Merry Christmas

Wow - I can't believe it has been a full week since I last updated. Shame on me! Things have been busy, but that truly isn't an excuse. Instead, it means I should have blogged more to talk about all that we've done. But, since I didn't, I guess I'll have to put the condensed version into one post. First and foremost, Merry Christmas to everyone! We had a great Christmas week.
We started with a Christmas dinner at Taste of Texas with my family on Tuesday night. It is a tradition we've followed for many years, and I hope many more. (Up until last year, we used to go on Christmas Eve, but all of the festivities we partake in were too much for the kids in one night, so we split them over 2 nights.) Wednesday was mass, and light dinner, and the Armstrong family present opening at our house. Jacob loves it when we have 'parties' at our house with his cousins, and this was no different. Add in all of the presents, and he could hardly contain himself.

Thursday was Christmas with our little family of 4. What a joy to see Jacob have so much fun.

Friday we relaxed and prepared for Mia and Papa's arrival on Saturday. Saturday night we celebrated Christmas with them.

Everyone surely knows what Jacob's passion is as he got a ton of cars of all shapes and sizes.
He was thrilled.

Santa and Mommy and Daddy tried to give him some non-car things, and he showed little interest. He was happy to get a Big Wwheel from Grandma and Grandpa and a drill from Mia and Papa, so I guess a couple of other toys made the cut.

Luke, of course, had no idea about the whole thing, but liked to pull at the paper and chew on it. He mostly just looked on in awe.

Luke has really had some incredible changes in the last week. He's really coming into his own. He seems so much more alert, is 'talking' more, and is even up on his hands and knees quite often, rocking. Sometimes he will move his knees forward, but he hasn't figured out how to move his hands yet, so he ends up in a faceplant. I think crawling is right around the corner. Yikes!

He also is sitting up much better now too. For awhile, everytime I sat him up, he would straighten out his torso and fling himself backwards. He would do the same while in the Bumbo chair. He apparently had no interest in sitting. Well, in the last two days, he has been doing much better, actually sitting up for nearly a minute at a time on occasion. Unfortunately, sleeping is still an issue. We had one night where he slept until 4:45am before waking to eat. We were thrilled. Unfortunately, it was only one night :( He is eating more and more, usually twice a day. We added carrots to the mix this week.

Mia and Papa will be staying with us for the next week, so we are excited to have some fun with them. Jacob adores them and especially enjoys all of the extra attention he gets when they are here.

Go here for a whole bunch of pictures from the week. (I don't have any from the dinner - I'll have to get some from my dad.) I got some fabulous new photography equipment (a new lens, tripod, remote, and external flash) so I have been taking tons of pictures to experiment.