Merry Christmas!

...and boy, are we having fun!

I'm sorry for the lack of postings. I've realized that when things are going tough, I tend to not share so much. I've started writing several times but as I'm writing, it feels like I'm just whining. I don't like sending out to the world the impression that we're always struggling and never having fun. To be honest, it has been a struggle lately. After making incredible progress the first week of our new routine, the wheels seemed to come off and we went back to a lot of crying. It's hard to describe without going into a lot of detail but the short of it is, we're still putting them down in the crib drowsy but awake instead of holding them to sleep. That involves more crying than we would like and a LOT of patience. It has been very difficult at times but overall, we're confident that we're making progress and the girls are gaining the ability to fall asleep on their own and more importantly, fall BACK asleep on their own without assistance from us. Just today, Katy fell asleep TOTALLY on her own for her afternoon nap and slept for almost 2 hours!

Otherwise, we're doing fine. We have a nice routine going and having fun in the process. The girls have started to sit up a little. If we sit them up, they will stay in the seated position for a while now before falling over. Before, it was mere seconds before they would lose their balance, but lately Katy has been sitting upright on her own for a minute or two at a time. Pretty impressive.

So hopefully most of our Christmas Cards have arrived. I wanted to share a couple of photos that didn't quite make the cut. The 10 or so pictures that we didn't use are just as priceless as the 2 we did. This first one we tried, Lisa and I made all kinds of noise to try to get the girls to smile. Of course, this made the girls just look up at us instead of the camera. Notice, Alyssa's looking at me and Katy's looking at Lisa.

This next one would have been a great picture but between takes I was lifting up Katy over my head to keep her happy....and she drooled all over my shirt. Nobody really noticed until we looked at the pictures later that there were giant drool marks all over my shirt.
...just a cute photo of me and the girls.

and Lisa.

Merry Christmas everyone! We love everyone and can't wait to hear from you. We'll be taking lots of pictures tomorrow. Love you all.

Andy, Lisa, Alyssa, and Katy.