She's nobodys Puppet

Berkley Mae. Is a piece of work. We've been working on baby sign language since she was 6 months old. Most babies I know start signing back between 8-10 months. One of the first ones you usually start with is "more" which is signed by putting the tips of your fingers together, kind of a clapping motion, hopefully that makes sense.
Anyway, she has taken to closing her eyes and screaming when she is mad about something. It is really funny to us because its so fake. Whenever she's eating and I know she wants more I sign "more" to her. She will either completely ignore it or if she's in a bad mood she'll close her eyes and scream. Another method for getting them to learn it is helping them sign it. She used to let me help her. Now she just clenches her arms when I try to bring them together, or yesterday she threw herself back in the highchair and put her arms up on either side of her head. Priceless. All of this tells me that she totally understand what "more" is and how to do it, she is just not going to. She also refuses to wave. Such a stubborn little baby!
Here is a short video of her eye scrunch and scream. She was in a paticularly bad mood, so it is followed by a little crying. I've been trying to catch her fake cry forever though so here it is.

Three Christmases

Whew! We're trying to get back into normal life again. We've been going and going since last Tuesday. We headed to East Texas to visit Chris' side. We had fun celebrating with the huge family. It is nuts there, 2 rooms with Christmas trees and gifts, about 36 people and chaos passing out gifts. I managed to snap a few of the girls amidst all that. We never did manage to get any of them with Nanny and PawPaw. After all the fun we tossed the girls in the car in their jammies and headed back home for the 3 hour drive.

Here is B enjoying her first candy cane. She won't be enjoying another one anytime soon. She was so sticky!
The girls unwrapping gifts. B of course loved the wrapping just as much as the gifts
E and her cousins Madison and Madison enjoyed running around outside and making leaf piles to jump in. This picture isn't nearly as funny as it was in real life. Madison was swiping Elliott's stick. E has her teeth clenched and was trying so hard not to let go. Quite funny.

Christmas morning I think I was more excited than anybody! I had trouble going to sleep, then woke up around 5 and was watching soaps on the couch trying to go back to sleep. E came and got me, we snuggled in her bed and I fell back asleep until B woke up around 7, then we all sat around waiting for Miss E to roll out of bed. I never would have guessed that we'd be waiting on the resident 3 year old until 8 am to see what Santa brought! Next I tried to cook a big breakfast, but between Berkley being ready for a nap, Chris going into starvation mode and stomping around, E wanting to play games it was a little crazy! We decided from now on we'll take a break after Santa gifts for our breakfast. Live and learn :-)

The whole family Christmas morning.
The girls giving daddy their picture desk calender
Chris enjoyed shopping for the girls and getting what they would think were good gifts. E got me a ton of Hello Kitty stuff. She was so sweet, he brought it home to let her pick what to give me and she could keep the rest. She wanted to give it all to me.
Berkley gave me the best thing she could think of. Fleece footie pajamas! Chris had been laughing about it for weeks, so I couldn't wait to find out what she came up with. So sweet.

Next we headed over to my parents to celebrate with my side of the family. We had fun playing Yankee Swap with my siblings. Chris and I were the only ones that stole from people. He ended up with an Ipod Shuffle and I got 2 board games. All the gifts were good so I think everyone was happy. The girls enjoyed opening more gifts and playing. We had a big meal and played dominoes and monopoly. It was such a fun day!

Friday I went to my sisters and helped them paint stripes on Miss Rylee Rose's room. It turned out so cute! Then we went and registered for baby stuff. I had so much fun! I think I'm almost as excited about her getting here as I was about my own girls. We also got to go see 2 movies. The Curious Life of Benjamin Button, was wonderful. Valkerie, not so much.

We had such a great holiday and we feel so blessed to have so many wonderful people to share it with!

Santa Baby

I had to post these. I took these of her today while E was at MDO.

9 months

Our little Berkley baby is 9 months old today. It has absolutely flown by. It is hard to believe that this time last year she was in my belly kicking around and we were dying to meet her. As fast as its gone, its hard to remember what we did before she was here. We went to the doctor today. She weighs 19 lbs and is 28 1/4 inches tall. She is such a happy girl, although she definitely lets you know what she wants and when she wants it! She is working really hard on crawling, most of the time to get to me....I have a feeling once she can crawl she will be on heels all the time! She loves to be held. Everything is always better if mommy is holding her. She can be tired, hungry, and cranky but if I hold her its all good. Its so nice to be so loved! A bit hard to get things done, but who needs to do any laundry or housework when you can kiss her squishy cheeks?!

We've been working on baby sign language since she was 6 months old, I think she totally knows what I mean when I do it, but she is not willing to try it herself yet. I'm starting to think it actually ticks her off a little bit. Today at breakfast I kept signing more, she would just sqeeze her eyes shut and scream everytime. "you know I want more mommy!!"

She loves her sister so much. I couldn't have hoped for Elliott to be more wonderful with her than she is. She loves to share with her and bring her things, she always wants to feed her and show her toys. I hope she's still as loving when B is able to get to everything she wants to get into of Elliotts!

She likes to pull up on her little sheep chair and try to get her face.

Here she is "helping" Elliott color. E didn't even get mad at her!

After E decided to put sparkely lipgloss in her hair, I decided B could paint with baby food on her highchair while E was painting. She really thought it was a good time!She is our little Elf. I think E actually took this picture. She's going to take my job soon! You might be wondering if the kid ever wears clothes at home......

Our Weekend

The first Annual Pomeroy Gingerbread decorating took place this weekend. Elliott has a Christmas elf that brings her little treats everyday. Most days she just gets little stuff like a Hershey's kiss or something little like chap stick. This day though, the elf had a treasure hunt for her with little notes leading to her house! It was so fun to watch her look for each clue and see the excitement. We had a good time making the house together too.
Looks like mommy takes her house decorating pretty seriously.....

Sunday I ran my second Half Marathon. 13.1 miles. I ran the first one 2 years ago, this time I didn't train near as much but I still did alright. I finished in 2 hours 5 min. It was brutal though! I got there late so I started at the very end, I had so much running road rage for the first 4 miles or so, trying to get through all the people that were just out for a stroll, taking pictures and such. I made it though and it sure felt good to finish! I'm finally not sore today. Chris and the girls were waiting for me at the finish line. They were my little training buddies. Lucky for me they both love to go for runs. B loves to be outside and E has enjoyed looking for houses with Halloween/Christmas decorations outside. And there is always the promised trip to the park at the end.

Daddy's Days Off

Daddy took a couple days off work this week to hang out with us. We had a such a nice time! Elliott had playgroup at the house this week so we decorated cookies with all her friends. When Chris got home she wanted to decorate some with him.

Right before this, he was looking down at his cookie working on it, Elliott said "Look at the camera and smile dad" She knows the rules!

We went to the mall to see Santa, it was Chris's first time to go with us. E was so excited, Berkley immediately pulled his poor beard as soon as she sat down. She didn't cry though.

This was B's first time to do the merry-go-round. She loved it!

E's favorite has always been the duck, looks like she's still enjoying it in her old age.

E is enjoying have a buddy in the play area. She wanted B to ride the slide with her over and over. Until I finally got tired of putting Berkley up there.
Our new little photographer. She asked for a pink digital kids camera for Christmas, I've been bribing her that if she lets me take pictures of her she can take some of me
She's pretty good at it, here are some pics she took of Chris and I, she just kept snapping away until I had to take the camera away from her.

Reading

Berkley stayed up late again the other night. Elliott has one of her library books memorized, so she wanted to read it to Berkley during bedtime stories. Berkley found it highly amusing. They are just so adorable together, I love to watch them. Their laugh is my favorite sound.

The lone tooth

Berkley has finally sprouted her first tooth! She'll be 9 months old next week....it is so stinking cute. We didn't really have the experience of a lone tooth with E, she got her top fang first and all the others came within about a week, poor kid. B is loving testing it out. She was trying to sharpen it on some rocks I have on the island. She's bit me twice today. I said "Ouch, No Bite Berkley" not even very harsh, but it broke her little heart and she burst into tears. I've been trying to get a picture of it, the tooth not the tears. She's getting big so fast, she's also close to taking off on the crawling. She gets on her hands and knees and rocks back and forth, then she'll just lunge as much as she can at whatever she's trying to get. She's really good at getting to where she wants to be without being able to crawl. I still haven't figured out how she does it, I'll watch her forever, turn my back and next time I look she's in a whole new place. Who knows, maybe she can crawl ;-)

Inappropriate? Probably....

I know its not an appropriate song for a 3 year old to sing. But it is too darn cute! She has boots that have fur in them so we always sing about her "boots with the purr" when she puts them on.