a little more Christmas in the air...

some snapshots of the holidays in our house so far...plus a little fun bonus...







and oh...what holiday decoration is this?

why, they are 2 holiday eggs of course! and oh look, they are hatching...



cheep cheep! merry christmas from our crazy birds!

little C report...

Little C is just under 2 weeks away from his first birthday. (where did that year go!)

He now is crawling up stairs like a pro and standing up more and more by himself.

Just waiting for what will come next...=)

update on W...

We called into the Gastroenterology office this morning and are happy to report that W's polyp was benign! Praise the Lord for this good report!

We thank everyone for their prayers for us in the past couple of weeks.

and about those kids...

Kid stuff post!


First off is this big sweetie, little C...

• We can't believe he is almost one! He is a busy active happy determined (stubborn =) little 11 month old.
• Some of his new games are repeating certain sounds back and forth with us (dadda says "mmBAA", C says "mmBAA" over and over).
• He can sign "more" and "up," although he has been refusing to sign "more" lately. We know he can, and he knows he can, he just won't. Although "up" has been a really nice one to learn for all of us. G & W never really signed up or even held their hands up as insistently or as early as C is.
• He is pulling himself up on everything - really prefers to be standing whenever he can. He also doesn't like to hold on very tightly. This has led to a number of topples, but has also led to him starting to get his balance and stand on his own for very short periods of time. He is also walking along furniture now, so it won't be long until he is chasing after G & W on 2 feet rather than all fours!
• He is definitely a momma's and dadda's boy. He would rather be held by us, and is always looking to make sure we are there. If we aren't, it takes about 5 minutes to realize that we are gone (even if I am just in the next room) and he loudly lets everyone know that he doesn't like that! Then he will set out to search for us or just be super loud and unhappy until we come back and get him.

Then there is our other big boy, W...

• W has just taken off with letters lately. He has known his ABC's for a long time, but lately he talks about them a lot. He will tell us the sounds that letters make and what letters are at the beginning of different words we say while talking with him. For example, I was talking to him about a piece of paper the other day. He looks up at me and says "puh-puh-puh-paper...that starts with puh-puh-puh-P like PUH-PUH-PUH-Poptorn!" Little smarty-pants! He has trouble saying the hard C and the K sound though, so those sounds come out as "t" usually. Our favorite so far is "too-tie" for cookie. =)
• He is also talking more dramatically, not unlike his big sister, G. If you ask him whether he wants to go and read a book, he says "Yeah! YEAH! That would be SO SO SO fun! I LOVE books, they are WONDERFUL!" It is scary how much he talks like G sometimes.
  
• He has also turned into a boy-boy. He loves Super-Why lately, and pretends to be a superhero-boy a lot. He no longer wants the pink cup or plate or balloon like G, but rather says his favorite color is blue. Playing ball and trucks are still his favorite past-times during the day, although reading books or being read too is a close second!
• W is also still our big snuggler. He is the biggest one out of all 3, and loves to crawl on your lap and curl up. He will crawl into our laps to snuggle often, whether we like it or are ready for it or not.

And then our little princess, G...

• She has learned her left and right. A couple of weeks ago, when we were out running errands, she asked me "how do you tell your left from your right?" (we had already talked what left and right were a while back) I told her to hold up her hands with her pointer fingers pointing up and her thumbs pointing out, and the hand where that looked like an "L" was her left hand, and the other one was her right hand. She got this right away, and so I asked her in the stores a couple times whether we were going left or right, and which hand she was holding things in, and before I knew it, she just got it. No big practicing, no me helping her over and over and over and over, she just got it. And she doesn't use the "trick" I showed her either. She just knows. This baffles me as I still mix up my left and right.
• G is also recognizing more words and can sound out words and spell them with a little help. She loves books too and often sits with books on the couch and now she will say "Look, momma! That word is dog (or cat or duck or whatever)" We love that our kids are so into reading and words and letters! Hopefully this will start a lifetime love of reading...
• She has been into pretending a lot lately, and instructing W or S or I on how we should pretend too - "I am a queen and I love to color, and W, you are a prince who has a dog and is coming to visit me today, but you have to walk over there." She also likes to talk in her own languages or like animals and will tell us how to respond - "When I say 'meow, meow, meOW' that means I would like a piece of cheese. You should say 'MEow' for that means yes."
• She is such a big helper to us each day, but has also started to try to pick both boys up which we don't like, and she likes to "help" C by picking him up and moving him away from certain toys - this has gotten her in trouble. She also helped out so much when we were prepping W for his colonoscopy - she helped us get him to drink a lot of his prep juice by basically playing drinking games with him only she had apple juice, W had his prep juice, and their shot glasses were oversized legos with a straw. =)

Over and over each day with these kiddos, no matter how frustrating at times, we are reminded of how blessed we are as a family!

snow day games...

Today is a snow day...or it would be if we had anywhere to go or if S had to drive further than 1 mile to work...10F with a -15F windchill blowing the 3-5 inches of snow we got last night all over. Ahhhhh...MN winters!

When we were kids and had snow days, my brothers and I often would break out the Monopoly game and play for hours. Well, I guess things haven't changed much in 20 some years:

G asked to play Monopoly Jr when little C went down for a nap this morning, and with W "helping" out when he felt like it, we played for over an hour! G is so competitive that we have really been trying to play non-competitive board games with her lately(like Orchard), but I guess I just have a soft spot in my heart for Monopoly(plus she is learning counting and math and money, right?).

By the way, she totally kicked my butt...=)

a little Christmas in the air...

The day after Thanksgiving S had to work all day. G woke up with the thought of Christmas decorating in her head (we have been telling her for weeks that unlike all the stores, we didn't decorate for Christmas until after Thansgiving). I was not about to attempt getting out our decorations with 3 kids and no S! But in catching up on a few blogs in the am while baby C slept, I noticed this post on Simple Mom that linked to a craft idea for making a "snowstorm" in your window. I thought it was pretty cute, and something that the kids, or at least G, could help me with! We did not have labels and were not going to get anywhere near the stores on black Friday, so we improvised:

1. let G pick out light blue and white patterned paper from my scrapbooking stash
2. used big circle punch to punch out a big stack of circles - G and W both helped with this!
3. G organized the circles in 6 stacks according to pattern
   
4. grabbed pkg of dental floss (yay for having that in bulk from Costco!)
5. G helped me string out the floss and tape it to the kitchen table
6. G & W brought me 2 circles from a stack and chose where they wanted to put them on the strings (with a little direction from me so we could have a random pattern =)
7. placed one circle, pattern side down, under the floss
8. rolled a piece of G's tape (she is scotch tape queen at our house - has her own mega dispenser and everything, thank you again Costco!), and put it over the floss on the circle
9. put matching circle over taped circle, pattern side up
10. when all the strings were done, we detached them from the table and hung them in the big window in the front room

So now we have a little Christmas in the air at our house! The kids love these. They love looking at them from inside and from outside too, and the "snowflakes" move and flutter when the heat kicks in or when the kids blow at them which is really fun. Plus our window smells minty fresh! =)

Now that W's procedure is over and done with, we can focus a little more on Christmas and will hopefully get out the Christmas tree, rest of the decorations, Jesse tree, and Fa-La-Lattes in the next week. May you all enjoy your preparations for this blessed season!


*****Reality check*****
This was a super fun craft to do, but it may not have gone as smoothly as it sounded. Most people could probably do this in less than an hour. It took us ALL DAY! With many tears because I wouldn't let G pick out red and green elf paper, frustration when W rolled his car over the strings and detached them all, grrs from the momma when none of the kids would listen to what I was telling them to do, and 50 million interruptions of just the normal kid things of the day making me crabby because I just wanted to finish the project, and ending with S sweeping in when he got home to save the day and help hang up the strings like it was that easy. =)

update

Just a quick note on W. His colonoscopy is done and everything looks good. They removed the polyp and will send it off for biopsy. Otherwise, the doctor said that everything else was clean and healthy, no other polyps. We survived the prep and are glad to be done with it all and look forward to "normal" meals from here on out. Continued prayers for the biopsy results (according to the doctor, 9 out of 10 polyps in kids this age are benign and there is no further issues).

Thank you to all for the prayers and support.
S and C (and W too!)

how much fiber have you had today?

How much fiber have we had today? As little as possible.

On purpose, though. W has to have a colonoscopy on Tuesday to remove a polyp that we discovered a couple of weeks ago. Polyps like this are not common in toddlers, but luckily, the chance of it being abnormal are only 1 in 10 - this increases the older you get. He will get put out for this so we have to go to the Children's hospital - same place we went when G had her dental surgery a couple years ago. It is not a long procedure, but the preparation for it is the long and icky part as some of you adults may know. And it is hard to reason with our 2 yr old about why he can't have certain foods, as well as having to deal with cleaning his system out Monday, so this will be a rough couple of days!

Saturday - low fiber diet
Sunday (today) - same low fiber diet, and 64 oz of water (if possible),
Monday - clear liquid diet after midnight on Sunday, icky stuff to drink in afternoon that will clear out his system
Tuesday - nothing to eat or drink after midnight on Monday

We are thankful that both grandmas will be coming to help. My mom should be here soon, and S's mom will come tomorrow morning. That will provide plenty of good distraction for W tomorrow, hopefully!

So please keep W (and all of us) in your prayers for the next few days. Pray that the procedure be safe and successful, and that we all have patience and resolve with the preparation for it. We will post an update after Tuesday to let you know how it all went.

blessed...and recharged

Father We Thank Thee
by Ralph Waldo Emerson

For flowers that bloom about our feet,
Father, we thank Thee.
For tender grass so fresh, so sweet,
Father, we thank Thee.
For the song of bird and hum of bee,
For all things fair we hear or see,
Father in heaven, we thank Thee.

For blue of stream and blue of sky,
Father, we thank Thee.
For pleasant shade of branches high,
Father, we thank Thee.
For fragrant air and cooling breeze,
For beauty of the blooming trees,
Father in heaven, we thank Thee.

For this new morning with its light,
Father, we thank Thee.
For rest and shelter of the night,
Father, we thank Thee
For health and food, for love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends,
Father in heaven, we thank Thee.

And for a beautiful, wonderful, lovely Thanksgiving day spent with family that pushed away the stresses in our lives for a while helping us focus on what is really important,

Father in heaven, we thank thee.

a little ketchup...

Grab a cup of tea and a cookie, maybe even two because this post is a long one! I have been silent for far too long and thought you deserved a little ketchup...not on your cookies, but rather...

...on the Twins!

S, my brother L and I attended the best baseball game. EVER!:

• Twins vs Tigers, 10/6/09
• tie-braker for Division Championship
• section 202 row 6 (paid $85 a piece for the $11 tickets, but they were SO worth it!) - GREAT view
  
• ~54,000+ fans with homer hankies in attendance
• TWINS WIN in the 12th inning!
• Fantastic baseball by both teams - good and close game all night!
• G at friend A's house, Aahma rode along with L to watch W&C

Such a fun time with S and L and so great to see one last Twins game in the dome - thanks for asking us to go to the game with you, L! Love ya!

video after a home run by the Twins - shows how LOUD it was in the dome!

...on little C!

Oh the forgotten third child. I started this blog to hopefully be able to keep track of baby milestones and have failed this boy miserably! I looked back and I think the last official baby C update was when he was 2 months! Well, he is certainly not forgotten in our day to day life and is such a fun and good baby. But to catch you up a little bit, here are some quick C stats and updates.

• 4 months in May (27" tall - 97%, 17 lb 6 oz - 90%)
• fun giggles, especially at brother and sister, could reach for things, pick them up and hold onto them, started to clap too!
  
• at 5 months got his first two teeth on the bottom, two on the top quickly followed
  
• 6 months in July (27 3/4" tall - 90%, 20 lb - 88%)
• could finally roll over in both directions - lots of chub to move!, babbled a lot and was definitely not the quiet third child, got two more top teeth and one more bottom tooth
  
• at 7 months starting to sit up well

• at 8 months he loved to sit up and play with toys or just watch what was going on. So much fun to be able to just take him from room to room and have him be happy on his own on the floor as long as he wass by us, and he was getting good at rolling to whatever he wants too. Definitely mobile!
• and he got that last bottom tooth and had 8 teeth!..and no hair...and wore 12 month size clothes
• 9 months in October (29 1/2" tall - 80%, 22 lb 8 oz - 80%) - C was the exact size W was when he turned a year! He is our big boy and the 12 month size clothes are starting to be too tight
• C could finally handle solid foods at this point (digestive issues and could not process them earlier)! Started off easy with oatmeal cereal and quickly moved to baby food and before we knew it he was chowing down 3-4 jars of baby food a day! Too spendy for our budget and I was not having good luck with our blender or the baby food grinder, so we splurged and got a magic bullet for buzzing up our food into baby food for him. LOVE IT! It works so great and is really easy! It will definitely pay for itself!

• C is already betrothed. Good friends from church, M&A, had a daughter, G, in July. They also have a little girl, A, who is our G's age and good friends with her. One day they came over to play and turned out that our C and their G had the same outfit on! Without us even realizing that the other even had the same outfit (G's is 0-3 month, and C's is 12-18 month though)! We decided they were destined for each other, although I am not sure how C feels about it!
  

• right at 9 1/2 months C's mobility moved beyond rolling! He army crawled for about 2 days and realized he had too much weight to drag along the ground, so started getting up on all fours, and in a day or two had the crawling thing down!
  
• at 10 months he now moves quickly and is determined to get into anything that he is not supposed to - cords, computers, rocks, shoes, paper, books, shoes, brother and sister's things (G gets frustrated, W has all out tantrums!), shoes (he's like a puppy - loves to chew on shoes!)...it is so funny to see their little personalities already at this age - he is beyond sweet, but definitely could be our little stinker!
• C also signed his first word! We have been using American sign language with him from around 8-9 months when we are doing things like feeding him, picking him up, etc. And when Steve was feeding him one night and signing "more" to "eat" for him, he signed "more" back! And did it again and again for "more" bites, so we know he got it! So much fun to see their little brains really start to work and get things
  

...on W!

Oh this boy can be the sunshine of our lives one minute, and a frustrating "terrible 2 yr old" the next!

• W's has always had a advanced vocabulary, but it has really been taking off lately! With it went the ability to understand him for a while since he was trying to talk in big people sentences, but now is really talking clearly, and a lot! He also has known all his colors for quite a while and knows his alphabet and letter sounds too. (Helps to watch big sister there!)
  
• He is such a boy. He loves being outside, getting dirty, trucks, throwing balls, making noises, and is just now starting to get into the rough-housing and tough-guy stage (which momma is not liking as much, especially when he tackles baby C!).
  
• Even though he is a boy-boy, he does have an older sister whom he loves and wants to copy every thing that she does. He will tell you his favorite color is pink, can be seen wearing his snoodle as a "princess dress" and has a baby-doll named "BA-nana" whom he nurses "just like momma!"

• W is also very into coloring lately. He concentrates very hard when he colors and loves to show off his pictures
• He loves books. All our kids do and we foster that as much as we can by reading to them, having them around all the time (in every room practically!), and going to the library often for storytime and to pick out new books, which is a favorite outing of W's lately.
  

...on G!

She's 4! We can't believe how old she is some days. Seriously, how did that time go so fast! Don't even start me on how she will go to school next year...unless you want to deal with a blubbering puddle at your feet!

• our fabulous family photographer has been uber busy lately (like with this...and this...and this!), so 4 yr old pics of G by her did not happen around G's birthday which we totally understood! So one nice day in September I decided to channel my inner auntie C and took some pics of G in the backyard:
  

• She is growing up so much! And she wants to be part of the "grown-up" conversations so bad! She listens intently to S and I when we talk and regularly interrupts them trying to re-say or re-tell what we just did so that she can be a part of our conversations. Like when we were discussing rearranging furniture on our yellow level. After talking about different ideas over breadsticks one Sunday night, G says "wait a minute! I have a GREAT idea! We can move this couch over here and this couch against that wall...and the TV over here (basically what S and I had just talked about doing)...and then W and I will have a LOT more room to run and play!"
• Her big interests lately have been coloring and drawing. The little kids table we had purchased from IKEA quite a while back was proving to be way too small for her and her brother to both work on, so we rearranged our office and desk area and now have a new "art table" desk for the kids that has plenty of room (can fit two more cousins to color too! =), and also "their" computer on it as well. We might as well buy stock in 3M too, because this girl loves her scotch tape! She loves to cut things apart with her scissors and then tape them back together again! She tapes drawings and coloring pages into books, fixes holes ripped in her paper, and "decorates" things by taping little shapes that she has cut out and colored
• She loves dancing (we have watched Dancing with the Stars together for years now!) and singing and is always coming up with a new "show" to put on for us. She catches on to songs and lyrics very quickly, and also likes to make up her own!
• Her favorite outing lately is church and Sunday school. She loves her friends at church and learning new songs and Bible stories in Sunday school. She is really a social bug who loves to be around people and we have to drag her crying to the van every Sunday because she doesn't want to go home!
• Being able to do things on her own has been one of the biggest joys of her being 4. It was almost like there was a switch in her head "I'm 4, I'm a big girl, I can do this by myself!" She can dress herself, go potty by herself, pretty much get anything that she needs by herself or with only a little help. She is also my big helper around the house! G loves and cares for her family and genuinely wants to help with everything.

...on random other stuff!

• We had a big snow on October 11/12 and the kids had SO MUCH FUN! My grumbling about it coming so early quickly melted as I watched their sheer joy at playing in the snow and making a snowman. October was very wet and cold, and we just weren't ready to go from that into winter! Fortunately, November has been really nice so that we have been able to get out and do more things outside.
• G and W have had a new game in the backyard - G calls it "pulley." She stands on the deck and lowers a rope tied to a bucket, and W fills it with whatever treasures or toys he finds and G pulls it up to her. They can do this for quite a long time and giggle and laugh at all the things W puts in the bucket! They came up with this on their own - their imaginations continue to impress me every day!
• Our computer's motherboard went out...AGAIN! So we had to ship it off to HP once more as it is still under warranty. I like the comment that my friend T made about it: "Perhaps there is a lot of mothering going on in your house?! Maybe all the mothers are just tired?" You have no idea, T! =)
  

OK. Phew. Are you still with me? Am I still with me? I probably would have fallen asleep by now. Really though, this was just as much for me as for anyone else so that I could journal a little bit about the little people that fill my day that S and I love so much. But now I feel like we can move on not feel so behind that I don't even bother! Hope you all are doing well - we love you all and think of you often (even if we don't always communicate that =)!