Here’s our monthly family picture:

Just kidding. I’m just playing major catch up here. I started these dolls back in December. I finished the Alan doll on Christmas Eve. It took me a little longer to finish the rest of the family. But I know I finished Isabelle and Nathan when we went to the zoo in January because I took this picture there.

The dolls might look a little familiar. I used them for the entire month of January as my banner:

And it would have made sense if I had shown the dolls then. But…I couldn’t find them. Isabelle kept playing with them and losing them. At first the Isabelle and Nathan doll went missing. And when they turned up, daddy doll went missing or someone was always missing. Well, I’m glad I found them all at the same time so I could get a picture.

The dolls were a collaboration between me and Isabelle. It was originally from this banner:

I created it in Illustrator. In Illustrator you can save only the artwork on your art board. So, I don’t usually draw what’s not going to be in the final image. In the original file we had no legs. Why draw legs when you aren’t going to see them? But every time Isabelle walked by and saw me working on it, it drove her crazy. She kept asking where her feet were. So, I drew some for her. But then when she had feet, she wanted the rest of us to have feet. So, of course I had to draw some for her.

And that’s what I was going to use for our family dolls. I started changing us a little bit around but I liked Alan in this, I call it “sexy pose”. Hee hee hee!

But Isabelle didn’t like it. She wanted daddy standing like normal and she wanted us in different colored clothes and she wanted to be in a dress and why didn’t we have shoes on? I love what she came up with.

And here we are with our dolls.

And finally our real monthly family picture.

I have a four month old now. Wow four months! It absolutely flew by.

Nathan has chunked up so much since this picture was taken. I was just saying the other day that he weighs something like 16 or 17 pounds. We just weighed him on the Wii. He actually weighs 18.5 pounds! My sister’s daughter, who is about 1 year and 2 months old, weighs 18 pounds. How did he get so heavy?! (And we might need to think about getting a real scale. Weighing Nathan on the Wii is so involved. With a scale we can just step on.)

I’m having a hard time finding any words to write today. But I can say this: Nathan is loved.

Isabelle has been talking about Santa a lot this year. So, we asked her if she would like to meet him. She said, yep, so we brought her to meet Santa for the first time. FIRST TIME!! It was Nathan’s first time too. Well, obviously. Der!

Isabelle was only scared for a little bit. When we walked up she hid behind me for about three seconds. Then she was over it and talking to Santa and telling him what she would like for Christmas AND calling him her friend.

And I didn’t freak out about germs…too much. Who asked me if I put toilet seat paper on Santa’s lap? My sister? Yeah I think it was my sister. And, no, I didn’t. And, no, I didn’t spray Santa down with antibacterial stuff either. I just sat my children on his lap and happily let them get their pictures taken.

Though, to be truthful, when we got to the doors at the mall, I did make Isabelle use her elbow to push the open door button. Then I did freak out when she tried to grab the door handle when it wasn’t opening fast enough. I SWEAR I’m not usually such a germaphobe. But mix H1N1 fears with a new baby and my paranoia gets pushed into crazy.

Well anyhoo, back to Santa. Isabelle was super excited to meet him. She even wanted to get dressed all purty for him. So, we figured we’d get Nathan all dressed up too. And since Nathan just turned 3 months I said we should all get dressed up to get our monthly family picture taken. Only Alan sort of balked to that. But I guess that’s a good thing, otherwise, I would have happily went all dorky and gotten us some matching red things to wear.

Or even more geeky, I would have made us wear pajamas. That’s supposed to be the Polar Express we’re riding there and it only makes sense to be in pajamas.

Maybe next year. Ha ha ha!!