Christmas Time!

I love the holidays and Christmas time! I love the decorations. I love the food. I even love the cool weather and the early dark evenings which allow for guiltless lazing by the fire place. This year is even more fun with two cute kiddos now. Lucia is so articulate and excited about every new thing. She is, at this moment, singing the clean up clean up song. She is so funny and wonderfully sweet. She loves her little brother and talks to him all the time telling him about the moon and other super important things. Anyway, this week has been filled with lots of Christmas fun.

We went to get our Christmas tree this weekend though we started the festivities a bit early with green and "red" (pink) pancakes made special by Daddy. They were terrifying looking but awesome. Yes, that is a lump of green pancake in Lucy's mouth.
Next we hit the tree farm (two to be honest). The first one had seriously pathetic trees, so I made us go to another. Thankfully the second one was small and awesome. Pat is a trooper and puts up with my picky tree hunting without a word of complaint

Lucy was super cute tromping through the woods with me looking at the trees. She is so fascinated by everything right now. It is great.
Tree decorating time with daddy


Just a cute one of the little guy
I could eat these kids up!

Mommy bliss! Both of my little people for bed time stories!
And, in Summerill family tradition, Grandma Jana supplied Lucia with her first ever chocolate advent calendar. I LOVED these when I was a kid. My mom would get them for all four of us kids and line them up on the piano. Who doesn't love chocolate pieces in the morning!!! I do remember my mom making the chocolate a few of the years and reusing the calendars. Way to be reuse mom!
Seriously, we finally caught a smile on camera!!!

Sweet Moments

Pat will probably hate that I posted this because he had no idea that I was taking video, but these are the moments that I LOVE!!! I absolutely love watching Pat play with Lucia and now with Elijah. He is the sweetest Daddy. He makes me smile all of the time and I could watch these kind of interactions all day long. It reminds me how sweet life really is.

Lucy Loves Her Princesses

So, Lucy has only been exposed to princess movies once and it was just this Thanksgiving where she watched a portion of Cinderella. That said, she can tell you all of the princesses names and she LOVES them all. ;)

A month with Elijah

I can't believe that our little guys is already a month old though, on the other hand, it seems like he has been a part of our family for much longer than that. He is such a sweet and easy baby! Today we had his one month check up. The little man is putting on weight fast which is a HUGE relief given the challenges we could have with MCAD if he were not gaining weight. He has been weighed at the doctor's office four times in the past month and he has progressed from 10% to 13% to 20% to 41% at this last check up. He gained 1.75 pounds in the last two weeks alone! It is happening so fast that there are a number of his newborn clothes that he has only worn a few times and has already out grown them! It is pretty cute to see his little face filling in and that most splendid double baby chin. He looks so much more like a little baby than a newborn now. He's transitioned from wearing PJs all day every day to wearing pants and shirts. Oh, the little boy is growing up to fast. I just smother him with kisses to try to make up for all of the growing up that he is doing. I love love love holding him, rocking him, and kissing his cheeks. I think that I could do that all day or until my arms fell off.

He is a great little sleeper too...for the most part. He sleeps at night except for the feedings every 3 hours. I had high hopes of feeding him only every 4 hours after the Biochemical specialist told us that would be ok, but he is intent on eating every 3 hours still and we do have to do "feed on demand" still. That said, I really can't complain given that he falls asleep right after the feedings for the most part. When he doesn't, Pat takes the soothing which is awesome for me!

Ok, this is just a bit of rambling. Here are a few pictures of the little man at 1 month.

Daddy with his little people!
Sporting his cute outfit from Auntie Kaitlyn
Hanging out with Daddy
This sleeping face is so so sweet!
Um...and so is this one!
I caught the tail end of a smile!
He looks so old and seriously pudgy!
I can't resist the sleeping face pictures apparently. He just looks so peaceful

Little Videos

So, this isn't super exciting or anything, but here are two quick videos of the little man. He doesn't do any super baby tricks. This is mostly for Lindsey who hasn't seen the little man in real life yet.

Uncle Craigee?

Just a quick Lucia story. I have been reading A LOT to the little lady because it is one of the few things that I can do with her while nursing the little guy. Most of the time she opts to read her bible. The other day we were reading the story of John the Baptist and she said, "hey, uncle craigee is in my bible. Look mama!". Here is the picture that she was looking at when she made the proclamation.

Pretty awesome!


One more Lubee story... The other night she came walking into her room with her eyes closed saying "Dear God, please move the clouds so that I can see the moon and the stars. Amen." She opened her eyes and said, "I prayed to God, mama!"

LOVE that kid!

Elijah at 3 Weeks

Elijah will be 3 weeks old tomorrow. In some ways, the time has flown by and in other ways it seems like a lifetime ago that we were at the hospital. We are enjoying his sweet little nature. He is such a chill and happy baby. He is sleeping in his crib now and has been for the last week. He sleeps from one feeding to the next without having to be walked or rocked. What a relief and blessing! He, in just the last few days, has really started to coo at us and do his little tiny baby smiles. I know the smiles aren't social smiles yet but they are still so cute.

I think that Lucia is adjusting fairly well. She seems to be testing the boundaries a bit but has been quite sweet with Elijah. Yesterday we were driving in the car after dark and she said "look brother, the moon!". She also asks to give him hugs and kisses before bed just like she does with us. On a funny note, she asked me yesterday "mommy, do babies eat boobs?". That was awesome. Nearly peep my pants laughing at that!

That's all for now. Off to play with my baby!

Family Pictures

It was a beautiful fall day in Seattle, so we thought that we would try to take a few free moments to get a few pictures of Lucia and Elijah. Pat, of course, did the photo work. Hopefully we will get some pictures soon of all four of us!

Maybe a bit crazy to let your 2 year old hold a newborn, but she was a natural...sort of...and did a great job. Elijah survived it. :)
Big sister love. She asked tonight to give him a hug and a kiss before bed! Such a sweetie!
My sweet little man. I could kiss his face off all day long!

Random Kiddie Cuteness

I could hold and snuggle these two kiddos all day every day and be so happy. I am the luckiest mama ever to have been blessed with such sweet babies. I love them to pieces. Though the best, I must say, is seeing all of my people together...Pat, Lucia, and Elijah snuggled up. That is the height of happiness.

Here are some pictures from our lovely moments...

Visit with Grandma Jana

My mom traveled up here to spend the first 10 days or so with us and the new little guy. It was so nice to have her here for so many reasons. She was a great comfort when we found out about MCAD and made it totally seamless for Lucia. She let us have our space to process and took Lucia so that she didn't need to see our initial "processing". She was very encouraging. On top of that component, she spent at least half of each night with Elijah and held him while he slept. It was so sweet to know that she was getting that time with him...and that Pat and I were getting more time asleep! :) She did tons of cooking, cleaning, and Lucia entertaining. I don't know what we would have done without her!

Here are some pictures from her visit.



Lucia and grandma at the museum being fire fighters.
TWO grandbabies now!!!