We made it home last night from a very fun Christmas in Chicago. We always enjoy our time there, and having Andy's parents with us too was even better. We talked on the way home about how we didn't even leave the house much, but we barely noticed. We played games, laughed at the kids, ate VERY well, and enjoyed each other's company. Also, having to get 8 adults and 3 kids ready for church on Sunday morning wasn't nearly as difficult as I imagined it might be!

We took some family pictures after church that turned out really well. Ours is featured here, but you can see the rest at our Google Web Albums page.

Noelle did well in the car both ways, and even without Ella this time. She actually ended up sleeping more on this trip, which we were grateful for! She really is a great kid, and we can't believe she also turned ONE over the holiday! We are the parents of a one year old. Now if she'd only start sleeping like the big girl she is!

We're leaving tomorrow afternoon to spend Christmas in Chicago with my family. Andy's parents are coming to Chicago as well, so we'll have the whole gang together just like last year. Being Noelle's first birthday, they really wanted to be with her this year. They must have, to give up Florida weather for a chilly Chicagoland Christmas.

This will be our first road trip with Noelle, so we're interested in seeing how she does. We haven't had her in the car for more than an hour or so at a time up to this point, and tomorrow's trip is about 7.5 hours, not including stops. We are traveling with our friends Brad and Heather, though, and Noelle's best friend Ella. We're going to have the girls ride in the same car together, which I think will help them both! The times they've been in the car together before have been fun.

Christmas in Illinois consists of the morning at my parents' house, the afternoon at my Grandma Wadsworth's house, and the evening at Grandpa Bartling's house. It's a very busy day, lots of family all packed in to one Super Holiday. That's the way it has always been, and I always enjoy it.

It's been hard for me having to split up holidays between my family and Andy's since we got married, and even moreso now that we have Noelle. Living a good distance from both sets of parents makes it even more difficult. Holidays are a built in excuse to spend time with family, and having to sacrifice one to see another is just a tough part of it all. Having children of our own, we would also really enjoy celebrating at home once in a while to be able to incorporate some of our own traditions. We didn't even pull out a single Christmas decoration this year because it just felt like a waste (and Noelle would have been all up in the tree anyway), and that's kind of sad to me.

I guess I should feel very blessed that I even WANT to spend time with both sides of our family on holidays. I know lots of people dread this time of year because of family issues, and if my biggest holiday complaint is that I don't get to see ENOUGH family, I'm very fortunate.

I hope that you all have a meaningful and blessed Christmas, and that you spend it doing what you love, and with people that you love.

So I feel I should make some sort of speech. I mean seriously...it's quite an honor to be listed alongside the likes of 1969's Middle Class, 1982's The Computer or even 1999's Jeff Bezos (Amazon.com's founder and CEO). I don't really have anything prepared but I suppose I should first thank the people who created the personal computer, the keyboard, the programmer who created my favorite text editor and of course, Jeremy Allaire, the man who invented Coldfusion. Without all of you, none of this would have been possible.

Okay...if you're confused at this point, maybe you should read the article before you go any further. Lest you think I'm having delusions of grandeur Time magazine has basically named ALL of us the "Person of the Year". That's right...you over there in Kansas, all of you up in Illinois and Indiana and of course those of you down in Florida. Even if I didn't mention you, you're STILL Person of the Year...Time says so. You didn't read the article did you? Go ahead...the rest of us will wait for you to accept your award because you've been so gracious while we fumbled in our pockets and rambled on and on even while the stage manager kept giving us the sign to wrap it up. We're so proud of ourselves... Check the link

I think this plan is going to be the one, as long as we stay consistent about it. It's from the book "Good Night, Sleep Tight" by Kim West, and the method is called "the Sleep Lady Shuffle." Basically you put a chair next to the crib, put the baby down and sit next to them until they fall asleep. You can pat them or talk to them, but can't pick them up. Every few days, you move the chair farther away from the crib until you're sitting in the hallway just comforting them verbally if they need it.

So last night, I put Noelle in the crib at 7:00. She stood up crying for 30 minutes while I sat next to her trying to comfort her, and also tried to keep her from biting the crib rail. That was fun - I put my hand where her mouth was headed and kept moving it, and she kept pacing back and forth trying to find a spot to bite. That made her pretty mad. So after 30 minutes where she wouldn't sit down, I stood up and sat her down. She was more upset for a while, but stayed sitting, then after about 15 minutes started falling asleep sitting up. I was afraid she'd fall asleep and hit her head on the crib, so I intervened and helped her lay down. 15 minutes later, she was asleep and I was able to leave the room.

She slept from 8:00 - 2:50 (longest in a while!) then Andy went in to sit back in the chair, and she barely even cried and he was out of there within 30 minutes. She slept from 3:20 - 6:45. And I didn't have to nurse her! I was very proud of her.

This morning, I put her down for a nap at 8:40, and she was asleep by 9:05, and almost an hour. I think up to this point, the plans we've tried we have either not both been 100% on board with, or they were a little too confusing to be consistent with. So while one night does not a habit make, I feel confident about this method working for us. Yay!

It's 7:30pm and Noelle is currently in her room crying, and has been for the last 30 minutes or so. The reason? We're out of options and at our wit's end. Those of you that are close to us know that Noelle has never been a good sleeper (surprising when realize just how much Jaime loves to sleep). Since she's been a baby we've fought with her time and time and time again to get her to sleep.

For some other kids, this might not be that big of a deal as you could just throw a pacifier in their mouths, or give them their favorite blanket/toy or even give them a bottle to help them fall asleep. The problem is that Noelle has none of these.
1) She's never taken a bottle
2) She has no favorite toy or blanket despite our best efforts
3) She spits out a pacifier in seconds.

The only thing that really, truly comforts her is nursing, or rocking her to sleep. We take the blame since I'm sure we are at fault for some/all of this. But regardless, it's had a serious effect on our relationship with each other and with Noelle. It's never a good thing to want to bounce your baby off the wall when you've spent the last 20 minutes rocking her to sleep, putting her in her crib ever so gently, walking to the door to close it, only to have her break into an ear-piercing scream the minute your body crosses the threshold from her room.

So, that brings us back to Noelle crying. We've tried so many, many methods to get her to sleep that I can't even remember how many there were. We originally didn't want to let her cry it out. Maybe we're softies, maybe we didn't want her to think that she was alone, maybe we didn't think that was a responsible method, or maybe even we just didn't want to put up with her crying for that long.

We're in this now though. We've decided that we absolutely cannot allow it to continue as Noelle is almost a year old. Jaime says she hasn't gotten a full night's sleep since sometime during her pregnancy. I'm lucky enough that for the first 5 or 6 months of Noelle's life, I was able to sleep through most of her crying, unless Jaime specifically woke me up. No more...

We're trying a method that is supposed to work on 95% of babies within 2 weeks of it's inception. You put them to bed as normal (hopefully asleep) and you sit in a chair next to the crib until they DO go to sleep. That's it...you can sooth them verbally or even physically, but you don't take them out of the crib. Tonight's our first night, and the first three nights are supposed to be the worst. So that baby you thought you heard crying on the wind, might just be Noelle.

So, if you pray, then when you pray, pray for us that Noelle would start sleeping. We desperately need sleep.

PS...it's now 50 minutes after Jaime and Noelle went into her room and she's finally stopped crying. I don't know if she's asleep because if I stuck my head in there and she woke up, Jaime would have my HIDE. I think I'll just want to find out.

Last night I went with a group of women from our church to a place called Super Suppers. It is one of those places where you can go and prepare a bunch of meals at one time to take home and freeze. They do all the prep work, and all you have to do is go around to the different stations and follow the recipe for each meal. They even take away your dirty dishes, usually before you can even set them down! I had a great time, and now we have 12 meals in our freezer that I can just thaw and eat. And, it was nice to have time to myself that wasn't at a doctor's office.

You should check to see if they have a location in your area! It really was fun, and they had great snacks there for us, too. Also, the party host there gets free meals based on how many people attend, and in this case our hostess donated all of those meals to our church's freezer meals ministry. She got 16 free meals that we can now give to families in need.

Andy was jealous that I got to go instead of him, but he changed his mind when I said that all the food was chopped and separated and ready to go. That's one of his favorite parts. Maybe he should get a job there! More likely, though, we talked last night about how this was a good idea for us to do ourselves once a month or so. He can do the prep work, and I'll put all the meals together. Works for me!

Over the past year or so, clever webizens have pulled recordings of their favorite movies and re-edited them into something they were never intended to be. For example, Mary Poppins as a horror movie:

Or Titanic as a suspenseful thriller:

Or even better, The Shining as a romantic comedy:

This week I've been taking care of Noelle's friend Ella a little bit each day, and they've been having a ball. They play together unlike any other 1 year olds (well, almost in Noelle's case) I've seen. For one, they actually play together a lot of the time. They share, they make each other laugh, they chase each other around the house. Heather and I know we've read that most babies their age are more into parallel play, but these girls just really enjoy being together.

This morning I put them both in the pack and play for a few minutes while I dried my hair. They both stood up and held on to the railing, bouncing up and down and laughing hysterically, all the while looking at the other to see their reaction. Crack me up.

Well, it's been over a week since Thanksgiving but I'm just now getting around to telling you all about it. Jaime and I have traveled quite a bit over the last few months and so we didn't really feel like traveling for Thanksgiving. Since we were planning on staying in Nashville anyway, our friends Jason and Shannon Truss invited us over for dinner.

It was a simple thing, but we had a great time. Shannon suggested that we do a sort of progressive dinner; we ate lunch over at their house, then walked to our house for dessert (yum). We had a fairly traditional meal: turkey with the most amazing gravy, mashed potatos (Sauteed Garlic and Goat Cheese by me thank you very much), green beans, rolls, and more.

Kids were running all over the place, the meal was superb and we just enjoyed the company of good friends. After dinner we walked over to our house because the weather was simply smashing. We ate Pumpkin Cheesecake and Apple/Pear crumble and just relaxed.

The end.