Christmas Fun...(for Mom anyway!)

Joel woke up in a really good mood this morning (after having me awake from 4:00-5:15 this morning...YUCK!!) so I took advantage of that to try and see if I could get him to cooperate for some pictures in front of the tree. He was fairly cooperative, but most of the pictures turned out blurry...a constant thorn in my side. These were pretty good though. I had to bribe Bailey with Beggin' Strips to get her to sit still. She wasn't very thrilled about it, but she will do anything for a Beggin' Strip these days so she went along with it. Joel is really noticing her a lot lately and likes to grab her and pull her hair. Bailey is amazingly calm about this, and we always grab Joel's hand and help him be gentle with her. He is getting better about it, and doesn't seem to pull quite as much as he did at first. He likes it when Rob feeds him on the couch because Bailey lays up against them and he can feel her fur while he is eating. So sweet! Joel is crawling more and more and getting better and better at it. Now if we can just get him to stop waking up during the night we would be all set! It is weird...he goes in streaks where he won't wake up for weeks at a time and then he will for several days. If he is going to wake up it seems to be between 4:00 and 4:10 am....almost without fail. I sometimes wonder if something doesn't wake him up at that time, but I can't for the life of me figure out what that would be. It's a mystery! Oh well, tonight is Daddy's night, so we'll see what happens! Joel went with me to have lunch with my friends Tiffany and Andrea today and did really well. He is quite the social butterfly! Lunch with the girls wore him out and he took a nice nap this afternoon. Hopefully he is out for the night now! More later...