Christmas and More

I hope everyone had a good Christmas and New Year's.  It's been a while since I last posted! We were in Duluth for about a week. We split up time between my family and Dan's family. For Christmas Eve, we went to the church Dan's family goes to. The girls made it 20-30 minutes until they were too restless, so we took them out to the reception area. They were hilarious out there- hyper and loud- we were afraid the whole congregation would hear them! They had so much energy built up. There's a video below, but it doesn't show the extent of their mood! It was fun to be around family  and everyone got fun presents. This feels like their first Christmas even though it wasn't (they were in the NICU last year)!

After Duluth, we had a relaxing weekend to ourselves to decompress. On New Year's Eve, Dan and I surprisingly stayed up until midnight! I bought Dan a Wii for Christmas so we had fun playing Mario and toasting with champagne. It was perfect. Having Dan home from work was great but now it's back to reality. Here's a couple of updates for each girl.

Sofia... well, her eating is our latest battle! She is getting picky and actually learned how to spit out food. At first she did it with foods she wasn't familiar with, then she started doing it with food I know she likes! The last couple of days have gotten better but it was really frustrating. It was especially maddening because she is smaller- every calorie counts! Besides that, she is fun and cute like always. We notice that she is probably the biggest bully of them all. She does not back down and frequently wrestles with her two sisters (instigating it usually). Her size is not holding her back!

Sofia peering out the window

Madeline... a week and a half ago she took a couple of steps! She was standing in place and I held out my arms and she took two small steps to me. Dan said she did it again when I wasn't there but I'm not sure if these little steps "count". She is definitely more of a risk taker than the others...before long they'll be running all over the place.

Madeline!

Josephine... I wasn't lying last post- Josie did get a tooth!!!! It finally cut through the gums. Woohoo! We were starting to wonder whether there would be NO teeth! The great part about this is we didn't notice her being especially cranky- maybe a little bit here and there, but nothing we can pinpoint as "oh, that was teething". We would be just too lucky if all the teeth here on out are this easy. Knock on wood!

Josie smiling away

One more tidbit about Josie and Maddie is that they are rock stars at climbing the stairs. We live in a one level so the girls aren't used to stairs, but Josie and Maddie quickly learned to climb the whole staircase at their grandparents' house. Because of this new ability, we had to watch them that much closer! Sofia just looks up the staircase and whimpers- she hasn't tried really, but I'm sure she could too.

OK, picture time!

Christmas Eve during Church

Christmas morning- looking at one of their new toys

Testing out the new sled! (L to R Peter, Madeline, Sofia, and Josie)

(J, M, S) with their FIRST dolls!

Sofia and Madeline looking out the window

Nightly routine (naked baby time!)

Testing out the sled outside! (Sofia in back, Josie in the middle, Maddie in front)

Maddie: "you guys alright back there?"

Family picture right before heading down the hill! (just kidding they're not to that point quite yet!)

Peter checking out his cousins

Having fun, girls?

Time to eat! (J, M, S)

(J, S, M)

Back at home, testing out a new car!

 This is DURING the Christmas Eve service...oops! The "ahhhhh" they do is the new thing they do all the time. One baby starts and the others chime in.

This is baby wrestling time...Sofia is in pink being a little bully. (The camera got put down for a few seconds but resumes so watch 'till the end!)

I have to say, I AM DONE PUMPING!!! At one point, I wrote on the blog that I would pump through the cold season, but I changed my mind- and I have no regrets. I made it longer than I ever thought and am proud of that, but now I have so much more time. Plus, now I can run in the morning before Dan goes to work, which makes for a happier and better mom! (I used to have to pump first thing in the morning, making running right away too hard.) Stopping was actually a little emotional, which I never would have guessed, but I hear some moms are sad to stop nursing so it's kind of the same deal.

Resolution for the new year: be a great mom and get back into running shape (hopefully a handful of 5ks!) What are your resolutions?

Have a great first week of the new year!