Best of friends

Best of friends

Photo of the Week

2010 Week 3

She holds onto his hair when necessary...

He manhandles her when necessary...

They are best of friends.

Apparently our neighbor has a friend with a tractor plow

Three-year-old writing numbers

Three-year-old writing numbers

Photo of the Week

2010 Week 2

This was the very first time he attempted to write numbers.

He wanted to do them, so we did.

We are learning to recognize and write numbers 1-10

and now we have started writing letters, too.

Do you notice his precision on this first try?

Hard to believe my just-turned 3 year old has such great fine motor control!

Saturday morning

Preparations are underway

Cute outfits picked out...

Extra walking shoes purchased...

Sunglasses dug out in the dead of winter...

in preparation for our upcoming sunny trip!

Have you guessed where we're going?

Creativity

The creativity of my three-year-old son is amazing. Here's a snippet - from his "schoolwork" - which is not really like school at all. He was asked to glue the fish anywhere on the paper (in the aquarium). He said that he wanted them in a circle, talking to each other. He was working on this particular one with his babysitter, who asked a few times, are you sure you don't want one swimming here, another swimming over there... No, he insisted on placing them in a circle, where they can talk to each other - and was concerned for the one on the bottom that got left out.

I can tell you, it's the most interesting aquarium scene I've ever seen!

"Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality."

Beatrix Potter

January weekend

Just in from the cold!

Just in from the cold!

Photo of the Week

2010 Week 1

Who's who?

Late night work

I'm just popping in for a second to show you this beautiful moment from last night...

This was about 2 a.m. Since Ariana is getting her second tooth out (and let's hope it comes, soon), she wakes up a lot more in the middle of the night from the pain, and only nursing soothes her back to sleep.

So here I was working on some major deadlines in the middle of the night, and nursing my hurting baby back to sleep. At this point, she was already sleeping and I was contemplating taking her back to bed. All of the sudden, she reached her arm back, instinctively found my hand, grabbed it with her little fingers and held on - all the while sleeping. I was dumbstruck for a moment at the beautiful picture before me (remember, both of my hands were on the keyboard at the moment, typing away) and since my camera lay only a few feet away, I wrestled my way to it, quickly grabbed it with one hand and snapped the picture.

Now you know what our nights look like.

Entertainment

Entertainment fit for a 6-month-old.

6 months

Look who's turning 6 months today!

Happy half-year birthday, Ariana!

(congratulations on getting that first tooth out!)

Still teething

But she is getting some rest, so she's mostly returned to her old happy self.

Completely unrelated: BOTH of my children badly need a haircut.

Shiny new pictures in the shiny new year

So, I've had the last few days off, which has been just awesome and very much needed. I know that I need to gather my strength for the new year ahead, and also wrap up some projects in our home, which is what some of the time has been spent on doing. As you can see, we were busy this weekend taking down our Christmas tree. It's a little early for us, but my reasoning is, with the way I tend to get busy nowadays, if I don't do it now when I've got the time, it may still be up on Valentine's Day. Which is not a good thing with a live tree. Well... not technically live... having lived once tree...

In other news, this little munchkin is teething big time. Which means no matter how many times I put her down for a nap, she will invariably awake 10, 20, or at the most 30 minutes later. All day long, it is a dance of put down for nap, wake up, put down for nap, wake up. So she is not rested and cranky all day long. Which makes it impossible to get anything done unless it is in small increments throughout the day. Let's hope there's a tooth in there somewhere about to emerge.

There was a lot of putting our feet up this weekend.

So out of the ordinary.

It's all about the orange stripes

Every evening, when Daddy gets home from work,

the order of the day is to play Play Dough with Caleb.

Caleb looks forward to it all day long, even mentions it to Daddy in the morning

as he is leaving for work: "Daddy, we'll play with Play Dough when you get home?"

I sure do appreciate Ron's dedication to this particular type of play.

She is practicing sitting up. Sometimes she falls over.

Cranky because she is tired and does not want to sit up anymore.

We've had a lot of time for learning, too. Here Caleb is parking the cars.

Learning to recognize numbers and affix the appropriate amount of animals
to the picture. He is doing great!

Using the glue independently

CHAOS.

This is actually not as bad as it was. The sorting here is already halfway done.

Look behind her. ORGANIZED CHAOS, I'm very proud to say.

And here we have a very close encounter with a Smurf.

Outdoor fun. In the bitter cold.

Stop licking your lips, sweetie. Remember what you looked like at Christmas?

MAGIC. How did he do that?

Rosy cheeks.

Actually, her cheeks were rosy before going outside. Saliva rash.

Okay, sweetie. I don't think it's going to work.

You're doing a great job trying to be DOUBLY excited to make up for her

uhm... lack of excitement

at trying to show off matching baby legs/shirt. You're a good boy.

I, too, thought that she might catch some of your enthusiasm.

However, it appears that she's not having it. I think she really needs a nap.