josh + kati + marion

January – We’re pregnant!

February – Five years together

March – New car

April – New couch

May – It’s a girl!

June – Our first look at the face we love

July – Baby showers

August – I miss my Papaw

September – Our new family

October – Happy Halloween

November – First family vacation

December – Merry Christmas!

It’s Christmas Eve and we’re just waiting for Santa (according to NORAD, he’s in Maryland now) and I’ve realized I never posted Marion’s three month pictures. So there’s no time like the present!

Her face is priceless!

Doing her best imitation of a froggie

Hi y’all!

pbbbbbt

silly, silly, silly girl!

I promise, dog spit makes bows stick

This month, she’s learned how to grab, er, pet, Nanuq

Look how chunky those thighs have gotten! (click to embiggen)

Letters to my daughter, month three

on Christmas cards, and we sent out two this year. One is a bit more traditional and the other, well the other is pure Marion.

If we thought you would appreciate the traditional a bit more, this is the one you received.

If we thought you would appreciate our sick sense of humor, you got this one.

Either way – Merry Christmas!

This weekend was, among other things, Marion’s christening. It was also my parents’ 20th wedding anniversary, but I was too busy having fun and visiting to take pictures. Luckily, everyone who was at the party was also at her christening.

I have to start out by thanking my mother-in-law for the absolutely gorgeous christening dress Marion wore. It is just beautiful and it was so special to have that for her.

My dad did her christening, which made it even more of a meaningful occasion.

Our whole family, well, most of us anyway.

We were just missing Brent and Bregitte and their little one on the way

This makes me laugh because we’ve all got our mouths open and Marion is crying.

The three girls, Isabella who just turned two and Lauren, who is almost seven months and Miss M.

This is as close as we got to all four of the grandkids (sorry for the way off coloring.)

The pretty little miss

She was so tired, but she was so well behaved.

We also got to spend some time with Mamaw. It’s our first Christmas without Pap, but it was really healing to see Marion and Mamaw together.

Look at those big old monkey feet!

Well hello there!

Daddy got in some good play time as well – it’s so nice having him off of work!

When Daddyzilla attacks, part one

When Daddyzilla attacks, part two

I know I usually post the knitting stuff on the weekends, but I’m cheating this time. This isn’t any actual new knitting, it’s just knit wear modeling.

The little soaker I made her ages ago

She’s so cute in it!

The brown hat that was my first knitting project for her finally fits (newborn heads are a lot smaller than I thought. Well, not than what I thought, but than what I thought I should knit.)

I made these little mary jane booties ages and ages and ages ago (like, when we lived in Indiana.)

Her monkey feet are finally big enough to fit them

Well, kind of.

And that’s just too cute not to share. We see that face a lot.

I’m not very good at learning my lessons, and this weekend was proof of that, in case anyone needed additional examples.

I love Martha Stewart. I think she’s brilliant and talented and who I want to be when I grow up. Minus the whole jail time thing.

However, she has the most evil trick of throwing a totally unnecessarily complicated cooking step into a recipe or calling for some strange esoteric ingredient. You would think I would know this by now, and I kind of do.

I had a cookie exchange to go to yesterday, and I decided to make these fabulous Chewy Ginger Chocolate Cookies that I made last year.

So Saturday afternoon, we had a trip to the store planned, and I was pretty sure I had everything I needed for the cookies. But I tripled checked the recipe and made sure that I did, in fact, have everything. I opted not to start cooking Saturday night and spend the time with Josh and Marion. Good decision, right?

Until I woke up Sunday morning at 8:00 a.m., ready to make eight dozen cookies and be at the party by 2:00 p.m. I started to measure and prepare and read through the recipe, only to discover, the stupid cookies have to be refrigerated for TWO HOURS before cooking!!!!

I should know better – I really, really, really should know better at this point! But I didn’t. So they only got cooled for like thirty minutes, and I put them in the freezer instead of the fridge, but whatever, they turned out delish anyway.

Stupid, stupid Martha Stewart. Oh I love to hate you. And perhaps next time I’ll read the whole recipe, not just the ingredients.

While I was busy cooking, Miss M and her Daddy were busy reading.

In the past week, Marion has really started to enjoy looking at books. And catalogs. I think we have an early shopper on our hands.

Please notice that her hands are still not still.

She also likes to help turn the pages. Thank heavens it’s heavy catalog season, this is how we’ve been able to eat dinner in peace lately!

And in other big news – look what we did!

It’s our first trip to see Santa! With her brother and sister of course. They’re old pros at the Santa picture thing, so she wasn’t scared at all. By the way, it’s insanely hard to get two dogs and a baby to all pose for a picture!

Oh yeah, and this little thing happened this weekend too.

And she did it again, to prove it wasn’t just a fluke the first time.

Here she is just being cute

The Little Miss is already a social butterfly at the ripe old age of twelve weeks! We had two “engagements” this week and we both had a lot of fun at them.

First up was playgroup at our house. I’m part of a local mom’s group here in Houston and we just got Playgroup Seven (for babies September 2008 – March 2009) up and running. We hosted the first meeting and it was a blast seeing all of the moms and babies!

She was all festive for the occasion, thanks to Papa and Granny Chris for the outfit.

The little green thing in her lap is what most people call a “lovey” but apparently Josh used to call them “dahs” so that’s her froggie dah. The past couple of weeks she’s really started to be interested in toys and has really developed her ability to grab things. The froggie is certainly one of her favorite items – and it goes straight into her mouth like everything else.

And on Thursday we had our weekly Birth Babies and Beyond meeting – this week it was our holiday party.

Momma and baby

With our friends Robin and Anastasia – and no, the girls aren’t twins. Robin and I get a kick of it when we’re out in public and get asked this question!

And we had our first momma/baby crafting project

A footprint angel!

No…Gracie doesn’t have bad dandruff!

It snowed here last night! SNOW!

Real honest to goodness snow!

Have you ever seen an odder sight than a palm(type) tree with snow on it?

So the snow is nothing like what we got in Indiana, but still, it was fun and unexpected. We did take Miss M out in it, but she was not a fan and it was her bedtime, so we didn’t make her get her picture taken.

To make the whole situation even stranger, on Tuesday, I had the air on in the house!

We tried to take Christmas card pictures this weekend and I think we have a winner. But we haven’t fully decided yet, so in the meantime, here are some that definitely won’t be it!

This one didn’t make the cut because guess what, she’s moving her foot – go figure!

But I don’t want to be a reindeer!

I really, really don’t want to be a reindeer!

Apparently something outside the windows was way more interesting than looking at the camera.

Seriously, puppy licks are the best thing for keeping bows on.

Again with the movement!

That’s how she gives kisses.

Nanuq is the most fascinating thing in the world to her

She loves to practice standing up.

I think that means it’s time to stop!

If you’ve wondered why I’m always late

It’s because I’m trying to get this dressed every morning

It’s impossible to get her to be still long enough to fasten anything in any kind of a timely manner

Then, she starts talking to you

And you start talking back. Before you know it, you’re late.

But when the end result is this cute, what does time matter? (And please forgive my stupid momma-talk in the background.)

I could spend hours with her like this and not care that I’m late for everything all the time now. I can always make up an appointment, I can’t go back and make this up.