Christmas 2013

This year we went home to Maryland for the Christmas holiday. We spent two weeks with our families there and enjoyed every moment! The kids were spoiled rotten with all the attention from their aunts and uncles and grandparents and even great grandparents. I didn't take as many pictures as I should have because I was too busy reading THREE and a HALF books while other people entertained my children. It was glorious! 

While at home we spent a long weekend up at a ski cabin at Deep Creek Lake with Sam's Dad's side of the family. Sam got to ski for the first time in many years and the kids got to meet Sam's cousin's daughters that are close to their age and were very fast friends. 

Sam and I also snuck away from everyone for a night to a Bed & Breakfast in Annapolis which was a wonderful start to our New Year. We haven't yet found a babysitter in CT so date nights are few and far between these days unfortunately. 

This is the face LK makes when she gets flashed by the camera- haha! 

Pile on Uncle Colin! This went on forever...

Lanie Kate was thrilled that the appetizers at Uncle Colin and Aunt Gianna's Christmas Eve party were just at her level. 

Snacking and Pop Pop Christmas Eve

Colin and Gianna's Christmas Eve dinner party

Our little family on Christmas Eve

Lanie Kate is obsessed with "big-people" cups and Mom Mom is just the softie to indulge her

Quinn is infatuated with Uncle Kirk's long-time girlfriend, Andy ever since she played bubbles with him at the beach this summer. Watch out Uncle Kirk, you've got some competition!

Christmas morning at Mom Mom and Pop Pop's. Santa brought Q a Kindle Fire, a Ravens football helmet, the Planes movie, and a drum set. Santa brought LK a stroller, doll, and diaper bag.

Christmas morning at Nana and Granpop's. Santa's second stop for the Fromille kids! He brought Q a couple educational games, play dough toys, and How To Train Your Dragon. Santa brought LK a PB Anywhere Chair, a purse, two chunky necklaces, The Little Mermaid, and a couple board books by her favorite author. He filled their stockings with Craisins and Dried Mango- some of their favorite treats! 

Granpop set up his electric train display for Quinn and Q got to blow the train whistle. This display totally saved Christmas because when we arrived at Nana and Granpop's we were 45 minutes into the worst tantrum we have ever experienced over getting dressed {which required him to take off the football helmet}. When he showed up and saw the train set, the helmet was quickly forgotten.

LK insisted on wearing both of her new necklaces.

Carving the turkey breast with an audience.

Hoping for some turkey...

Master chef Nana. It was so nice to have someone else doing most of the cooking! 

Zia made Q and LK a hand painted giraffe growth chart. Probably my favorite Christmas present. My sister is so creative and an amazing artist and her gifts are always the best. She made me two sketches, one of each of our dogs. And painted a catamaran sailboat on a navigational map of the Bimini Islands {where Sam use to sail in college} for Sam. 

I am pretty sure we have a picture of my dad in some sort of goofy head gear for as many Christmases as I can remember.

Nana and Granpop totally spoiled the kids with presents and this little stand mixer and cookie cutter set was a favorite for both kids. 

Another favorite from Nana and Granpop was this little purse. LK got 3 purses for Christmas but this was by far her favorite and has barely left the crook of her arm since!

My fur babies snuggling

Q rocking out on his new drum set. Santa may regret this gift... ;)

There is a good chance that this will be our last Maryland Christmas for awhile and it was such a fun one full of family and great memories with the kids at this fun age. It even snowed after Christmas so Quinn could go sledding, which may be his favorite memory of all time- we sure hear about it enough now! We hope your Christmas was as full of wonderful moments and memories as ours was!

Happy 1st Birthday LK!

My baby girl is turning ONE! As I type this I am thinking back to one year ago at this time when I was in the middle of my labor with her freaking out about having another premature baby. It was an awful labor but I can say without a shadow of a doubt that the past year with this sweet, happy, healthy, precious little girl was well worth the terrible pregnancy, nerve wrecking labor, and 15 day NICU stay. Her infectious smile lights up my world every single day. I have never met a sweeter or happier child in my life. She is truly a joy in every sense of the word and I have really savored this past year with her. I honest-to-goodness even treasured the middle of the night feedings when she was in her first few months, knowing this time around that the lack of sleep would be short lived and so would the sleepy infant snuggles. In all honesty, this first year has gone too fast and I'm clinging on to the last moments I have left with my baby as she too quickly turns into a toddler. It is impossible to be too sad though because it is so fun seeing her bubbly personality continue to develop and at this age I enjoy watching her learn, discover, and experience new things every day.

Today we had a little fun with the {almost} birthday girl. We dragged my old high chair from when I was a baby out into my parents back yard that is on the brink of fall in Maryland and got Lanie Kate a cupcake from a local cupcakerie {that is catering her upcoming cupcake themed party}. This was LK's first cupcake so it was really fun to see her enjoy a sweet treat and yummy mess for the first time. I went a little crazy with the photos in this post, but I just couldn't choose! I love all her little expressions!

 Confession... I have given my parents a hard time my entire life for ditching me with my aunt on my 1st birthday in order to go on vacation to Hawaii. As it turns out, tomorrow morning before the birthday girl wakes up I'll be boarding a plane to go visit a good friend for a few days sans children {taking advantage of daddy being off of work and available}. I'm sure I'll never hear the end of this from my own parents or from my little birthday girl! Hopefully she can forgive me since I let her eat cake a day early and we're throwing her a party next weekend too!

Love you to pieces my little sweetness! 

Lanie Kate {6-7 month update}

It's been... awhile... since I posted a Lanie Kate update so I'll try to make up for lost time over the past couple of months that I have neglected to post. We have been very busy. Little miss went on her first cross country trip to visit family and friends in Maryland and Virginia. She also survived mommy and daddy planning and hosting a charity event {no small accomplishment for any child of mine who has to live with me as their mother when I am stressed!}. She went to her first major league baseball game to see the O's play the A's up in Oakland.  And she traveled to TN {mommy's birth place} for a friend's wedding. Amidst everything going on in our family life, she started eating solid food {sweet potatoes are her favorite thus far} and has learned to sit up on her own {kinda}. She continues to have the happiest, smiliest personality of any baby I know unless you catch her in the last hour before bedtime or if someone other than mommy tries to feed her... We're working on it, baby mum-mum's seem to be doing the trick lately ;) She has definitely found her voice and jabbers and talks away all day long, particularly if she has an audience. Her favorite word is "da-da" but she mostly enjoys squawking noises.  She almost never stops kicking her legs, particularly if there is music playing.  She seems to be on the verge of crawling, just doesn't seem to have the motivation to go for it because she is just generally so content.

Licking her lips!

 She is such a messy eater! Big brother is always telling us "Lanie Kate's a mess!" pretty much every time we feed her.

{around 6 and a half months}

Enjoys her toys a lot these days

Especially loves tags...

Shoves EVERYTHING in her mouth

around 7 and a half months

Sitting up!

Outtakes

While I was visiting the East coast, Lanie Kate and I took a trip down to Virginia to visit some friends of mine. One of my closest girlfriends happens to be a professional photographer and a personal creative inspiration and mentor to me as I dabble in {very} amateur photography and other creative pursuits. I love taking advantage of the opportunity to watch her work especially when it's with my own little ones.  And it was really fun to be a part of the editing process and to get to go through all the film myself.  I found that a good number of the shots I wanted to save were technically outtakes that no photographer would have selected to present as part of the final product. But I love them because its life that happens between the smiling snapshots {of which there were many with this happy little girl} that make up our unique life and her unique personality. These are the moments, the little expressions, the personality captured on film, that I don't want to forget! Life happens in the outtakes!

All credit for the photos here goes to Audra of Simple Soul Photography

{the amateur editing, however, you can blame on me :-) }

At this age, she shoves EVERYTHING in her mouth

Yep, punching mommy in the face... that's about right!

She always has her tongue out!

Maybe later I'll have a chance to post some of the not-outtake pictures from her 6 month shoot with Audra because they are awesome too!

Catching Up! {This Is Our Life Project}

I have been slacking on the weekly photography project with life getting busy as usual so I have some catching up to do. Mostly I just haven't downloaded pictures in ages... so here is my attempt at getting caught up. In the interest of getting caught up I have not edited any of these images even though they could use it... oh well!

Week 7: Negative Space, It's a Positive Thing!

Negative space is the blank space in a picture which you can use to compose a picture to achieve a desired effect. Here the negative space is the big blue sky.  I took the picture from below as Q was swinging at a baseball.  Playing baseball is currently his favorite thing to do.  He loves watching his baseball movie (The Sandlot) and goes out back to hit balls as often as I will let him. He can throw the ball up and hit it out of the air himself but he prefers when he can get someone to pitch for him. He's quite the slugger these days!

Week 8: Wild Card

Me and my girls <3 p="">

Nothing spectacular about this but it makes my heart smile- loves these girls!

Week 9: Out of the Shadows

Project "beach acclimation" is complete. From a child who use to hate sand and refuse to move if you put him down in it, he told us on our way to Carmel on this evening "I love going to the beach and playing ball with the dogs!" He even went so far as to dump a bucket of sand on his head gleefully... so I'd say we're plenty acclimated. Here, my friend Jenn who was visiting from Chicago was building sand castles which Q was systematically destroying.  Apparently you do not need to teach boys to act like boys... :-)

Week 10: Changes

Quinn took this picture :-) This is our first baby who is trying to get use to not being "top dog" anymore. As Q gets older, Bella has been trying to let him know who is boss {her according to her}. We have been working on teaching her that she is actually not in charge of the children and is therefore not allowed to "discipline" them when they misbehave, furthermore, she needs to actually be obedient to them... ouch... change is hard for this little one!

Week 11: Play

These are my boys playing! Q loves to help with just about anything we are doing and washing the car was no exception.  We've had gorgeous weather here lately so it was a good day for getting wet and playing with the soap and the hose. Winston dog is the biggest sucker for the hose- he goes nuts when we get the hose out and tries to bite the stream of water.