Welcome Baby Jack!

He was a stubborn bugger, but baby Jack is finally here. John Henry arrived on Monday, January 4th at 12:50 p.m., weighing in at 8 lb 10 oz. He's still pretty much a sleepy blob at this point, but is definitely louder and a bit more demanding than his big sister was at 4 days old. Good thing he's extremely cute!

Star Search Here We Come

Baby Jack's reluctance to enter the world has afforded Anna another feature blog. Here she is in all her singing glory, complete with bed head, polka dot robe, rainbow socks, plastic Cinderella shoes, and Target bargain bin echo microphone. It's too bad Ed McMahon isn't here to see this latest singing sensation.

The End of Anna's Reign

This may very well be the last blog featuring Anna as the lead story. With baby Jack's arrival right around the corner, our little girl's reign is about to end. Given that Josh and I are both first borns, we can partially relate to this process of dethronement and believe it's for the best! Anyways, over the past few weeks, we've been enjoying all the traditional holiday activities as much as my extremely pregnant and uncomfortable state will allow. Anna was a huge help in the kitchen this year, dutifully unwrapping Hershey's kisses for the PB Kiss cookies, carefully sprinkling the sugar star cookies, and painstakingly sampling one of every kind of cookie that came out of the oven. For the first time in J & L Heebner family history, we got to celebrate Christmas at our own house in RI. Last night we went to the Christmas eve service (and struggled to keep Anna still through an entire 30 minutes of overheated pageantry) and then this morning, we had breakfast & gift opening with Mom-Mom, Dad-Dad and Uncle Dave who came into town to celebrate with us.

On the whole, Anna was sort of overwhelmed by all the gifts and seemed partially irritated by the never ending unwrapping process. (With so many fun things to play with, why would she want to keep unwrapping?). Her favorite gift was the box of princess shoes that Uncle Dave got her, followed by the Belle dress from mom-mom and dad-dad. Another close runner up (strangely enough) was the ironing board and iron that Josh and I picked out. She's currently ironing a pair of her underwear while wearing the Belle dress and plastic high heels...

Beginning of the Holidays

It took some serious convincing, but eventually Josh (always the salesman) persuaded me to stop in NYC on our way down to Philadelphia for Thanksgiving so we could take Anna to FAO Schwartz and World of Disney. Figuring it might be our last chance to do anything like that for a while (thanks to the immanent arrival of baby Jack), I gave in. I'm not sure Anna will remember any of it, but we definitely had fun watching her check everything out. At FAO they had an entire corridor devoted to princess wear which practically gave her a toddler heart attack. She was also super impressed with the Barbie fashion runway. Such a girl!

Our Thanksgiving trip turned into a bit of a whirlwind, as usual, but we did get a chance to catch up with a few friends, even if it was only for an hour or two. I snapped this cute photo of Anna and Eowyn playing together. I still can't believe how well they get along... very little "mine, mine, mine" when the two of them get together. (Maybe that's because Anna knows that her good behavior will be rewarded with Aunt Lissa's insanely rich homemade chocolate cookies?).

Since we got back, we've managed to get the whole house decorated for Christmas and our Christmas cards might actually make it into the mail before week's end (fingers crossed). We also managed to make a "perfect" gingerbread house at the annual gingerbread party. This was the first year Anna could really participate in the construction which forced me to relinquish my type-A tendencies and allow her to slap anything anywhere she wanted. Josh is now in the process of slowly eating all the chocolate pieces off our confectionery creation. Not sure that was the idea, but whatever.

Anna Update

Last week while Josh was away, Anna and I took a mini "cation". We drove down to Mystic, CT, went to the aquarium, ate dinner at Mystic pizza, and stayed overnight in a hotel with an indoor pool. It was a great way to break up a long stretch without daddy! As soon as Anna figured out that the sea creatures could not escape their glass enclosures, she was totally on board with the aquarium experience. As for the hotel pool, that got two thumbs up. (What didn't get two thumbs up was my big pregnant body in a bathing suit -- yikes!). Anyways, I'm really trying to suck everything I can out of these last few weeks alone with Anna. I'm excited for Jack's arrival, but I'm also sort of sad about it not being just the two of us anymore!

On a completely separate note, we were watching Wizard of Oz last night and Anna picked this peculiar spot to relax.

Sweet Sleeping Beauty

Playing Doctor

Apparently Anna's been quietly absorbing everything she sees at my prenatal appointments. Today I caught her playing doctor with her baby, using the ear light thing (what's that called?) and "the goo" to listen to the baby's belly...