the pink team

I made the blog a little more girly in honor of our new baby girl on the way. John is sooo outnumbered.

So, from the way people voted on the site and from the people that just told me their guess, it seems like most people were WRONG.....just like me! John continues his lucky guess streak.

candy canes

Sylvia's first candy cane:

Merry Christmas

Our little elf putting candy canes on the tree :)
She tries to sneak them off everytime she spots them now :) She really likes sorting out the different colors and eating them much more than seeing them go on the tree, but it's all fun. I kept promising her a walk through the neighborhood the other night when it was warmer, and when we stepped outside I realized it was lightly raining...oops! So we walked anyway, and Sylvia had sooo much fun looking for lights and snowmen and reindeer and Santa Claus....

Everytime we reached a slight incline in the sidewalk, you'd think Sylvie was climbing a mountain. "Up a hill, Mommy, up a hill!"

frosty Sylvie missing Daddy

We stayed up late to watch Frosty the Snowman during our "girls' weekend" while Daddy was in New Hampshire. I think we've seen about every kiddie Christmas special now - Polar Express is definitely the winner.

the Tex family circus

John can juggle just about anything I think, including Sylvia's toys. This was Sylvia's first lesson:

Yeah Daddy!

ADCDEDT

Sylvia often sings the "ABC" song lately, although it is usually when she is alone in her crib or at the top of her lungs in the grocery store, and I haven't caught a good version on video yet. This is the best I've gotten so far...

Basically her version goes like this: ADCDEDT......various middle verses.....and a confident finale that often gets repeated over and over: "W X Y Z"

sleepy Sylvie

After our Christmas tree mission, we stopped off to do a little shopping, so poor little Sylvie was exhausted by the time we got home. It was the first time she rode in Daddy's truck with the carseat facing forward, which she really enjoyed, but she didn't get much sleep. She finally dozed off about 5 minutes from home, but popped awake as we pulled in the driveway, still half asleep, yelling "no, no". John re-enacted the scene for her a couple dozen times, and she found it hysterical each and every time.

rainy Christmas trees with decorations high in the sky

We had planned to get our Christmas tree the weekend after Thanksgiving. When we woke up to a rainy (and muddy!) day, we decided to go anyway. Sylvia had new boots to try out, and other than the hay ride being a bit too wet to try out, we had a great day. Sylvia had fun stomping around the trees with Grammy and "Chrissy-Mark", as she would say, and even got to help feed the horsies some carrots.

We kept the tree outside a few days to dry off, but now it is beautifully decorated in our living room. Sylvia says "ooohhh prettty" every time I turn the lights on, and said the same thing each time we hung a decoration. She started off wanting to hang them all herself, but later enjoyed telling me where to hang them. She pointed to the top of the tree each time and said "high in the sky". After I finished each ornament she clapped and said "Yeah Mommy!". We saved the angel and some of the special ornaments for Daddy. She liked to look at each one, and then hand them off to Daddy so he could hang it, and she could move on to the next ornament. Decorating a tree has never been so much fun!

cutie pie cousins

So, there really are pictures of lots of people from Thanksgiving, but if I'm only picking a few for this post, they just have to be Brock and Sylvie photos.....too cute!

Who knew "Goodnight Moon" could be so funny?!

So cute in their matching PJ's. Sylvia loves that Elephant that she sometimes confuses with her other riding toy, the zebra. ("Beebra") She often puts on her cowgirl hat and rocks on her Elephant shouting "Beebra", "Beebra", even though she knows it is an elephant. Confusing.

....and a good-bye song from little Brock. Happy Thanksgiving!

If you want to see the other Thanksgiving photos you can look here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/mccarraher5/2008Thanksgiving#

or here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/MaryLouPictures/Thanksgiving08#

the monkey dance

One night before bed, Sylvia decided a monkey dance would be appropriate, since she was wearing Monkey PJ's. Anything to delay bed time :)

all she wants to do is dance, dance

The first video below was from 11/06 (I'm still catching up on videos). One of Daddy's favorite songs (Romeo and Juliet) came on the radio, and he wanted to dance with his little sweetie. However, she had her own dance style in mind, that involved a little less slow dancing and a little more head-banging.


Cue the ballerina:

bumblee bee flashback

This was from October 29th, just before Sylvia's daycare Halloween party. She was so cute buzzing around, I had to take some video.

a big sister photo shoot

I hope it is this easy to get great photos when there are two little munchkins. I set Sylvia up for another photo shoot - how cute is she??!!

some Christmas fun

Here are a few photos of the tree "pre-decorations":

Practicing to place the angel:

Sylvia has now watched the "choo-choo train" movie twice (aka The Polar Express). She loves it, although it may be hard to tell from the serious expressions below. I think they were annoyed that I was snapping photos - I just couldn't resist their almost matching outfits! :)

tree tickles

Have you ever been tickled by a Christmas tree? It looks something like this....

Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful, wonderful Thanksgiving and were very fortunate that all of our family was willing to travel to be with us :) It was sort of potluck meal, and people brought lots and lots and lots and lots of yummy foods - including the turkey!! We made the mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, and cranberry sauce, and all of it was good, but the cranberry sauce was the big hit! So, courtesy of my friend Jenny, here it is (a non-secret family recipe - so hopefully ok to share!)

Hansen Family Cranberry Sauce:
1 bag Ocean Spray cranberries, rinsed and drained with stems and bad berries removed (Other brands beside Ocean Spray can sometimes be sour.)
1 10.5 oz. can mandarin oranges in pear juice. (If you can't find them in pear juice, you can buy a can of pears in their own juice along with the mandaring oranges.)
1 cup sugar

Drain mandarin oranges, reserving 1 cup of the juice. (There usually isn't enough juice, so you make up the difference with water.) Set aside some mandarin orange segments (about 6) for garnish. Combine juice and sugar in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil. Add cranberries and return to a boil. Boil at low heat (to minimize splattering) for 10-15 minutes or until thickened (it will thicken more once you refrigerate it). Mix in drained mandarin oranges, pour into serving dish, and immediately arrange reserved orange sections on top. Cool, uncovered, at room temperature for about an hour and then refrigerate. The sauce can be covered once it has cooled completely in the refrigerator. Enjoy!

Yum! We finished the night watching the Eagles win, playing Quiddler (a very fun card game!), and eating way tooooo much dessert. I'll have to steal some photos from the people who took them to post later. Our first family holiday in the new house was a success :)

ultrasound comparison

So here is Sylvia at ~ 11 weeks:
and here is Sylvia's little brother or sister at ~ 12 weeks:

I don't know; they're both looking pretty blobbish to me. The profile shot is more distinct in the newest photo, but that could be because the u/s was taken when I was a little further along? or because the angle was a little better? It's kind of funny that John and I both thought the u/s looked like it could be a boy. (Sorry to offend you, my little baby, if you are a little girl!!)

Anyone get any insights from this comparison?

little baby update

Just a quick update....we had a doctor's appt on Monday that went very well. Sylvia and I got to hear the baby's heart beat again. If you ask Sylvia what the baby sounds like, she will tell you "bump, bump, bump". We also got the final blood results back, and just like last time, everything came back very, very good. I'm starting to feel subtle movements more frequently and looking forward to the bigger kicks :)

John is still sticking with his guess of "girl", but although he has an almost perfect record of guessing correctly for all of our friends' babies, he doesn't really like to guess his own little one. I am leaning towards boy for a guess, although that's what I guessed last time, and I have a near perfect record for guessing wrong. There's a first time for everything.

happy birthday horsie

Whoa. The little baby in the "Waiting for baby" box surprised me when I logged on tonight. I didn't realize baby would be updated so realistically, with veins and everything.

Anyway, I had fun watching Sylvia play with all of the little beanie baby animals last Friday. It is a world where the Koala bear is the kitten's mommy and the polar bear is the puppy dog's mommy. And...the frog and the rooster just love to kiss. When she pulled out the unicorn, I spent a lot of time explaining what a unicorn is. A pretend animal that looks like a horse with a horn on it's head, blah, blah, blah. She stared at him very seriously for a good minute. I thought she was processing what I told her, but she had her own ideas evolving.

Suddenly, she broke into a huge smile, and started singing "happy to you horsie, happy to you horsie...."

There are no such thing as unicorns. Only horses with shiny birthday hats on their heads.

cutest kid ever

Every now and then I feel a little guilty that I have never taken Sylvia for professional photos. (ok, once with GG, but that was a long time ago and the photographer scared her - it just doesn't count). However, every time I pose her for pictures and get awesome shots of her giggling little face, I no longer feel any desire to cart her off to the mall for photos.

Friday when I dressed her up for Christmas card photos in her little Santa dress she got so excited. "Halloween! Halloween!!". So funny.

We had fun singing silly songs "Happy Birthday little......Peacock?" (That is funny to a one year old) and got lots of great photos. I found a Christmas card design that I could squeeze lots of photos in because they're all so cute. Here are a few:

Here are the rest: http://picasaweb.google.com/TexFamily/2008ChristmasCard#

puzzle pride

Sylvia has now mastered her three easiest puzzles and is working on the more challenging alphabet puzzle, which frustrates her at times. She gets so happy with herself when she gets a piece in by herself. This is the face she makes after each successful attempt.Oh, the simple joys in life.

an artist at work

Last weekend I climbed a ladder to change a light bulb. Sylvia stood at the bottom saying "no Mommy, no! down Mommy!!". After she realized what I was doing, and that I wasn't going to fall, she watched until I was finished and then gave me a round of applause. "Yeah, Mommy!!!". She must have thought it looked like fun, because afterwards she said "baby's turn!".

Maybe if she keeps practicing her painting skills, I can let her try out the ladder to paint the house....or maybe not.

Anyone can finger paint, but can YOU toe paint??? Sylvia can!

our growing family tree

We invited everyone over to see our Sylvie-bumble bee, and posted the following message next to the tree with photos shown below:

Almost everyone was too excited to see our baby Bumble bee and a cute little Dragon to notice little sayings on the wall (who can blame them!!), but by the end of the night, we officially shared our happy news.

my messy, messy floor

This sweet face is the reason I can't keep my floors clean. She is getting very good with that spoon, but for each cheerio on the tray, there are three on the floor. Luckily she thinks cleaning the floor is a fun game. I wonder how long that will last....

duck, duck, monkey movie

A few weeks ago, John spent the day with my dad and Sarah helping out with a road rally. I took Sylvia to my mom's to play with Brock and Grammy. These photos were taken just after the kids raided Autie Mo's stash of ducks. They were watching Tarzan (after I fast-forwarded the traumatic beginning...)....hmm...should I attempt to grab that sticker off his nose??

tattoos for everyone :)

Several months ago Sylvia (or maybe it was her cousin Brock), discovered that there were tattoos in the Thomas the Train coloring book. Ever since then, Sylvia believes all coloring books have tattoos, and each time I use the wash cloth that I used for those first tattoos, she asks for more. Luckily we've been rationing those choo-choo train tattoos and still have some left. A few weeks ago I gave her and John matching trains and nines, one on each hand. I think I'll have to find some more number tattoos - She can now consistently recognize the number nine!

Go Eagles...

....are you telling me the Eagles couldn't even win a game against the Bengals? ughh. I'm glad I slept through the game. (Mommy is glad she slept through the game too.)

tumbling party

This was from Aden, Jackie, & Rory's party a few weeks back. Rory and Sylvie were a bit young for the gym games, although Sylvia did love the parachute. Aden bounces along right in the beginning of the first video and Jackie rolls along at the end.

and a brief clip of Sylvia, who was not too interested in the climbing mats:

sing baby sing

She is just too cute. Lately, she sings all the time. Sometimes real songs, sometimes not. In these videos, the Barney song was the tune of the moment. I just love it.

seven bridges road

Sylvia is still pretty obsessed with "Happy Birthday". This video was taken at the end of September. I realize watching this now, that she was probably singing to Carys (it was her 2nd birthday that triggered the "Happy Birthday" obsession. ) At the time, I thought she said Miss Carrie, her daycare teacher, which led to a whole discussion about daycare.

Sylvia now loves daycare, thank goodness. She usually complains more when I pick her up than when we drop her off. She agrees to come with me only after I tell her we can look for the horses on the way home (she LOVES the horsies.) Everyday she checks whether they are inside or outside, and whether they have blankets on their back, which leads to many, many "why?" questions. Why does the horse where a blanket, why is it cold, why is summer over??

Luckily for me when I run out of answers, I can sometimes distract her with music. The other day "Seven Bridges Road" came on the radio and she literally cheered and clapped the whole song and asked "Again?" when it was over. She loves live songs and clapping along with the audience. Although, I'm sure in this case, she also loved the song itself. It's in her blood.

rotten tomatoes

I was looking outside today and realized that it is time to clean up our mess of what were the tomato plants. The photo below was from early summer when Sylvia and I went out to pick tomatoes for the first time. Every time I turned my back she grabbed a few more tomatoes - can you tell which ones she picked?

By mid summer, I could send her off on her own and she knew exactly which ones to pick.

By the end of the summer we had to keep a close eye on her again. She knew to pick the reds ones, but just as fast as she used to grab the green ones, she now tried to shove the red tomatoes in her mouth before we could stop her - or at least get a good sized bite.

I'm sad to see the tomatoes go, but the leaves and pumpkins have been just as much fun. We're looking forward to starting over with new tomato plants next spring, and maybe we'll be more adventurous and add some other veggies and flowers. It's fun to have a little gardening partner!

swim baby swim

Here is the brief little video I got at one of Sylvie's swim classes. My battery died almost instantly, and since then I have stayed away, because Sylvia did a little better when she wasn't distracted by Mommy. Her last class was supposed to be last Saturday, but she jumped in for the first time that day, so John was inspired to sign her up for the next session. Yeah Sylvia!!

pumpkin patch part II

We had so much fun at the pumpkin patch, we decided to make a return visit with Grammy, Pop-pop, Brock & Aunt Sarah (not that we needed any more pumpkins...). The lines were a little long, but Sylvia and Brock passed the time blowing the dandelions around.And finally, the long awaited hayride:

The Pumpkin Hunters in action:

And a quick trip down the slide: (this was the first time down the slide - Grammy took Brock down the second time, and accidentally got lost in a corn maze on the way....no videos of that, although I'm sure it was pretty funny :)

So, every picture tells a story, and the story of the photos below is that we wanted to get some cute photos of Sylvia and Brock in a wagon that Uncle John (Daddy) was pulling. Sylvia was fine with that plan, but Brock realized that it would be much more exciting to roll around in a nearby play area filled with hay for the little ones to jump and roll around in. He later decided he would like to pull the wagon with Uncle John and at some point, he actually did get in the wagon. In the meantime, we got a lot of photos with Sylvia and some random little girl who did like the wagon. Here is a link to the individual photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/TexFamily/PumpkinPatchPart2#

for Ally

Today the world is a sadder place to have lost such a spunky, courageous, funny little girl. She touched so many people's lives, and many never even met her. I am so lucky to have had many days with her to play Little Mermaid Old Maid, dress her little princess dolls with plastic clothing (I wasn't too good at that one), play at the park, and watch John play games with her and Ashley that involved him wearing earrings and jewels, but sharing the purple ones with Ally, because those were her favorite.

Photo below was at Christmas time a few years ago:

This photo was the first time Ally met Sylvia in summer of 2007:It feels impossible to say good bye to such a bright little light and indescribable to watch my friend go through so much pain.

Early 2004:

A link to Ally's tribute video:

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=45058500