The Secret to a Restful Night

Hello all you new mothers and fathers out there (and to those you find this blog post absolutely useless, I do apologize).

Ivy will be having ear tubes placed in both ears on Monday. The procedure is considered 'surgery' and for that, yes, I am freaking out. After literally visiting the doctor every other week since about October, we decided she would very likely be a happier baby if we had the procedure done.

In preparing for the procedure, which requires her to eat nothing (including water) after midnight the prior night, we have been trying to find the perfect overnight scenario to get her rested without a milk bottle in the middle of the night or early morning.

Until now, Ivy has always been a very good night sleeper, often going down at 7pm without a fuss and sleeping (at least, not waking Mom and Dad) until 5:30am the next morning. Since the latest ear infection that has been around now for several weeks and the numerous antiobiotics to attempt to resolve it, she has had a very frequent habit of waking around 2am and relentlessly wailing. We've slowly been weening out a multitude of issues, only one of which I will share at this time.

Often when she woke recently, she had completely drenched her onesie and pajama outfit. She tends to drink a lot of water with dinner and then gets a light bottle before bedtime stories. Well, we noticed that it happened only sparatically, even though she generally had the same amount of drinking fluid before bedtime. Well, we found out, that she often didn't pee through her clothes on BATH nights!!! That's right, we are pretty certain that at bathtime, she takes the time to take a pre-night pee in the bath water, thus expelling just enough fluid as to not overwhelm her nighttime diapers.

So, my friends, the lesson is, that no matter the time and effort that bath-time may require at night, it can be well worth a restful night.
 We still have other issues to iron out before Sunday night, but at least we have tackled one of our many foes.

Maniac...Maniac...

Needed to show you this dancing queen...

Seasons Greetings!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from our family to yours.

We had a fantastic Christmas celebration with our families and are off to a great start to the New Year.

Here's Santa Claus with the rosy nose and jelly belly.

 Here she is again making some music on her new xylophone set.

 Jason's dad was gifted a very clever snowman kit, which Ivy tried on before we had a snowman to model it.

 Ivy had a fabulous time in her new tunnel and tent, one of her many Christmas presents.

 Here is the snowman all dressed up.  Jason's dad was so excited to get it constructed for Ivy.  The temperature and snow wasn't behaving properly so he had to help the snow along a bit with some water, but it turned out great.  Now that the snowman has melted, Ivy keeps pointing to the spot on the deck where her snowman once was, and we keep telling her Grandpa will come back to build her a new one soon.

 We dressed Ivy in all of her snow gear and let her meet her snowman face to face.  She's been big on open lip kisses, which you can see in the picture is what she is trying to gift her new friend.  Once she smacked her lips on the snow, she was a bit taken aback by the cold.

 We didn't make the trip to the mall Santa, but Ivy got her chance to tell Grandpa Schreiner that she should be on the nice list this year.

 Jason, Ivy, and I really enjoyed having the families here to celebrate Christmas.  Might look like chaos below, but we enjoy nothing more.

Birthday Fun

Erg. It's been forever. So much for keeping up with my blog. Consider it a new year's resolution that I will also ignor.

Here are just a few photos that I intended to post earlier this month.

Ivy turned 1 year old last month.  On the actual day over her birthday she decided she would start walking without any assistance.  She's moving like crazy.  We celebrated Thanksgiving at Jason's aunt's house and then had a quaint birthday bash for Jason and Ivy that weekend.  I prepared some sheep cupcakes, which Ivy seemed to enjoy.
"I love this weather!"

 "Grandpa, smell my sock."

 "Mmmm, pancakes."

 "Like my Thanksgiving outfit?"

 "You want me to do what?"

 "These cupcakes are like heaven."

 "I can't believe I ate the whole thing."

(I will have to get to the many Christmas moments that we captured at a later time.)

Halloween Weekend

(This has been drafted for almost 3 weeks, but I originally had problems uploading the pictures, so here goes.

I know that I've already revealed the costume I made Ivy, but I also wanted to share some of the photos from the actual Halloween weekend.  In standard celebration of the scariest of holidays, we carved some pumpkins, roasted some seeds, and gifted large quantities of chocolate out to our neighborhood children.

Popcorn!

I got an early birthday present from my parents which is a perfect addition to our recently constructed theater. We got it put together yesterday and made a ceremonious first batch of popcorn. It tasted great and it makes plenty!

You will note that this is my first post to the blog. Bess gave me permission to add to the blog. Hopefully I won't screw it up...

Ivy's First Halloween

Ivy can't quite walk yet (very close, though) and has very few teeth, so trick or treating is next to pointless this year, but Jason and I figured at the very worst, it may be an excuse for us to re-introduce ourselves to the neighbors.  That...and I really wanted an excuse to sew together a costume.

I am still looking for a little cow bell to attach to the body suit to finish the costume, but I couldn't keep myself from putting her in the outfit to take a picture.