Seriously? Aunt Annie Is Coming To Visit This Weekend???

Could she BE any more excited?

Toys and Food-What's Not To Love?

Luke's main gift from Santa was a Elmo Sing N Giggle Tool Bench (see also pix). He enjoys it quite a bit. It's Sesame Street--how could he not love it??

He's really started to pick up the pace with the things he can say and do. He can point to a duck and say "duh." If you ask him where the picture of a duck is in a book, he can flip through the pages until he finds one and points. He can get in the fridge and get his own juice box--he can't break the straw through the seal
but he can put it in once the seal is broken. My Mom and Dad got Luke a toy 4 wheeler for Christmas. He knew just what to do with it. He hopped right on, grabbed the handle bars and started making engine noises. Aunt Robbie got him a Radio Flyer scooter that has a bell he can ding on it. When he gets tired of being on one of these two things, he just transfers to the other.

He has found a new game he enjoys. It's called the "Drop food/sippy/fork/spoon from my high chair, say 'uh oh' and laugh" Game. Yeah, it was real cute the first 3000 times he did it. ..not so much any more. He can also say "whoopsie." Now that is still cute. He is getting clearer with saying Ella (more like El-uhh now), Grammie (Rammie), juice box (ooos ahx), "want that" (uhnt aaat).

The kid is wild, I mean WILD, about any kind of dried fruit. In particular, he enjoys craisins and blueberries. It almost makes me want to drag out my Mom's old food dehydrator from her basement and whip me up some homemade dried fruit. Almost. Not quite, Mom, so don't go dragging it over to my house on Tuesday. I always dream of being like my friend, Jeanne's Mom (Diane). When Jeanne was little, Diane would make them homemade yogurt. Did you hear me correctly? I said yo-gurt. This woman is some sort of patron saint of healthy eating for her kids. I think she even made them sweeten it with honey (no sugar). My hero.

Santa Comes In Our House How??

Christmas went well in our household. This was the first year that Ella really got into the whole Santa thing. She didn't quite grasp the concept that you ask Santa for something and he brings it to you, though. She was rather content to let him decide what to bring her with complete confidence that she would love whatever he brought.

She was a little worried about our friend, Santa, when on Christmas Eve, Aron wanted to light a fire in our fireplace. Ella had a little moment of worry because she thought it might be too hot for Santa to come down our chimney if we had a fire in there. If she were any other kid, I'd probably say that she was just worried that her presents would be singed but I actually believe she was worried about the ol' Claus. Here she is, sitting on our fireplace with cookies, milk, and carrots for the reindeer.

P.S. We bought a new camera so we no longer have to depend on my parent's camera. I think my Dad was a little nervous about my handling his "precious" and kept asking me if I was messing it up by fiddling with the knobs on it. Patience, Young Skywalker, your camera will be fine. (Yeah, that's right, I just referenced 2 movies in one small paragraph.)

Labile mood anyone?

Ah, how quickly the pendulum swings...(thanks Jamie for the title)

Girls Gone Wild

Last Saturday night and this Saturday night, it was Girl's Night Out. Ella, Grammie, and I all went to the movies. Last week we saw Happy Feet (I give it 3/4 of a thumbs up out of 2 which means it was tolerable enough that I only looked at my watch a couple times). This week we saw Charlotte's Web. I don't really remember reading this story as a child (Aron thinks I'm a freak because of this, and I probably shouldn't be admitting this out loud in blog form but I never really had an interest in doing so). Grammie hadn't read it either so it was new for all of us. About 5 minutes before Grammie got to our house, Aron springs it on me that Charlotte dies in the end (sorry for those of you who didn't know). Wha? Charlotte does wha? Wha? Crap! Now I'm going to have to talk to her about death and dying--just what I wanted for the holidays--discussions of spider heaven.

All thru the movie, I prepared for the end...the death...the questions...the crying...but it never came. You know why? CAUSE I'M A GENIUS! That's right, my friends--G to the E to the N-I-U-S. Charlotte dies right after she gives birth to her 514 babies while they're at the county fair. The characters briefly discuss that she is going to die then it just appears that Charlotte goes to sleep. Ella looked at me like "What just happened here?" I told her that she needed to take a nap after she had her babies and she would see them again at next year's fair. She nodded like she bought it then I asked her if she wanted more 7up. She took a sip and by the time she was done, presto! The scene was over and everyone was happy again.

Bottom line: Crisis averted.

Um, Is She Taken?

Our sitter, Katie, came over last night to bring presents for the kids. She tried to win their affections with presents but she should realize that they are already smitten with her. Look at the look on Luke's face (after you get done laughing at the fact that he's wearing a hard hat with his PJs. At least it matches, right Auntie T?). She brought Ella a set of horses with real manes and tails that you can brush and soft, fuzzy hair/fur/whatever it is that horses have.

She brought a Noah's ark Little People set for Luke--score one for Katie because he loves the Little People.

I must admit, though, that Ella went to bed last night without putting her horses away. I went downstairs this morning and saw the super big horse (I'm holding it in the top picture) on the floor and thought it was a squirrel. Hey, leave me alone--I didn't have my glasses on and it was early! Let's just say I almost screamed. Let's also just say that I almost tried to beat it with a broom handle. Let's just say it was a good thing I realized it wasn't a squirrel before the horse met it's untimely...well, Katie would've been buying another set of horses.

If You Know His Father...

Then this comes as no surprise. Luke likes to eat. I'm not going to hide it anymore. Yes, he weighs about as much as my arm with 5 pounds of bling on my wrist but I'm telling you THAT KID CAN EAT! I put a cookie in front of him and this is what happened...

I'm pretty sure this crosses the bounds of blog etiquette

I didn't realize it until about an hour ago that there is something very special about our family photo. Look closely at Ella's hand in the previous blog.

Um, I don't think Santa will be coming for you this year, Ella.

Christmas Picture

Yes, it's that time of year again, folks. Christmas picture day. Every year since Aron and I got married we take a picture together in front of the tree. Here's this year's edition. We decided not to try to get Jane in it this year. She's just to squirmy.

Mall Santa's Got Nothin' On Story Hour Santa

I think you all know by now that my Mom's day job is as an Assistant Director at a library (Hi Mom!) when she's not watching the kiddies at my house. Well, every year for her story hour she has Santa come and hand out presents to the kids. Santa's little elves (aka the story hour teachers --Hi Miss Nita, Miss Janet, Miss Sally, and Miss Katie) wrap up presents with the kids' names on them for Santa to pass out.

He came walking down the hallway of the library back to the story hour room ringing his bell. All the kids got really quiet when they heard what was going on. He gave each of the story hour kids a book and each of their baby brothers and sisters a teddy bear. That Santa...he sees you when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake, he knows when you've been picking your nose so quit it for goodness sake!

On Dasher, On Prancer

Our town had a Christmas festival this weekend. They had all kinds of stuff going on like Turkey bowling (I had never heard of this but you basically take a frozen turkey, roll it down a lane made of ice, and knock over some bowling pins), show choirs singing, and free horse carriage rides. We got in line for the carriage rides. Ella and Myles were anxiously anticipating said ride so once the horses got there, they were jumping up and down bursting at the seams with excitement. The guy who driving the horses asked if they wanted to sit up front with him (um, do thine ears deceive me? Who wouldn't want to????). He even let Ella hold the reins and steer the horses. This guy totally rocked. My camera's officially busted so if you want to see pictures you have to go to Robin's blog. If I haven't given you the link, give me an e-mail and let me know. The pictures are a riot.

As they got off, Ella got really squirmy and wanted to get back on. I told her it was someone else's turn. She told me she wanted to get back on because she forgot to tell them to "Giddy up."

Seriously, Ashton Kutcher, Come Out Cause I Got Punk'd

I'm serious this time. We tried to buy my brother-in-law, Kevin, a magazine about motorcycles for Christmas. I'll be up front, Aron and I have no clue about motorcycles nor do we know about magazines and such. We looked at the magazine display at Barnes and Noble trying to pick one out and spent a solid 5 minutes trying to look at the covers to see which one looked the best. We picked one out and thought we had made a good selection--the cover promised in depth analysis of the most recent models of motorcycles by all the major manufacturers. Sounds good, right? Once we got it home, we decided to bust into the plastic wrap it came in to get a card to send him a subscription. As I'm going through it, I notice that there seemed to be a lot of women in the magazine but I wasn't really paying attention until I noticed that it had a centerfold in it. Huh, a centerfold, huh? Yeah, there was totally a naked chick on the bike. A more in depth look at the magazine revealed that there were quite a few ladies so excited about the most recent models of motorcycles that they had to get naked.

I'm thinking we would be on Santa's naughty list if we gave it to him for Christmas. Rats.

I Loves Me Our Katie-Sitter

Aron had his office Christmas party over the weekend. One of the partners of his company hosted it at his house this year. We had our babysitter, Katie, come over a little early so Aron and I could go shopping before the party. As we were leaving, Aron remembered that we needed the directions to the party. He ran all around the house trying to find them but couldn't. We took off without the directions thinking we would call someone on the way. About 15 minutes into our journey, I got a text from Katie. She had found the directions and had typed them all out for us. Man, I love that girl. She probably thinks I'm the most disorganized freak ever but who cares cause she's got my back.

We went to the mall and saw our friend, Krystal, who was working some sort of crazy, heinous schedule at Macy's (think 10 AM to 11PM or something crazy like that) and did some shopping. We went to the party and had a good time. When we came home, Ella was still awake but fell asleep 2 seconds after I put her in bed because it was 11:30 (waaaaaaaay past when she normally goes to bed). She was having too good of a time with Katie having some "girl time" doing "girlish things." Luke had fallen asleep later than he normally does, too, but he only made it to 9:00. I think they're trying to tell me that Katie's more exciting than I am. We all know she's more exciting than Aron but more exciting than me???

After Katie left, I went into the office/toy room and found all of the toys neatly organized and put away in their respective baskets. I left that room and went to the kitchen and found the kitchen neatly organized with all of their dishes done from dinner and the counters wiped down. Man, I really love that girl. Can I swap her for Aron?

Did I just get Punk'd?

I ran to the store the other day with Ella while Luke and Aron stayed home. I just had to pick up a few things and probably didn't even really need a cart but somehow Ella talked me into getting one of those car carts. You know what I'm talking about. Those ginormous carts with the car built into it so the kids can drive the car while you're shopping. A good idea in theory, but in reality it's like driving a Hummer down a one way street with parking on both sides. They're impossible to steer and you don't realize how long they are (they're longer than the regular carts). Well, there I was bopping along in the produce when all the sudden, a display of oranges jumped in front of my cart and fell over. Ok, ok, so maybe the oranges didn't "jump out" in front of me and maybe I'm "Mr No Depth Perception" ($5 to the first person who can tell me what that reference is from) but let's just say there I was in the middle of the produce section and there was a bunch of bags of oranges all over. I looked around and no one had seen my mishap so I started to try to pick them up but then I realized that I had broken the board that holds the display case together. I tried to stack them up on the shelf without this precious board but no dice. I ended up going to get the lady in the floral department because Ella kept telling me "Mommy, you need to pick that up. Mommy you should really pick that up." Curse me and my needing to set a good example--I should've just run like the wind. Double curse to me and my bad luck. Although, my luck is nothing compared to my friend, Connie. (Poor Con. 2007's gotta be better).

The Ever Growing, Ever Changing LUKE

He's growing up fast, my friends. He's started to say all kinds of new words like duckie, desitin, gator, etc. Also, he's started making gestures for things he wants like yogurt (don't show that kid a container of yogurt and expect him not to eat it). He makes simple choices of milk or juice when I show him the containers. He's definitely started to show a preference for feeding himself. He even scoops up thicker foods like yogurt or chunky applesauce himself with a spoon. There's a definite preference for fruit over vegetables--don't get him started on dried blueberries because he won't stop. If you ask him if he needs a diaper change, he points to his diaper and nods. Ah, the beginnings of potty training. Ella was only a few months older than Luke is now when we started the process with her.

Our babysitter, Katie, came over last weekend while Aron and I went shopping. She brought birthday presents for both the kids since it had been a while since her last visit. Ella got a My Little Pony with accessories to brush the hair, a crown, and barrettes for its hair. It also came with a My Little Pony DVD that she really likes....really, REALLY likes...like watch it a bazillion times in a row likes it. Curse that Katie. Luke got a truck that makes engine noises when he presses the top. He loves that, too. He knows where to find it when you ask him where his Tough Boy Truck is. Both kids had a blast with Katie and was very sad to see her go. She'll be back this weekend, though, when Aron and I go to his work Christmas party on Saturday.