New Years Eve: Out with the Old

For the past while I've been keeping a close eye on Ginny's mouth, watching for any sign of her first tooth. It didn't occur to me that there was another mouth in the house that I should have been watching a little closer.
Late in the afternoon on New Years Eve, Ethan came in with a concerned look on his face after playing outside.
"Mom, I fell and bonked my mouth and my teeth are funny now."
That put a concerned look on MY face. Upon examination of the "funny" teeth, we concluded that the two lower front teeth were "very wiggly." Only a few hours later, Ethan lost his first tooth. Literally his first tooth. That was the first one to come in when he was a baby, and now it's the first one to be put in the place of honor underneath the pillow. It's neighbor is acting eager to follow.

Thanks to the big gaps in his teeth, it's kind of hard to tell anything is amiss.

Cousins

Matt's sister Marci and her family are home for the holidays from Eugene. Ginny loves having her cousin Rocky around to do tummy time with.

Christmas Program

All the kindergarten classes at Ethan's school put on a Christmas program yesterday. They've been practicing for weeks and we've been hearing bits and pieces of songs around the house. I was really impressed with how many songs those kids had memorized. I also had no idea how many songs there were about Santa.

Marci, Brandon and Rocky were able to come up and watch it with us. When we walked into the gym, the kids were already sitting up on the stage. I loved that Ethan saw all of us show up and just wiggled with excitement.

My favorite was when they sang Silent Night. They sang the first verse and then hummed the melody while they did the first verse in sign language. Silent Night has been my favorite Christmas song since I was in Sonoma Valley Children's Chorale and we learned the whole song in german. To hear it in those sweet voices (and I swear I could pick Ethan out) and then to see it in yet another language. Oooh, I had goosebumps.

Ethan's favorite, the one he's been singing around the house the most, is I'm Getting Nuttin' for Christmas. I don't know if it's because he likes all the naughty things in the song, or if he secretly wonders it about himself.

All in a row

Joanna's passion lately is lining things up.

Add that to Ethan's penchant for a jumbled pile and you've got a recipe for trouble.

Decorating for Christmas

Ever since Ethan was one year old, decorating the Christmas tree has been a favorite event of mine. In years before that, I'd always enjoyed getting out the ornaments, remembering the stories that came with each one. But add the excitement of a toddler running back and forth between you and the tree, hanging every ornament within the same square foot of tree space, all with such care you didn't know their chubby little fingers were capable of. Oh man, it's bliss for me.
Trying to capture the beauty of these precious little faces lit up by the Christmas lights was a difficult task due to the fact that their precious little bodies don't stop moving. So we ended up with a lot of blur, but that's kind of how the evening ends up being. A blur of excitement and tradition and Christmas stories and hot cocoa and Christmas songs.

Joanna doesn't remember last Christmas all that well, so she's having a hard time this year understanding what the big socks hanging on the wall are for.

And even more kids stories

I wonder sometimes if these little stories I share are as cute to the rest of the world as they are to me. Maybe not, since I think my kids are the epitome of cuteness, and I know there are other moms out there who think their own kids hold that status. Either way, I know there's at least two sets of grandparents and a smattering of aunts and uncles who get a kick out of my kids so here we go with round three of my own version of "kids say the darnedest things".
We've been transferring photos from our old computer to the new one, so I'm going to throw in a couple of oldies but goodies towards the end.

I leave the kids in the car to run in and pick up my contacts. When I get back in Ethan says "We talked about it and (he throws his hands up in the air), none of us knows how to drive the car!"

Joanna ate a banana and carried the peel around for a little bit. Then she put it down in the middle of the floor and yelled " 'atch out! Don't swip!"

Joanna: 11 months

Ethan: "I'm going to wear my skull sweatshirt because I'm awesome and I look awesome in it!"

Ethan: 4 1/2

Aunt Jill: "Whoever says 'I'm a geek' wins!"
Ethan: "I'm a geek!"
Me: "Ethan, do you know what a geek is?"
Ethan: "umm...."
Me: "It's like a nerd. Do you know what a nerd is?"
Ethan: "Candy!"

Joanna: 1 year. Ethan: 4 1/2.

These last few are thanks to Ethan's vocab program in kindergarten.

"My favorite word is....The!"

Joanna: 1 year

"I'm not sharing. I'm a happy miser!" ( I think this one is thanks to Daffy Duck )

Ethan's silly face: 4 1/2

Ethan's playing in the creek bed with Carson, smacking a shovel against a rock to make sparks. I call for him, telling him it's time to come home and he yells back: "No! I want to linger!"

Joanna: 14 months

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving just isn't complete without an after feast nap.

Skipping Rocks

We headed out a little while ago to do some hawk spotting. We ended up out at the bird refuge teaching the kids to skip rocks.

Ethan got the hang of it and got a high score of 4 skips. Matt got one that we lost count on but was at least over twenty.

Joanna's still figuring it out.

What a Difference a Year Makes

This is Joanna one year ago.

This is her now.

I know I've already used this picture before, but I just love it. Those cheeks, those gorgeous eyes. She's a doll.

Blessed is the Thumb

There are two, and only two, responses we get when people see Ginny sucking her thumb.
1. Oh how cute! She's sucking her little thumb!
2. Uh-oh, you've got a thumb sucker.
Now with both my girls (Joanna was and still is a big thumb sucker) I have put myself in the first category and added a "Thank heavens!" In my experience, thumb sucking=good sleeper.
There is many a dire warning that comes (unsolicited) from those in the second category. It will mess up their teeth (no problems yet with Joanna), it will interfere with eating (again no problems here). It's such a hard habit to break. Hmm. Now we haven't come to that bridge yet, but I have hope, since Joanna has kept the thumb sucking to times of distress and sleepiness.
And really, when it comes to getting good sleep during those first years, you'll take anything that will help. When Ginny first sucked her thumb and followed her sister down that path, I swear I heard the Hallelujah Chorus playing softly in the background.

More Kid Stories

Our backyard is awesome in the fall. The trees drop so many leaves the kids can just about swim in them. I recently did an impromptu photo shoot of Joanna so I thought I'd share some of the pictures along with a couple more stories.

Ethan will often ask for "music that is fast and that I like." That usually means some kind of punk music, his favorite being the Ramones. The other day in the car Matt put on a song that started out slow with just some piano. Ethan whipped out a whiney "nooo" followed by "I want music with a drummer and a guitar and a guy with a microphone that sings, NOT piano."

The kids were fighting over who got the green cup. I said "If you close your eyes, the cups are exactly the same." Joanna squeezed her eyes shut really tight and said "oh, dawk." She did it over and over all over the house.

Ethan asked me how old Ginny is. I had toothpaste in my mouth at the time so my answer came out as "five mumfs."
Ethan: "what are mumfs?"
Me: "no, five months. She's five months old."
Ethan: "oh, ok...what are mumfs?"
Me: "no, I meant to say months but I had toothpaste in my mouth so it came out sounding like mumfs. Mumfs is not a word."
Ethan: "oh, ok...but what are mumfs?"


If Ginny seems to be getting shorted blog time, it isn't because she's not cute. It's more like everything she does is cute, but in a 'you had to be there' sort of way.

Cold days are upon us

Of course the fates would have it that we'd get a slushy snow storm and freezing temperatures the week that Matt is in Vernal.
I still force the kids outside, but we don't last long. Ginny's usually the first to complain, having never known cold before in her life. Joanna's nose becomes as red as a cherry and starts running like a faucet. And even for me, the lure of chatting with the ladies starts to be trumped by the lure of hot chocolate.
Ethan's the only one that doesn't seem to mind the drop in temperature. He never seems to notice what the weather is like (some of you may remember the trouble we had getting him to dress in anything but sweat pants and long sleeve t-shirts when the temperature was in the 90s this past summer.)
I knew it was inevitable, this move towards winter. And I should be grateful for the long Indian summer we had. So I guess I'll just accept that I can't go out in flip flops anymore, curl up with a cup of hot chocolate, and dream about when summer will come again.
Ethan, not too long ago, enjoying the last warm days with his friends Aubrey, Carson, and Jake

Emo Jo

When Joanna gets out of the tub she's got great emo hair.
She'd fit in nicely with AFI
Or maybe not, she might be too much of a sweety pie.

Halloween

This Halloween was a good one. In the morning I took the kids with my friend Sue and her kids to downtown Logan. A lot of the stores hand out candy to trick-or-treaters and it was a good way to wear the kids out so they'd nap before the rest of the festivities. It's become tradition to have the entire neighborhood meet in the late afternoon and do a costume parade to the end of the street and back. People put out stereos and play Halloween music to walk to, and after the parade we gather for pizza. After some mingling and picture taking everyone dispurses for some Trick or Treating.
Ethan went as a spy
Joanna was a tiger
and Ginny was a bug
Here's all the neighborhood kids (Ethan is in the front to the right, Joanna is front middle behind the frog)
I tried to get a picture of Joanna with her friends Allie (lion) and Aubrey (skunk) but I didn't manage to get one with all of them looking cute at the same time, so to be fair, here's the one with no one looking their best
This is Ethan with his best friends Carson (Tiger) and Jake (Cow).
And one last one. These are the kids that usually play together every afternoon, minus Joanna.
Left to right: Lily, Aubrey, Carson, Ethan, Jake and Allie.
I love Halloween. Yes, the candy is awesome, but what's really great about it is that it makes these kids, who are just about as cute as you can get, somehow even more cute.

Made by real hippies

Some who know us would wonder if the title means the shirts or the kids.

Matt's parents recently visited his sister Marci and her family out in Eugene, Oregon, where her husband Brandon is going to school. They brought back these awesome shirts for our kids.