Sic Em Santa....

Noah celebrated his first Christmas in Iowa but was of course decked out in green and gold. My mom bought Noah this little outfit shortly after she found out I was pregnant. I was so excited for him to wear it this Christmas season. It says things like "Deck the halls with green and gold," and "Have a Holly Jolly Texas Christmas, Y'all." The best thing it says though is, "Sic Em Santa."

Merry Christmas from the Weems Family

Best. Gift. Ever.

1st Family Christmas...

This year we celebrated our first Christmas as a family. It was so fun to watch Noah open his presents. His joy at tearing the paper and waving it around was hilarious.

Our gift to Noah was the Fisher Price Little People Nativity. I'm so excited about him having a nativity to play with next Christmas as he learns the Christmas story. I really want Christmas to be about Jesus at our house so I've been thinking a lot about traditions and what we show as important by our celebrations. Our plan for next year is to tell the Christmas story throughout Advent by using his nativity figures.
We're still trying to figure out what other types of Christmas traditions we want to establish. I would love to hear what your family is doing to focus your children on Jesus during the holidays.

Christmas in Texas....

We started our Christmas festivitie with a quiet celebration at home--just Josh, Noah and me. Then we join my parents at my sister's house to celebrate as an entire family. We tried to get some pictures of my parents with their grandkids.


It is a little difficult trying to get a 6 month old and a 16 month old to both look at the camera at the same time. I think my sister and I took 50 pictures of this pose between the two of us.....this is the closest we got to getting a decent pic!



See how much easier it is to catch just one baby looking at the camera. This only took one shot.



Ava is at such a fun age right now. She's talking all the time (we can even understand some of the words). She loved Christmas. She liked tearing the paper. We got her two books--Little Hoot and Little Pea. Plus some bath crayons and tablets to turn the bath water different colors. She loved the crayons. Mark told her, "Ava, these are for the bathtub." She immediately stood up, picked up her crayons and went to stand by the bathroom door. She seemed a little confused that we didn't give her a bath right away but insisted she open more presents.

She enjoyed helping other people open their presents too. Here she is modeling my sister's scarf.

She also helped unwrap a purse. She threw it over her shoulder and said "bye bye" repeatedly while waving and walking around the room.

Ava got Elmo Live. She loved it although she doesn't look totally thrilled in this picture.

After all the presents we ate lasagna. Yum!

Then it was time for the little ones to get on jammies and pose under the tree. Sweet cousins!

Santa....

We took Noah to see Santa and he loved it!! He sat on Santa's lap like a champ. After the "official" picture was snapped Santa turned Noah around and talked to him for a few minutes. Noah absolutely fell in love with Santa's beard and gave it quite a few yanks.

The Twins Are Here....

We finally made it back over to Fort Worth for a visit. We were so excited to stop by the house of old friends and meet their new twins, Zara and Austin, who were only a week old. It was wonderful to catch up and to snuggle with such itty bitty babies. Nick and Traci led our small group at our church in Fort Worth. They also walked alongside Josh and I through our struggle with infertility and the road to IVF. It definitely made the journey a little easier when you have friends to share in the heartache, the joy and to discuss injection techniques. Their prayers for us made our journey more bareable and we were happy to return the favor. We can't wait to see what the Lord has planned for this new family of four.

Going to the chapel....

...well not quite yet. But Jaimie is getting married in February.

We are so excited for her and Steve as they begin their life together as a married couple. Meredith, Nicole, Hailey, Kristi and I hosted a shower for Jaimie in Dallas. It was so fun to get to hang out with friends and catch up on what everyone has been up to. The food was delicious (although we had way too much and were eating it for days) and Hailey's house looked great all decorated for Christmas.

Jaimie got lots of gifts to help her and Steve set up "Casa de Moss." I had my camera but was too busy chatting to snap many photos but here is one of the hostesses with the Bride-To-Be.

Jump Around....

We finally got around the hanging up Noah's Jumperoo thing. He adores it. I think it has surpassed the exersaucer in the rankings of favorite thing to do. It is also exhausting though and play time is usually followed by a nice nap.

Veggies anyone??

We continue our trek through various stage 1 foods. Somedays Noah seems to really enjoy the veggies and other days wants nothing to do with them. Whether they are good or bad though lots of food always winds up on his face. These photos are from the last attempt at eating with clothes on. Now we just strip down to the diaper which has cut down on lots of stain removal time.

6 months old....

We managed to schedule our Christmas photo shoot on December 6th. Noah was exactly 6 months old. I really can't believe he's already 6 months old although I can't remember what our days were like without him either. He's growing like crazy and I've had to put so many clothes away already.

We met Emily at a park and she snapped some great shots of our little man. I love having our pictures made by Emily since she is my friend from college and I've known her husband/assistant since middle school. We just laugh and have a great time the entire shoot.

Noah's 6 month stats:

Weight 17 lbs 7 oz (50th percentile)

Length 27 3/4" (90th percentile)

Head 18 (90th percentile)

Noah has the best baby laugh and he's really started babbling this month. He constantly says "da da da da da." Josh would tell you that he is saying, "Dada." I remind Josh of this early in the morning when we hear Noah babbling in his crib by telling Josh, "He's calling you. You'd better go get him."

Cutest Little Pilgrim...

I may be a little biased but I think Noah might be the cutest little pilgrim ever. When we picked Noah up from school on Tuesday his teachers had made him this little hat. Everytime we put it on Noah he would smile so big and laugh so hard. He never tried to take it off eventhough he hasn't worn a hat since he was a week old.

We're so thankful for our little pilgrim!!

Rice cereal...

ell, we've started trying to eat rice cereal. Noah hated it at first but he's getting the hang of it. Some of the cereal actually winds up being swallowed....although most of it is spit up within the next 30 minutes or so. The picture above is the first time Noah sat in his booster seat.

Trying to grab the spoon....

This is something different!!

By the third bite Noah was definitely having second thoughts!

When can I have some more??

3 words....

SIC EM BEARS!!!!

Baylor 41 A&M 21

5 months....

Noah is 5 months old. I cannot believe it. His little personality is starting to develop and we are loving watching him learn new things.

He now rolling front to back and back to front. He immediately reaches for his bottle when he sees it. He laughs and smiles all the time. He loves to be tickled and bounced. Favorite things this month include the exersaucer and playing with/sucking on his own feet. He's also become really interested in Monty and the other kids at his school.

He's growing like crazy. I had to sort through his dresser and closet and put away so many little baby clothes. Most of his 3-6 month clothes already don't fit anymore. Josh put Noah is a sleeper the other night that used to swallow him. It was way too small so we were changing it out and of course it got stuck on his head. Noah just laughed and laughed.

Sic Em Bears!!!

We also took Noah to his first Baylor football game. We had great seats thanks to Noah's Uncle Mark. Mark is a Missouri fan so things got a little interesting since the Bears were actually competitive.

For Homecoming the football team came through the stands and ran out onto the field through the freshman who make up the Baylor line. It was really cool.

Noah did great at the game. He took a bottle. He took a nap and slept through all of halftime.

The fans got pretty noisy (for a Baylor game) and Noah got a little stressed at first but then seemed to enjoy it.

And although the Bears were behind when time ran out, we had fun and made some great memories with our future Bear.

SIC EM BEARS!!!!

Homecoming Parade...

I was so excited about Homecoming this year. I loved bringing Noah to Baylor, a place so special to us, for the first time.

And Noah decked out in his green and gold (and several outfits with bears on them) was ready to "catch that Baylor spirit."

I saw this quilt at Homecoming last year when I had just found out I was pregnant. I knew our baby had to have it and was so excited when I found one in a store in Garland. I'd been saving it so that our first time to use it was at Homecoming. Noah was all cuddled up in it as he watched the parade roll through campus.

And of course Homecoming is really about hanging out with old friends....

Noah's 1st Halloween

Noah's 1st Halloween wasn't exactly how I imagined but he's only 5 months old so I'm hoping he won't be scarred by the lack of festitivies.

Halloween and Baylor's Homecoming were the same weekend so we decided Noah would be a bear so he would have a cute and warm outfit to wear to bonfire on Friday night. I was thinking that surely it would be chilly on October 31st.

Noah wore his costume to school for the preschool's Fall Fest. They took all the kids trick or treating next door at the senior living center. He wore his costume around the house so I could take pictures but he didn't get to wear his costume to bonfire. We didn't even make it to bonfire because we got a late start leaving. I thought maybe he could wear to the parade the next morning but it was way too warm for his little costume.

Here he is at home. He was so excited to play with this orange jack o'lantern bag. I can only imagine how excited he would've been if he knew the stuff inside was candy.

He was such a cute bear though....

Until he got hot and had a total melt down...

I am really looking forward to next year's Halloween. Noah will be almost 17 months old so he'll be toddling around. Plus, our street goes ALL OUT for Halloween. Tons of yards were decorated...orange lights, inflatables and grave yards everywhere. One house built a huge haunted tent for kids to walk through and another had a Batman theme complete with Bat Cave to walk through to get to the door, a graveyard with headstones for every Batman villan and a huge Bat signal that projected into the night air. It was awesome and our street was crawling with kids Halloween night.

Have I mentioned....

Noah's totally in love with his exersaucer. Turning the wheels, trying to eat the sun, pressing the buttons and making music play the exersaucer is Noah's favorite thing right now. They have two at his preschool that are different from ours. I lifted him out of one the other day to take him home and he started fussing.

The real problem with the exersaucer though is that all the noises attract Monty's attention and the exersaucer puts Noah right on Monty's level. We've been worried about how Monty would react especially since he doesn't do well around small things. But the problems so far have been caused by Noah. Monty will get close and try to check things out and Noah will pull Monty's beard. This causes Monty to scream and run away....which then makes Noah cry.