Christmas Gatherings

As always we had numerous family gatherings for Christmas. I'm finding myself having fewer pics from these type of events. Probably because most of my time is spent desperately trying to balance parenting (ie keep my kids from breaking things, yelling, running or hurting each other while also making sure they have fun) and actually getting to visit with people! I hardly have time to pick up the camera. Thankfully my dad usually has his, so many of these pics are his!


Immediate Wiley Family

I love our family get together. It's not that we do anything super special, but I love celebrating with my family. This year with all the kiddos being of a good playful age made it really fun!

I thought we had a small Christmas tree, but my parents had us beat! They had just finished revamping their downstairs rooms and didn't have time to get a big tree.


I loved my kiddos' Christmas garb! So handsome! So beautiful!


Fun with cousins - they all adore each other. I hope it's always like that!




Some family love



Enjoying the presents!




My sweet little family


Santa

I'm going to squeeze seeing Santa on the float in here. Mostly cuz I don't feel like making a whole separate post for it! Redondo Beach canceled their float due to lack of funding, so we made sure we were at my parents' house to meet Torrance's Santa. Austin, of course, loved it. He was very excited to show Santa his stuff reindeer. McKenna, of course, hated it. But she did freak out less this year than last year!



Grandma met us over there to get to see the kids with Santa


Steinmeyer Christmas

I was so glad this year our Steinmeyer Christmas was held at my parents' house because that meant we could go for the whole time, rather than being a couple hours late! It was a wonderful gathering but also somber as it was the 1st time my Grandpa wasn't there. He was in hospice care following a fall and passed away 4 days after Christmas. He was a wonderful man, despite his gruffness, and left a legacy of faith in our family - every single member of our family is a professing Christian.

And that legacy is continuing with the next generation too. My cousin's sons recited all of Luke 2 to start our worship for the evening. They rocked it!



The next generation of cousins


And I have to throw in this pic of McKenna and I! Love this shot!


Christmas Morning at our house

Christmas with kids gets more fun every year! Austin and McKenna look forward to the present part of Christmas. Hopefully soon they will understand the real reason we celebrate though!

I gave in some and let Brian do a little bit of a Santa tradition with Austin too. I never believed in Santa growing up and have a problem with teaching my kids to do so, but I was okay with having fun as long as it is presented as a game. Since he couldn't teach him the whole Santa story, Brian thought it would be funny to tell Austin that Santa comes to inspect how well we decorated our Christmas tree and if he likes our work, he eats the cookies we left for him. Our children are going to be so confused when the get to school and compare notes with their friends!

(The carrots were for the reindeer)


Gotta share a pic of our Christmas morning fire - Brian and I giggled when I came across this on TV and we thought it was fairly fitting since our fireplace couldn't actually be used for a fire!


Grandma joined us again this year and we had such a great morning!




Brian with his traditional underpants present. Austin was jealous of the Angry Bird underpants and used to insist they were his!


We had a present fail. I assisted the kids in buying Brian a "daddle" - a saddle for daddies. It was super cute and would have worked great since the kids have a hard time hanging on sometimes. Unfortunately he ended up being allergic to it! It was sold by a company that also makes real saddles and sells hay, so the best we can figure is Brian is allergic to hay! It was promptly returned1



Grandma got the kids great presents this year. She made Austin a teepee. It's awesome. The kids love to watch TV from inside and often have teepee picnics!


And McKenna got a baby bed.


Apparently there was a little confusion about it's proper use...


Crowley Christmas

For the first time, we celebrated somewhere other than Gramma Crowley's house. Instead we got together at Brian's cousin Eric's house. It was a nice change of scenery and we had a great time. The women in Brian's family really know how to make yummy food too! We always eat so good!

McKenna really liked Eric's tree!


Grandpa & Great Grandma Crowley


The kids had fun showing Grandpa their new toys, especially their new motorcycle!




Extended Wiley Christmas

The day after Christmas was spent over at my grandparents' home. It's always a great day to finish off our get-togethers. My grandparents are wonderful and we are so blessed to get to spend time with them! My dad's family is all really funny and hanging out with them is always very entertaining.

My sweet grandparents!


And one of my Grandma and Katelyn & McKenna


And one of my Grandpa and his youngest (at that time) great granddaughter. (Dontcha just love her cheeks?!)

I wish I had more pics from that day, but I was busy chasing my kiddos and just enjoying myself and for some reason my dad hardly had any to snag!

Once again a busy but wonderful Christmas Season!

My Little Baking Assistant

I love love love that Austin is old enough to get to help me in the kitchen some. I love that it's a lesson in math, a lesson in cooking and a lesson in listening/following directions. The only downside is the flour everywhere, but that's why God invented vacuum cleaners!

So I was really looking forward to making Christmas cookies with him this year. We waited until McKenna was down for a nap (otherwise there really would have been flour everywhere!!) and got to work. He did so good and had so much fun! Oh and the apron he's wearing was made by his grandma! You definitely gotta have a custom made apron - not a lot of ones made for little boys out there!











This is in my top 10 most favoritest pics of him!

The cookies came out great. A little too great. I was 3 months pregnant and somehow my only 1st trimester craving at that time was sugar cookies. I'm not sure Brian got more than 2!

Trimming Our Little Christmas Tree

Finally getting rolling on December 2011! I'm excited to be finishing so I can get to this year! At least if I'm in the right calendar year, I won't feel so behind!

Ooh, it was so fun to look back at the last Christmas in our old house! Can't wait to get to do it in our new one! We have a much better spot for a tree! Maybe we can get one that's bigger than 2.5 ft tall! But I did love our little tree last year! The kids loved helping me decorate. They were such good helpers! Once again, we put it up on the table in hopes that it didn't get knocked down and the ornaments didn't get destroyed. No one knocked it over this year, but boy did McKenna do her best to break ornaments. I think ultimately they all survived, but I had to replace pretty much every once several times. With a small tree, there really wasn't a "safe" place on the tree to put the special ones, so I just really had to watch her.

McKenna Update - 2 and a 1/3

I'm still going to go back to December and get caught up, but I want squeeze updates on the bigger kids, since it's been too long. I even skipped McKenna's 2 year update. The move really screwed me up on that one!





McKenna's last update was from the beginning of March and reading it, it felt like a lifetime ago! She has grown up so much in the last five months! Probably some of it is real growing and some of it is just in comparison to Bella. I swear McKenna's head grew while I was in the hospital. It's huge now! Hee hee. Really she just seems so big when I snuggle her on my lap now. She's no longer my baby. She's a bonafide big kid.

With growing up has come all sorts of attitude! Not sure if it's because she's 2, because we moved, because of Bella's arrival, or all of the above. She definitely had a hard time right after our move. Even though she loves her new room and our house, she adopted some defiance issues - refusing to feed herself, screaming at me. That has only gotten worse since Bella was born and now includes throwing things, hitting and kicking and straight out telling me "No!" when I ask her to do something. So I'm doing my best to make sure she knows that is not acceptable while also trying to give her special attention so she doesn't feel slighted by the attention Bella requires.

I am so so thankful that any aggression she has is taken out on Brian and I rather than Bella. We were very worried for as clingy as she had been the last couple months that we would have lots of jealousy issues. But as it turns out, she ADORES Bella. Her first words in the hospital room (with her arms outstretched) were "Hold it?! Have it?!" Seriously melted me to my core! (Austin, by contrast, was far too distracted by all the buttons and levers and switches in the hospital room and had to be compelled to say hello to his new sister! He adores her now though.) She is always near her, making high pitched cooing noises and talking to her in her own little language. And she'll even share her favorite blanket with Bella. ("All cozy!") It really is so sweet to watch. If anything we have to make sure she doesn't love Bella too much. She can get a little grabby and hold on too tight. And she is determined to accessorize Bella with Mrs. Potato Head pieces. She will get those glasses on her eventually, even if Bella loses an eye in the process!

Once again, her speech totally amazes me. She uses complete sentences most of the time and picks up new words and phrases constantly. She's constantly repeating what Austin says too, which is good and bad! It's very cute to listen to their conversations. Their arguments are pretty funny too. Often they argue about two different subjects. "Blue!" "No, papa!" "No, blue!" It's very entertaining.

Up until last week, her affirmative answer was almost always "please", even if it was just a yes or no question. Recently she added "Sure!" to the mix but "please" was still dominant. Just last week she stopped saying it all together and now just says "Yeah." Sounds like a silly thing to document, but I'm actually really sad! I loved her "please"! Is it bad that I'm trying to get her to regress back to it?!

My absolute favorite thing she says...One day I asked her if she knew she was wonderful and she said "No! I 'pecial! I 'pecial like Bob!" Thankfully she's talking about Bob the tomato and not "What about Bob"! Bob the Tomato says "God made you special and he loves you very much!" I love that she knows that already!

McKenna and Austin are becoming the best of friends. They still drive each other nuts though - McKenna is a typical little sister, swyping his toys and pushing his buttons; Austin always has to be doing whatever McKenna started playing with and is constantly telling her the right way to play with something. But a good portion of the time they play well together. They love to chase each other through the house. (I LOVE that our new house allows them to do that! At our old one, the chase was very short - about 10 feet!) They love to dance together, which they insist on doing anytime a song comes on in any movie or show they are watching. And they love to wake each other up from naps too. Their exchanges then are so very sweet! I hope they are always good buddies!

My fear that McKenna wouldn't be a puzzle lover was totally unfounded. In the last 5 months she's gone from not liking puzzles to loving them and rocking at them. She can do the 24 piece jigsaw ones now. My mom has some multi-layer ones that she loves and will spend most of the time at their house playing with. I love it!

Her other favorite activity at my parents' house is putting on my mom's necklaces and bracelets. She is all girl!! She'll get about 20 around her neck and then come show you how pretty she looks. She looks like she's been to Mardi Gras!

Her next favorite thing to do is coloring. She could do it for hours. It's the only thing that keeps her in her Sunday school class.

We are no where near potty training. She used to go on the potty sometimes but now not at all. Even though I bribe her with chocolate. I'm not in a hurry really, except that she hates to have her dirty diaper changed. I was hoping if I could get her to go in the potty, it would cut out that drama.

She's getting there on her letters and numbers. Austin learned his primarily by doing his letter puzzle and while I worked with her as she did that puzzle too, she wasn't nearly as interested in learning them. She's picking them up though. I got a new app for the iPad this week and was surprised that she knew more than I thought she did. She does pretend not to know things sometimes.

Just like her brother, she has endless energy. She hardly walks anywhere and always has the cutest bounce in her step as she runs. Still has happy feet when she's excited too!

Her hair is getting so long now! I love having daughters just for the reason of getting to do someone's hair! It's long enough to have two french braids down the back. She actually sits still sometimes to let me do it. She likes to inspect my work in the mirror afterwards.

Her favorite book for the last several months has been "Happy Birthday Hamster". Austin got it for his birthday but she has claimed it since her birthday was more recent. She gets so excited with each page.

McKenna got an adorable kitchen from her grandmas for her birthday. As soon as we bought a house, I knew that was going on her wish list. The kids play so good with it. Austin really likes the baker outfit that she also got. And McKenna loves to "make" cookies and waffles and feed them to me. (And Bella! We have to watch her on that too!) She's such a good little hostess!

She loves all things Princess, especially Rapunzel (which is her favorite movie) and Tinkerbell and gets horribly excited when she sees them. And since Tinkerbell shows up at the beginning of every Disney movie, she gets excited a lot!

Gosh, I'm sure I could keep going. It's been a full 5 months. But I think that mostly covers it. Despite the behavior issues, she is such a fun kid! Even if she can't be my little baby anymore, I've still loved watching her grow into a little girl!
*I was going to write an update for Austin too, but he's close to turning 4, so I'm going to wait until then. Hopefully I don't forget!