my family twelve times | november

-- Is it really this late in December?! I'm going to blame the lateness of this post on cookie baking, present shopping, and overall Christmas dreaming... it's really hard for me to stay focused in December. :)

-- November was such a warm and comforting month for me. I think that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, and we had the pleasure of celebrating on Thursday and Friday that week! I love the time spent with family... and even though I'm not very skilled in the kitchen, it's nice to have a day that centers around being thankful and sharing a meal with your loved ones.

-- I tried all month to get Caleb to say, "Mama". He never did it. Instead, whenever I walked in to get him up from his nap, he looked at me with a huge grin and said, "Dada!" It made me laugh on more than one occasion.

-- Maggie has entered a whole new world of pretend play. I often catch her talking to herself, she has started singing with made-up-words, and she has an imaginary friend named Kenna. (Kenna has definitely been blamed for things that I'm pretty sure were Maggie's fault. :) )

-- Caleb turned one! My sweet, happy baby is not-so-babyish anymore. We had so much fun celebrating him.

-- I realized last month that we don't have people over for dinner often enough. We love having people over, but choosing something to serve for dinner makes my mind go blank. (I think I've gotten over the fact that our house is always disorganized!) But I decided that my fear of cooking should not prevent us from inviting people into our home. So we're trying to do it a lot more often! And if I invite you over, don't be surprised if we serve spaghetti. :)

-- Caleb learned the sign for "more", and I love seeing him communicate. Even having one sign has been so helpful during the day. And one of my absolute favorite memories last month happened when Caleb signed "more" after Maggie stopped singing. It might have been an accident, but it was adorable anyway!

-- Maggie is a serious, serious dancer. Her "best move" has evolved and gotten even more impressive. She especially likes to sing while she dances and often ends with a high kick or a leg lift. I can't wait to get that girl into dance class.

-- I had an incredibly embarrassing interaction with our mailman a few weeks ago. He came to our door, and I excitedly met him with the hopes that he was delivering a wedding album. Instead, he informed me that our mailbox was too full to fit any more mail. Because I hadn't checked it for an entire week! Seriously? Who does that?! So I sheepishly grabbed my shoes and ran out the door to clean it out for him. I kept apologizing, and as I pulled out one crinkled piece of mail after another, I could visibly see his frustration turn into sympathy. He started commenting on the few magazines that he saw, and when he noticed me dislodge a new Netflix movie, and gave me a list of all his current favorites. I felt ridiculously silly. And I definitely owe him a Christmas gift this year. Any suggestions?

-- The end of the month brought a wonderful feeling of anticipation as we cleared out our living room for the Christmas tree. I love, love, love this time of year.

-- Thanks for reading! There's only one more month in this little blog experiment! I can't believe that the year is so quickly coming to an end...