This has been one long year!

I started off this year with the intent on keeping up with my blog, well since my post is 10 months late....but, now that I have my IPad, I can update as I go! So let's see, January to May we were busy setting our house up and getting ready for Erika to arrive. We had a few trips out to PA, which is always nice. Sydney loved Easter this year, especially the sugar cookies and marshmallow sucker the bunny left her. Egg coloring was lost on her this year.
I thought that Erika was going to make her appearance as early as Syd did (a week early), but my due date came and she was still tucked in for safe keeping. I didn't have to wait for too long though, for she arrived 2 days after the due date. And if I thought my delivery was quick with Sydney, Erika was much faster and easier. I know a lot of mothers would like to smack me for that comment. Let me just say, I didn't go without pain. I woke up at 1:00 in the morning with contractions and called Dad to come on up. He obviously know my personally very well, when in the middle of the night he answers and says its time? And i say, "no, i told you i would call you at random times to keep you on your toes", and he says " we are on our way". As i was waiting for Rich to get ready my water broke. When I told Rich, he took the quickest shower I have ever seen (4 minutes). We were getting things ready and was hoping to keep Sydney asleep, when we forgot about our alarm when he opened the door put things in the car. Well, needless to say Sydney woke up and since my contractions were so bad we threw Sydney in the car, called Dad and had them meet us at the hospital. We got to the hospital at 2:30am and Erika arrived just before 6am. We stayed 1 day in the hospital and went home and everything was ideal!

So much for catching up!

It has been 5 months since I last posted! A lot has happened since then but due to an issue between our camera and laptop I haven't had access to the pics off the camera. Now that I downloaded an app for my phone that has a decent camera, maybe I can fix that.

December events!

Our December unfortunately has been a month of illness in our house. We started the month off with a series of 24hr stomach flus, after it went through all of us, we started a round of colds which seems to keep persisting through the month. We were very excited to go to a birthday party that we had to cancel because of the colds.
The following weekend we had a work Christmas party planned that we were excited about, Santa would even be there. We had to cancel that because the roads were too bad to drive on due to weather. We were beginning to think that we weren't going to ever go anywhere again. We did however, get our christmas tree this weekend, which is always fun. Sydney was involved with the decision.

But, it was all up to Rich to cut it down.

The tree cutting experience was quite an effort for Sydney.

After her long nap she did have enough energy to help us put the tree up.

Sydney went to bed and we finished decorating, the next day she had to inspect the tree.

Sydney tried on her new snowpants and loved them so much that she didn't want to take them off.

The weekend before Christmas was another weekend filled with celebrations. Rich and I enjoyed the company of all our friends at Dave and May Russell's holiday party (where I finally got to give Maya her birthday gift from the party we missed), thanks to Papa and Grandma for coming out to our house to watch Sydney for the evening. The following day, we were lucky enough to host the Borrusch cousins christmas. The house was full of children and we got to cook for all our family. It was very exciting to break our new house in like that. All the kids seemed to love their gifts and we are very grateful to have the family that we do.

Thanksgiving

We spent Thanksgiving at Dad and Barb's. Sydney had a lot of fun with cousins, Aunts, Uncles and Grandparents. We realized that Sydney does not like to share her Mommy with her cousin Logan, lets see how she will like it with her little sister.

Isn't Logan a cutie?

We had Thanksgiving at her other Grandparent's house the next day. Sydney and Lanie had a lot of fun playing with each other. Lanie is a great older cousin, she is very patient with Sydney and tries not to get upset about Sydney not understanding sharing yet.

We didn't make it through Thanksgiving without a mishap. Sydney had her first trip to the ER. She was having so much fun playing at Grandma and Papa's that she tripped and hit her head on a wooden couch leg and had a very impression bump on her head. Mommy and Daddy paniced and took her straight to the ER. Luckily the ER wasn't busy and we were out of there within a few hours. The doctor told us to monitor it, make sure we can wake her up at least once in the middle of the night and hopefully it will be fine, I would like to add that a month has passed and she still has a small bump in the spot.
We had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend where we finished up our move and cleared out everything from our old house.

Our busy October!

We had a very busy October, dealing with moving, first trimester of pregnancy and a one year old is a challenge. Luckily we have a lot of family that helped out. Not to mention that Sydney helped Daddy with climbing the ladder.
Our new home!

We will miss our other home, we did a lot of work and had it the way that we liked it but it was just too far out for us. I almost cried from happiness when I made it to Sydney's daycare in less than 20 minutes the first day I drove to work from the new house.
We spent a very nice weekend with a few of our friends in Gatlinburg, TN. We had a lovely cabin through a company that we would recommend. It is out of town a little bit but has wonderful cabins with very nice views. http://www.cobblynob.com/. Sydney had some good bonding time with Aunt Micki. We also spent one of the days ziplining. I loved it, Rich did not, but he was a good sport and did it anyway.

Sydney loves playing with our phones and I have to say, even though we shouldn't, we let her because it is so darn cute. We just have to remember to hit the clear button every few minutes. We don't want a bill for a phone call around the world.

We spent Halloween out in West Hickory again, probably the last time in many years since it has fallen on a weekend for the last two years. We bought a couple of pumpkins to carve, Daddy did all the work.

She shared an apple with Daddy for the first time and she wouldn't give him anytime to take a bite of his own.



She trick or treated with her cousin Trevor and went to the community center afterwards. She didn't go up to any house on her own, still a little too shy for that. She had a lot of fun.

Labor Day, New York City and September.

It has been forever since I have posted, how quickly time goes by. Lets start with our Labor Day plans. We took the whole week off and spent our weekend with Rich's parents at West Hickory and drove from there and spent the week in New York City, how I love that city. We stayed in a very nice one bedroom apartment on the Upper West Side, http://www.homeaway.com/ is definately the only way to go. We actually didn't get many pictures there. We spent a day in Battery Park and Ellis Island, we did a lot of subwaying, which isn't the best with a stroller. We walked around the city and did some shopping. We spent a day in Central Park which is one of my favorite things to do there. And it was very nice to visit with one of my close high school friends that now lives out there and I haven't seen in a long time.

Here are pictures of our apartment.

We have been enjoying Sydney's curiosity and playfulness, she is getting to be more of a little girl than our baby.

We were so excited about the fall and Sydney enjoying the cider mills and Halloween, since last year she basically just laid in our arms.
She enjoyed her first trip to the cider mill and enjoying a donut with Grandpa, she didn't really love the gilmore car museum that we did before that. Everyone else did, the Gilmore Car Museum in Hickory Corners is very nice.

She even loved the pumpkin cup of cider that Grandma got for her.

She amazes us on how much she comprehends, like when she started putting my belt around her and trying to buckle it, which she actually accomplished on her own. She also thinks that she is already a teenager that has phone priviledges and homework.

Syd's First Birthday

She is 1 year old already!!!!
Sydney's birthday party was so much fun, thank you all for coming.
The weather was pleasant, Sydney was in a great mood and well rested, the food and cake turned out great and we were lucky to spend the day with people we love. Who could ask for anything more.

Uncle D/Papa along with the pear tree entertained the girls.

Sydney didn't tear into the cake, but she was persistant enough to get frosting all over her (even in her nose). She put a decent dent into the cake.

All the girls were more than happy to help Sydney out with her gifts.

She ended her day, exhausted and fell to sleep in under 10 minutes.

And now that she has turned 1, she starts her transition into the next room for the entire month and in September she will be officially in the Toddler room. We will miss Miss Parveen and Miss Christine very, very much! This picture marks her first day of Transition, she showed up to daycare with her brand new shoes and insisted that the cooler bag is her 'school bag'.