Baby Mack

One of the reasons we traveled to Charlotte as early as we did before Christmas was because my sister was having a baby on December 21st and we wanted to be there. So we packed up early Friday morning (the 21st) and drove to Charlotte to visit them in the hospital. It was Hailey's first experience with a baby. She wasn't too impressed...until I started holding him and then she got a little jealous. Ha!

Introducing Mack!

Grams and Gramps with two of their three grandchildren. Unfortunately Tucker (Mack's big brother) got sick right before he was born so he couldn't go to the hospital to meet him.)

The Epleys meeting Mack

Oooh! What's that? He looks like my baby doll.

But my book is more interesting.

So sweet!

Silly Girl

While I'm still getting myself together from our Christmas traveling here's a little bit of my silly girl having fun at Grams and Gramps' house.

Christmas Parties Galore

This past week / weekend we had a lot of Christmas parties and get-togethers to attend. It was so much fun to be able to hang out with friends and enjoy the friendships God has blessed us with here in Raleigh.

Tuesday night was our pastors' wives Christmas get-together. Each month we meet for a prayer time for one another and to just get to know each other more. It is so encouraging to be able to talk with other pastors' wives, learn from them and pray together. I have enjoyed it so much since coming to Providence. (Sorry, I forgot to take any pictures).

Thursday night was the staff Christmas party for Providence. Hailey stayed at home with Sarah (the wonderful babysitter who doesn't seem to mind my baby crying too much) and from what I hear, they read LOTS and LOTS of books! Sound like my baby?! Anyways, we had a great time at the Christmas party and just enjoyed spending time with the people that Ryan serves alongside everyday. It was a nice, more formal party so it was fun to dress up and have somewhere to go. They had a wonderful dinner and an improv group gave us a little entertainment.

Ryan and I- I'm so glad he wore a suit!

Andrew, me and Ryan- the Charlotteians transplanted to Raleigh

Ryan, Bev and David- wonderful blessings as we learn the singles ministry

Saturday night was our LIFE class Christmas party. Once again Hailey missed out on the fun. But she got to stay with Jodi and Chad, friends who are at Southeastern and having a baby in February. Hopefully she didn't scare them about parenthood too badly! Can you guess what she wanted to do with them?

Wasn't Chad a good sport?! It was SUCH a blessing that they were willing to keep Hailey for us. It really allowed us (me) to just have fun spending time with others at the party and not having to worry about if Hailey was happy or tired or needed to be fed or it was close to her bedtime.

We had a tacky sweater party and here are a few of the fun ones.

the winners of the contest

some were homemade! and lit up!

Ryan and James

Ryan and I

 We also did a $10 gift exchange. There were some pretty funny gifts, as well as some nice ones. I think the funniest one had to be the "Forever Lazy" that Josie got.

Too funny!

We had a busy, but oh so fun week hanging out with friends. We're looking forward to more over the next few weeks!

And because I know the grandmas are sad there isn't a picture of Hailey yet...here is my sweet girl before church yesterday.

Bobo

In Hailey's 9 month post, I mentioned that she had taken a liking to a pink stuffed dog that Ryan's uncle had given her. I also mentioned that she loves dogs, all dogs. Well, when we came back from Thanksgiving Hailey started saying "Bobo" all the time which is the name of Ryan's parents' dog (Beau). I felt bad that she couldn't really see Bobo and kept saying it so I started calling the stuffed dog Bobo. Now she loves him. She drags him (well I guess her, since it is pink) around by the ear everywhere. We can ask her "Where's Bobo?" and she will go get him. Every time Hailey picks him up she just smiles and giggles. It's so cute!

Bobo plays with Hailey,

 watches Baby Einstein with her,

 takes naps with her,

 and just hangs out with her.

So cute!

"What?! You mean my chair isn't to help me pull ornaments off of the tree?"

Hailey climbed up on her chair by herself and then pulled ornaments off of the tree, higher ornaments that she hadn't been able to reach before. I think she's too smart for her own good. Lord help me!

Christmas Fun

This year I decided to do the "25 Days of Loving your Spouse" countdown that I found on Pinterest thanks to the Dating Divas. It's just a little countdown for Ryan that goes through each day until Christmas. There's an envelope for everyday for him to open that either gives a compliment, tells something that I love about him or has a fun Christmas activity to do. (And since he's been removing cards everyday it's become a cute little way to display the Christmas cards we've been sent.) Yesterday his card said to meet us at Cheesecake Factory (yum!) for lunch and then we were going to visit Santa at the mall. We mainly wanted to visit Santa to see how Hailey would react to him. You see a lot of funny pictures of kids sitting on his lap!

We had a good time at lunch and Hailey did really well...until she stuffed too many Cheerios in her mouth and got too excited and then spit them up, all over her cute outfit. But me being the mom I am and wanting her to stay in her cute outfit, I just wiped it off and we went on about our lunch. Ha!

After lunch we went out into the mall and found Santa.

Isn't she just precious?!

Waiting...

Hailey really didn't seem to mind him too much...at first. Ryan was trying to take our picture from afar because we didn't want to pay the $15 dollars for one. (Are you kidding me?!) But I asked the lady and they let him take a close one too. That's when Hailey didn't like him too much.

first shot from afar

"I'm done! Let me outta here!"

Now,that the cuteness has past let me say that we've decided not to do the whole if-you're-good-Santa-will-bring-you-presents thing with Hailey. We've decided that we're going to tell her the true story of St. Nicholas and about how he was a good man that helped others by giving them gifts. Not that there's anything wrong if someone decides to do Santa with their children. It's just something we've been thinking about and just decided together that we want more of her focus to be on Jesus than Santa at Christmas time. But that doesn't mean that we can't take a few cute pictures or make memories. There...

One more shot of cuteness in another Christmas outfit

Ok, maybe two.

9 months

Where does the time go?! These posts always seem to come up too quickly...
Hailey is now 9 months old. I can't believe it. We go to the doctor for her 9 month check up next week but until then, she weighs about 20 pounds (according to the Epley scale). She wears 9 month clothes, sometimes 12 month pants and size 3 diapers. Hailey now has 4 teeth and it looks like 2 more are coming in on the top.

Can you see all those teeth?

This past month we've had a rough time with sleep, but we're hoping she's getting back on track. She's been either waking up at 5:00 or waking up several times during the night. We've assumed it's because of teething, but I can't wait to get back to her normal sleeping schedule. She still takes a nap every 2 hours, but lately I've been able to get an hour to hour and a half nap a few times a week! Those naps are wonderful, and she wakes up like this:

These are our "we love long nap" faces!

She is eating three solid meals a day and nursing about 5 times a day. She loves yogurt and still doesn't like peas. Her favorite snack is definitely Cheerios, but she also likes puffs and yogurt melts. I've tried to give her a few finger foods like cut up sweet potatoes, diced veggies and bread / crackers / pancakes. She didn't like the diced sweet potatoes, even though she loves them pureed and didn't chew the diced veggies too well yet. Hailey is great with her sippy cup and will take a bottle for her Daddy, but not anyone else so far.

Daddy makes yummy pancakes

Hailey said her first words this month! She said "Mama" first, then "Bobo" (Beau is Mimi and Poppi's dog) and then "Dada". Ryan wasn't too thrilled that he came after the dog. Ha! She babbles all the time and tries to mimic sounds we make too. Sometimes after we cheer for her it sounds like she says "yay" too. She's also mimicked "bye bye" a few times, and we've heard "nay nay nay" which we're assuming is "no no".

This is her pouty face

Hailey is a quick little crawler and is now cruising the furniture. She hasn't taken any steps alone, but stands up without support a lot.

Hailey still LOVES books and has even started to bring us some to read to her. Right now she loves the books that only have one word on a page, like the ones that tell colors or name toys. She also loves "Itsy, Bitsy Spider", of which we have several copies and she giggles every time we read any of them.

For some reason she is fascinated with the vacuum and broom. Anytime I get either of them out. she wants to play with them. Weird, right?

She also loves to play in the refrigerator. Whenever she hears us open it, she does the fast crawl to catch the door open. Stinker.

She loves dogs and will smile and laugh any time she sees one. Hence the reason she said "Bobo" before "Dada"! She is definitely not scared of them.

She's taken a liking to this stuffed dog that Ryan's Uncle Butch gave her

 So much has happened in the last month, I can't imagine what's coming next!

Just a Walk in the Park

Even though it's December, temperatures at the beginning of this week were in the 70's. So we took advantage of it and spent a few days walking in the park with friends. We normally walk once a week with a few girls from church and their kids, but this week we did it twice. The babies are really starting to interact with each other and "talk" as we walk. It's so cute to see them be friends!

Happy girl!

Advent

Today was the beginning of the Advent season. Advent means "coming". Each December, we celebrate the first coming of Jesus and look forward to His second coming.
Each Sunday until Christmas we will celebrate by lighting one candle in the Advent circle. There are four candles in the Advent circle and one in the middle. They symbolize: Prophecy, Shepherds, Angels, Bethlehem and Christ. Today in church, our family lit the "Prophecy" candle to remind us that Christ's coming was revealed by God through prophets hundreds of years before He was born.

Thanks Megan for taking our pictures!

We lit the Advent candle at all three services this morning so we had a bit of down-time in between each in which we had to keep Miss Hailey occupied. Here's a little of what we did:

Played on Daddy's bookshelves

 Helped Daddy work

Took a nap

We also had to have a mini photo-shoot this morning before we left for church because Hailey just looked too cute in her Christmas dress. (That my mom made for me and I wore as a baby)

We hope you're enjoying preparing for Christmas as much as we are!