Christmas Through the Eyes of a Three Year Old

So I went to pick Maddie up from school, and she wouldn't even let me get out of the building before we had to stop so she could show me the picture she had made today. She excitedly told me it was a birthday card for baby Jesus. I of course told her how beautiful it was and thought the conversation was over. About half way to the car, she said, "I'm going to give it to baby Jesus." And I thought I might pursue this one a little more, and I asked her when she was going to give it to him. And with a huge smile on her face she said, "at his birthday party, you bring presents and cards." So she knows that Jesus died on the cross for her sins, but that Jesus had no correlation whatsoever in her mind to the Jesus whose birthday we celebrate on Christmas. When I started trying to explaining that Jesus grew up and died on the cross, her response was Jesus is a big boy now! I said well yes he was when he died, but that was 2,000 years ago (as if that registers with her at all).

But also, this time of year means that our mailbox is jam packed with toy catalogs, and my daughter can spot them from a mile away. So since she usually sits down with them and shows me ALL the toys she needs, I decided it would be a good time for us to work on memorizing Hebrews 13:5 "Keep your life from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, 'Never will I leave, never will I forsake you.' " And she knew the never will I leave you never will I forsake you, so we were saying the first part of the verse back and forth, and when we got to because God has said, I asked her, "because God has said what Maddie?" And she looked back at me and said "no more toys!" I couldn't help but laugh because although God clearly does not say that anywhere in scripture, she understood what the verse translated to in her world!

She has a Christmas Sing at school and a Lessons and Carols she is singing in at school, so she has been practicing several different songs for both of those events. And tonight she decided it was time to give a performance. So here she is..... (and yes, she is wearing some of Emalyn's 12 month pajama pants that I told her were too little for her now and she wanted to show me she could prove me wrong with her glitter sponge pant shirt from VBS this summer)

Here are her lyrics, "O come all he faithful, joyful and triumphant, come me oh come me to Bethlehem." (Ye is not really in a three year old's vocabulary).

And here is round two...blogspot does not like long video clips!

She keeps us laughing there is no doubt about it!

Halloween

Yes, I know it is now almost been a month since Halloween, but what can I say? Life happens and updating the blog always seems to get pushed to another day. We had a wonderful Halloween! Maddie wore a different costume to each little get together we went to. This is her kind of holiday; she got to pick out her own cloths!

We started off Halloween by going to Gentry's Farm with Uncle Tee and Miss Caroline.

Getting a picture of the two of them both looking and smiling is near impossible! I need to do a post of all the attempts of taking cute pictures of the two of them.

Its so hard to believe how little Maddie was this time last year, but here she was!

 

Our lives have changed quite a bit since we were at Gentry's last year!

Pumpkin Carving

Emalyn just chilling as usual!

 

Here is was the costume she finally decided on after to wear in the St. George's Halloween Parade.

Maddie insisted on wearing her "high heels" in the parade, so Mrs. Pendleton, the director, grabbed her hand to help move her along!

And here is her whole class after the parade.

Each mom signs up to help with one of the holiday parties, and I helped with her class Halloween Party.

The next day we had a playgroup Halloween Party, as you can see it was comical trying to get them all to sit on the sofa. We had already lost baby Carrie by the time I could take the picture.

Another costume for Miss Maddie:

And the big night finally arrived!

Anna Caroline stopped by for a visit.

Emalyn was exhausted by the week of activity!

Maddie with our next door neighbor, "baby Hayes." And she had already started on the candy!

Emalyn was so tired! She never stays asleep while we transfer her from one place to another, but not that night. Sound asleep for most of Trick or Treating!

 We have had a great November and loved having Chris home some of this past week for Thanksgiving. I can't believe it is already time for Christmas lights!

Projects

I keep a running list of all the projects I would like to get done, and I wear my husband out most Saturdays just telling him what all I want to get accomplished that day. I know there is no way that we can get them all done in one day especially with two little ones running around (or crawling around in Emalyn's case), but I just need to get the ideas out there. But I will say after the craziness of this last month, I am done with projects for a while (which if you could see Maddie's room right now, you would know that is going to be hard for me.)

I feel like every time I sit down to write a blog post all I think to start with is whew, what a busy month it has been! But I think this month takes the cake, between hosting a wedding shower at our house (which meant a very long list of to-dos...it was the first time we had hosted anything in our backyard, helping with a baby shower, recovering from knocking my head against the brick wall of our house..and yes, a month later I am still dizzy!.., a trip up to Knoxville to finally pick up Miss Maddie's big girl bed then down to Chattanooga for a sorority sister's wedding, hosting a jewelry show, a trip to Auburn for the LSU game, hosting another baby shower in Birmingham, and helping with Maddie's class Halloween Party, I am exhausted!  Sadly, it has taken me 9 months to realize I cannot do all of this with two kids! All of which have been so much fun and I would not ever want to miss celebrating any these exciting events with our friends, but I think I am learning I may have to take more of the approach of I would love to help split the cost of the shower, but I'm not sure how much time I will have to help with the fun little touches a shower entails.

Chris has just start this men's Bible Study, CLC, and one of the first books (or in this case a mini-book) is Tyranny of the Urgent, which I sat down and read this week. And the premise of the book is that we so often let the "urgent" things crowd out the important things. And I know if I really looked back on my day, many of the time consuming tasks that seemed "urgent " in the moment are actually not that big of a deal. Chris and I had had many conversations the past two weeks as to what we need to cut out of our lives, b/c of live is too full and busy. And the thing that is most important, time with my girls gets swept away in the craziness.

Here are a few of the projects that have kept us busy the past few months:

Since the flood I have realized the importance of having furniture that has lots of storage in it. So I began the hunt. We found one sideboard at Nadeau, one of my favorite places to find furniture. And we found another side board at one of my aunts estate sales (Patterson Estate Sales). It is so fun to see what she has at her sales each week, and even more fun b/c everything goes 50% off on Saturday. And this piece actually was still there the end of the day Saturday, so we got a great deal on it. After refinishing a table from one of her sales, Chris said no more refinishing, and this piece would have required a lot of work. So I opted to paint it gray instead.
Here is the before:

And the after now that it is in the house (still working on the cord situation underneath)!

And I have had a lot of fun with my monogramming machine:

This is a little gown I made for some friends of ours, the Eaves, who are a having a little boy in November

Here is Miss Maddie in her M dress. Gotta love the monag dresses. I think my girls will be living in those for the next few years.

And for the shower for Jeff and Jessica, I embroidered them linen cocktail napkins. The pictures is not very good, but you get the idea. I had always ordered the white linen hemstitch napkins, and I wasn't sure what I would think about the cream. But I really like them monogrammed in brown. I monogrammed their initials on some, The Krones on some, and Jeff and Jessica on the rest.

And for the centerpieces on the table we used wine bottles with labels with their initials.

And it was our week to bring snacks to Maddie's class. We made Jello sail boats:

And here are the fruit cup jack-o-lanterns for her school Halloween party. Chris just shakes his head when I start one of these projects, but the end result is so much fun!

So here is to a much less busy November and simply getting to enjoy my girls!

Eight Months!

Emalyn was eight months old on Saturday. I cannot believe how quickly the past few months have flown; we will be celebrating her first birthday before I know it. It has been so much fun. She has changed so much in the last few months. Here are all the new things she is doing:

• Her first little bottom tooth popped through the middle of August, and she is working hard on that second one (I had forgotten how rough teething was. I now remember why I was so excited when Maddie finally got her last moler). 
• She can push herself up to sitting. It is so fun to walk into her room to get her up from a nap and to see her sitting up in the bed smiling at me. We had a few rough days when she couldn't figure out how to lay back down, but she seems to have worked through it.
• She has started crawling! She is still not really motoring very far yet. But for the past week she has been getting up on all fours and rocking, and has gotten stronger each day. Her life and my life is about to really change once she can start getting into everything!
• She has starting pulling up on things. She pulled up on the coffee table last Friday, but she still hasn't quite figured out how to get her legs untwisted and stand up. But she is working on it none the less.
• She has learned to tip her toy basket over so she can reach the toys inside, which means all I have to do right now is set her in front of her toy basket and she is quite content.
• She has started patting me on the back when I pat her back, and when you ask her to “pat pat mama,” she will get a huge grin on her face, think about it for a second, and then bring her right hand around to pat me – she gets so proud of herself. 
• Gone are the days of setting her in the exersaucer for entertainment.(Thanks to baby Carrie for letting us borrow yours since ours got "flooded" as Maddie calls it). All Emalyn wants to do is to be on the floor scooting now.

She still loves being held and snuggled although she is quite the wiggle worm these days. And she is still is laid back as ever, but we are starting to see a little bit of a temper when she doesn't get her way. :) Bottom line, I am loving life with my sweet family these days. I was reminded tonight by an e-mail from a friend, that September is National Childhood Cancer Awareness month. And I spent a few minutes looking at YouTube videos of pediatric cancer patients, and it so quickly took me back to my precious patients in Atlanta, so many of whom are no longer with us. Chris and I are so blessed to have two healthy girls. I don't have to worry about white blood cell counts, shaving my child's head b/c their scalp is itching from their hair falling out, sores in their mouths from chemo, ports or central lines, emergency trips to the ER, hosptial bills stacking up, and so many other things. Puts so many of my "problems" into perspective!

First Day of School

Miss Maddie starts the 3 year old program yesterday at St. George's Kindergarten, which is where I went to preschool. St. George's is in a area that was devastated by the flood, and they worked hard all summer to get it reopened on time. The school looks great; she even has a touch screen computer in her classroom! She went to St. George's last year one day a week to the Mother's Day Out, but this is her first year to be in the Kindergarten side of it. We went on Tuesday to meet her teachers: Mrs. McMurtrie and Mrs. Hill. They are both so sweet, and I know Miss Maddie will be well loved this year.

Here she is on our front porch before we left for school.

She had a great day and lots of fun playing with new friends. Although I think she mainly played with the one little boy Ethan that was in her class last year. We stopped by Donut Den on the way home (I was hoping for a cupcake from Bread and Company, but she is her daddy's child and wanted Donut Den), and as we talked about her day, the one question she asked me was "How come I have to keep my shoes on there?" She had worn her jellies to school, but I had put her tennis shoes in her bag. Her teacher told me about 10 minutes after I left, she changed shoes, but my guess is she was trying to take her shoes off. She is definitely not a shoes girl; she would much prefer to walk around bare foot like her daddy.

Maddie's 3rd Birthday

 So much for planning to post the day of Maddie's Birthday, but better late than never! This year was Miss Maddie's golden birthday: she turned 3 on August 3rd. And she soaked up every minute of this birthday! We went to Donut Den that morning for breakfast, and she ordered her usual: 1 chocolate sprinkle donut and 1 pink sprinkle donut (she can never eat both of them, but it is very important to her to get 2 each time)We had a few visitors stop by to wish her Happy Birthday, and we went to lunch with Neel and baby Carrie. And after a quick nap, we went to get cupcakes at Bread and Company with Bebe. When we got home, Uncle Tee and Miss Caroline were waiting for us to give Maddie her present: a new addition to our family - Jim. One of Caroline's roommates has a Beta fish named Jim, and it has been all Maddie has talked about. We have talked about what Jim's favorite color is, what Jim likes to eat, what Jim is doing right now, and it went on and on. So Uncle Tee got her her very own Jim (he tried to explain that this was Jim's sister, but instead Maddie said "Oh, there are two Jims!"). Maddie was so excited, she could not even believe it at first.

And we finished the night off by meeting Mimi and Grand D and Anna Caroline for dinner at Yolo's. Maddie wanted to wear her "high heels" to dinner. This is a look I've been getting a lot these days, when she is not pleased with what I am asking her to do (in this instance stop so I could take a picture of her)

I gave Maddie the option this year either to have her party at our house or at Monkey's Treehouse (a indoor playroom w/ a treehouse and just about every other type of toy you can imagine), and without blinking an eye she replied Monkey's Treehouse! So that is where we had it. She was excited that day that the last thing she wanted to do was take a nap. We had been in a transitional period where she really still needed a nap, but she was fighting it and if she slept too long then she was up at night. So I've been letting her just play quietly in her room, and most days she plays for a few minutes and then she will snuggle into her bed and fall asleep. But on the day of her party, she absolutely did not want to take one. So she sat on her stairs screaming for about 30 mins that she was not going to sleep, and when I opened her door to wake her up from her nap for the party, this is how I found her: sound asleep on the stairs. :)

Here she is with her beloved "big girl cousins" on either side!

And the chaos begins of getting everyone cupcake wrapper off, getting everyone ice cream and a drink! I learned two things for next year: take the wrappers off ahead of time, and do not attempt cream cheese icing when it is 100 degrees outside - it was good but way too runny and therefore very messy!

It is amazing to think about how much Maddie has changed and grown in this past year. So much changes from two to three. At two, she wanted to help with everything but wasn't able to provide much useful help. But I feel like in the blink of an eye, she goes and gets her own snack now and can get a juice box out of the refrigerator. I turned around last week and she had buttoned her rain coat all by herself! She will go and get a bib or burp cloth for Emalyn without me even asking. If she hear Emalyn crying, she will go and put her toys back in front of her. She loves to help me cook and bake, and we have so much fun doing it together. And she has had had a lot of change thrown at her this past year: starting school for the first time, she moved to her new big girl room upstairs (and soon she will have a new big girl bed), she was potty trained, and the biggest change of all - a new little sister. We definitely had our moments, but overall I have been amazed at how lovingly she has welcome Emalyn into our lives. When Chris and I went to the mountains last month, she called Honey everyday to check and see how her baby sister was (and could have cared less about talking to Chris and while we were gone). They already have a very special relationship. Emalyn squeals and flaps her arms every time Maddie walks into the room. They carry on little conversations with each other by squealing back and forth to each other. I have so much fun taking her places with me these days. She went shopping with me last week, and we walked into the fitting room. She hopped up on the beach, and with each new shirt I tried on she would say "that one is pretty cute mom." Wow! What a change even from a few months ago...she truly is a little girl now! She even suggested that I get two of the shirts I tried on. Definitely my girl! :) But I think what has been the most fun thing for Chris and I to see is more of her little personality coming through these days. She has the sweetest little heart, so caring and compassionate. It was a wonderful third birthday, and she is already talking about her next party!

A Glimpse into our Crazy Month

Whew! Get ready for a marathon of a blog post.  We have had a lot of milestones this month: Maddie's first tea party, first 4th of July festivities with two kids, Maddie's first year of Vacation Bible School, Emalyn started sitting up, our first trip away since Emalyn was born, and our first slumber party at our house. Throw in there a quick trip down and back to Atlanta to get the townhouse ready for new renters, a going away party for Lauren and Matt, and all the preparations necessary for Chris and I to actually get out of town and now you see why it has been a month since I have posted anything!

Maddie was invited to princess tea party birthday party for Anna Claire, one of her friends from church. She was so excited the invitation told her to bring her baby with her.

Anna Claire's mom painted each of the girls their own plate and tea cup. They each got to make their own tiara (of course Maddie wouldn't keep in on), but she had a blast!

Then it was onto The Fourth:

The Youngs invited us to join the parade on Skyline. 

We went ahead and gave Maddie her birthday present a little early this year: a new bike!

Maddie started off riding her bike, but that didn't last for long. She dropped her bike off in Graham and Neel's driving and ran instead!

Here are the girls with "baby Carrie" in their fourth of July dresses.

We followed up the parade with an afternoon in downtown Franklin with Joe (Chris' boss) and his family and friends.

We have known for a while that "Miss Lauren" and "Mr. Matt" as Maddie calls them would be moving to New York City this summer, but time passed all to quickly. Lauren has been my best friend since elementary school, and we have gotten so spoiled these past two years having her in Nashville. We are going to miss them very much! The day she left, Maddie packed up her picnic basket and said "Okay Mom I'm ready!" (When did she get old enough to call me mom and not mama?) I asked her where she was going, and she reply "To New York with Miss Lauren."

That next week was Vacation Bible School at church, which made for a very busy week in the Camp household, not to mention it was from 4-6:30 which meant that I had to wake Maddie up from her nap each day to get there in time. Maddie loved it did not want to leave each night, and of course Thursday night was the only night Chris was not there to help me round the girls up. Maddie made her rounds giving all her friends hugs and telling them bye. And by this point I was hot (I know I was on the couch most of last summer in the beginning stages of pregnancy, but I really think this is the hottest July yet!) and tired and hungry and was ready to get the two girls in the car and head home. Maddie continued to stall, and I was done. So I resorted to picking her up and carrying her to the car,. which never turns out well. She's kicking and screaming, I'm trying to bend down and pick up Emalyn in her car seat which now weighs 30 pounds, and get my purse to get out to of there as quickly as I can. Thankfully, another lady took pity on me and carried Emalyn to the car. I'm half way down the hill to my car when I look down and Maddie has pulled my shirt down and my bra is showing for everyone at church to see. I set her down in front of the car to lock Emalyn into her seat, and Maddie runs away into the parking lot. (She never does this!) So I quickly set Emalyn down, run and get Maddie who is still screaming hysterically "I don't want to go home". I finally get Emalyn in the car. I try to take Maddie to the side of the car and talk to her, but of course at this point there is no reasoning with her! So I decide I've just got to try to overpower her and get her buckled (which is proving to be very difficult these days...she is getting strong) and get home. Sweat is dripping down my body at this point, but I got her buckled. I am calling Chris to prepare him for when we arrive home, and I look in the rear view mirror and Maddie, still screaming, has gotten her arms out of the harness of the car seat and is trying to stand up. I pulled over at a gas station, telling Chris he may have to come get us b/c I don't know if I can get her back in her seat. At that point, I lost it and told her she was acting ridiculous and that daddy was going to have to drive all the way out there just to buckle her in her car seat. Using the daddy threat worked, she immediately sat down and let me buckle her in. Lesson learned, next year there will be no waking her up from her nap 5 days in a row, that is just asking for disaster. But overall it was a great week. The highlight of Maddie's week: Daddy dressed up as Adam and was the story teller one of the days (yes, my sweet husband still loves me even after I volunteered him to do this).

Here Maddie is singing The Butterfly Song, her new favorite song.

The long awaited first trip away! I was bound and determined to have Emalyn taking formula so that Chris and I could get a little break from being mommy and daddy and just be us for a few days! My mom and Millie and Woody divided up Maddie duty, and we dropped off Emalyn with the Hills in Knoxville on the way up to Ashville to meet two of my best friends from college. It was such sweet time being able to catch up with Emily and Rosemary. I feel like with the addition of Emalyn, there is less time in my day to stay in touch with my friends. So it was a wonderful, relaxing weekend. I still woke up each morning at 6, but it was so nice to be able to roll over and fall back asleep!

Sweet Maddie had done so well until Saturday night when Tee and Caroline came to babysit her for my mom to go to a wedding. She absolutely lost it. I tried talking to her on the phone, and she was just frantic. "I want my Bebe." So my mom ended up staying home from the wedding. That night as she and Maddie were falling asleep Maddie said to my mom, "I happy now, Bebe. You can go to your meeting in the morning, and I go with Uncle Tee." When my mom asked her what made her so sad, she said, "You see Bebe, my mommy and my daddy are both out of town, and I not want my Bebe to leave me too." Sweet little thing! I was so proud of her that she was able to communicate what was wrong (of course not in the heat of the moment, but at least she is thinking through it).


And on Friday night, Maddie got to have her first slumber party. We had two of Brian and Sara's kids over to spend the night. We started the night with dinner at Chick-Fil-A

Then it was home to bake sugar cookies and watch a movie

They did get in bed until 9:45, but I was really impressed we only had to go upstairs one time and it was because my child would not stop talking. We could hear John Miller through the monitor saying, "Maddie, I am trying to go to sleep if you don't stop talking, something bads gonna happen." We were up by 6:15 the next morning and at Donut Den by 7:00.

Okay, I have to admit I have been working on this post for over a week now. But I knew I had to get it done before our big day tomorrow: Maddie's turning 3!