Big Announcement

Abby wore a shirt just like this to announce our 2nd pregnancy. We're having another baby!  

On Christmas day, I had it wrapped up and under the tree.  It was the last gift to be opened.  I had Abby open it and put it on to then show everyone.  It was a pretty great moment in time.  

Merry Christmas

I absolutely love this photo.  It is the quintessential photo of a toddler's love-hate relationship with Santa.  Really, Abby doesn't understand yet what Santa is all about, but it's the beginning.  

Fall Fun

We've had a busy fall season!  

My parents came in the beginning of October for dual purposes.  First to see Abby and watch her while Brent and I went away for the weekend.  We then had a small birthday party for Abby since they would not be at Abby's 'real' birthday party.  

While my parents were here and did some fall-related mandatory activities like visit a pumpkin patch and put your face through a billboard and have your photo taken.  We went on a Monday so there weren't any hay rides going and it was too early to pick a pumpkin in my opinion so we walked around the pumpkin patch and did the hay maze, corn "maze", played in the kid size play houses and saw some farm animals.  

The following weekend after my parents left, Abby had her official birthday party.  It was a gorgeous day for some outside activities for the kids.  We painted pumpkins and played with homemade koolaid playdoh.  

We carved pumpkins - a Halloween tradition, of course.  We have yet to master the timing of it all - not too early that the pumpkin rots before Halloween arrives and not doing it the night before because it's been a hectic week.  It ended up being Brent cleaning out the pumpkin with a few opportunities for Abby's help and then Brent taking care of the rest.  Hmph.  

We dressed up - three times!  The first time was for daycare - their halloween party was a few days before Halloween.  These are Abby's friends that she talks about all the time.  When we ask her "What did you do today?", she responds with, "I played with Alex and Hadley and Maggie.".  In that order.  Every time.  It's very cute.  After the daycare party, we went to Ikea to go trick-or-treating there with Alex.  Did you know Ikea does trick-or-treating?  I didn't either.  

Abby, (Elmo) Alex (cupcake) and Hadley (Minnie Mouse)

Hadley, Abby and Maggie

Second time was for Halloween night and unfortunately it was raining (like it was the previous year!).  We went over to our friends' house and had the kids do a quick trick-or-treating to 5 houses before we called it quits.  Abby dressed up a bumblebee this night.  

The third time wasn't for any festivities.  Halloween had passed, but I still needed to get an obligatory picture of Abby in the Mittelkamp clown costume.  

We raked leaves  - and then jumped and played in them!  Abby had a blast jumping in and rolling around in the leaves.  

Abby-Doo turns 2!

On October 12th, Abigail Jean celebrated her two year anniversary from when she was born.  I can't believe two years has passed by already!  

Abby putting up 2 fingers (pay no attention to my bedhead! Or hers for that matter!

And now we're dressed and can take a decent picture!  

I'm trying to upload a video of Abby singing "Happy Birthday", but I'm having difficulties.  Picture a child in her pajamas, very much like the child in the first picture, and then picture her singing "Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday dear everybody, happy birthday to me".  

Update:  It's been almost 2 months since her birthday and she's still singing "Happy Birthday" to various people/stuffed animals.  She'll break out into song at any time.  

Deluxe Dux

This summer my Dad's side of the family had a week long family reunion.  It has been WAY too long since the whole family got together.  I think the last time was nearly 5 years ago at my wedding.  But I'm not counthing that because even though we were all present and I have pictures to prove it, I didn't get to hang out with them a lot (I was busy getting married!).  Plus we've added a new family member (Abby) to the family, so it was time for a reunion.

We all traveled to Duxbury, Massachusetts. Which, we found out/realized afterwards that the Davis roots settled in Duxbury after coming over on the Mayflower ship.  How cool is that?  I have paperwork to prove it too!  
But back to the reunion...

Firstly, Abby is proving to be an excellent traveler.  So far she has flown 6 times (3 round trip flights) and she has slept the last 3 of them.  LOVE.  I'll take a sleeping toddler on a plane any day.  Despite my cramped leg, foot, butt, arm, I loved having her sleep on my lap.  At one point, I had to go to the bathroom badly and she transferred to Brent (and then I climbed over them to get out) without even waking.  Fantastic!  

We met up with everyone and moved into our house.  All the kids (Carver (10), Jacques (8), Rowan (7) and Alex (5) all played fabulously together.  It was fun watching them all.  Rowan had a motherly tendency towards Abby and Abby ate it up.  Every morning Abby would wake up asking for Rowan "Where's Rowan", she'd ask.  But it'd be more "where rowant" since Abby likes to put /t/ on the end of words that end in /n/.  (Don't worry the Mom in me is wigged out, but the SLP in me knows that it's completely normal).  

We did all sorts of fun activities...

• We traveled via ferry into Boston to go to the Aquarium and ride the Duck Tour.  
• We walked to the Miles Standish monument and climbed the tower to view out over Duxbury.  
• We had a beach day - the whole family lounged on the beach and read, made sand castles, collected shells, and played in the cold water.  
• We had a rainy day one day - so it was a pretty uneventful quiet day.  Sometimes those are good days!
• We had a pool day - we all trekked over to Anne and Mark's house for a full day at the pool.  We stayed there at night for a cookout and a fireside chat.  
• We played silly Minute to Win It games - it was a hit with the kids!  
• We ate lobsters for dinner one night - delish!
• Even with our large group of 18, we managed to eat out all together a few times, rather successfully if you don't mind me saying...

My Uncle Grier compiled everyone's photos from the whole trip and picked out the best to make a great YouTube video - you can watch it here.  And you can watch the second half of the photo show here