Learning to build BIG towers

With his own curiosity and some guidance from Josh, Lucas has been building large towers with his blocks (recognize these, Dante? they are a big hit!). In this series I captured this morning, he builds a tower taller than he is.

Here he stopped and waited long enough for me to leave the room, get my camera, return, and take his picture. Amazing, given his competing urges to build taller and/or knock it down in delight. But he waited for me instead. And he is smiling with pride in his accomplishment thus far.



Adding the "l" block, which makes the tower about exactly as tall as Lucas.



And now one more, which requires tippy-toes:



He actually had to turn this one and try again, but I only posted one of these, so the block is a bit turned in the next photo.

The finished tower:



The good news is, as much as he loves building and stacking, he is equally pleased when it all comes crashing down (and sometimes helps speed that process along), so this has been a fun activity for all of us.

Wii tennis

Josh loves to play Wii sports, and Lucas loves to play along too, but doesn't know how to push the right buttons to actually control the Wii. So we've discovered that tennis is the best game for Lucas to play along with. Josh plays the computer, and Lucas is sure he is controlling the movements of the other side. He doesn't even have a Wii controller, he has the TV remote or, in this instance, a drumstick. But he jumps and swings his "racket" and thinks he is playing. At around 0:24 in this video, you can also hear his Seles-like grunt. It is really quite cute.

He also has the Wii racket accessory (sans Wii controller) to further the experience. Maybe he has a future in tennis, he sure seems to love it!

Inauguration Day!

You've probably seen the painting of Barack Obama in red and blue that became iconic and was the cover for Time magazine's Person of the Year issue. Well, I found a website that lets you make your own, so I loaded in photos of Josh and Lucas. It is from Paste Magazine's Obamicon.me. I think they look cool!

Happy, happy day!!

Fun times

Here are the boys (all of them!) playing their guitars together. Not only is it visually cute, but they go around in a circle and make up lyrics, and it is super-cute to hear the things Josh sings about. Lucas still doesn't talk much, so he just strums along. I just love that they each have a different size guitar to fit their needs.



I also brought out our Ladybug tent, which was a gift from my Aunt Mary Lou a few years ago. Josh has been asking about camping, but of course we were buried in snow last month and we're moving into the dead of winter, so I was happy to substitute this nice indoor tent! Now Josh wants to picnic inside it for every meal. The boys are loving it, especially the fun tunnel, and the velcro side door that each of them can open and close by themselves during repetitive rounds of hide-and-so-seek/peek-a-boo, Lucas' very favorite game.

Disney album

I never got around to posting the pictures from our Disney vacation in September (there was just too much going on then, sorry!), but upon my friend Krista's suggestion (via her blog), I made a photobook of the trip at Shutterfly to give as our Christmas present to my family. Thanks for the tip, Krista!

You can view the album, if you want, by clicking on this link. You will not have to join Shutterfly to view the album.

share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=2AaMmbVu0ZsXHQ

We had more than 1,000 photos between everyone's cameras, so I had a lot to choose from and tried to hit the highlights. I think it turned out well, and it was well-received on Christmas day too!

Christmas Day

Well, with the record snowfall and heretofore unseen 14 straight days of snow for Portland (which rarely gets snow at all, such that we don't even own a snow shovel and heard tell of friends digging out with items such as food trays), it looked like we might have to spend Christmas alone. But alas, John's brother and sister-in-law Curt and Jeni managed both to arrive via plane (after a few days of nothing but cancellations, including John's parent's Monday flight) and to drive the short distance from the airport to our house, but not without getting stuck in the snow and enlisting the help of truckers to chain up their rental car and get them back on their way.

So, having arrived Christmas Eve they decided to spend the night with us and witness Santa's visit to Josh and Lucas Christmas morning. On Christmas Eve, we let the boys open their gifts from Curt and Jeni. Josh received Moon Sand, which he was so excited about and proceeded to quote the tag line to anyone who would listen: "it never dries out!" He made a castle and a treasure chest full of coins, giving the adults lots of time to catch up (but apparently none to take a photo, so you'll have to take my word for it).

Lucas received a marching drum and he loved it, and drummed all around until we made him go to bed. He was the cutest little drummer boy.



Of course Josh snaked most of Lucas's toys at one point or another (see illustration below).

Lucas also received a cool textured book, which Uncle Curt read to him:



After some toy time, it was time to put out Santa's cookies and go to bed. When the boys awoke Christmas morning, and came out to the living room, the first thing Josh noticed was the crumbs on the cookie plate--but no cookies! "Santa came! Santa came!" He was so excited. Then he spotted the presents from Santa, and immediately held up his wrapped gift and yelled, "It's a jet plane!" Guess he was pretty sure Santa deemed him "nice" this year. But indeed it was a jet plane, a large one for Josh and a small one for Lucas, just as requested. Guess who plays with which one, though?! Lucas rides the big one around (sitting on it), and Josh zooms around flying the small one. But hey, they're happy.

The tree, full stockings (or "sockings," per Josh), Santa's gifts, and the tell-tale plate:



Josh fetching his gift:



Lucas was just happy to be there, he had no idea what was going on.

Christmas Day x2

After their Monday flight was cancelled, John's parents spent the rest of the day trying to get rebooked for another flight. It took a good 12 hours. There are few things worse than trying to travel at Christmastime. But thankfully, they did get another flight booked, for the day after Christmas.

They were supposed to arrive Friday evening, but were delayed for several hours, leaving us all to fear the flight would be cancelled again. But it finally took off shortly after midnight, landed after 2, and John drove out in our chained-up Subaru to pick them up and get them here, a little after 3 am. Needless to say, everyone was exhausted! But very glad they made it!

So after gymnastics class Saturday morning (both Josh and Lucas have just started going to our neighborhood gymnastics gym for Saturday morning classes, and they are so cute!), we had Christmas #2. Actually, Gail and Gene came to the class, which was the first time the boys and I had seen them since they arrived (yeah, we didn't wait up for the 3:00 arrival). Josh saw "Gammy" watching him in the gym through the viewing window, and we saw him say to his teacher, "It's my Gammy and Poppa!" We could only see him mouth the words, but he was so plainly excited to see them, which was really nice.

We got back home and awaited Curt and Jeni's return from her dad's house, and then resumed the opening of presents. Josh was all business.



Hey, it's matching guitars, just like Daddy's but sized appropriately to each kid!



Playing jumping up and taking flight with Poppa:



and Legos with Gammy, who felt she may have been more invested in the final product than Josh was:



Grandparents and grandkids, complete with Sammy:

Merry Christmas!

With lots of love!

Lucas dances with baby SpiderMan

Just click on the "Play" button ( > ) on the bottom left corner to play the video.

Snow Day Fun!

We had more snow yesterday, then freezing rain overnight that added a layer of ice on top. So today, we sledded! John blew up our inner tube and we sledded down our driveway. It was more fun than I thought it would be for a relatively small hill, we had a fun time! It is really cold out there though, especially when the wind blows!

A view of our frozen trees:




The boys in their ski bibs before we headed out:



The front yard's snow. The boys are sitting on the retaining wall but you'd never know it from all the snow piled up under them:



Josh starting a trip down the hill!

Snow day fun video!

Turn your head, I couldn't figure out how to rotate this video, sorry!


It took me several tries to just get it uploaded, I've been having a lot of difficulty getting videos up on Blogger since August. Hope this one works!

The Holiday Express

Last year, Josh had two train rides with Santa. First, we took the Polar Express out of Hood River, a two-hour round-trip drive from Portland. The Polar Express followed the story from the book, with servings of hot chocolate, a reading from the book, and then our arrival at the North Pole, where Santa and his elves got on board and came through the train, taking pictures and visiting with each child, and handing out bells as well. Josh loved it. (Lucas was only 6 months old, so he could take it or leave it).

But then, he was also invited on a second train ride in Portland with his buddy Ben, in which Santa also came through and handed out candy canes. It seemed to us that he loved them equally, and really only remembered "Santa" and "train." So this year, we saved ourselves the drive and only booked the local Holiday Express ride. We went last weekend, on a frigid night that seemed much too cold at the time, but it has been snowing ever since (a rarity in Portland, which hardly ever gets snow and never gets 7 days of snow in a row!) so I guess we were lucky.

Here are Josh and Ben after we boarded:



and Mommy and Lukie:



Here comes Santa!! It was very fun seeing him make his way toward us, the boys could barely contain their excitement:



A big hug from Josh:



And nothing but tears from Lukie! (again--he also cried when we saw Santa for their picture earlier in the month)

He still got a candy cane from Santa though, which he loved (me, not so much, what with the exceedingly sticky hands and face afterward):



Josh and Daddy were pretty happy too:



Overall, a very cold but very fun night.

Then, as it turns out, Josh does remember the Polar Express ride. As we've read the book at bedtime this month, Josh has talked about when we rode the Polar Express, on the "other" Christmas (he doesn't use temporal words like "last year" or "yesterday" yet; it's just the "other" one). He remembers getting the hot chocolate and, especially, getting his bell. But he isn't disappointed this year, the Holiday Express was satisfying enough and he's thrilled to have ridden with Santa again. But next year, it may be back to Hood River RR for us.



Brothers. They kill me with their cuteness sometimes (lots of times).

Tis the season

Well, before the snow hit we had plenty of Christmas activities planned to carry us through the holiday season. But a couple parties were cancelled due to the snow, and we stayed home and warm instead of seeing Zoo Lights or the Christmas Ships (although there's still time). But even at home we found some holiday fun.

Here is our tree, now inside, lighted and decorated. We had to keep the glass ornaments off the bottom, after Lucas' curiousity broke several right off the bat. My Aunt Pat sent the boys some stuffed ornaments they could color, so those are taking care of the bottom, where nothing can be broken! Thanks Aunt Pat!



When the first boxes arrived, Josh thought that meant it was Christmas--after all, there were presents under the tree, which meant there were presents to open! But we explained the wait and made a calendar so he could count down the days, and then the boys moved on to the second best thing about receiving boxes of presents: the box! It's a spaceship, it's a fort, it's everything they need it to be.

The Christmas Tree Farm

We made our annual trek to the Christmas tree farm Saturday. It was a dry day here, which is somewhat rare in December, so it was busy. We found our tree right away, but kept looking a bit to make sure. But we didn't want to wander too far and let someone else sneak in and take our tree! We are very pleased with it. It has great color, proportions, and size, and looks fantastic in our house.

Here is our chosen tree, still in the ground:


Daddy makes the first cuts:


Josh is helping out with such determination (while Lucas wandered all about, eating branches):


Josh's turn at the saw:

Success!

Miscellaneous unposted photos

Things have been busy here for any number of reasons, and I haven't posted since my birthday, I think. We had a great celebration with some friends on the weekend before, then celebrated Thanksgiving at home, caught the Macy's Christmas parade in Portland Friday morning, and then went to some friends' house at the Oregon coast for the rest of Thanksgiving weekend.

Josh has really been into wearing my boots. They make him feel like either a cowboy or a rock star or a rock star cowboy. He is surprisingly mobile in them, despite a 3 or 4-inch heel. He runs all around and feels so cool. Here he is rocking out on Dad's guitar with Mom's boots and his favorite groupie: (and just look at that face!)



This was just a super cute picture of the two of them bonding and watching what was probably Spongebob. They get along so remarkably well. Which is not to say there aren't fights over toys, but they really love and enjoy one another. Every night after I get Lukie ready for bed, I tell him to go out and kiss Josh goodnight, and to my surprise now he just does it (he is starting to follow a lot of instructions, which caught us off guard because we didn't really realize he understood what we were saying). It is so cute to see them kiss and hug goodnight.



Here we are at the coast. Gary and Elizabeth live one block inland from this stretch, which was just gorgeous.





And finally, like the instructions we were surprised to see Lucas follow, he also surprised us when he started doing the movements as baby Spiderman sang "the itsy bitsy spider." Here he is doing the spider part, with his little fingers together. He also does the "wash the spider out" movement, and then the "up came the sun" movement (arms in a circle over his head). So, so cute.