a good time to let her run around in just her underwear and that was a big mistake. She wanted nothing to do with it and even staked out places in the house to have accidents - behind her rocking chair, under the table, in her closet. It definitely didn't work. By the time this session of potty training came around everyone was mutually ready and anxious to achieve something. We were all positive and it was a pleasant experience.

Congratulations Anna! You're a big kid now! And I have to say that it's a bit sad. It's quite weird seeing my baby girl run around in her little Elmo or Ariel underwear.

The photo below was a strange mommy moment for me. We built a camp that day and the girls were crawling in and out of it. Anna let me put her hair in a pony tail - which is an accomplishment in itself - and she had her little Elmo undies on. It was surreal to see her little diaperless bottom running in and out and made me want to freeze time. Here I had my two baby girls enjoying this wonderful, innocent, childhood moment and I knew that I would find it passing all too soon. Anna was for so long toddling between the baby and preschool age and this little underwear moment made it official: she's considered a preschooler :( ...and tomorrow's my baby's first birthday so I better stop writing before I really start shedding some tears....

Happy New Year!!!

Better late than never, right :)

We had an enjoyable NYE because we decided to have people to our house. That translates into the fact that Megan could go to bed on time in her own bed and we could still enjoy ourselves. The Bozemans and Bradleys came over with their crews and the girls all had a blast while we enjoyed a semi-adult New Year's Eve celebration. Everyone was impressed that the little ones lasted so long and almost to midnight; they all left at 11:30. Anna was wiped and asleep just in time for Matt and I to watch the ball drop. It was a very fun night and we loved celebrating with all of the kids. They had party favors (appropriately Elmo themed), root beer floats, and lots of energy. They were so cute!

This last picture was taken by the most qualified person left after this group was formed, 4 year old Taylor. She did a nice job :)

Christmas Slide Show
(Sorry for the large amount of pictures. I had a difficult time eliminating.)

Snow Days

These pictures are too funny. Until you have dressed a toddler for the snow, you cannot truly appreciate the snowsuit in The Christmas Story.

Finishing a night of sled riding with some pizza.

Megan's First Christmas

Christmas is definitely up there as one of the most wonderful times of the year so don't you wish you could spend it with a sweet baby every year? It seems we're making it a tradition in our family to do just that :)

Megan's first Christmas was a great one. Since she's almost one, it was a really fun age because she could crawl around and get excited about all the decorations. She loved checking out ornaments and pushing the button on our singing snow man. She enjoyed pulling wrapping paper and eating the cardboard boxes. She wanted to pull herself up on Christmas trees. We decided the pulling up thing would be a problem so we moved our tree to the basement this year which actually turned out quite nice. We may continue that tradition. Here our some great pictures of sweet Megs enjoying some holiday cheer!

Christmas card shots.

Decorating the Christmas tree.

Practicing for a sled ride.

A "balleriba" dress for Megan's first ChristmasWaiting for her first Wigilia ("Va-geel-ya" Polish Christmas Eve dinner)

More fun UNDER the table.

Finding the shopping cart from Santa.

So tiny that this is the same outfit Anna wore on her first Christmas at 5 months!

Anna's Christmas Fun

I absolutely love making memories around "events" and this Christmas, we worked really hard to squeeze a lot of those in. It was much easier to make that happen for Anna if we took only her and left Megan behind. Megan's just at a difficult age because she wants to get into everything and isn't too content sitting in a stroller. We didn't feel so bad leaving her out knowing that she didn't have a clue anyway. (I'm really looking forward to next year when it will be perfect to celebrate everything with both the girls.)

Baking cookies at Grandma's - This was during a Bengals home game. I took the girls over and laid Megan down early for nap and the three of us "big" girls baked Christmas cookies. Anna couldn't stand the excitement knowing that she could eat them when she woke up from her nap.

Southern Lights in Lexington - This has become a Blaze family tradition ever since our days began on campus at UK. We start out with dinner at Cracker Barrel down the road from the Horse Park and then head over to drive through the lights and go to the petting farm. Anna checking out the lights by kneeling on her car seat and holding onto Baw Baw's seat.

"Getting the Feel" of the ponies.

Sometimes I think Uncle Andrew gets more excited about the petting zoo than the kids.

This picture turned out hysterical. I have no idea what this weird creepy animal is, but I was a mean mom and made Anna take her picture with it because I thought it was hilarious that a) it looked like a cross between a llama and a lion and b) that Anna was so scared of it (rightfully so). The best part of this picture is that our camera is terrible when capturing eyes so this thing's eyeball looks like it's straight out of a Lord of the Rings movie or something.

Jonathan, Shelby, Andrew and I help decorate the Christmas tree.

Festival of Lights at the Cincinnati Zoo - A perfect night, not too terribly cold. We enjoyed as much as we could that would also appeal to a two year old. This included pizza, a train ride and a gingerbread man cookie.

Fun family night culminating with a fantastic Anna quote that has become our favorite: We grabbed a hot chocolate and coffee as we were leaving. On the way home, Matt cranked up the Christmas music and was singing quite loudly for fun. As he was belting out "O Holy Night" in his best choir voice, we hear a tiny voice call out from the back seat in between gingerbread man bites "Hey Daddy! Drink. Your. Coffee!" Soooo funny. We were rolling in laughter.