The Doghouse

Happiness & Cheer

It's been a busy month. Hard to believe, but between being a big sister, performing with her school and eating at Chik-Fil-A every other day, Naomi still found time to celebrate the season.

The season kicked off with our annual trek to The Colony High School's Breakfast with Santa hosted by the cheerleaders. This was our third year to attend and Naomi finally got her money's worth of donuts, juice, and crafts.

Another Christmas tradition three years in the making is The Colony Christmas Spectacular Parade. This year, Naomi attended with friends Laina & Wesley. It was definitely the coldest year so far, but that just makes it more fun to be bundled up snug and warm!

Our neighborhood association does a fantastic job hosting various events throughout the year. For Christmas, they put together a wonderful event for The Legends Tree Lighting. Along with the lighting of the big tree, Santa made an appearance AND there was an awesome snow hill!! Naomi had a blast sledding. Because the weather was quite chilly, there was not a huge turn-out, so Naomi was able to sled over and over without waiting. She lasted as long as her fingers could bear!

To learn a little bit about Christmas, we visited a Live Nativity in our neighborhood with friend Kai. Somebody set this up in their front yard, complete with live animals, actors, music and hot chocolate. Naomi was too nervous to taste anything called HOT chocolate, however her and Kai did enjoy petting the animals while the actors were on break.

Yet another holiday favorite is driving around to look at Christmas lights. We do this around our neighborhood any time we are coming home after dark, but we also ventured out to the Farmer's Branch Christmas Lights with Talya. After about an hour long wait to enter the park, we were rewarded with a fantastic display of lights, followed by a siting of Santa Claus. The candy cane from Santa was almost too good to be true!

Merry Christmas!

Trending Downward

Danielle Speaks

Well sort of.

Disclaimer: This is more of an "excited Mom moment" and will probably be of no interest to anyone other than me and Danielle's grandparents!

Although if you care to watch, here's the scoop. Danielle celebrated her one month existence by finding her voice. She's been crying and grunting since birth, but today was the first day she made a new noise in response to being talked too.


As far as other one month accomplishments, she is gaining control of her eyes. She can now lock onto our eyes and follow us from side to side. She is working on head control and strengthening her neck muscles, but she still has a long way to go.

Everything else remains about the same. She sleeps 17-18 hours a day. She eats every 2-3 hours. After eating, she likes to just chill out, either by herself or in our arms. At night, she's very good about eating and going right back to sleep. (Hallelujah!) Overall, she's a textbook infant with an easy-going temperament.

The Show Must Go On

Well, we may be well on our way to our very own future former child star winding up in rehab.

The Colony Christmas Spectacular took place a couple weeks ago and Kids Count Too (Naomi's school) once again had a starring role in the festivities. Know what that means? Yep, more dancing! woo hoo! Only, for Naomi, it turned out to be more woo sans the hoo and !.

Prior to the show, she was her usual excited self, ready to bust a move.

Aaaaand then the show started. First up, Winter Wonderland. She looked a little unsure at the start but rallied at the end. Whew!

But then came The Hear Miser. The "unsure" look returned and quickly morphed into full on tears. At this point, her teachers were making smiley faces at her, I'm giving her the thumbs up, and Naomi was doing her best to hang in there. It was the best example of "the show must go on" you've ever seen and enough to make you laugh or cry.

But even a good sport has limits. By the start of the third song, she was done playing along. Out came the hook and she spent the last couple songs watching the show and helping Ms Brittany conduct.

So, what happened? Nobody knows. I asked her about it right after the show and her response was the kid-predictable "I don't know." Of course, by that time she was already over it and wanted to hear more about those McDonald's chicken nuggets I'd promised earlier.

Hopefully, that "whatever" attitude means she can bypass rehab in the future.

* Note: After uploading the videos, I realized they're pretty small. Unless you squint just right, you'll have to take my word for it about the streaming tears all thru The Heat Miser.

Which one is not like the other

It's been fun comparing Danielle to Naomi's baby pictures to find similarities and differences in their appearance. I was having a hard time comparing 3-D baby Danielle to 2-D pictures of Naomi, so here is a little something that helped me. See for yourself! (If you click on the picture, you can see a larger image.)


Receiving their first piece of mail...a brand new Social Security Card.

Itinerary

In case anyone needs to know where to find us for the next couple weeks.