Merry Christmas!

Christmas with two toddlers=magic! We had an absolutely wonderful Christmas and I hope you did too! This year, Meredith really started to get what Christmas is about and whenever Mere is excited about something, it rubs off on Jack. We started off Christmas Eve at Grandma Rooney's house with dinner and presents. These pictures are from before we left to go have some of Uncle Mike's awesome low country boil and play with cousin Dylan:

And a family picture in front of the tree

When we got home, it was time to get cookies out for Santa and to spread the reindeer food that Meredith made for Santa's reindeer to eat while they waited for him on our deck. She picked the ingredients: rainbow goldfish crackers, oatmeal, pixie dust to help them fly (red glitter--Mia's poop should be interesting for the next few days, considering she ate a large amount of reindeer food) and snow (powdered sugar). The reindeer must've liked it, because everything was gone the next morning.

Christmas morning with Mimi, Papa and Sandy
Jack picked up the camera at one point, handed it to my mom and said, "Jack, Papa, Dada" and pointed for her to take their picture
Meredith asked Santa for one thing: a purple rabbit. He must've gotten her letter!

Jack and Daddy putting together his new workbench

One of Jack's many tractor presents. At last count, Jack had gotten five tractors (including a replica of my dad's lawnmower, which Jack conned him into taking him out for a ride on when we were at their house Christmas night), a fire engine, helicopter, front loader and multiple tractor books.

On Christmas night, we went to Mimi and Papa's to celebrate with our family. Mimi has those pictures--we'll post them soon. Between Mimi, Aunt Kathy and Grammy, Mere was in Hello Kitty heaven. The kids got to Skype with cousin Skyler and had lots of fun.

And then, the bottom fell out.

When we got home, we noticed that Jack wasn't quite himself and Mere had a terrible cough. Long story short, we spent the day after Christmas with two very sick kids. Somehow, they still managed to play with their new toys though! Their last Christmas presents were two matching prescriptions for Augmentin and a whole bunch of Tylenol. Today has been a better day, thank goodness.

We've been talking a lot about the new baby too. Last week, the last of Jack's "big boy" furniture came in, so he and Meredith took a nap in his new crib and he never left. It was a pretty seamless transition to his new room and he's never slept better. The best part of the room, in my opinion, is that we left the double bed there. Both kids will eventually transition to those as their beds, but for now, it makes it much easier for me to have a place to crash besides their rocking chairs! The bedding for the new baby's room just came, so now we start the decorating/washing baby clothes/getting ready transition. I'm 20 weeks and finally feeling her move around a lot. Mere was asking questions about the baby this morning. She wanted to know how big she's going to be when she's born and wanted to know if she can hold her. She said that's a big sister's job and since she's already a big sister, she's pretty sure she can handle it! We think her name is going to be Claire and the kids were pretty excited to open baby Claire's Christmas presents. She'll be here before we know it!