Life as we know it...: Turkey, Cereal and Snow...

This year our Thanksgiving was smaller than usual. Since my sister and her family moved to Spokane last spring, plus she JUST had a baby a few weeks ago, they could not be with us. And my older brother decided to be with his other terminally bachelor friend, Matt. Lots of beer and football. So it was just the four of us, my Mom, Dad, Grandma and brother Dave and his wife Kristen. I thought it was going to be kind of sad since we were missing a few, but it turned out to be a really relaxing day!

We started the day having "Nate the Great" chocolate chip pancakes. If you haven't heard of "Nate the Great", he is the main character in a book series Connor and I have started reading. Nate is a detective and he always has to have pancakes while solving a case. So in one of his books they printed the recipe he uses, we added the chocolate chips ourselves. They were GOOD!

We headed up to my Mom and Dad's at about 2pm and we had a really great time talking and eating. I think I ate for two, I figured I was making up for last Thanksgiving since I was just newly pregnant and was throwing up and had to sit near an open window since the smell of any meat made me sick! So I ate last year's meal plus this year's- I was FULL! But since we had fewer people, we could all fit at one table!

We also played Monopoly Jr and had a chance to catch up with each other. It was a wonderful day and I have SO much to be thankful for! My family, my friends, my dogs, a new job and safe and warm home with a kitchen full of food! Plus this year we finally have the family we have dreamed of, Punky is here and now our home is full!

Punky slept right through the good food!

Dave & Kristen

Connor and his favorite part of TG- PIE!

Billy, Connor and Gus playing Monopoly and Connor WON!

Here's Sam

and little Nola

Regan was four months old Friday and her checkup was the previous Wednesday. She is now 13 lbs 2 oz and 24 1/2 inches long, she is dead even, in the 50 percentile for both height and weight. She is reaching her milestones and talking up a storm! It is so great to hear, but a little bittersweet, since I now know that since Connor didn't do any of that, it should have been a MAJOR sign something was going on. I am reading an awesome book my good friend Amy, whose son also has ASD, recommended to me. It is so full of great information about ASD, ADHD, asthma & allergies. The doc who wrote the book is not at all anti-vaccine, but just believes they should be given on a safer schedule, so this time she only had to have one shot, which was much better!!

That evening we thought we'd try out a little cereal. Now I must explain that having two children 7 years apart is like having your first baby all over again- except that your stomach doesn't snap back quite the way it did the first time! ;-) All the rules have changed since starting solids with Connor. Now they really aren't supposed to be on a regular schedule of cereal until 5 months, but our doc told us we could just begin slowly with a little each day. I am using oatmeal, instead of the typical rice cereal, we ran into some problems with rice cereal with Connor and his sister seems to have a bit of that same "problem", so I am not even going to try rice cereal! So we gave her about 6-7 tiny spoonfuls, which she did pretty well with. She has the most expressive face I have ever seen on a baby! She furrows her brow when she is unsure of something or is just checking things out. A look that comes straight from my Dad, she is like his mini-me!

I gave her the cereal and she gave her "Jack face", but seemed to like it! But that only lasted a bit before she got frustrated because it was coming fast enough for her, so we switched back to her bottle. It was a good try for the first time!

Here comes the first bite!

Faster Mom, faster!

Hmm, not bad...

Ok I've had enough, give me the old standby.

See what a happy girl I am?

So it finally snowed here in Denver, we had gotten one morning earlier in November where we had some flurries and then it was melted by the time we left to take Connor to school. I cannot remember it EVER snowing this late or having such weird temps- it got up to almost 80 on one day this month! The week of Thanksgiving I saw a guy putting the top down on his car! Global warming much?

Here are some pretty shots during and the morning after.