Loving the Library

I took the kids to Pooh's Corner for the first time this past week, which is a story time class for kids at the downtown library. They had a great time and actually sat through the whole thing. Casey and Maggie were attentive the whole time, Mitchell had trouble sitting still but he did still behave really well. We'll definitely go back again. Before we went in for story time the kids played for a bit. Mitchell was circling around this little girl with the shopping cart/stroller just waiting for his chance to go in for the steal.

He gave up and moved onto the airplane.


What's the first thing we do when we get back in the van? Sunglasses of course.

Casey is so funny when he does things like coloring or trying to fix something, he gets his face down about a centimeter away from whatever he's doing and concentrates so hard.


The other day I was in the kitchen and heard the boys giggling like crazy and banging something around in the playroom. When I got into the hallway I saw that they had torn the room apart(which is nothing new), but they also had turned this little house we have on it's side, got it through the doorway and were rolling it around with each other in there. I got it back in the playroom and then got some footage.

Then both of the boys wanted to be in there together which was fun at first...


but as you can imagine, it didn't last long.

When all of this was happening Maggie was stuck to my side which is where she's been lately. She has been a total mommy's girl lately which I'm soaking up because she's usually a daddy's girl. I'm not sure if this is just a phase or if it's due to something else. There's been a number of mornings where we've found little blood spots on her pillows that has come from her ears. The doctor didn't seem to concerned about it when we went to see him but because it's still happening he is referring her to an ear, nose and throat specialist. She never acts as if her ears are bothering her and doesn't seem to have a fever, the only thing different with her is that she is very attached to me, which may or may not be related. So we're hoping we can get in to see the ENT doctor soon.

Big Kid Chairs

Quite a while back my dad made 3 restaurant style high chairs for the kids. Up until now we've just been using them when we go to their place because honestly, I didn't want to not see our 3 high chairs in our kitchen. Now I realize how great these chairs are and how much bigger our dining room seems. Besides the occasional "trading" of food, the kids eat pretty well in them.


My dad is very talented and can make pretty much anything. He also made our kitchen table!

Another nice thing about the chairs is that the kids can slide them out from the table and sweep underneath! I'll take all the help I can get!



Another way the kids love to help is to carry groceries upstairs when I come home. We often end up with a lot of squished bread, but whatever, they're pretty proud of themselves. This day they got into the mushrooms and then had fun pretending to eat them. For lunch that day Maggie actually did eat a big one, just like it was an apple, Casey had one bite and Mitchell chewed apart the whole thing but didn't actually eat any of it. I think he liked the idea of eating it, but just couldn't get past the taste.


Maggie loves to wear sunglasses, even upside down!


I've been looking back through some pictures and saw this one of them in their high chairs for the first time...

And then the last time...

I'm a total sap when it comes to thinking about my babies growing up. It's just happening way too quickly!

Future Ball Players

The kids were pretty excited the other day when they got to try on the baseball jersey that daddy ordered. Casey was playing the part by sporting his shades too.



Not surprising, Mitchell's mouth was full....this boy can eat like a horse!


And here is our ladie's fastball player.


The newest game around here is to run and then slide on the floor. Daniel and I are pretty excited that they're already practicing sliding into home plate. I think we've got 3 more ball players in the family. Mitchell usually joins in but this day he was more interested in eating peas. Oh and 2 out of 3 shirts were off because they had spaghetti and meatsauce for supper. And don't you love Maggie's safety goggles, she wears these most of the day.


Maggie should get a 2 min body checking penalty in this one, thankfully Mitchell was a good sport.

I think both Grandpas will be impressed with Maggie's natural sliding skills.

A List of Demands

The kids are all talking a lot lately. It seems like everyday they pick up a few new words or phrases. One of the big things they've been doing lately (especially Casey) is telling us to be careful. So whenever I reach for something, bend down or pretty much anytime they'll say "Be careful mommy". Do you think they've heard that a time or two before?

Along with all of the talking and understanding of things comes demands. Maggie latest is that she will ONLY wear diapers that have not 1, but 2 Elmo's on them. If you try and trick her by putting one on that has one Elmo and Cookie Monster or Ernie she gets mad and screams, "No, 2 Elmos!!!!" And don't even think about putting the Mickey Mouse diapers on her, would just be ridiculous! So either we need to get her potty trained fairly quickly or we need to call Pampers and see if they would make us a box of exclusively Elmo diapers....hmmm, I'm not sure either is going to happen.

You can clearly see in the picture what the big deal is between the two diapers.

One of Casey's demands involves this stuff...

In case you can't tell, it's toe jam. Our silly boy insists on keeping the sock lint in his toes. If you try and take it out he says, "No, toe jam back in!" He does the same thing with boogies, he says, "No, boogies back in nose!" Sorry, this is probably one of those things that I'm sure you don't want to read, but one day we'll look back and want to remember it.

Mitchell has gotten very attached to a few of these little farm animals. His favorites are the big cow and one specific dinosaur. If you try giving him a different size of either one, he doesn't want them. And if you try and hide either of them in a group of animals and dinosaurs he'll have them picked out in a second.

There are a few things that the kids agree on for demands. One of them is to watch the show In the Night Garden. They are nuts about it and actually seem to be kind mesmerized by it. When this show comes on or even if they just hear the music they stop what they're doing and gravitate to the couch or in front of the TV and stare at it until it's over. Someone told me that it's made by the same producers of the Teletubbies and that would make sense because I think it's just as weird, if not more so. We got the kids 3 of the characters for Christmas. In case you're not up to speed with In the Night garden, this is Iggle Piggle, Upsy Daisy and Maka Paka.

It was funny when they were opening their gifts, Casey opened his Iggle Piggle first and as soon as Maggie saw his, she started looking around for her gift and said "Upsy Daisy" and Mitchell said "Maka Paka". They each have their favorite.


Another TV request they've been making lately is to watch hockey or football. And whenever they're watching hockey they say, "Daddy hockey, daddy hockey!", thinking that it's their daddy out there playing hockey.

I should be thankful that the demands have been pretty easily solved for us so far. I'm sure in 13 years, that won't be the case.

The kids are all over their colds and croup and are finally back to themselves again. A fun game that they like to play in the playhouse is to push each other out of the window. Maggie and Mitchell were at it this day.





Me and Mr. Curly

So Long 2010

Daniel and I celebrated our 5th anniversary yesterday on New Year's Eve. Its usually pretty tame for us and although this year wasn't wild and crazy we did actually go out. We went for supper with my sister and brother-in-law, Gail and Dave, and then we went back to their place where Gail put on a surprise 40th birthday party for Dave(his birthday was actually on Dec. 25th). It was a great time!

The kids were spoiled this Christmas and got so many cool things. For the past few days we've spent the majority of the time playing with tractors, power tools and cleaning. And there's still a fair amount of things we haven't brought out yet.

Casey has been a cleaning machine!




I love these pictures of Daniel and Mitchell. I don't think he's been without a drill in his hand during any of his waking hours, except at mealtime, since they got them.




Maggie took a break from sprinting around the basement to pose for me. This girl absolutely LOVES to run and jump!


It's been a year of some big changes with us moving to a new house, me starting back to work, Daniel resigning from his position and the kids doing or saying something new everyday. We're looking forward to 2011.