After The Tenth..... When The Fun Really Begins

Clearly this is my favorite website ever! (Was there any doubt?)

However, I now have a NEW second favorite website ever. Are you excited to find out what it is? (I bet you aren't...but I'm going to tell you anyway)

Unbeknownst to me, Macy has decided to share her love of photography by creating a blog that will be updated every day with at least one new photograph that she took herself. (I have to tell you that I'm jealous that she's figured out how to get a new post out everyday; as you are well aware that my posting frequency has significantly faltered.)

So here it is:

www.TheItsyBitsyPhotographer.com

(Check it out often; pictures updated daily!)

We have entered the middle of January and in the coming days Laney will lose her title as "Baby of the Family." Not only will she no longer be the littlest one, a position she's currently holding onto by a mere 3 pounds, but she's on the verge of finding herself in 3rd place. Aunt Sara is now within 3 weeks of her new little man and Aunt Tori is so close to her due date, that she could actually be on the way to hospital as I type this. (Just so we are clear...I'm NOT saying that she is on her way to the hospital, only that her due date is so close that it is not out of the question.)

It seems that Laney is aware of her inevitable title loss and has decided to just go ahead and continue maturing. She's getting closer and closer to crawling every day, though I'm betting that she just skips it and goes right to walking. I can't get over how strong she seems. If you hold her hands for balance, she can easily keep herself upright with her strong, strong thighs.

I think back to those days when I was hoping to see a trace of eye tracking and now she's locked in on everything going on around her. If she's sitting in your lap and you make a noise, she swings her head back and tries to look at you upside down. If you just leave her either in the middle of the room or in her high chair while things are going on, you can watch her eyes scanning the room taking it all in. I told you that we refer to her as Chumbawamba and if we were living in Medieval times, we would probably call her Chumba The Observer.

She really is aware of everything going on around her including everything her sister is doing. She seesms to really really like Macy and whenever we let her sit down next to (or on top of) Laney, they always seem to be laughing, at least until Laney pulls out a clump of Macy's hair. It is probably a good thing that Laney is still bald, because I'm sure that as soon as she has some long locks, Macy is going to exact some revenge for all this hair pulling.

While her hair still hasn't really arrived, her bottom two teeth are almost fully in and her top two are on the verge, so she has that going for her, which is nice. I wonder who will get a haircut first..Laney or her to soon-to-be born cousins?

It is Saturday afternoon and I'm feeling a little lost.

This is the first day in almost a month where Annie, the girls, and I are home alone. The house seems strangely quiet and almost empty, which isn't something that we've felt in ages. The whirlwind family tour started on Saturday December 24th, when we flew to Austin for Christmas and only ended this morning. (The Christmas photos are coming...I hope to have them posted before April) We were joined in Austin by Rich Pappa and Granny and had a really fun time with everyone. We left on the 27th and arrived home really late...so late that it was technically the 28th by the time we walked in the door.

With the girls half asleep already, we put them in their respective beds and faded off to sleep ourselves. The next morning I headed out to work, (Long story I won't go into...but I was supposed to still be on vacation, but things don't always go as planned) and Annie headed to the airport to pick up Grandma.

Grandma spent a rousing New Years Eve with us, each trying hard not to fall asleep before the ball dropped. And then on the 2nd, Pappa-ChooChoo arrived for a week. His week with us ended 3 days before Grandma left, so it was two trips to the airport that week for drop-offs. Grandma's flight was Wednesday evening and during the day something unusual happened; something that had actually occurred once before as well..which made it even more unlikely to occur this week.

Sometimes with family visits they are planned out weeks and in the rare occasion, months in advance; but sometimes they just seem to come together. Well, this time it turned out that Granny Kupper was heading north for a few days and Rich Pappa was going to be alone. Seeing as that wasn't going to be a lot of fun, he dropped Granny off in the Jacksonville airport and then continued onto South Florida for a short visit with us. His arrival happened to be Wednesday afternoon, which meant he needed an early check-in at Hotel Sznitken. Someone at our reservation desk had already granted Grandma Sznitken a late check-out. Needless to say, the housekeeping staff put it into overdrive and had clean sheets and a freshly made bed ready for our incoming house guest.

As strange as it seems, this is actually the second time that my Mom and Annie's dad have crossed paths on visits. After a few quick hellos that minutes later became goodbyes...it was off to the airport for Grandma. Rich Pappa stayed with us until this morning, when he had to head back to the northern part of the state to meet Ginny at the airport. Funny thing..I thought he was packing up his stuff earlier than we had discussed, but I just chalked up my confusion to my less than impeccable memory. Turns out that after breakfast he was gauging his time left with us on the coffee maker clock. He was on 95 heading north before he finally looked at the dashboard clock in his car and realized that he had left 30 minutes earlier than expected. Annie and I have been meaning to call the coffee maker manufacturer because the clock seems to run fast and needs to be reset every 6-7 days, and it had creeped ahead 30 minutes and was ready for us to reset it. I guess on his next visit he owes us half an hour.....

It was a bit of a crazy time, but there was so much going on and so much fun that I wouldn't have changed a thing. Over these past few weeks we've been crazy busy seeing people, doing things and eating really well. (Really well taste wise, but probably pretty poorly waist wise) Macy and Laney probably won't remember any of this and I'm sure details will fade from my memory as well. But what will remain with me forever is the fact that between Thanksgiving 2011 and mid-January 2012, it was hectic, it was crazy, and we got to spend a lot of time laughing, sharing and just hanging out with so much of our family.

But now the "month of family time" has passed and all the girls in the house are sleeping and I'm sitting at my computer trying to decide whether to take advantage of this quiet time to also catch up on some sleep or to finally start going through the Christmas pictures.....