It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas...

With Thanksgiving over, it's time for us to move into the Christmas holidays. It seems like our family decorates less and less each year which makes me sad. That's one of the things I adore about Christmas, putting up the tree and decorating it then scattering all kinds of festive goodies through out the house. This year, I got the tree up and was only allowed to put on non-breakable shatterproof balls on the top part of my tree. No other decorations were put out. It makes me sad, but I guess with really young kids I'll have to wait another few years. I did purchase Cara a really cute pink tree at Walmart, but I'll put a picture of that in next week's blog.

Here's Harris standing before the tree. He's Enemy #1 when it comes to decorations. His main objective is to take the balls off the tree and bring them to me. He looks so sweet in this picture. Little did we know that a few hours later while he was suppose to be napping that he would sneak into his sister's room and squeeze an ENTIRE bottle of baby oil all over her recliner. Oh yes! We did everything we could to get it out including getting it professionally cleaned. Nope, it won't come out. The only upside to having a ruined chair is that I get to pick out a really cute girly chair cover to hide the damage.

Cara's First Christmas Tree

Cara's becoming quite the Cadwallader. She's climbing into, out of, and onto anything she can. Here she is climbing onto the dishwasher.

All dressed up for church, but not looking happy about having her picture taken.

We had our first movie night at our house last week watching Cinderella. Nick loved it.

Cara preferred eating her blanky and went to bed about 10 minutes into the movie.

Guess who's 10 months old???

That's right, can you believe it? Neither can we. She's getting so independent.

Cara at 44 weeks old

At 10 months, Cara:

• Drinks out of a sippy cup for all but her nighttime bottle.
• Stands alone for up to a minute.
• CAN take one to two steps, but usually prefers not to.
• Cruises like a champ.
• Steals what she wants from her brothers (and they let her).
• Begs for sweets when she sees that we have something she wants.
• Pitches a tantrum when she doesn't get what she wants.
• Feeds herself and is starting to show interest in utensils (doesn't do well).
• Helps me dress herself (is able to move her arms into position to help me).
• Says a few words - Uh oh, Mama, Dada, Bye Bye
• And continues to be a wonderful, sweet, easy-going little girl who sleeps almost 12 hours a night and is growing up too fast for her parents.
  

She wore her snowflake shirt hoping that it would snow.

Here's a video of her pushing her walking toy. She decides she's done half way through.

Nick's really cool airplane.

Aunt Lisa bought Lauren and Cara matching candy cane shirts. How sweet!

Cara got her first boo boo this past week when Harrison headbutted her (not on purpose).

It's a nice one.

Getting ready for school on Friday with a scab over her eyebrow (this is very close to the scar Nick got 3 years ago December when he cut his head open at daycare). Hmmm, I'm hoping this isn't the beginning of a pattern.

So I'm sure you all think that I always show pictures of Cara but never the boys. It isn't that I don't want to have the boys on the blog, but they won't stay still or smile long enough for me to take a clear picture. I'll try to do better. I do have this one of them together. About two months ago, we converted Harris's crib to a toddler bed, and he refused to sleep in it. He'd sleep on the floor, want to sleep in our bed, or with his brother. Nick only had a twin, so that's a lot of boy in one bed. Last weekend, we thought we could bribe Harris to sleep in his room if we let him pick out his own sheets. $40 and a set of Cars sheets later... he slept on them one night and only because he didn't know he was in his room. He fell asleep in our bed and was carried to his room. This weekend we broke down and Chris and I got Nick's double bed out so the boys can both sleep comfortably in Nick's room. They giggle, jump, and fool around, but they are both IN bed and sleeping with some space now. WHEW!!! Now we just have to work on getting them to sleep earlier than 9:30 or 10:00 pm.

So I'm curious to see who all reads our blog each week. Leave us a comment and let me know!