Christmas and Such

So I don't have any photos from Christmas Eve yet, I will post them when I do. We forgot our camera! So these are all from Christmas day.

Santa brought Eleanora a table and chair and her face when she rounded the corner in the morning and saw it was priceless! She didn't even notice the other presents, she just sat right down and wanted breakfast!

After breakfast she saw the rest of the presents. She had plenty of practice the day before and tore through her gifts pretty fast, but I got of couple of good shots of her excitement,

After a relaxing morning at home, we went to celebrate with Bryce's family,

Eleanora made off with quite the haul this Christmas. Still trying to figure out where to put everything!

Today we met Kavan and the family for lunch before his flight back,

Juggling babies,

And after that we just lounged and played with Eleanora's new presents. I tried to get in a photo of me and my girl but it took quite a few tries and funny faces, but I got one that I like so that's always an accomplishment!

Here she is with her kitchen, she is in love.

And just cuteness,

Santa!

These are scanned copies of the photos we got, so they aren't the best. Trust me, in person they are way cute! I don't have the time/energy to upload the photos we took ourselves, so these will have to do for now.

Cardiologist

Everything went well at Eleanora's cardiologist appointment this morning. For those that didn't know she has a heart murmur and her pediatrician recommended we get it checked out by a cardiologist. He listened for a while, read the report of the x-ray done at our pedi's office and said it was nothing to worry about. Completely normal. If in 3-5 years she still has it, maybe we should come back again. But he said if you listened to all the 1st graders out there, about half would have a murmur. It's very common throughout childhood.

Whew! What a relief.

Photo Shoot Fail

So I was trying to get a photo of Eleanora in front of the stockings/tree and she refused to stand still. The only way I could get her to stay in front of the stockings was to put her in her new favorite thing: laundry basket full of clothes. As you can see these are what came of it, so I will have to try again when she's in a less feisty mood (which is rare around here).





I'll wait for round two until there's a tree skirt and presents around the tree...that should hold her attention.

Lies and the Lying Kucko's Who Tell Them

We haven't been lying- more like omitting. If you've asked us in the past 3 months how Bryce's job has been and we've said "Great!" we weren't lying - just not also telling you that his position was being eliminated as of tomorrow.

Yep. In Sept we found out the entire company was being re-organized and his position was no longer necessary. Good news was 2 positions with more responsibility and more pay were opening up, but all internal candidates whose position was eliminated and external candidates all had a shot at a few positions.

It's been a LONG three months in limbo, but Bryce was just offered one of the jobs!!!! He had interviews these past 3 weeks for both positions, and he was offered the one he really wanted today. It's a nice promotion and pay increase.

Many people were not hired back, and my heart goes out to them and their families because I am intimately familiar with that feeling of "What the hell do we do now?" I hope and pray they find employment soon. One of Bryce's close co-workers in the same position (desks next to each other) was not hired back and I feel for her so much right now. It's so scary out there!

Again, we continued to be blessed again and again. We are so grateful.

I am so proud of Bryce for how hard he's worked. We weren't too panicked because his boss kept saying that Bryce is the best new hire they've had in 5 years, that he can't believe how quickly and eagerly he learns, and how impressed he is with Bryce's natural tendency to go above and beyond what's asked. And honestly, after last summer I just didn't have it in me to freak out again.

So hopefully you'll forgive us for not being forthcoming with this reorganization info. We just didn't want to be bombarded with questions we didn't know the answer to! Plus, trying to keep my anxiety at bay would have been hard if I had everyone and their mom to discuss/panic with about the situation. Also I didn't want to give Anne a heart attack worrying about health insurance! I don't think her heart could take it again.

So yay!!! Another one in the win column for the Kucko's.

Stuck

Eleanora and I have been locked in the house for days now! Bryce took the car to work on Monday, and I hate hate hate driving in the snow so yesterday and today I didn't want to go out unless we absolutely had to.

Nora is getting quite bored. We've played with every toy, read every book, sang every song, and had many dance parties. She's even "helped" me with laundry,






Hopefully the snow gives us a break so we can go to a Mom's group tomorrow morning like we've been planning!

So today to spice things up a bit I gave her an oreo. I know, exciting stuff. So here she is getting ridiculously messy:

Words

Eleanora has always been a "talker", babbling long, serious sentences since well before her first birthday. Lately her babbles are turning into words! Cute, sweet little words that she is so proud to say. So far here's her vocabulary:

• Mama
• Dada
• Hi
• Eyes
• Teeth (tee)
  
• Hat
  
• Uh oh - everything is uh oh. Drops something? Uh oh. Purposefully dumps all the Teddy Grahams on the couch? Uh oh. Poops her pants? Uh oh.
• Bye-Bye (dye-dye)
• Night-Night (nye-nye) - she grabs her paci, blankie and pup pups her dog and walks to her crib and asks for "nye-nye". It's beyond adorable.
  
• Yeah
• Up (bup)
• All Done (aaaaaah-dun)
• Baa (what does a sheep say?)
• Moo (what does a cow say?)
• Duck
• Duck duck duck (instead of 'quack quack quack' - what does a duck say?)
• Hot (telling me when her food is too "ha" and points to the oven and says it too)
• Ta-Da! (takes off her socks and says it!)
  

So far a few two-word sentences, "Hi Dada!" (which was also my first two word sentence!) and "Bup, Mama". Half of this list is within the last 1-2 weeks. It seems everyday she says a new word! It's so fun.

There are many others that *might* be words, but it's too inconsistent to tell. We think she says "doggie" and possibly "hair", but again I can't officially call them words because to the outside person it'd sound like Pig Latin. Don't worry Eleanora, Mommy and Daddy understand you!

Who Says - John Mayer

We've haven't been up to a whole lot these days, but here are some recent pics,



Eleanora can now rock pigtails, so cute!





And she likes to steal Daddy's glasses,



Last week Eleanora and I caught up with a very old friend! We had a great time! (**waves hello to Jess**)



Nora is getting very good an applying make up to Daddy,







We put up our Christmas tree last week. It makes the whole apartment so much more home-y!



Tuesday I thought it'd be a good idea to take her to Toddler Tuesday at the Mall and meet Dora the Explorer. Turns out Eleanora is TERRIFIED of characters. Both Dora and Sharky the Underwater World mascot elicited high pitched screams and clawing of my neck trying to climb up me to be protected. So, I took her to Build a Bear instead. She ran around the store like a wild woman but I finally got her to help stuff her doggie and put in the heart,



Things went downhill from there and she turned into a real crank. As you can see,



This face is usually followed by screams and tears and sometimes throwing herself on the ground. Some tips on what NOT to do if you want to avoid this face and tantrum that follows,

1. Don't tell her "No"
2. Don't pick her up when she wants to be down
3. Don't put her down when she wants to be up (she says "bup" for both down and up, so this is a tricky one)
4. Don't let her become more than slightly hungry or thirsty. If she realizes she is moderately to extremely hungry, you better feed her FAST. If you forgot to bring a snack on errands (what are you, some kind of idiot?) then you must buy her the nearest edible item and follow it up with a juice box.
5. Don't take anything out her hand. Lily, Lana, CJ, Carsten, Keaton, Mommy and Daddy can all tell you from experience that she does not take this well.
6. Do not listen to the radio in the car...only a Barney CD

Consider yourself warned.


(as you can see she now has both her top teeth in!)