Some Pre-Christmas Photos

Hi all! Hope everyone is doing well and almost ready for Christmas! Everyone is doing well here. We're finally over all the sickness' that were in the house this last month. Jack had the flu which hit him hard for almost 7 days, then Jessica was sick with apparently something different for about 4-5 days then I got sick for a few days as well. Ian is the only one not to have any kind of cold/flu...lucky guy! But like I said, we're all super healthy now...just in time for Christmas!

I took the kids to see Santa yesterday and they did awesome. I'll have to get Ian to scan in the photo so that I can post it. Other than that - not much is new!

I'm also uploading a bunch of videos to YouTube...follow the link in the post below and you can view them probably later today or tomorrow.

Around the middle of November Jessica started being able to stand and hold herself in a standing position if you placed her there. She thought this was pretty cool (she still couldn't pull herself into the standing position yet though).
Jack thought this was pretty cool as well!
And then about 2 or 3 weeks later I was upstairs in the kitchen and I looked down and found that she had figured out how to get herself standing up! So I quickly grabbed this picture. By the end of this day she could pull herself up on anything as long as she could get her little fingertips up there!!
My birthday!
Our thermometer on December 13, 2009! Yes...it's on the 'minus' side...brrrr....
But hey, Edmonton is not always all that bad. Weather that cold will chill your drinks in about 5 or so minutes!
Jack's letter to Santa. He did the coloring - obviously! He told me what to write...and no, we didn't prompt him to ask for a stocking for Jessica. And it was true about the "too much" part...I asked him if he wanted to add 'books and music' to the list and he said "no Mommy, that's too much". Hopefully he always stays so sweet:)
Decorating the Christmas tree. Jack also put the angel on top with a little help from Mom!
He figured it out in no time! But of course he kept putting all the ornaments on the same branches:)
She sits like this all the time...grabs the bar on the high chair with her toes. I had to get a picture!
Jack always insists I take a picture of him when the camera comes out...yes I see that his pants are dirty now...oh well...still a cute picture:)
Now that Jessica can sit in the bath I think she finds it way more interesting. We don't normally bath them together - just easier not too...but on this night it worked out.
My two goofballs:)

Videos

Because the distance separating us from our family I have typically posted lots of videos instead of just selecting one or two cute ones. So rather than clogging up the blog with reams and reams of videos I've decided that for the most part, I'm going to leave them on YouTube and maybe just make a note when I update them.

So...the link to get to my user profile and see a list of all the videos I've uploaded is:

http://www.youtube.com/user/colleenfff

Happy watching!

Mostly just photos...

Not a lot to update you on (after the lengthy last post)...but here are some pic's of the kids...

Here are some photos of Halloween. Jack (clearly) was a Dalmation puppy (thanks once again to Old Navy for the fab costume!). We went out around 6pm with Jack's two little friends, Shelley and Ava (the girls are cousins, and all three have gone to daycare together since the all started daycare about a year and a half ago).

We had just done about 8 houses, the kids totally understood what was going on and we were ready to do some more! Jack is using his Pumpkin here as a 'guitar'...strumming away!!Here we are returning home after the night. I think we got home around 8pm or so...the kids did really well. Poor Jack was so tired! A couple nights before he had had a really high temperature (around 105.6...yikes!) and he had a bad cough still...but he was well enough to go trick or treating!
All Jack wanted was a little box of Smarties once we got home. He looks so tired here! But - never fear...the children all played for about 90 minutes like crazed lunatics...running around, going bonkers...so he still had a reserve of energy even after this picture!
This is Jessica eating her first really solid food...a cracker! She LOVED it...took the whole thing very seriously!
Definitive proof that the child sleeps on her stomach...ah-ha...I caught her! I actually refer to her as a 'splatterpus' because it always looks like she's fallen from the sky and gone 'splat' when she's sleeping on her tummy in the crib!

We actually didn't have that many leaves to rake this year but it still had to be done! I had bought Jack a little rake and shovel from Winners of all places earlier in the year ($6...how could I resist!). So Jack did a little bit of helping!
I'm so happy I finally found scarves for the kids...you'd think it wouldn't be that hard but I tell you...I've been looking and looking and finally found them at Wal-Mart.

As I mentioned in my last post - Jessica has refused to sit when we've tried to put her in a sitting position. So this picture is of the second time she was on her tummy and put herself in a sitting position with no assistance from us! Apparently she sits when she feels like it and no time else!

And this was taken when I was making lunch for the kids and I heard Jack talking to Jessica...looked down...saw this and grabbed the camera. Seriously - we're so lucky - Jack is sooooo good with Jessica! Hopefully she is good to him too! (I keep picturing a conversation with her when she's 20 something where I'm sternly saying "you're brother has been so good to you forever and you are so mean to him!!"...haha).

Pre-Halloween Photos...

I promise I will upload Halloween photos shortly...however, here are some that were taken the day we went to get our pumpkins!

This is Jessica modeling her new winter hat!
Can you spot my pumpkin?
The kiddos!


Jessica sort of started crawling last night...as Ian puts it "no one but the parents would call that crawling". But she can certainly scoot around the room in a hurry without doing any real crawling!! But seriously - last night she did sort of do the 'move the knees and hands to crawl' motion and she did move a bit...so I'm gonna say she's like 95% there! Also...babies are generally supposed to be able to sit up around 6 months...I've been trying to get her to sit since before that and she just plain old refuses...she just arches her back and tries to get on the floor (tummy or back doesn't matter)...I had started thinking I was going to have to start considering what careers she could have that would allow her to lay down all the time;) Anyway...the other day she was scootching (is that how you spell that?) around the floor and Ian and I look over and there she is, sitting up...and since then she sits up whenever she feels like it, as long as she's been on her tummy first...but if I try to sit her down...forget it. So - I must face reality - she's got my stubborn streak...which I must say - GOOD FOR HER!!! ;)

Jack saw the eye doctor a couple days ago. His eyes are doing good. With the glasses they were turning out a bit so he's gone 4 weeks without glasses and his eye is turning in a tiny tiny bit...barely noticeable and the doctor says it's within the 'acceptable range'...so...good news is that he doesn't have to wear glasses for the time being. We go back in February or earlier if his eye starts going funky again. So - while we should be ecstatic that he doesn't have to wear glasses I must admit that I miss his little glasses...I just thought he totally suited wearing them! Oh well...thank goodness his eyes are doing well.

Jessica is eating tons of food. The whole solid food thing started off a bit rough and she just couldn't seem to figure out what to do...which was completely different than Jack! But now she's a little vacuum just like her brother. Seems to like pretty much everything I've given her so far (peas, corn, various baby cereals, parsnip/carrot mash, green beans (surprisingly), pears, apples, bananas and yogurt). But nothing pleases her more than getting Cheerios or crackers so that she can feed herself...usually half of the Cheerios end up in the high chair or on the floor but she's quite tickled with herself when she gets one in her mouth. Oh...and she's got her two bottom teeth already too!

Finally...Jack is talking so much and it just seems that every day he is saying something new or expressing a new understanding of things. Sometimes it's just normal everyday stuff but sometimes it just cracks me up. He recently started saying "Why Not?" and the first time he asked was when Ian and I were having an 'adult' conversation about work or something or other and I was like "so I'm just not going to do that"...and Jack pipes up "Why not Mommy?". Haha. And we watched the movie Wall-E the other night for the first time (or as Jack calls it, 'Wall-E Robot'), and Jack was pretty interested; today we watched it for a 2nd time and everytime something happened he would say "Mommy, what's happening?". And...sometimes the talking coupled with his independence is just a little TOO independent for me...when we are driving in the car he does "dancing" but using various body parts - for example, he'll do 'knee dancing' or 'hand dancing' and sometimes we get treated to 'eye and mouth dancing' which is freakin' hysterical. But the other day he was doing 'knee, foot, hand, eye, mouth and head dancing' ("It's hard Mommy") all at the same time and I said "Hey Jack, why don't you do back dancing too" and Jack replied "No Mommy, I can't" and I said "Why can't you?" and he said "too busy"! I'm starting to hear the "too busy" reponse to a lot of things these days!

Okay that's it...I'll post more pic's soon!

Toots...yes really that is the title...

Last night as I was putting Jack to bed the following conversation took place as I was reading him his story while he was sitting on my lap:

Mom: (detects a bad odor) Jack, did you toot?
Jack: Yah. Toots on Mommy.
Mommy: Why did you toot on Mommy?
Jack: Because sitting on Mommy.

Seems so darn logical doesn't it?

PS: Jessica has cut her first tooth...bottom left, I found out when she chomped my finger...yeah Doodle!!!

Prediction...

Jessica will be crawling by 7 months.

Talking...

As I was putting Jack to bed the other night the conversation went like this:
Me: "time for snuggles Jack"
Jack: "no Mommy...talking...in bed"
Me: "you want to do talking while I lay in bed with you?"
Jack: "ya"
(we proceed to get in bed and under the covers, head on pillow for our usual 5 minutes of snuggles)
Me: "what should we talk about"
Jack: "ummmmmm, airplanes and parks"

Very sophisticated.