Summerill Christmas!

In my attempt to catch up on the happenings here, I am posting some photos from our Summerill family Christmas. It was so great to have everyone in one city this year especially after being away from the family last Christmas. Craig and Renee were up from San Fran until Christmas morning and then Mom and Lindsey were in town through January 1st. We were able to get together for dinner a few times and then we celebrated Christmas on the 24th. It was so much fun to see Lucia interacting with all of her Aunts and Craigers. She was so excited to have them around that she acted like a total spaz whenever they were around. She wanted to show them everything and make sure that they were fully engaged in all of her games. After everyone left she said, "mommy, I love my aunts and uncles. They are sweet people". It was, of course, fun to show off the little man. He had grown so much since my mom had visited when he was first born and it was Lindsey, Craig, and Renee's first visit with the little man.

Here are way too many pictures of the fun

Our Smiley Baby

Eli has really been changing so fast over the past few weeks. He went from being fairly smiley to smiling all the time. He's even started a little baby laugh of sorts. He is such a great baby! When he is mad, he is definitely very mad and lets you know he is upset, but most of the time he is totally happy. We did just turn a corner though. He had been quite fussy and we just couldn't figure out what the problem was. We knew that he was thrown off by our hospital stay and couldn't really get back into a good eating/sleeping rhythm, so we forced him onto a very specific schedule and it has been great ever since. We still have lots of work to do on nap training to get him to sleep the full time without our intervention and to go down more easily, but each day seems to bring about a little victory.

Today I just put him down for his afternoon nap completely awake with no rocking, he cried for 5 minutes and then fell right to sleep. That was our little victory for today. I hope that sticking with a good schedule will continue to pay off. It has been so nice, if nothing else, to know when he should sleep rather than just letting him run the show. Anyway, all of that to say that he is even more happy these days. I think the poor kid just needed more consistent sleep especially given that we still have to wake him up twice during the night to feed him for MCAD reasons. Poor little guy won't get a full night a sleep for a LONG time...

I leave you with an awesome video and a picture of our little mama feeding Elijah

Murphy Family Christmas

As most of you reading this blog probably know, my sweet little niece, Allistaire, was diagnosed with Leukemia in early December. There is much that could be said on that subject, but I just wanted to provide some framework for why our Murphy Family Christmas happened to be at Children's Hospital this year. It was certainly not our normal all day event with a big Southern, heart attack on a plate breakfast or our extravagant dinner, but we were all together and that's what mattered. It was so uplifting to see all of the kiddos together, looking as lovely as ever, and enjoying interacting with each other. I absolutely love seeing our family grow. Having and raising kids can be draining but it is days like our Christmas celebration where you sit back and remember how blessed you are and how unfathomable it is that God could have blessed us so much. Our lives our overflowing with blessing and joy and it is because of the people that God has put in our lives- the family that we get to share this life with.

So, we packed into a little hospital room to share a take out dinner, open presents, and have some boxed wine and Christmas goodies. It was a sweet time. The best part, by far, was watching the kids. I know that we will look back on these days and smile. What a wonderful time...life as a young family.

My sweet Lucy girl...oh how I love that smiling face!
The tiny man's first Christmas!
A wonderful group of little people faces
The three girlies!
Papa being sweet with Allistaire

One of my most favorite people on the planet! I could not have asked for a better sister-in-law! I am so grateful to have her in my life!
We have a hard time having any fun...
Ultimate cuteness!
Oh dear, I could smoosh that face! The lady is obsessed with those pockets! I had to tell her to take her hands out of her pockets all day because she kept nearly tripping without the use of her arms.

Playing Catch Up...Again

I haven't posted anything to the blog in almost 2 months. There have been plenty of cutie kid experiences to post, but I haven't quite pulled it together long enough to write out the stories. I will try to post a number of things in quick order in an effort to capture some of the loveliness over the last 2 months and then keep up with the current happenings.

Here are a few family pictures going back to the first half of December. This would have been when Elijah was between 6 and 8 weeks old. He seems so small in these pictures! He had just started to smile around 5-6 weeks and was hamming it up for the camera big time.

We had a good laugh at Eli in this hat though he was not pleased with it one bit
Gotta have a sleeping baby picture in the mix
Early smiles
It amazes me how easily new babies sleep!
Me with my lovely hatted lady


Moving on to current day. I have a quick story from today. First of all, in just the last week, Lucy has taken to bringing an imaginary friend with her about everywhere we go and often has an imaginary friend that she plays with at home. It just happened all of the sudden. A few days ago, we went to the mall with Dora and all of the pirate pigs. I was kept completely up to date on their whereabouts and exactly what they were up to. Today, however, has been my favorite thus far. Lucy informed me that Uncle Sten was in the closet. I told her that was cool. She stuck her head in the closet and told Uncle Sten that "he should come out and join the party". Apparently he did because then she said that she needed to read Uncle Sten a book...which she did. Next Uncle Sten was invited to join us in the car though Lucy said he wanted to sit in the very back. She then talked to him as we drove asking him the name of the song that was playing. She also let me know that he was wearing a yellow straw hat and that he was singing along to the songs. That definitely made me crack up. The picture that she was painting in my mind of Uncle Sten sitting in the very back of our car, wearing a yellow straw hat, and singing along to the radio was pretty awesome. I'm sad to say that I don't have a real picture. :)

I leave you with two current pictures of my lovely kiddos!

This little man gives out the best smiles ever! He smiles constantly and is even starting to chuckle. It is great!
Fashionista Lu wearing mama's boots. I think they look great on her!

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.