Sabrina's Baptism

We finally had Sabrina Baptized on November 13th, 2011 at St. Charles Church in Greenville, Michigan. We had a hard time deciding on Godparents for our little girl as there are plenty of females on Herm's side but not a lot of males. Since we picked from my side for Emilia we wanted to pick from his side for Sabrina.

Here we are after the Baptism with Father Mike. Emilia didn't do so well during the baptism and was trying to find any excuse to leave. We are not sure what set her off but we managed to get through her crying and get sister baptized.

Here is Sabrina with her Godparents. We choose Herm's niece Elizabeth and Herm's childhood friend Chris Lauria. He also did us the pleasure of filling in at our wedding at the last minute when we had a groomsmen bail on us. It took us a while to decide who her Godparents were going to be but we are very satisfied with our choices and hope that Sabrina will be too when she gets bigger!

Little Miss Grabby got a hold of her cake as we were trying to take a picture of her with it during her party at Pizza Hut. It will be fun at her first birthday to see her with her cake if this was a preview :)

Sabrina recieved some wonderful presents in which we thank you all for giving them to her. This is her new lamb that says a bedtime prayer. She loves the softness of it!

Trick or Treat

Happy Halloween!!! Only a month late LOL! I keep saying that I am going to try to update the blog better but I just keep forgetting about it for some reason. Maybe because most of the people that read this are on facebook. Anyways I am going to try to do a couple of posts today and hopefully catch up with where we are in life at the moment.

Halloween went very well for us. We had pretty decent weather. No rain and it wasn't too cold. Emilia was Ariel for Halloween. Ariel is her favorite Disney Princess and since she had an Ariel birthday it was no surprise to us that she wanted an Ariel dress. The minnie ears came about because I was wearing my halloween pumpkin Mickey ears that I bought last year at Disney World so she thought she had to wear hers too. Emilia started off a little slow with trick or treating and refused to get out of the stroller. After a couple blocks she finally got into it. Then came the phrase of the night, "I gotta get more candy!" She would say this everytime we left a house. This was most definately our longest night of trick or treating so far. It was fun to see her get into halloween this year.

Sabrina on the other hand had a good time hanging out in her stroller. She went trick or treating for 30 minutes before Herm took her back to Me Jo's house. Sabrina went as a Baby Witch as Granny always calls Sabrina her Baby Witch. So we figured that would be the perfect costume this year. Sabrina held onto those 2 butterfinger candy bars almost the entire time she was out trick or treating. I think she liked the crinkling and bright yellow of the wrappers.

Overall it was a good Halloween and we are still eating candy a month later!

New Season, New Routine

Fall has arrived and with it starts a new routine for us. Since Emilia turned 3 over the summer has brought preschool and an extra-curricular activity. We are slowly getting use to the new routine. I haven't had to be somewhere in three years and I am definately not a morning person so it might take me a couple of more weeks to get into the swing of things.

So after Labor Day brought our first week of Dance Class courtesy of Me Jo. We found a living social deal that gave us two months for a really great price to test the waters. Well Emilia LOVES dance class so I think she is going to stick this out longer than 2 months. She cried the first week because she didn't want class to end. She now goes into the room by herself and doesn't need me to walk her back to the door. After a couple of weeks of dance class it was time to throw Preschool into the mix.

Her very first day of Preschool was scheduled for Tuesday September 20th but it was cancelled due to fog. She was pretty bummed out when she got up that morning and couldn't go to preschool. That cancellation also threw a glitch into our plans as Herm was leaving for Las Vegas on Wednesday and one parent needed to attend school. So Sabrina went to stay with Uncle Brad and Aunt Margaret so I could attend school with Emilia on thursday. Emilia had to show her very cool cupcake pants! She loves these pants :)

We can't start school without a princess backpack! Emilia did fairly well in school that first day. She asked to go home once because she couldn't go do what she wanted to do. But we stuck it out and made it through.

Here she is playing with the shape blocks.

We survived our first day of Preschool!

So far she loves preschool too. We haven't gotten pass the whining/crying when we have to leave school but hopefully that will pass in the next week or two. She goes to school two days a week for 1.5 hours so its a good start. Tomorrow starts her second full week of school and they are going to learn about fire safety. Hopefully she doesn't flip out too much on Thursday when the fire truck comes to her school. She doesn't like big trucks for some reason and hates loud noises ever since our neighbors started firing shot guns for target practice.

2 Months Old and Growing

I can't believe how fast time is flying with Sabrina! She is two months old now (well actually she is one day shy of 11 weeks as I am writing this but we'll stick with 2 months). She weighed 11 lbs 6 oz and 22 5/8 inches long at her two month check up last week. She is getting better at sleeping through the night. Some nights she will sleep 8 hours but not always.

Sabrina loves her swing unlike her sister :) Mema picked up this swing for $20 at a garage sale since I sold Emilia's swing. It is in great condition and retails for $140 so this was a great garage sale deal! Poor Sabrina gets the short end of the stick with all the used items and hand me down she gets. I was hoping to break the tradition that the second one doesn't get to do as much as the first and keep things the same between her and Emilia but I don't think its going to happen. Emilia traveled a lot during her first 3 years with 3 trips to Disney World, 1 trip to Cocoa Beach Florida, and a Carnival Cruise. Sabrina will be lucky if she gets 1 trip to Disney during her first three years of her life at the rate we are going. Even though there is a great promotion going on for January/February at Disney right now that we could take her at roughly the same age we took Emilia but Herm would have to play a lot of poker and win to come up with the money in time. I think its just the guilt getting to me that I can't do all the things with her when she is small that I did with Emilia. Not that I don't enjoy the everyday moments and make the most of those :)

We put Sabrina in bed with Emilia to be silly. Emilia loved having her in her bed and was a little mad that Sabrina couldn't sleep with her. She loves being a big sister and I think she would like Sabrina a little bigger so she could play with her more.

The next day Emilia decided to climb in Sabrina's crib with her since they laid together in her bed the night before. Emilia is definately a silly girl. She is adapting well to having Sabrina in our house. The only place where she struggles is when it comes to the strollers. She always wants to ride in the strollers instead of letting sister as they are her strollers.

Emilia likes to help out as much as she can - I have yet to have her actually feed Sabrina an entire bottle though. Emilia is excited to go to Preschool in the fall. We are doing well on the potty training business during the day. She is nowhere near being dry at naps or night time yet though but I think we are going to be trained enough for her to go to school. Unless when she gets there she gets too busy and forgets then we might be in trouble. Hopefully since its only 1.5 hours she will make it through and won't have to go to the potty while at school as she needs help getting on and off and sometime pulling up her pants but not always.

Wells that is about it in our little lives. Nothing too exciting happening in our house which isn't always a bad thing :)

Happy 4th of July!

Happy 4th of July Everybody! I hope everyone had as fun of a weekend as we did. Here is Miss Sabrina looking cute on her first 4th of July!

On Saturday we went to Millennium Park for the first time. Emilia had fun splashing on the Splash Pad and playing on the beach. Sabrina took a snooze for almost the entire 5 hours that we were there in her cozy baby tent.

On Sunday we went out to Long Lake for the annual 4th of July party that we attend. Emilia was our little fish again and spent the entire time in the water swimming and attempting to kayak. After the party we went to Brad and Margarets to relax by their fire pit and make Hobo pies. We are going to attempt to watch fireworks tonight from Alpine. Hopefully we will be far enough away that we don't hear the sound as Emilia does not like loud noises right now. Today was spent playing outside. Emilia tried out her new rollar skates and her Ariel slip and slide that she got for her birthday. Emilia has been working on potty training for the past week. She has been doing so well up until this afternoon when she pooped in her panties and swim suit because she didn't want to stop what she was doing to go inside. Other than that she has only had two accidents all week long so we are very proud of her. Hopefully she will catch on that its okay to stop what she is doing and that she isn't going to miss anything when she goes inside to go potty.

Its hard work being cute on the 4th of July!

Check out the cute crab on my butt!!!

Someone turned the BIG 3!!!!

Miss Emilia turned the Big 3 on June 10th. This year for her birthday we had a swimming party at the hotel in Greenville. It was an "Ariel Birthday" as Emilia kept calling it. Here she is dressed in her brand new Ariel swimming stuff. She even has Ariel arm floaties! We made a weekend out of her birthday. On her actual birthday we went to Chuck E Cheese where she got all her new Ariel swim stuff. Her party was on Saturday where we stayed the night at the hotel and went to Rockford that evening to watch fireworks for their Start of Summer Celebration.
She even got to ride the rollar coaster at the carnival.

Emilia loves swimming with her Daddy. She is our little fish. The only time she got out of the pool was to eat and open her birthday presents!

Last year Emilia hated the Happy Birthday song so we didn't sing it to her. She pretty much hates all singing which is the main reason she doesn't know her alphabet yet but we turned her onto the Happy Birthday song a couple months before her birthday using playdoh. She even told us it was time to sing and was waiting on us. She had the biggest smile on her face and was thrilled to blow out her candle on her Ariel cake.

Here is Emilia opening her presents with her friend Gracie from Mom's Club and her cousin Kiersten. This was a change for us this year too since the past two years she had to sit on Daddy's lap to open presents. Last year she didn't even make it through the whole pile before she wanted down. This year she just went to town on them that it was hard to keep up with who gave her what present. I think I figured it out to get the Thank you notes sent out. She loves all of her new presents espcially her Barbie "puter", her wagon and the bubbles. We haven't tried out the rollar skates yet and I think we are about out of bubble solution :)

Overall it was a wonderful day. Emilia had to have the piece of cake that had the Ariel figure on it. I think she picked at that piece of cake for 3 days and mainly just ate the frosting. I think she had a lot of fun this weekend and it was worth every penny. This was her most expensive birthday party yet but that was probably because it wasn't at our house and I bought her a lot of presents since sister was just born 3 weeks ago. Sabrina was a trooper through the whole party. She pretty much slept the whole time and had lots of people to hold her so Herm and I were able to enjoy the party!!

Welcome Home Sabrina!

Such precious little feet! We are adjusting to our new life as a family of four instead of a family of three. It is definately different trying to get two kids out the door instead of just one.

Here are some pictures of Sabrina Kennedy for the non facebook people in our lives. She is 4 days old in these pictures and currently has blue eyes. I hope that they stay that way :) She weighed 7 lbs 8 oz at the doctor that morning and is only 20.25 inches long now instead of the 21.5 inches they measured her at the hospital. Emilia shunk too when we went to the doctor but I don't think quite as much and Emilia had more a cone head than Sabrina since she was in the birth canal longer. So I can't explain why she is shorter.

I know babies aren't suppose to smile this early but I don't think you can deny this one. Sabrina is a pretty happy baby and I have gotten quite a few smiles out of her so I don't think they are facial expressions responding to gas.

Its not all about Sabrina so here's a picture of Miss Emilia. This was after we have given sister a sponge bath. Emilia wanted to take a bath in the blue tub but we convinced her to give Ariel a bath instead. Emilia is adjusting fairly well. There are times that she says that she is a baby but for the most part is doing good. She wanted to be swaddled the other night when I was trying to figure out how to swaddle again. I gave away my "moms on call" book which had the best instructions on how to swaddle and Emilia never broke free until she was bigger so I am back to trying to remember since I don't want to go buy the book for just a few pages.