Sunday Night at the Rikers

The night after Toast for Tykes, because the Stubens were in town, the Rikers had us all over so we could finally get the kids together.
all different ages but all the girls got along so well...

The highlight for the girls was putting on the High School Musical CD and dancing on the bed...You can see Marianna trying to hang with the older girls.

Check out Avery and Alex's moves!

When I came in to check on Marianna...here is how I found her...

The Wall Dancer...(I think this was my move in college...)

Now it was time to watch Cinderella. Tracey and I tried really hard to get a picture of all the girls on the couch and these were the best I could do...

Santa Brunch and the Big Fat Lip

The night before brunch with Santa, Marianna fell out of her Tripp Trapp chair because she wasn't strapped in. Lesson Learned!
We had another wonderful Santa Brunch at Birmingham Country Club and Marianna, as usual, had a ball with her cousins..

The professional picture that was taken was actually just Santa and Marianna and Marianna is sucking her thumb and playing with her hair...shocker. Well, at least she didn't freak out! We were very pleasantly surprised!!

In case you haven't noticed the fat lip yet...here are some closer shots...

It's not a hematoma....

Marianna in the Snow

We got a very nice surprise this morning...fresh snow!! It was not even 9 am before Marianna was begging to get out in the snow...we must have heard the word "snow" a few hundred times today!
Babysitter Laura came prepared and took Marianna out as soon as she got here!

Look Ma...no hands!!

She seemed to love both going down the hill and being carted around in the sled...

Flying Solo... (the thrillseeker..)

Cookie Monster

DJ took Marianna out this afternoon to run errands and when she got back, she was pretty overtired and very silly. If Marianna does a good job eating a meal, she is allowed one cookie. For some reason, she refuses to eat the cookie sitting down and runs around the house with it for 20 minutes before she even takes one bite. Also, this is also her favorite place to hide and um, well...poop. I doubt that she even does it anywhere else but behind this chair anymore. Also, I find if you ask her to "please go ____", she will run behind the chair and won't come out until she has. Here she is coming out from behind the chair, with her cookie, looking VERY HAPPY...wonder why??

Now it has just turned into a game of peek-a-boo...

No Rules Day

I have been under the weather this week and since I cancelled all of our activities to stay in a recoup, I decided to give Marianna one of her Christmas presents early....250 balls!
We had the pool from the summer and I had the great idea (after seeing her have fun at our friends house in their ball pit) to create one of our own.
At first, she was pretty casual about it...brought a stuffed animal in with her and was just chillin'...


Then, she decided to empty the ball pit all over the playroom floor! Oh fun...she loved kicking the balls everywhere and I decided that she was not into the "pit" idea..but whatever...

Marianna has been converting to a "big girl" cup lately and would rather drink out of that than a sippy...so we bought special cups today at Target for her. When we got back from our Target trip, she seemed to have a lot more fun with the ball pit and literally jumped right in!

Diving head first into the balls....

Pretending to take a nap (she would do this all the time when the pool was empty in the basement...) and waking up...

After a somersault into the pit...

Onto the next idea...


Ottoman diving! Thank goodness Daddy wasn't here and it was "No Rules Day" with Mommy...otherwise, this probably would have been banned..

More and more...

and more and more diving...

She was taking a little break..i thought she had fallen asleep because she had jumped so many times...

One last time before nap time..

Should be a long nap!