Christmas Photos

We dressed Savannah up and took some Christmas pictures last week. We took lots of pictures with three different cameras. Here are just a few of the pictures we got.


Playing "Peek-a-Boo"- her favorite game. She learned to play it herself over Thanksgiving.


The picture above is my favorite. I'm a sucker for that smile!
Notice her dainty little pinky sticking up as she chews on her Christmas present.
The whole family- our first Christmas as a threesome!

Random Pictures

Bye-Bye

Savannah has started waving over the last couple weeks but just in the last few days she has started saying "baba" while she does it (her version of "bye-bye"). She does it randomly throughout the day, but I took a video to share with you and to document it for myself :)

So Smart :)

So I already posted about how Savannah has started bopping to music, but today I was watching her from the back while she played with her Little People's nativity. Part of the nativity is the little drummer boy's stable which plays "The Little Drummer Boy" when you push the little drum on the side of the stable. Every once in a while she'll accidentally hit the button and the music will play and she'll stop to bop to the music. Well, today I decided to video tape a clip of it and this is all the dancing I got... not much...

So, I decided to try again. I got up and hit the drum and then got back behind her to see if she'd dance more. She danced even less this time, but I kept taping to see what she'd do. And the little smarty got up and hit the drum herself and sat back down to bop to the music! I had no idea she knew how to make it play the music! I was so impressed! And after I stopped taping, she got up and did it a few more time, stopping to dance each time she hit the button, so it wasn't just a fluke. I am a very proud mommy and had to post my videos right away. Here's my little genius...
Of course, now that I know she really does understand cause and effect, I may have to start being a little more strict with my "no no"s :(

Can't Touch This!

We discovered something new about our baby girl this week. She loves to dance! My mom had a hallmark card that played MC Hammer's "Can't Touch This" when you opened it up. Every time it played Savannah started to bop to the music. We had a lot of fun watching her and since have realized that she'll bop to any music she hears. Sometimes I don't even notice there's music playing until I see her start bouncing up and down. We caught some of it on video so I could post it on our blog. Even when she was running a fever of 102 and didn't want to do anything else, if Cole gave her a beat, she'd start to dance! I guess she does have a little of her daddy in her!

Thanksgiving with the Kruithofs

After leaving Lexington, Cole dropped Savannah and me off in Greenville to spend the week with my family. We got to see Joelle and David's new house and help unpack a little and do some Christmas shopping. The girls are so fun to watch together. Some of my favorite photos are bathtime pictuers and with the girls getting older, they only get better! Can you tell Savi loves the bath! And even better... a bath with her cousins! Brent and Katie drove down on Wednesday and Cole drove back down on Thursday so we were all together on Thanksgiving. Mom made a great meal and we really enjoyed being with everyone. The girls all had matching dresses for their first Thanksgiving. Pressley was getting sick and not feeling well by this point, but we were able to get a few pictures of them all together.On Saturday we had our family Christmas since we won't be together for the actual day. What a different Christmas than last year! Joelle and I had matching bellies and this year we have three little girls who were fascinated by the lights and presents. I had to take this picture of my mom trying to look something up on the computer in the midst of the beautiful chaos!Here comes trouble!Joelle and I had some fun with the girls and their favorite treat. We stuck puffs to their cheeks and let them eat them off each other's faces. It was adorable, but also possibly the reason they all ended up sharing the same virus :(

Thanksgiving with the Varners

We were able to drive down to Lexington to visit Cole's side of the family for a few days last week. It was great getting to see relatives we hadn't seen for a while and getting to spend some time with the whole family. Cole's mom and dad were sweet enough to prepare a whole Thanksgiving meal a week early since we weren't going to be with them the day of. Addie and Yeats are getting so big and are just as adorable as ever. I wish we lived closer so we could see them more often!Savannah is blessed to have grandparents that love on her! Check out her face in the picture below. We can always count on Savi to give us 5 goofy pictures for every normal one- I love it!Here's Savi sitting with her "little" cousin Yeats. I had to post this one for two reasons. The first is because she's chewing on his arm. We have pictures of her chewing on her other cousins when she was one week old. The girl will try to eat anything! And the second is that Yeats is almost two months younger than Savannah and is already over 20 pounds. This picture really makes him look a lot bigger than Savannah (I think the angle makes it look like a bigger difference than it actually is, but it made me laugh to see it).This angle is a little more accurate. Aren't they adorable?And here's Savannah with Cole's Aunt Barbara (another goofy face). It was so good seeing her and all the other relatives in Lexington- some meeting Savannah for the first time. What a great trip!

Catching Up

It's been a while since I've posted because we've been busy! We got to spend about 10 days in South Carolina visiting family and then when we got home and Savannah got sick. I guess we should be thankful that she made it 8 whole months before getting sick for the first time, but it has not been fun! What an exhausting few days for all of us! I'll post about our trip in the next few days. But in case I haven't posted about it yet, she is now a crawling, cruising, waving, dancing little bundle of smiles (when she's not sick).
This is a picture of Savannah after she fell asleep in the car with her hat on. It obviously shifted a little before she dozed off. And now that Savi is crawling, she's discovering all kinds of new things... like the air vents!

Elf Yourself

While we were with my family this past week, we put together an "Elf Yourself" dance with my parents and their three granddaughters. I figured I'd post it since I hadn't posted for a while. I'll post pictures of our trip to South Carolina soon. Go here and check out the dance and then make one for yourself. It's lots of fun!

http://elfyourself.jibjab.com/view/1SQjr1MLxj4tMcyGTMwK

Gerber Puffs

We have started giving Savannah Gerber fruit puffs. Her cousins shared some with her a while ago and she did pretty well when we put it in her mouth, but we've been putting some on her highchair tray so she can practice picking them up and getting them into her own mouth. It's been so funny to watch her! She grabs it so it's in the middle of her fist and then puts her fist up to her mouth and tries so hard to get it. They get kinda sticky when they get wet, so it ends up sticking to her fingers of the palm of her hand instead of going into her mouth. But she is getting better and better with it. Last night we tried Cheerios and she did great with those, too. Here are some pictures of her first attempt with getting the puffs in her mouth. You can tell it was a little frustrating for her!

Cruisin'!

I'm sitting here watching Savannah crawl around the floor, pull herself up to standing while she holds onto the table, and then I watched her cruise along to the other side of the table and from the table to the ottoman! I can't believe how much she's getting around! And not only has she learned to cruise today, she's also learned to fall on her bottom instead of her head, which is great! Earlier this week, she would pull herself up on the table and then tip over and land flat on her back. But today, she's started bending her knees and leaning back so she lands on her bottom. Watching her grow up is incredible! Babies truly are a continuous miracle. I just had to post this while I was being amazed so I could get this milestone documented (she's 7.5 mos.).
And if you look closely, you can just barely see her two bottom teeth that just came in!

Piggy Tails

Savannah's cousin Lyla showed us her new hair rubber bands that are great for doing their fine hair! We borrowed some and took some pictures of the girls with their hair done. Poor little Pretzels, though, has a bit more hair to grow before she's ready for pig-tails (she actually has a head full of curls, you just can tell from these pictures!). They sure are cute though in their matching diapers and big round bellies! I love these girls!

There are those curls I was talking about- don't you just love 'em?

Just Like Mommy!

I've slowed down on the blogging a little bit lately, but maybe it was a good thing. I think Savi may have started picking up on my blogging addiction.

More Milestones!

So, lately, I feel like Savi is growing even faster than normal! A couple days ago, we saw Savannah kneeling in her crib with her hands holding onto the side rail and her chin resting on top, so yesterday (Nov. 2) Cole had to lower her crib just in case she decided to stand up any time soon. While he was working on the crib, Savi and I were putting away all the clothes that she's outgrown in her nursery and I stopped to play with her and noticed that her first tooth broke through! At Sara's shower on Saturday I was talking to some friends about her and showed them her gums because I thought they looked puffy, but I didn't expect that first tooth to pop out the next day! And then tonight I was giving her a bath and she got down on her hands and knees and crawled to the other side of the tub (usually she gets up, scoots, then gets down on her tummy and pops back up again- kinda like an inch worm) but in the tub, she was doing it the right way (to avoid a face full of water). What a smartie! And THEN, she kneeled and hung on to the side of the tub and then stood up! Good thing Cole lowered her crib. Anyways, I just had to get all this stuff down so I can have it recorded. It's crazy how much she can change in just one day!

Our Halloween Lion

Savannah dressed up like a lion for her first Halloween. We tried to get some good pictures of her in her costume, but it was no easy task. It was getting late and she was tired of being photographed (Jenn and I took these the same day we did the ballerina photos). We were struggling to get a smile out of her at first, but then it got worse...and after the crying started, the arms went up and she fell over backwards into the flowers...but it made the crying stop :) The only smile we could get was when she was up in the air, so here's our smiling lion...I'll take it!