Christmas

We had a very enjoyable week long celebration of Christmas here in the McCoy family.  For her first one, Kate made out pretty well.  We might have to tell her at some point that Christmas doesn't usually last over a week!  Kevin's parents made the trek up here to Syracuse to have our "McCoy" Christmas the weekend before Christmas.  We had had a foot of snow on the ground until the day before they arrived, when the temperature shot up to 52 degrees and it rained!  We still managed to have a great visit and had a very successful "first" Christmas for Kate.

Just hanging out once everyone arrived:

 

We went bowling, which seems to becoming a tradition with the McCoy family!

 

Yay for jeggings and Kate's first trip to the bowling alley!

 

Our beautiful tree, instead of me decorating by myself this year, we had a family evening and decorated together.  I am looking forward to starting that tradition with Kate.  All of our ornaments are mine from growing up, my parents still give us each a new ornament every year.  There's something so sentimental about Christmas ornaments, I can remember when and who most of mine are from.  I was thrilled that my mom, sister and Kevin's grandmother all gave Kate an ornament this year so she can start her own collection!

 Getting ready to unwrap presents

 The dogs got some gifts too!

 Doesn't really get the opening present thing

Yay! a mirror for the car

 I got a new lense for my camera .. trying it out on Kevin and Kristin:

 We made sure to get some family photos too.

Kevin worked on Christmas Eve, but Kate and I met him out at a bar for a couple of drinks and then we had leftovers from McCoy Christmas dinner back at our house with Murphy.

  

 Christmas day we had a quiet day at home, we actually spent a good chunk of time addressing our Christmas cards, packing and getting ready to drive home.  We had Christmas dinner with some of the ortho residents and families.

 

We actually decided to go ahead and take advantage of the fact that Kevin didn't have any inpatients and therefore didn't need to round on Thursday and Friday and drove home Christmas night.  We left around 9:30 after packing the car, and Kevin was a trooper and drove the whole way!  We didn't know whether it would be a disaster or not, but it worked out very well.  Kate slept the entire way, and it really saved us time to not have to stop and feed her.

Snuggling with Bushia the next morning!

 

We celebrated "Christmas Eve" and "Christmas morning" with my immediate family, Friday into Saturday.  We traditionally decorate our tree on Christmas Eve, and then play Cranium with my siblings.  I'm glad we could continue that tradition even though it wasn't really Christmas Eve.

Saturday, we had a very busy day .. opening stockings with my family, going to the rehearsal for Kylee and Andy's wedding, going to Yerkes Christmas with my dad's extended family and then Filliben Christmas with Kevin's extended family.

Yerkes Christmas:

Waiting for Aunt Tacie's hats

 Snuggling inside with Mimi

 Uncle Harley and Aunt Stephanie

New hats for the Trull siblings

Yerkes cousins

 Filliben Christmas:

Not even phased by the busy day .. Christmas is fun!

Big Bushia with her grandbabes

 Santa!

 Who is that guy?

 Meeting Margot!

 Finally worn out, found the best lap to fall asleep on.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is possibly my favorite Holiday.  I love everything fall, and while in Syracuse it is usually full on winter-y by the time Thanksgiving rolls around, there's still something about this time of year that I love.  It is a reminder to count your blessings, we get to spend time with family without the craziness of Christmas, and it is the beginning of the holiday season.  It is especially nice for us, living so far from home, to know that there is another holiday right around the corner.  This year, Kate, the dogs and I left Kevin in Syracuse and went home to PA by ourselves (!).  The trip actually went very well considering .. I have become a little bit immune to the baby crying in the car.  She was a little fussy for the first half of the trip down, but then we had smooth sailing from there.  I do miss the days of 10 minute stops at the rest stop .. now, by the time I let the dogs out, feed Kate, change her diaper, go to the bathroom and get gas 40 minutes has gone by!  Hopefully I will have adult company on most trips here on out.

We had an awesome visit with family and friends.  Kate even spent an entire night with Kevin's parents so I could participate in a friends' bachelorette party in Philadelphia.  All in all a very successful visit.

We had a busy day on Thanksgiving.  We had breakfast with my grandmother at Kendal with Aunt Becca.  Then we checked in on the Neubauers and Laura, Nate and baby Kauffman!

We had our Thanksgiving meal at my family's first, and it was a whopper.  Our original plan was to have a quiet meal with just my immediate family, which rapidly expanded to 24 people!  Needless to say, Kate got to meet/spend time with lots of cousins and family this trip.

My brother and sister-in-law's wedding gift from a large part of our family was a "Big Green Egg", which is basically a combo grill, smoker, outdoor ceramic oven.  We cooked our turkeys on the Egg this year and it was delicious.

Kate meeting her second cousin Waylon for the first time .. he is six weeks older than her, but they are about the same size!

 We had to put a ban on Baxter playing ball .. he was taking advantage of all the people around and was getting sore!

 

We went to Kevin's family for dessert 

We sure missed daddy (who attended an orphan T-giving with residents here in Syracuse), but we had a great visit home once again.

2 Months!

Time is flying by, Kate celebrated her 2 month mark on November 30.  We were home in PA for Thanksgiving, so we got to her pictures a few days late.  I can't believe how much she has changed in the past month.  She is a lot more alert, smiles all the time and has started babbling.  She will even babble in response to someone talking to her.  She is still very strong and has just this week started to push herself up to a standing position (with support), she likes to bounce herself on your lap.  She is still eating very well, about every 3-4 hours and is doing a great job taking a bottle when necessary.  She is also sleeping well, and went through a stretch of sleeping 6 hours at night, lately she has started waking up twice and she has not gone more than 4 hours.  We hope its a growth spurt!  Her hair is still getting longer, although I think it has thinned out a bit.  It is still dark, but now has some reddish streaks in it.  We can't tell what color her eyes will be, they are sometimes grey, sometimes blue and even green at times.  She has had a lot going on this month; she spent her first night with a babysitter when Kevin and I went to the Upstate Charity Gala.  She was fussy when we left, but everything went well and we will definitely be calling Michele again.  She had her first snow!  The week before Thanksgiving we had a few snow storms, and ended up with about 10 inches on the ground, I am sure she will see a lot more snow this winter.  She celebrated her first Thanksgiving!  Kate and I traveled to PA to be with family for the week, and sadly left daddy behind to work.  She spent her first night away from mommy, I had a bachelorette party to go to in Philadelphia and Kate got to spend the night with Kevin's parents.  She did very well taking the bottle for that long, and gave them a normal (for her) nights sleep.  She had her 2 month check up at the doctor today and is a big girl at 12lb, 9oz and 23.5 inches long and is in the 95% for both height and weight.  No wonder she is in 6 month clothes already!  The doctor even commented on how strong she was.  She got six shots, and other than some screaming did pretty well. This little girl surprises us every day with how fast she is growing and changing.  I look forward to the many changes next month will bring.

This drooling just started today

 

We still love our cloth diapers!

It was a lot more difficult to get non-blurry pictures this month!  She was kicking and wiggling a lot!

 Close up of how light her hair is getting

 Starting to get a little grumpy

 We still hate tummy time

 andddd we're done with the pictures mom, Baxter can't even cheer her up.