Update

Hi! How are you all? Did you know that doubling the amount of children you have makes you more than doubly busy? i didn't know that till recently:)

Anyway, you may be asking, what's going on? Well, here we go.

Cadence got baptized at the end of October. She was 17 days old at the time, which is a bit early, but the pastor we wanted was unavailable in November, and the next time she was available was the end of December. So we had an early baptism. i'm pretty sure it still counted though. :) It was beautiful, and Cadence wore a dress that several other girls in Kris' family have worn, going back 3 generations. She was absolutely angelic in it, and thankfully slept through the baptism. She didn't make a peep! i don't have any pictures from it yet, because i didn't take any pictures. i'll have to ask family members to burn me a cd, and then i'll put them on here. She really was the sweetest thing.

David is talking a tiny bit more. He now says mama, dada, up, zap "zzaaa!", byebye, hi "eye", ball "ba", and baseball "baba". He also calls cellphones "bye", which i think is adorable. We keep trying to teach him they are phones, but he sees a phone, points to it, and says "bye!"

On that note, he uses all things as a phone. He particularly enjoys two people talking on whatever toy happens to be lying around. If one of us is unable to talk on the phone with him, he grabs one, starts jabbering, and walks around the house, looks out the window, etc. Just like i do when i'm on the phone.

On Thanksgiving morning, i heard him playing with his toys in his bedroom. i hadn't gotten him up for the day yet. So, yes, he learned to climb out of his crib. We got a toddler bed for him last summer, and we need to replace a bolt on it, then it's time for him to be in his Big Boy Bed. He slept on a twin bed at my parent's house the other day just like normal, so i think he'll be ok without his crib. It just came as a surprise to me: i definitely did not have the capacity to deal with that on Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving was awesome! Kris spent a week getting the basement ready. We have two bedrooms down there (we use them as a music room and office) that were bright purple and schoolbus yellow, due to the kids living here before we moved in. Now one of them is no longer yellow, but a beautiful calm gray, with white trim instead of the hideous 70's dark brown. That music room has Kris' drums finally all set up as well, and it's a very relaxing and inspiring room for us to play our instruments in.

We have a closet under our basement stairs that backs up to our laundry room. There were no walls between them, only the washer and dryer and the beams, so Kris found used drywall and made a wall. He painted the closet, installed a light in it, and reorganized all of it, and threw out a bunch of stuff the previous owners had left. We still have 2 weeks worth of trash to throw out in our garage, but our closet is much more neat and has a ton of storage space!

But you know how whenever you make major changes in your house, it ends up being a lot of unexpected trips to the hardware store and a lot more time than you anticipate? The night before Thanksigiving, i got 3 hours of sleep, and Kris didn't even go to bed. Totally worth it, though.

We smoked a huge turkey and made a smaller one the regular way. Our smoked turkey was AWESOME. We call it "Turbacon", and it was my idea:) Kris put sliced apples and garlic and wine in the skin. He then wrapped and stuffed the whole thing with bacon. (i don't like to eat bacon, but love the flavor it adds to things.) We used hickory chips soaked in apple cider and more wine. It was incredible.

i made these parmesan and mozzarella mashed potatoes, and they were insanely good. Definitely no gravy required. i also made white wine sangria which turned out great. Sangria goes down very easily, which made some of my guests have a better time than normal:) i think there were 5? people who were drinking it throughout the day, and there were 3 liters of wine and a half bottle of brandy in the batch. So, needless to say, good fun was had by all. There were 13 people total at Thanksgiving and it was a smashing success.

Cadence is going to play Baby Jesus at my church's Christmas pageant! i'm SO excited. i think she might be the cutest Jesus since...well, you know!

She has started to smile a bit more, and sometimes i swear she laughs. She also cries a lot more. Not enough to where i'd say she's sick, or has acid reflux or anything, but for like the first 6 weeks of her life she never really cried ever, and i guess i got spoiled. So she cries more, and HATES the car, and cries all throughout many drives i take. David isn't a huge fan of the car, but he does enjoy taking his cues from his sister. i gotta tell ya: when you've got two kids crying at the same time, it's amazing how your mind remembers that bottle of rum in your freezer. Her neck is getting stronger, too. Pretty soon she'll hold it up by herself, which will make her a lot easier to carry around.

She still fits in her newborn clothes, which makes me really happy. David hardly ever fit in his: i think they fit him about 2 weeks or so. She is 7.5 weeks now. She did go up a diaper size though. Those newborn diapers were not effective any more.

She slept through the night twice last week, which was just a tease. She tends to sleep from about 11 PM-4:30 AM now, and then she'll usually sleep again till 8 or so. Except today, where she just hates everyone and everything, especially sleep.

Speaking of that, she's crying (shocker) so i'll go be a good mommy and attend to her.