Christmas 2012

Christmas Eve - before church (Isn't it a great picture!)

This year, Christmas was really exciting!  Alexander totally understood what was happening and he was super excited on Christmas morning.  He had even asked Santa for 3 things for himself, a helicopter, motorcycles, and a bike.  He also made sure to ask Santa for Minnie Mouse for Julia.  So, of course, Santa  had to make sure to bring those 4 things to our house.  He was very surprised when he got other things from Santa as well.  He kept saying that he didn't ask for certain things.  He definitely liked them though.  Santa knew that Alexander is totally into Jake and the Neverland Pirates, so he brought him a Jake dress up kit.  He dressed as Jake for the whole morning.  It was pretty funny.  He also had to ride his new bike.  Luckily that weather was decent and he got to ride outside. 

New bike!

Julia really didn't care about the presents.

There is the helicopter!

Motorcycles!

Santa remembered to bring Minnie!

He also brought Julia a house.

Alexander dressed as Jake.  He is a real pirate now!

Both kids love the house.

Daisy loves opening presents too!

First bike ride.

Then at around 1:00, we packed up the car and headed to Pennsylvania to visit our families, so we thought.  We arrived at Nathan's parents' house that evening.  Julia wasn't feeling well.  We thought she just had a cold, so we didn't worry about it too much.  We opened more presents when we got there and had a fun evening.

Opening presents at Grandma and Pap Pap's house.

More presents!

The next morning, we got an ice storm.  Our plans for that day involved visiting both of Nathan's grandmas and other relatives.  That didn't happen because of the ice.  So we spent that day hanging out in the house.

The next day, we traveled to my parents' house.  By this time, Julia really wasn't feeling well and Alexander was starting to exhibit the cold symptoms.  We persevered though because we had traveled to see our families.  We opened more presents there and then relaxed.  We were supposed to visit with the extended family on Friday. (You can see where this is going, can't you.)

Daisy is worn out!

Playing games on Mommy's new kindle. Uncle Joe gave him the pajamas.  He says they are his favorite gift.

Sick baby.

Julia and Pup Pup.

All the kids.

Grammy and Alexander singing Christmas carols.

On Friday, Julia developed a fever and Alexander was not feeling well either.  I didn't feel great as well.  My brother and his girlfriend had come down with the stomach flu and my one aunt was getting bronchitis.  Because of this, we cancelled our family get together.  So, we essentially traveled to Pennsylvania to see our parents, who we see all the time.  Oh well, hopefully we can see everybody else soon, when we are all healthy.

The kids are starting to feel better now.  Julia's fever was gone today and her cough sounded better.  Alexander sounds a lot better.  It was definitely a Christmas that we will remember!

10 Months Old

Julia turned 10 months old on the 24th of this month.  We've been super busy, so I didn't have time to write about it.  She is growing so fast!  I think she weighs a little over 21 pounds.  I don't know how long she is right now, but my guess is that she is close to 30 inches.  I feel like she has grown longer in the last couple of weeks.  Nathan and I both feel like she is really looking like a toddler.  She is really close to being able to walk now too.  She is standing on her own and has tried to take a couple of steps.  I'm really not ready for her to be walking, but it exciting too. 

She is the happiest baby.  She loves all of us and isn't really shy around strangers.  She has the cutest smile too, with her eight teeth popping out.  We're pretty sure that she can say about 5 words, when she wants too.  She says da da and means it.  She says ma ma.  Her first word was definitely Daisy.  She loves to talk to the dog.  She has said more and no.  This week, she has started to copy me when I say uh uh uh.

She loves her toys and can play by herself for a long time.  I really can't believe that she will be a year in less than 2 months.  Where did the time go?

Alexander's First Year

Nathan and I decided that we wanted to make photo books for every year of our kids' lives.  I am not good at scrapbooking, so we decided to do the books on a photo site.  This weekend, instead of doing schoolwork, like I should have been doing, I made the first book.  This is the book for the year that Alexander was born.  It didn't take me very long at all and I think it turned out really good.  I hope you enjoy looking at it.

Click here to view this photo book larger

Turn your favorite photos into a photo book at Shutterfly.com.

Sickness

This month has been a very bad month in our house.  We can't seem to get healthy!  It all started with Alexander getting sick last week.  He was sick for about 4 days with a 104 fever.  We even ended up at Urgent Care one evening.  I got a little freaked out when his fever spiked to 104 and he started complaining of neck pain.  The first thought that went through my head was, "OH MY GOD! He has meningitis!"  Luckily that wasn't the problem and I was a little crazy, but I felt it was better to be safe.  His diagnosis was tonsillitis. 

Then on Sunday, Julia started running a fever.  The fever went away on Monday.  She went to daycare on Wednesday.  Then wouldn't sleep at all on Wednesday night.  We sent her to daycare on Thursday because she seemed fine and didn't have a fever.  We figured that she didn't sleep because she had teeth coming in.  Apparently we were wrong.  I got the dreaded call from daycare a 3:00 today.  Julia was throwing up.  I felt so bad and immediately left to go pick her up.  We got home and she threw up 2 more times and was running a fever of 102.  I called the doctor and talked to the nurse.  They thought it would be a good idea for her to be seen, so we took a trip to the doctor's office.  We ended up with a diagnosis of some summertime virus that kids are getting now.  I guess they develop a rash, throw up, and get diarrhea with this virus.  It is also very contagious.  Lucky us!  So Julia has a completely different illness than Alexander had and he will probably catch it too.

So, we need some prayers that this illness will leave our house without Alexander or anyone else catching it.  We also hope that no one at daycare catches it either.

9 Months Old (A little late)

Julia turned 9 months old on October 24.  I waited until this week to write about it because I wanted to have her most recent stats from her doctor appointment.  It also has been really crazy around here.  I can't believe that she is already 9 months old.  When I stop to think about it, I get really sad.  I love that she is growing up, she is healthy, and she really is thriving, but I will miss having a small baby around.  I am not going to dwell on that though.

Julia is growing so well.  She weighed 21 pounds, 4 ounces at her doctor appointment.  She is in the 89th percentile for weight.  She was 28 1/2 inches long, which is the 78th percentile.  She is a lot bigger than her brother was at this age.  I have already started shopping for a convertible carseat because she is going to outgrow the length limit of her infant carseat soon.

She is a happy baby.  She loves to follow her brother around and is getting into everything.  She is pulling up on all of the furniture and walking all along all of the furniture.  She is using her baby walker to get around too. 

She is eating really well too.  She loves to eat her baby food.  I make most of the food myself, but feed her store bought food for dinners and when we travel.  She still won't eat from a bottle, so we mix breastmilk in with her baby food at daycare.  She is still nursing in the morning and at night.

We have been enjoying this time so much.  We love this age and how her personality is really starting to come out.  Keep growing and doing well little girl!  We love you!

Googly Eyes

Little googly eyes have become my nemesis.  Alexander's babysitter has the kids glue eyes on everything that they make.  I think that they are putting more eyes on things this year than ever before.  Then, when Alexander brings his school work home on Friday, he proceeds to take all of the eyes off of his projects.  I stand there and tell him to put the eyes in the trash can, but do you think that happens?  Nope!  Then I spend tons of time looking for teeny, tiny eyes on the floor and swiffering for hopefully find them.  Of course, I never find them all, but we have a baby who is great at it.  Today, I found her with one of them in her mouth.  Thank God I caught it in time.  I told Alexander to stop taking the eyes off of his pictures or I'm going to tell his teacher that he isn't allowed to have eyes on his work.  I think maybe they need to draw eyes instead of gluing them on. 

We Are Prepared...I Think

We spent our weekend preparing for Hurricane Sandy.  It is supposed to be a monster storm.  We went to Target yesterday and got stocked up on canned goods, batteries, flashlights, and water.  Then we went home and spent the rest of the day raking and bagging leaves.  My dad asked me why we were doing all of that work when the storm could blow them away.  We decided to bag up the leaves so that they won't clog our drains.  We ended up bagging about 30 bags of leaves and we still have some left on the trees.  We also did a lot of laundry because if we lose power, it may be awhile before we can wash our clothes.

Today, we decided to take a trip to the farmer's market for apples.  It may be our last chance to get farmer's market apples.  Then we went to the grocery store to pick up a few more supplies.  We have the basement set up and ready for us to spend the day there on Tuesday.  Our biggest fear is that a tree is going to fall on our house.  (If you've been to our house, you know that it is a real fear!  We have over 16 tall trees in our yard.)

My hope is that this storm will not be as bad as they are predicting.  Hopefully we have done enough to be ready for it!

Here are some pictures of our leaf raking adventure yesterday!

Pumpkin Patch and Randomness

It has been completely crazy around our house during the last few weeks.  We have been constantly running to different events.  I feel like I haven't had any time at home until today.  So, of course, our house has suffered because of this, but, OH WELL!  I choose to spend my time with my kids and I will clean the house when I can, but please don't judge me!

Last weekend, we took a trip to the local pumpkin patch.  It is a small nursery right by our house and they bring out bouncy houses and fun activities every year.  Every year at the end of September, Batman shows up there!  It is exciting!  The best part about it is that we only had to pay for Alexander.  We  usually go to the big pumpkin patch that charges everyone to get in and we just couldn't afford it this year.  Luckily, Alexander loves going to the local place and couldn't wait to see Batman again.

He had tons of fun and we took a lot of pictures.  Even Julia got in on the action at one of the bouncy houses and a rocking horse.  She thought it was a fun trip too! 

The funniest part was that he didn't even ask us to buy him a pumpkin.  When I had told him that we could go to a pumpkin patch for him to get a pumpkin, he told me that he wasn't getting his pumpking there.  He was going to get his pumpkin at Lowes.  When he told me that, I laughed!  We ended up buying his pumpkin at Home Depot, but he was happy with it.

This past week was really crazy.  I took my third graders on a field trip and we didn't get home until 8:00pm.  We had some tired kids and teachers.  Luckily it was a really great trip, but I don't want to go on it again next year unless we charter buses.  Waiting for the school buses to come back took too long.

Then this weekend, we went to two birthday parties.  The kids had a great time, but Alexander was really worn out.  He ended up falling asleep on the couch this afternoon.  All in all, the last few weeks have been a whirlwind.  Hopefully, I can catch up on housework and school work during the next couple of weeks!

First Time for Everything

We have had a week full of firsts.  Alexander passed his egg challenge on Tuesday!  That was a very exciting day.  He is now cleared by the doctor to eat anything he wants.  We had to celebrate by getting a real cupcake from a bakery.  It looked a lot better than the ones that I make that have tofu in them instead of egg.

 He also ate stuffed shells for the first time and loved them.  He got to eat wings in a restaurant and this weekend, we went to IHOP for the first time in about 2 years.  He got a pancake to eat.  He ate all of it and even ate some of my breakfast.  It was the first time that we were able to share our food with him.

 Then we went to the grocery store and he got his first ever bakery cookie.  Overall, those were some great "firsts" for him.  He has been a real trooper throughout the last few years.  I don't think he has every complained about not being able to eat something.  Now he has everything available to him and I couldn't be happier for him.

8 Months Old

Julia turned 8 months old on September 24.  I can't believe how fast the time is going, yet it is hard to remember what it was like before she was born.  She is still growing super fast.  I think she weighs around 22 pounds and we estimated that she is around 26 inches tall.  We won't know for sure how big she is until Halloween, when she goes to the doctor again. 

She has the greatest personality.  She is always happy and loves to play with her brother.  She is a tough little girl too.  Alexander can get pretty rough with her and she never cries.  She just laughs and laughs when they are together.  It melts my heart.  I told her babysitter that she is a rough baby and she told me that that is the biggest understatement ever.  Julia isn't allowed to play with  the other baby because she is too rough.

She is starting to enjoy food more.  She loves baby cereal and yogurt.  We are still working to get her to enjoy the fruits and vegetables.  She hates jars of baby food.  She likes the homemade stuff better.  She still won't take milk from a bottle or a cup.  She will only eat from me, which means that she eats in the morning, before bed, and in the middle of the night.  We taught her how to drink from a straw a couple of weeks ago, so she drinks water in restaurants in a kid's cup.

She is on the move constantly.  She is crawling all over the house and getting into everything.  She also crawls somewhere, then immediately pulls up on whatever it is.  She really wants to walk, so I think she is going to walk early.

She also has 6 teeth now.  We started giving her some food that she can chew because she has so many teeth.

We really couldn't be luckier.  We have really great kids!

Crazy Day

I wanted to put pictures in this post, but something is not working with that, so here is our story without pictures.

On Saturday, we took a day trip to the beach.  I thought we were pretty crazy to attempt such a trip, but it actually worked out.  We left at a little after six and reached the beach at around 9:30.  We went to breakfast at an awesome restaurant and got crepes with fruit and chantilly cream.  Even Alexander got to enjoy the fruit and cream!  Then we hit the beach.  It was a perfect beach day.  It was 78 degrees and sunny.  However, the water was frigid.  I couldn't even stand to put my feet in it.  Alexander didn't think it was that cold though and he spent about 15 minutes playing in the ocean.  He was cold when he finished playing though.  We told him to play in the sand to dry off and he had a great time playing with his sand toys.  Then he went on a seashell hunt.  He brought about 20 shells home with him.  At that point we had to leave the beach because the wind was blowing so hard that we were getting exfoliated by the sand.

We decided to walk the boardwalk for awhile and visit some arcades.  Before we could do that, someone told us that they were giving away free kites, so of couse we had to get a free kite for Alexander.  When he got to the people giving them away, he had a choice of pink or purple.  I guess all of the other colors were gone by then.  He didn't care though.  He chose purple and we went onto the beach to try flying it.  It was a great kite day and his kite took off.  He loved flying it and was so excited.

Then we started walking again and went to an arcade.  Alexander got a couple of prizes.  At this point, both kids were really tired, so they took naps in their stroller and we started walking back to the car.

We went to Philips Crab House for dinner and had crab legs, shrimp, and tons of other seafood from their buffet.  Then we left the beach and went home.  We got home at around 9:30 and both kids were asleep.  We transferred them to their beds and then we went to bed.  All in all, it was a really great day!

Random Thoughts

• I have not had enough time to write lately.  School has started and I am so tired.
• Julia is getting more teeth.  She already has 4 and I can feel 2 more popping through.  It explains why we went from getting up once during the night to 3 times.  I can't believe that she is going to have 6 teeth before she is 8 months old.  Alexander didn't have any teeth until he was 8 months.  She will be able to eat real food soon!
• We raised the training wheels on Alexander's bike this week.  He is getting so big!  When he talks to us, he sounds so grown up.  Time needs to slow down a little bit!
• Pumping at work feels so pointless.  Julia isn't eating milk at daycare and I end up freezing most of the pumped milk.  However, I have to keep pumping because she does eat on weekends, so I need to keep my supply going.  My freezers are overflowing, but I can't bear to throw any milk away.  It feels so wasteful to throw it away. 
• Julia is standing all the time now.  Again, time needs to slow down!
• Now I need to get tons of school work done.  It is never ending!

Sickness

The last few weeks have been incredibly busy here.  School started, so I have been back at work for the last couple of weeks.  Last week was the first week of school and the week before that, we had work days and a meet and greet with the students.  The day before the meet and greet, I went to work to try to finish up getting ready for school to start.  I felt really tired and kind of achy all day.  I thought that I was tired because Julia was up 3 times during the night.  I went home, cooked dinner, and ate with the family.  Then I sat down and I felt like I couldn't get up.  I felt like I had a fever because I was cold and couldn't get warm.  I took my temperature, but it was only 99.  I told Nathan that he had to take care of the kids because I wasn't feeling well, so he took them to Home Depot and I took a nap.  When I woke up from the nap, my temperature was 102.5.  That's when I knew that something was wrong.  My guess was that I had a breast infection and that I needed medication.

Nathan came home and I told him that he would have to take me to the Urgent Care because I had to go to work the next day and it was already 7:30.  Luckily the urgent care is open until 10.  When we got there, I told them what had happened and that I thought it was a breast infection.  They really had no idea what I was talking about.  The nurse even asked me if I thought that they doctor would want to check my breasts.  That was when I figured out that urgent care may not be the best place to go for this type of infection.  The doctor came in and was very nice.  They had done blood work, and it had shown an infection of some kind, so she put me on Augmentin and diagnosed a breast infection, even though she really had no idea.

I went to work the next day to meet the kids and felt awful.  Luckily my boss said that I could leave right after the meet and greet.  I went home and slept for the rest of the day.  Then the next day, my fever was gone!  I had taken 3 doses of medication by then, so I stand by my diagnosis of breast infection. I think I am prone to these types of infections during times of stress. I am really grateful that the infection hit the week before school started and not during the first week of school.  Now hopefully we can all stay healthy for awhile.

7 Months Old

I cannot believe that my baby is seven months old already!  Where did the time go?  She has hit all sorts of milestones now too.  She is crawling and has been since she was about 5 1/2 months old.  She chases her brother constantly and always wants to do what he is doing.  This week she also started pulling up on things.  She has 3 teeth and I think a fourth one is on the way.  She is a drool machine.  She is starting to eat solids a little bit better.  We can convince her to eat most fruits and a few vegetables.  She also loves baby cereal.  She is a stubborn little girl though.  She absolutely refuses to drink from a bottle, so she eats solids at daycare and nurses before bed, in the middle of the night, and when she wakes up.  It obviously isn't hurting her though because she weighed 20 pounds, 4 ounces at an impromptu trip to the doctor this week.  They told me that she is in the 93rd percentile.  I don't think that I need to worry anymore. She is the cutest, sweetest baby in the world!  We love you Julia!

Rough Start

I started back to work this week.  For me, it was a pretty easy week of setting up the classroom and getting ready to start school.  I found out a couple of weeks ago that I wouldn't have to change grade levels, so my stress level went down a little bit.

It was not such an easy week for my children because they had to get back into the schedule of going to daycare everyday.  It was a lot easier for Alexander than I thought it would be.   He walked right into his babysitter's house and got right back into the routine.  Julia had a much rougher week.  She didn't understand what was happening.  On Monday, she didn't eat all day.  She didn't take any bottles and didn't eat any baby food.  I felt bad for her, but I felt especially bad for her teacher who wanted to get her to eat so badly.  Then for the rest of the week, she refused to take a bottle.  We tried everything!  I took a cup and a different bottle.  We gave her formule instead of breastmilk.  Nothing worked.  I got really worried that she wasn't going to get the nutrients that she needs.  However, her babysitter is AWESOME and mixed formula and breastmilk into her baby food, so she managed to get between 3 and 5 ounces a day. 

Then today, she was home with me and she didn't drink very much, so I don't think that she was missing a lot of feedings at daycare.  I have decided that I'm not going to worry about it anymore.  If her doctor thinks it is a problem, he will tell us and hopefully, he will have a solution to the problem.
Maybe this week won't be a rough either!  Let's hope!

Naptime

I think that naptime needs to be a thing of the past all the time for Alexander.  This summer, the naps have become fewer and fewer.  He ends up taking a nap about every 3 to 4 days.  Then, when he does take the nap, it is impossible to wake him up and we can't get him to go to sleep at night.  When he doesn't nap, he goes to bed between 7:30 and 8:00 and it takes roughly 10 minutes for him to get to sleep.  When he does nap, we start bedtime at the same time and it takes a good hour for him to fall asleep.  We end up wanting to pull our hair out at around 9:00.  He can't feel very good about himself either because we end up getting really frustrated with him.

He goes back to daycare next week though and I'm not sure what is going to happen with naps there.  All of the kids take a 2 1/2 hour nap during the day.  I'm going to have to talk to his teacher to see what we can do.  I don't think we can handle bedtime that takes over an hour every night.  We need some evening time without kids!

Preschool

Alexander is 3 1/2.  His birthday is in January, so he won't start kindergarten until 2014.  We have started debating when to send him to preschool and where.  It feels like a huge undertaking.  We have pretty much decided to leave him where he is for the current year.  He likes it there and he gets to be with his sister.  We also love his daycare provider and they get some preschool every day.  The reason that we want him to go to preschool though is that he is not with any children who are the same age as him during the day.  We also want him to be in a school for one year before going to kindergarten. 

We went to two different open houses last weekend and I think that we have a good first choice as of now. My biggest problem with it is that the school that we liked, still has naptime for the four year olds and the other school doesn't.  Alexander has almost grown out of naptime now.  I worry that we won't be able to get him to sleep if he naps during the day.  The curriculum is good though and it is a really good school.

 It just feels like such a big decision.  I keep telling myself that it is only preschool and he will survive no matter where he goes.  So many kids don't even go to preschool.  Why am I worrying so much about it.  I guess we'll see what happens as the year goes on and everything will work out.

Time Flies

It feels like I just brought Julia home from the hospital and she looked like this.

I know she wasn't a really little baby then because she was almost 9 pounds at birth, but now she is huge at almost 19 pounds. 

This week, I really realized how big she is getting and how fast time is going.  We had a lot of firsts this week.  She sat in the bathtub for the first time without her bath seat.  She absolutely loved that.  She went to the waterpark and sat in the pool by herself.  I managed to get a picture of that.

She also sat in a shopping cart for the first time with her brother and without.  I love that the got to sit together.  It was so cute!  They also entertained each other for the whole shopping trip!

We had a big milestone at the end of the week.  Julia has been trying to crawl for the past few weeks and this week, she succeeded and is moving all over the room.  I managed to videotape her as she was learning.

Then, this morning, she pulled herself up in her crib!  Again, time is moving too fast!  Of course, we have started installing baby gates everywhere and we lowered the crib this evening.  I love that she is learning all of these new things and every milestone is exciting, but I feel like she is moving out of the baby phase too fast.  She will probably be my last little baby and I want to savor it, not speed it up.



6 Month Woes

Julia is the happiest baby most of the time.  However, she has been giving us some problems recently.  She was so interested in our food when we were eating.  She couldn't wait to eat food, so we thought.  Right before she turned 6 months old, we gave her some cereal.  She didn't mind that, so we introduced some vegetables.  That was a mistake.  She hated the vegetables.  I then tried to give her some fruit.  She tolerated the peaches and apples.  Then she got sick.  She didn't want to eat anything.  As of right now, she won't eat any solid food and she is barely eating breastmilk.

I also wanted to start weaning her before I go back to work in the fall.  That may not happen now.  She refuses to take a bottle at home.  It doesn't matter who gives her the bottle, she will not take it. Nathan and I went for a date night on Saturday and she didn't eat more than 2 ounces for the entire 5 hours that we were gone.  She fell asleep without eating too.

At her 6 month appointment, we found out that she had an ear infection, so the doctor put her on medication.  Getting her to take the medicine has been quite something too.  As soon as she sees the syringe coming, she clamps her mouth shut and starts blowing raspberries.  We have to hold her head in a headlock and pretty much shoot the medicine straight down her throat.  I hope that it clears up the infection because I don't think we can handle another week of medication.

We can live with these problems.  Hopefully, once she is off of the medication, she will start eating again.  Luckily, she is very big, so if she loses some weight, it won't be a big deal.  I know how lucky we are that we have two healthy and happy children.

6 Months Old

Today Julia is 6 months old!  I can't believe that I gave birth to her half a year ago.  It seems like just yesterday.  We had a doctor visit today and she weighs 18 pounds, 9 ounces and is in the 88th percentile.  I was very surprised by this because she hasn't been eating very well.  She was also 26 1/2 inches long and in the 67th percentile for height.   I still think she is huge.  She started wearing 12 month clothes a couple of weeks ago.  The doctor said that she should start to plateau with her weight soon. 

She is still breastfed, but started some solid food a couple of weeks ago.  So far, the only thing she likes is cereal and peaches.  We are planning to start weaning her to formula within the next few weeks because she has 2 teeth now and she bites HARD! 

She also had an ear infection at her doctor appointment today, so we are giving her ammoxicillin now.  That is fun because she hates all things that don't taste like breastmilk or peaches.

She is also mobile now.  She can get up on all fours and will rock.  Then she lunges forward to get to the toy that she wants.  She can sit for at least 10 minutes without help and she can get into a sitting position all by herself.  We can't believe that she can do all of these things already.  We are still waiting for some babbling to start though.  Right now, she just likes to shriek.

Julia, we love you so much.  I can't even remember what it was like before you were born.

Disney Vacation - Last Day

This is the final post from our Disney vacation.  I know, you're probably happy about that.  On the last day of our Disney trip, we went back to the Magic Kingdom.  Alexander really wanted to see the princesses and more characters, so that is what we started with.  We started with the princesses and got a fast pass for that line so that we could come back later and not wait in line.  Then we started our quest for more characters.  As we were looking for characters, we found two more princesses.  Alexander had to wait in line to see them. 

Princess Aurora (aka Sleeping Beauty)

Princess Tiana (from the Princess and the Pea)

 

Then we rode the train to Frontierland to look for Woody and Jessie.  Alexander was so excited when we finally found them.  The Toy Story movies are his absolute favorites. 

After that, we went back to see the princesses.  We found it hilarious that he was the only little boy in line with all of the little girls.  He didn't care though.  He was determined to meet those princesses and he tells everyone that that was his favorite part of the trip.  Julia also enjoyed meeting the princesses.

Cinderella

Belle

Rapunzel

This is one of my favorites.  Julia is practicing to be a princess too.  Look at her hand.  She is doing the same thing as Rapunzel.

 Later on that day, we went to dinner. For our final day at Disney, I booked a character dinner. It was a huge success. We ate dinner with Winnie the Pooh, Tigger, Eeyore, and Piglet. Alexander didn't even know who all of those characters were, but he loved eating with them. I had two favorite moments during the meal. The first was when Eeyore came into the room. Alexander had no idea who he was and he yelled out, "Look, a cow!" We then told him who it was and he didn't say it again, but I love the things he says. My second favorite moment was when they had a parade in the dining room and all of the kids got to march with the characters. Alexander was pretty much leading the parade. It was so cute and pretty funny.

After dinner, we went to Tomorrowland and rode some rides there. We also got to meet Buzz Lightyear, which was a BIG DEAL!

Alexander even got to drive!

Alexander fell asleep at around 7:30, so we decided to find a good spot to watch the parade and we ended up with front row seats.  We ended out trip to Disney with the electrical parade and the fireworks show.  It was so much fun!  We didn't get back to the hotel until around midnight and we were really tired the next day, but it was all worth it.